When starting out on something new it's easy to get discourage comparing yourself to others and setting high expectations. Sometimes it's just as fun to set obscure goals to reach that aren't necessarily skill based. You can be as creative as you want in Splinterlands to set a goal. For example one could just be winning ranked matches using all the cheap reject cards on rental market. Naga Brute, Gremlin Blaster, and Rusty Android could all earn wins in the right playset and card order.
I like to set a goal to buy a cheap card with DEC profits when I rent cards for the day to win ranked battles. The card I reward myself is something I work towards as I win DEC. For me right now I like to collect gold Battering Rams using DEC earnings after a few days of playing. The small rewards are something to keep me grinding towards that doesn't take a terrible amount of time to do.
The difficulty and length of the goal doesn't matter as long as you challenge yourself and have fun for the game. I'm sure other players have much more intense goals to reach with crazy rewards since Splinterlands is play to earn. On the other hand players are simply lucky enough to participate such an ambitious project.