Against Streaking

Hi there,

Why I'm posting most days, not every day.

Streaking is a perfectionist nightmare.

A streak is when you do a thing for consecutive days.

A lot of people like this approach to habit creation.

It’s not a bad way to get started on a new behavior. It takes less energy to commit to something every single day. When you allow some flexibility, your commitment can be a little softer than it needs to be for daily activity. Some people worry that if they allow flexibiillty, they'll never do it.

It's more likely that if you will only do something within a rigid structure, you're not fully committed anyway.

If you want to gamify something sort of meaningless like Wordle, have at it. The Times will even show you how many days in a row you've done it. 

Once you get into a streak, you adopt the identity of someone who streaks every day.

This is not the same as the identity of someone who integrates a new behavior into their life.

With a streak, you miss a day and your identity crumbles.

Do you want an identity of someone who meditates every single day without fail?

Or someone who has a regular, consistent and supportive meditation practice?

The identity of doing it every day isn’t the same as someone with this behavior as part of their lifestyle.

Then when you break your streak the mental obstacle between stating over at day zero and getting back to where you were feels impossible.

You’re more likely to put off starting again.
You already screwed up. Screw it. Start again tomorrow.

Or the next day.

Or just later.

Which can easily turn to never.