It can help if those arbitrary challenges are in some way helpful to society.

Setting a goal of say genuinely helping X number of people on stackoverflow or http://ask.sqlservercentral.com is more significant than setting a goal of a high record in Asteroids. Helping the poor or setting a goal of making a useful open source project are more significant still.

In short, succeeding in doing something both productive and challenging > succeeding in random challenge that is not productive.