What we give up when we give in to the streak

On growing without gamification

My first go with meditation was in 2021. I wrote then how “It’s a vulnerable position, sitting in a quiet darkness of your own making,” but that it led to “being kinder to myself and others” as a result. I used the app, Headspace, most days for a good part of the year, but eventually let the habit fall by the wayside.

Headspace, like a lot of apps, finishes every session with a reminder of your streak, or how many days in a row you’ve used it. It’s a subtler count of your activity than other apps, and nothing like the borderline harassment that Duolingo levies when it’s late in the day and you haven’t practiced your Spanish, but it’s still something they show you after every use.

Duolingo and Headspace bill themselves as educational and health companies, but they’re also tech companies, and their tactics for driving activity are based on thousands of tests with millions of users. This must mean that encouraging someone to start a streak of daily activity and then instilling the fear of losing that progress is a proven incentive for users of their apps, but is it a viable way to encourage behavior that leads to real habits?

It’s something I’ve been thinking about as I started this year with the intention of thinking more and drinking less. Three weeks into the year, neither streak stretches across all 23 days, but I feel more honest about my progress in both. More in tune with when meditating is the right way to start my day and more aware of when I’m having a drink to celebrate or elevate a meal rather than just because that’s what I’ve trained myself to do in certain settings.

Speaking a language and meditating every day is probably the fastest route to fluency and enlightenment, but taking a break on Saturday doesn’t negate the time put in Monday through Friday. Habits are great guardrails, but living is often done outside of our best laid plans and when we start listening to the buzz of a notification over the sound of our own bodies, we develop habits that look good on paper but might just blow away when we really need them.