I lost a streak on Reddit and felt nothing.

I lost a streak on Reddit and felt nothing.

Last week I lost one. I was close to something, I’ve already forgotten what, and then I wasn’t. And I sat there waiting to feel bad about it, and nothing came.

That annoyed me more than losing it. The number had clearly been working on me for weeks, and the second it was gone I couldn’t tell you what it had been for.

So I went looking for who put it there.

one square a day, and the day it stops

Duolingo tells its investors the exact figure. 15 million people did not miss a single day last year. About one in three of everyone who opens the app. Two years ago it was five million.

Then, further down the same document, it lists the thing it sells you to protect the number.

Snapchat sells one too. You get one free Streak Restore. After that, in their words, “the price shown on your device is the price that you’ll be charged”, and it “will vary in different countries”.

In June, Duolingo ran a one-off called Streak Revival. Opt in, do three lessons, get your longest-ever streak back. 15.4 million people took it. Nearly 8 million of them had no active streak at all when it started. The company’s own words: it “shows how much the streak matters to our learners”.

Eight million people came back for a number they weren’t even holding.

Then I found the one place somebody has actually tested this.

In May 2016 GitHub deleted the streak counters from every developer profile. No announcement. Their blog said only that the new design focused on the work you’re doing “rather than the duration of your activity”. The green squares stayed. Just the numbers went.

Three researchers realised they’d been handed an experiment. They went through 433,138 developers and 290 million contributions, before and after.

The long streaks got shorter. Of the streaks that made it past a fortnight, the average ran nearly 26 days before the change and 22 after.

the streaks that used to go the distance

And the share that ever went the distance more than halved. Weekend work slipped too, for the developers on the longest streaks: a small drop, the paper says, but one that held at every window they tested.

Nobody asked them to stop. The number just wasn’t on their profile any more.

Then I found the bit that makes the whole thing slightly ridiculous.

The habit research says missing one day doesn’t reset the habit. In the best-known study of how habits actually form, missing a single day had no material effect on the process at all.

Your streak goes back to zero.

Your habit doesn’t.

The annoying part is that streaks work. I know, because we have one too.

Long Story Short. One sentence a day. Miss one and the number goes back to zero. We don’t sell you a way out of it. We’re one of the mean ones.

I suppose Reddit did me a favour. I still can’t remember what number I lost, and I haven’t missed it since.

Anyway.

Nineteen streaks, and what each one does to you when you slip →

I make one of these every week. The bigger builds, and the stories that never make the newsletter, live in the Hidden Tab. A few quid a month: sheets.works/member

What’s your streak? Hit reply, I read every one.

Akash

streak? · a sheets.works data drop