Streaks
I’ve always been a streaks person. Reading books, steps / walking, strength training, gratitude journaling, learning Kannada (and now writing here). I’ve had streaks - and I’m the kind of person who keeps at it for long enough. It’s almost always helped me, I think.
It almost always starts with a “vision”, an outcome that I want to get towards - Eg, being healthier, stronger. Somehow, the Product Manager brain in me puts a measurable goal for it. And then my brain goes down the path of inputs that I will do towards the outcome. The slide from there to a streak-led goal then becomes inevitable. “Year of Health” became 7k steps a day, 4 strength sessions a week. You get the drift.
Forever, I’d been of the view that having a streak helps keep momentum towards the end outcome. It helps me pull through on days where I have low motivation to do something that I am yet to make a habit or something I truly enjoy as part of my routine / life that I do it without second thought. And these days happen quite so often, atleast in the beginning. So 7k steps a day slowly became an obsessive streak - 500 odd days. And at least for 30 of those days, I mustn’t have been in the mood or had the energy for it. But still went ahead with it. Sounds fair? No?
On one of those days, I was at close to 6K steps for the day, and it was 10:30 pm. I didn’t have the energy to go downstairs for a walk. So I was just walking up and down the house to finish the final 1000 steps and get the Garmin celebration streak notification. Neha asked me what the point of doing these 1000 steps up and down the house was. My answer was “My streaakkk - I’m on Day 390”.
Her: “What did you start with? Why did you get into this habit in the first place?”
Me: “I wanted to be healthier”.
Her: “Sure, yes. How does doing this 1000 steps up and down the house help with that goal? It does nothing towards that goal. This isn’t going to make you healthier - perhaps it might do you damage, given you are doing it on a day when your body is super tired already. You started with a nice goal. But you metricised it - and it’s nice to have that to get into the habit. But at Day 390, if you’re now doing it obsessively for the sake of a streak, perhaps it is time to rethink if that streak is worth it”
Point? I guess. The vision → outcome → input → streak works well to get into the habit. But at the point when the streak becomes an obsession, I’ve lost sight of why I went down this path in the first place.
And why today? Well, I wasn’t particularly in the mood to write something. But there’s this entire streak (and if I don’t write, I don’t get to use Instagram on Sunday). The need to keep the streak up helped write this. But at what point will this streak go from being healthy to an unhealthy obsession?
How do you all keep habits? Streaks? Anything else? Do habits even matter?