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The Scary Prospect Of Being Taken Back To Square One
Streaks are great as long as they don’t dictate where we’re going. Let’s use them and not let them use us.
Streaks are overrated. Admittedly, they are very useful when it comes to creating habits, but they are equally good at ending them.
Most education apps on our phones (whether we use them for exercising, meditating or learning a new language) have the streak feature. It makes sense: once you’ve opened the app every day for the past 99 days, you really want to make it to 100 and beyond. I am a big supporter of gamifying education: if most of us love competition, let competition help us compete better.
Indeed, habits are possibly the most powerful form of magic we possess. Exercise at high intensity for only ten minutes a day, but do it every day, and soon enough you will be fitter than ever before. Learn a language for half an hour every day, and you will eventually speak it. It is so easy, so enticing, that we fall for it every time without realising we are missing the catch: the fact that there is nothing easy about every day.
On the contrary, doing something — anything — every day is one of the most difficult tasks we will ever undertake. Nevertheless, we shouldn’t make a big deal about it: missing a…