Winter achievements?

A few days ago I noticed that my iTunes Recently Played playlist was approaching 400 (it might have been at about 380). It seemed possible to get this number to 400 without too much effort, though I still don't know why I thought that this would a particularly good idea.

After about a day or two of somewhat regular use of the iTunes Genius Mix function (basically a means of randomizing what is played without me having to worry that every second track will be spoken word) I managed to make it past 400, Actually I made it way past 400 and almost to 500. At that point I decided that I might as well keep on going as such milestones would provide me with a sense of achievement, even though I wasn't really doing much to achieve any of these goals.

I am now about a week and a half into this process and my new goal is 700 (I am presently at 687 [now 689]). Of course there are at least two problems with this process. Firstly, the goals are completely meaningless and arbitrary. Having played 400 songs in a particular timeframe really doesn't mean much. Secondly, to achieve such numbers I have taken to playing music almost constantly when I am at my desk, but at such low levels that it won't distract me from whatever it is I am doing. My desire to attain higher and higher numbers is so strong that I have even contemplated completely muting my computer while allowing the tracks played count to continue to roll up (fortunately things have quite devolved to this far yet, and I should also be clear that I haven't yet sorted my tracks by length and started playing them from in that order).

Oh, another problem that I realized last night is that I can't just play the stuff I like, repeat plays of the sam track don't drive up my numbers. This means that I am actively playing music that I have but don't really like (to be fair, it's not that I dislike it but rather that it just isn't in my top preference tier).

I really need to stop this nonsense, it isn't helping anyone (and it is totally distorting my Top 50 Most Played playlist). I certainly can't allow myself to keep this going past 1000 (but I really can' see myself stopping before then now that I am so close).