Across the world an amazing amount of effort goes into streaks. The sequential number of times something is done. Whole apps are build around the premise. The one more time provides a small hit and a way to compare “progress” against others.
Certainly, the idea of a streak is important to Habit building. Missing a day can remind me I don’t yet have the habit embedded. Unfortunately, the broken streak can make me feel bad.
There are a couple of streaks which have been life changing for me. I meditated 1,000+ days in a row at a time where my mental health really needed me to be in the habit of daily peace. A few of the streak entries were a quick 1-minute meditate when I went to bed to keep the streak going. There was little value in that minute.
- and I reached 50,000 minutes of meditation in the Headspace meditation app.*
The other streak has been to read every day. I have mixed fiction and non-fiction in the count. When I changed to my Kobo my Kindle count was 1694.
My meditation and reading streaks have built a life-long habit and it is okay if I miss one, or even a few days. I will survive and pick up the next. These days I only meditate before work on Monday to Thursday and even then if I have to adjust my routine I might miss a day. Reading is easier to keep going everyday as I typically read over breakfast.
Kindle reading stats. The total days reading in a row is 1694 because there was a period of a few days where my Kindle was used and offline so it didn’t register the days’ reading.
I struggle with journalling every day. Will streaks be the way to get me started on what I know is another necessary habit to build? I can only try.