Streaks
I've not got a competitive bone in my body so I'm not particularly motivated by streaks. It's just data: I've done a thing this many times. Streaks happen or they don't. They are a side effect of the thing.
This is prompted because I've recently broken a French streak I held for over five years. It was a complete accident. Nothing in particular happened. Just, one day, I forgot to do a thing I'd done every day for five years. Those five years contained some of the worst days of my life - and I still did my French practice those days. Broken by an uneventful, completely average Wednesday. Whoops I guess.
I didn't track my French to count the streak itself. I tracked it because it was useful data for me to know - to make sure I was getting a good balance of watching, listening, reading, and so on. A side effect was that I could see an unbroken line of dates. I never set out with the intention, five years ago, to do French every day for five years, to build a streak. It just happened.
Like reading. I log the books I read so I can reference them, organise my notes on them, and so on. I'm interested in moods like whether I'm reading more fiction or non-fiction. That sort of thing. It means I know how many books I read each year but that's not a metric I care much about.
I understand streaks can be very useful and motivating for some people! Trying to establish new habits and such. To keep persevering. To be proud of.
There are things I do every day, or near enough. Because I want to do them every day. Not in order to 'maintain a streak'. Options like protecting a streak on the owl app make no sense to me. I'm not sure why I would want to think I had done something when I hadn't.
I got back on my French the next day. But it will be worth thinking about why I missed that day. I wasn't excited enough about it, I think. There are things I can do about that. It's all just data.
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