Last night, I made a decision.
As I made it, I worried about the ramifications. I was certain I would face today filled with regret because of that decision. I felt the weight of it.
And then I woke up. Feeling fine. In fact, feeling more free than I expected, like I had shed unneeded baggage.
Last night, I decided to break my +1700-day Apple Activity Rings streak.
Go read any book or article about habit forming and you will find the same general ideas. James Clear breaks it down nicely in Atomic Habits:
- There needs to be a craving
- There needs to be a reward
- We should have some way to track the habit
Given this, building a streak seems to be the perfect answer. Maintaining the streak is, itself, something that creates a craving. Extending the streak becomes its own reward. And the streak is tracking our success.
Yet, despite this, I am beginning to believe that streaks may do more harm than good.
Streaks promise to motivate us. They convince us to repeat the behavior. Extend. Number go up.
But there is something more sinister at work here. I first discovered this pernicious motivation when I started playing Guild Wars 2. Every day there were login rewards: crafting materials, keys, currency, etc. And the more you logged in, the larger the rewards got.
Guild Wars was far from the only game doing this. In fact, it is everywhere now. Open the app daily to get the rewards, but if you miss, you have to start over! Keep your Wordle streak alive! Whatever you do, open the app.
And that is the problem.
As we gamify our habits, we can lose sight of why we started in the first place. The streak becomes the goal, not the behavior itself. When I decided to stop Duolingo, long after I wasn’t really learning anything anymore, it was precisely because all I was doing was extending a streak. I was just opening the app. That was the desired behavior: coming back to the app every day.
I realized that was what had become of my Apple Activity Rings as well: I was just closing them, regardless of whether I had exercised or not.
I lost focus on the target behavior.
I was just making a number go up.
Is there data to support using streaks to build habits or encourage behavior? Yes, there is.
Studies have shown that building a streak keeps behaviors going. It was motivating for many of the people enrolled across seven different studies. An intact streak helped people continue building it.
But.
And it is a big but.
Breaking the streak was incredibly demotivating. In fact, they found that a broken streak often led to complete abandonment of the behavior. Those enrolled found a broken streak more demotivating than the intact streak had been.
So, yes, streaks encourage people to continue. But the harm of breaking a streak was immense.
And we will all break the streak at some point.
—
Life is messy. That is just part of it. We are imperfect beings. It is part of being human. And as such, we will have days where we fall short. And that is okay. But the streak may be less forgiving.
That was my breaking point: realizing that the streak had superseded the behavior in importance, and that I was fudging things to keep the streak alive.
Some days, I did a “Mind and Body” workout just to close my rings. Did I actually sit down and meditate? Nope, sure didn’t. Other days, I would use the (somewhat) recently added “Pause Rings” feature.
And while I appreciate the “Pause Rings” feature for days when I am actually sick, I found myself using it on days I just didn’t exercise. No good reason. I just hadn’t done the work.
So my streak was a lie.
At least to me, it was. So, just like my Duolingo streak, I let it go.
And I feel fine. Good, actually.
Did I close my rings today? Yep, sure did. Was it legitimate? Also, yes. But I don’t feel this weird pressure to just close the rings for the sake of it. I want to for the good of it.
And the first step to feeling that again was to break the streak.
This wasn’t the article I was planning to write this week. In fact, I have an entire separate article written (editing pass not yet done), but this morning, broken streak on my mind, I felt this was what I needed to write today.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about self-optimization. And I have thoughts. Many of them.
Streaks are tied up in those thoughts. Streaks become data points—drops in a veritable deluge of data—that seduce us, singing a siren song of improvement, promising that they will make us better.
Because we all need to be better.
And while I agree that our primary goal in life should be becoming better versions of ourselves, I am beginning to reject the idea that our entire focus should be on self-improvement. Self-optimization is inherently a selfish endeavor, and there is too much selfishness in the world.
Streaks may work well for some people. If that is the case, and it is truly motivating, it is a tool. Use it. But if the streak is becoming noise and taking focus from the actual behavior—as it was for me—then abandon it.
Free yourself from the tyranny of the streak.
You are more than the number. So much more.
