Short answer: No.

Here is how I got there and why I think it isn't bad.

First, I want to start off with 2 of my major goals in life then an analogy.  Afterwards I will tie it all together with regards to the Microsoft MVP award.

Goals:

Learn everything and help as many people as I can learn what I know.  Think about it you know you can't learn everything but you set your goal to learn everything imagine how much you can learn if you fall just short.  You will probably learn quite a bit.

Analogy:

If a person is going to run 5 miles no matter what.  Is it wrong for him to set a side goal of getting 1000 dollars if it is available.  To me no there isn't anything wrong since he is going to run no matter what. (just imagine for a moment strictly running for money is bad)

Now I am sure some of you are going huh about now. Here is how I look at having a goal of earning the MVP award.  I am going to help the community no matter what.  I have been doing so for 4 years and will continue to do so for as long as I am able.  Some of the things I have done and do are:

Blog
Attend DNUG meetings
Speak at DNUG meetings
Work on staff at Conference
Help Organize Dev Conference
Post on forums

Those are some of what I do to help, have done for a while and will continue to do them because I enjoy it. 

So, if I am going to do the above in order to obtain my original 2 goals above then I don't see a problem in having a side goal of earning MVP award if it is available.  For me the first two goals are most important over all others (within the non-political, non-religious, and non-family context).

Now some have said that the MVP isn't in my control so it isn't a very good goal to have.  I have to disagree to an extent.  Earning MVP may not totally be in your control, but there are things you can do so that it doesn't go the way of a dream.  To me a dream is something that would be nice, but isn't what you are going to pour your heart and soul into doing or getting.  Like going to space is a dream for me.  It would be nice, but I am not going to spend the time to do it (I'll wait until it is affordable).  Compared to that there is an amount of control in earning MVP, by helping the community.  Earning the MVP isn't all up to you, but you don't have to keep it in the same realm as going to space.

In the end to me if earning MVP isn't your primary goal then having it as a goal, namely side goal, isn't bad at all.  If it is a primary goal then I suggest re-assessing what you are doing and why because that is a lot of work for the chance of it not happening.  If the primary goal is helping others in the community and teaching; then by all means a side goal of MVP is not a bad thing.

Please let me know what you think especially if you don't agree with me. Please, let me know how I am wrong if I am.

EDIT: Just wanted to note that I am NOT and MVP, but want to become one.

Let me describe an average, believe it or not, scenario of current end-users in today's world.

1. A device of some sort like a smart'ish phone.
2. A laptop
3. A home desktop
4. Mp3 player (iPod, Zune, Sansa, etc...)
5. Game Console (Xbox 360, Wii, PS2/3)

Some of the common tasks that are accomplished are:

• Browsing the Internet
• Bookmarking
• writing reports or documents
• listening to music
• checking e-mail
• watching video
• gaming
• social networking stuff (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc...)
• Phone conversations / chatting / text-messaging

The above is where things break down they are almost all broken apart each "device" does something different or in a broken manner where the other "device" doesn't benefit or help the other.  Take music for example you may have music on your laptop, desktop, iPod and Game console. However, there may be different music on all of them, but to get them all "synchronized", for lack of a better term, would take hours and usually beyond the scope of the average end-user of these products.

We can also look at browsing the Internet and bookmarks.  Currently, if you are on your laptop looking at something you won't be able to access it with a single click from the mouse, or that simplistically.  It would take remotely connecting into the other computer, synchronizing bookmarks or going to a social bookmark site.  It would take quite a bit of work to accomplish this.  In the end it would be a HUGE headache, and the end-user still has to do a lot of leg work.

Here is how things _should_ be:

You get to your desktop at home in the morning check your e-mail that has all your tasks, todo's, and events easily noticeable location so you can glance at it quickly make a change or two and get back to your e-mail.  Next, you go looking through your e-mail and see a link you want to read so you open it in your browser.  Wait, you realize that you want to listen to some music, but you want something different.  You log into your music download app say iTunes.  Download some new music and turn it on and listen while going through more e-mail.  So, now you are done with your e-mail and get up and go to the kitchen for breakfast, but like the music you are listening to so you quickly turn on the game console in the living room that is adjacent to your kitchen, but away from your office.  You navigate to that song and pickup with the music you just downloaded and queued up without hitting anything extra like sync or get.

A little later you are off and out the door dressed you have your phone/mp3 player, keys and laptop for work and/or school.  Then you get an e-mail you open your phone check the e-mail, not important so you continue.  Now, you are parking and have a few block walk to your office for work or school so you open your phone and turn on the music you just got from your desktop. Next, you are on your laptop browsing the net.  Wait, you opened up a site in your browser at home, but got distracted and don't remember exactly where you got the site link.  No problem you hit a button now all the sites on your home browser are in new tabs in your current browser.  While going through the new site you decide to open up iTunes on the laptop and download some more music so you do, but unfortunately you have to go so you don't get to listen to the music.

Finally, you are home for the evening and want to prepare a nice dinner, but remember you have music you want to listen to that you got earlier from the laptop so you walk over to the game console and hit play.  After dinner you sit down and start a movie that you are really getting into, but realize you forgot to do some work so you go into your office flip on your TV and continue the movie from where you left off and get to work on your desktop doing what ever you needed to do.

That is how technology should work for the end-user.  Completely seamless, everything you want or do is always at your fingertips with little to no effort to get what you want or need.  Now, I have no idea if this is even possible at this point in time from my experience it is close, but has a way's to go and takes a lot of leg work to get working properly. Even then it fails to much. The above scenario is where we should be for the end-user and I am always on the look out to get there for the masses.

As a person that has ADHD organized is not in my list of strong abilities, however it is an essential part of life that I need to get under control.  Therefore, for the next 30 days I am going to try a new method of getting organized and getting things done.  I am going to categorize it.

Accomplishing Tasks:
Break up my day into “work” and “personal.” My goal will be to accomplish only 3 goals per day nothing more that way I don’t overwhelm myself which is easy to do with ADHD.  Here is it visually

Work:
1. Design new data structure
2. Redo class and add unit testing
3. Work on Report service

Personal:
1. Study Calc III for an hour
2. Research, CSS adapters for ASP.NET
3. Make post about CSS Adapters

For studying I will make flashcards to just carry around with me and still do the 1 hour thing with a book cracked open.

Events, Dates, and Tasks will all be handled in outlook integrated with my PDA.  My PDA will become and integral part of me or a note book can work too.  We’ll see what I end up using.

And for the final thing to do.  Once a week clean my desk and office so that it isn’t cluttered and won’t overwhelm me.

My goal is to do this for 30 days then see how I did and where I can tweak this system to do better.

As a person that has ADHD organized is not in my list of strong abilities, however it is an essential part of life that I need to get under control.  Therefore, for the next 30 days I am going to try a new method of getting organized and getting things done.  I am going to categorize it.

Accomplishing Tasks:
Break up my day into “work” and “personal.” My goal will be to accomplish only 3 goals per day nothing more that way I don’t overwhelm myself which is easy to do with ADHD.  Here is it visually

Work:
1. Design new data structure
2. Redo class and add unit testing
3. Work on Report service

Personal:
1. Study Calc III for an hour
2. Research, CSS adapters for ASP.NET
3. Make post about CSS Adapters

For studying I will make flashcards to just carry around with me and still do the 1 hour thing with a book cracked open.

Events, Dates, and Tasks will all be handled in outlook integrated with my PDA.  My PDA will become and integral part of me or a note book can work too.  We’ll see what I end up using.

And for the final thing to do.  Once a week clean my desk and office so that it isn’t cluttered and won’t overwhelm me.

My goal is to do this for 30 days then see how I did and where I can tweak this system to do better.

I must say I love to program I find a lot of joy in it, especially after solving a problem that takes forever to fix.  My problem though is lack of ideas for programs that I can make.  I either come up with a good idea that I don’t know how to solve or go about solving or I want to make something that is so far out of my reach skill level wise that I get very discouraged when I don’t come close.

I guess this probably happens to a lot of people I just wanted to tell someone.