Thoughts on “Streak”
Thanks to @jasonleow and @therealbrandonwilson for your kind words on my yesterday’s post. I want to ruminate a little more on that topic today.
I wrote in the LifeLog why I am against the streak and the craziness behind not breaking it. My point is, I find that maintaining a streak is a tough job. I don’t want to feel worthless or bad for breaking the streak. I have seen people on social media posting that they have completed all three rings in Apple Watch for one full year. “Congratulations, but so what?” is my question. Yes, you completed it diligently, if that is what is bringing you happiness, I am rooting for you. But I don’t want to join the bandwagon of the streak. Because I know for sure that I will break it.
It could be because I have various tiny interests and it is humanly impossible to maintain a streak. I like to invest in health, wealth and myself. On health, I want to consistently have a time-restricted feeding window with 14 hours of fasting and 8 hours of feeding. I want to work out consistently. Lift weights or do squats or keep moving. I want to write consistently. I want to have a gratitude practice with myself and also with my wife. I want to read for 30 mins. I want to read a new article every day which is out of my comfort zone. I want to meditate by listening to Sam Harris or Andi Puddicombe or Tara Brach. After all of this, I need to work as a product manager and live my life as a father, son, husband and brother. I have not included my passion for good movies or TV in this list :-).
With all this stuff going on, I find maintaining the daily streak very hard. I don’t want to paint a picture that I am doing because someone else is coming and forcing me to do it. I am opting in to do all the things I have listed above. I want to live life and do the above. I want a healthy body and mind. I want to produce a lot, by consuming a lot of good content. I want to spend a lot of time with family and friends. Eventually, I want to own my schedule and have more freedom. My pursuit of wealth or in general anything in my life is mainly to enable the above.
Do I have a clear answer on what is the alternative for the streak? How do I get more accountable for my goals? The problem here is I don’t have any strict goals. Take the example of my goal in LifeLog, I want to consistently publish 50 articles. When I wrote this I was pretty clear that it is not in 50 days. I want to publish 50 articles in Q1, that is 90 days. That’s quite a relaxing goal with a lot of buffers.
What if I don’t meet that 50 posts in 90 days goal? Should I self-flagellate myself? Should I curse myself and feel like shit? I understand why people do that. I am not at all judging that. I have been in that position. The point of being hard is to force some accountability and continue the practice. I get it. But what if there is an alternative. I don’t have a clear answer yet for that, but I invite you to think along with me.
I want to bring my “needs vs wants” perspective to this debate. The streak sounds like a “need”. That I need to write every day to maintain the streak. But what is the “want” behind that “need”. Maybe I want to become a writer or maybe I want to publish a book or maybe I want to be known for a good body of work in my writing portfolio or newsletter or blog.
If “I want to publish a book” is the want, should I beat myself up for missing the streak for a day or a week? Or is “publishing a book” a more of a need than want? “I need to publish a book because I want to leap forward in my career”. If I dig deep into my want, I may even think like this “I need to leap forward in my career because I want to be viewed worthy or I want to be valued by my family or friends”.
I have always dug deep into my needs vs. wants rabbit hole in the past months. Consistently I get into the wants of feeling good about myself and feeling worthy to my loved ones or having the feeling of adding value to a family or relationship.
The funny thing is when I focus on “feeling good about myself” or my true want, I get motivated to do things that are mostly defined or measured by streak. I want to write my morning pages when I feel fresh and very good about myself. I find that to be easy and be in a flow state and write my morning pages. It is easier than saying that I have woken up now I need to find my morning pages as the first thing. So when I miss writing it for a day or a week, I don’t want the streak to question my “worthiness” or “value” or in general, feeling good about myself. I missed it for a week, so let me come back and get started again.
It is not only my “feeling good about myself” that motivates me to write here in LifeLog. It is also the community. The community that resonates with my ideas, which pokes them with curiosity and gives points and counterpoints. These two factors are the main reasons for me to come back and write, not the pursuit of maintaining the streak.
(Hope to go into a little more on what I want from the LifeLog platform in the next coming days)