Not at all. To use your analogy, this is more like the person who plays and tries a reasonable amount but doesn't kill themselves by overdoing it or paying excessive amounts for specilized equiptment because they know they aren't making it to the professional level.
For me, there's no point in setting a professional goal. I just do my work and try to do a good job. On average, I've had a new manager about every 10 months. That's not a lot of time to build up rapport and work whatever angle that person sees s the path to the next level. I've literally gone from teams or managers that say X is a strength and Y is a weakness, to the new team or manager that says Y is a strength and X is a weakness. I've been a dev for over 12 years, and been midlevel for over 10. I've done all the stuff you're supposed to do to move up, not because I set them as goals but because it seemed like the right thing to do - learn new tech, volunteer for new roles and assignments, work extra hours, get a masters (since they pay for it), etc. I've had tech leads ask why I'm taking a demotion when I'm actually taking a lateral, because they already thought I was a senior. I've had our team and other teams in the enterprise calling me the TL because I fill that role for a year when we didn't have one (I did a good job and the manager admitted I deserved the highest rating but they couldn't get me the rating for political reasons... this is one of the 3 examples where a manager has admitted I should have gotten the highest ratingnor been promoted but wasn't).
So yeah, what's the point of a professional goals when the targets change in less than a year, I'm doing what I'm supposed to or doing a good job, and past results don't help with advancement? I guess I should mention that I have a disability and my current department head is targeting me, according to what my manager told me. So maybe that's what's holding me back. But I see no point in setting professional goals - I'd rather just focus on doing a good job. That should be enough, assuming you don't want to hit the C suite.