Streaks are overrated
How many is enough? (Image by Alfred Derks)
The app that I use for writing, writinganalytics.co, keeps trying to give me badges for things I don’t care about.
“You’re on a streak!” it says, when I manage to write for two days in a row. Animated confetti fills the screen. I impatiently click through to get on with my life. Streaks are overrated.
Yes, habits are important. The routines that facilitate habits are vital. But doing something every single day? Worse, tracking the number of days in a row that I’ve done the thing? I don’t need that kind of pressure.
When I first got the Apple Watch, I was intrigued by the streaks I could earn for movement. Every day, I made sure to hit the targets the watch presented, even if it meant that I would be wandering around a questionable neighborhood near midnight to “close the ring.”
I was anxious about losing my streak on an upcoming trip to Thailand. On the return trip, how was I going to navigate a calendar day that would only be twelve hours due to time zone weirdness, especially if most of that period would be spent immobile on a plane? How would I reach my movement goal in so short a time?
I needn’t have worried. Ironically, a few days into my trip, my watch died as a result of faulty waterproofing after one too many lap swims. That was the end of my streak. And with it, I felt relief. Now I could decide for myself how much I wanted to exercise. I didn’t have to be goaded by a device.
It’s possible to build good habits without streaks, per se. What’s required is that we pay close attention to the behavior we really want to reward. I prefer to cultivate the habit of returning regularly to the activities I care about, even if there are days off in between.
In my case, I aim to write and exercise every week, and I don’t waste brain space on making sure I do it every day.
Streaks are made to be broken. And the longer the streak, the more awful it feels to start over again at Day 1 after the streak has been broken. If I’m going to track something, I find it more useful to consider totals: How many days this month did I do yoga? Can I do more days next month?
This approach offers freedom and second chances. It celebrates the work that has been done, not the exact format in which it was done. It’s forgiving and generous, which is the attitude we need to take with ourselves when we’re trying to build a new habit.
When you let go of streaks, new possibilities appear. Once I take a day off, how many days does it take me to get back into it again? I can make a game out of that. I can make a game out of how many blog posts I can write in a single day. (My current record is four). I can observe the rise and fall of my capacity for certain types of activities over a week or month and build a sustainable schedule based on that.
There are only so many things you can do every day. Eating and sleeping are two of them, and they take up a lot of time and energy. Anything that has to be meticulously tracked is probably not something we’re going to be able to sustain every single day for the rest of our lives. Better to end the streak on purpose and practice picking up again after a break.
As you build a habit, you will reach a point where you do the thing without even thinking about it. You don’t need to be on a streak to make that happen. You need consistent effort over time. You can take a day off here or there. It’s not as intense as a streak, and that’s the benefit.
