The Bad Habit of Daily Streaks

The US has a culture of streaking. I don’t mean running around naked at events. I mean of trying to do something daily for weeks, months or even years. As great as it can be, to develop consistent habits I believe that it can have a negative impact.

For months I wanted to get my daily streak of Duolingo, and eventually I got mentally tired and gave up, after 270 or more days in a row. With Kindle they encourage us to read daily which is great because reading is great, but it’s detrimental because I think finishing a set number of books per month is healthier.

It’s the same with blogging. Writing every day is great because we learn to think, and elaborate on ideas. It’s bad too, because we generate a lot of crap, over the weeks and months of writing each day. It’s worth highlighting that my decision to blog every day was to break my Facebook habit.

There was a time when Twitter and Facebook was about conversations with whom we would elaborate on projects either for work, or sports, or other. During the pandemic, especially, social media just became about wasting time. That’s why spending an hour or two writing made sense. I believe that blogging is a healthy habit. “Doom Scrolling” as people call it is not.

WordPress and especially Jetpack encourages this bad habit too. Recently I noticed that my streak is going back up. I must have deactivated it for a few days.

I know of people who write a weekly, or irregular newsletter and I notice that sometimes it’s just as mediocre as if it had been written over a few minutes rather than a few days.

If I had confidence in what I write I would start a newsletter on Substack or Medium but I prefer the freedom of a blog. With a blog I’m practicing the art of writing, and I’m exploring ideas. The irony is that people can read this post as an e-mail, if they choose to.

If I went to Medium and Substack I would be feeding the long tail of traffic for others, rather than gaining for myself. I would put up with more noise, without finding more engagement.

Having said this, these posts are now on Threads, Bluesky, as well as the fediverse, and with the fediverse people can comment and have a conversation natively.

I believe that writing every day is a good habit but I believe that it’s better to read a certain number of books per month or year, rather than read daily. The Kindle app wants to trap us on their device, and in their library.

I need to stop giving in to streak rewards.