How to Not Let Streaks Intimidate You jordanmarsh6, October 15, 2021April 5, 2023 I talked in a previous post about my friend Anki. Anki is not actually a human, but it might as well be with how much time I have spent with it over the last year and a half. Anki is a software-based flashcard tool. Basically every medical student on earth uses it to memorize all the stuff you have to memorize in med school. It’s based on an interesting algorithm; you tell Anki how easily you remembered the card it just tested you on, and Anki schedules the day you will see that card again right then. If it was hard, you’ll see it again sooner; if it was easy, you’ll see it again later. Anyways, that’s not necessarily the point of this post. The point of this post is to discuss the little “streak” counter that is built into Anki. As long as I did one solitary flashcard a day (or more, of course), I would improve my streak of using Anki by one day. In that last post I mentioned previously, I told the story of how I literally got out of bed halfway asleep to go do one Anki card so that my streak wouldn’t be broken. Knowing that I would break my streak was enough motivation to drag my sorry behind out of bed and do at least one card. But then, I let the streak break. My longest streak on Anki was 104 days. On that 105th day, for some reason I let it slide. On the 106th day, now what was supposed to be day 1 of my new streak, my Anki motivation tanked. “ONE-HUNDRED AND FOUR DAYS?” I thought, “That’s going to take me forever to get back to.” And guess what? I haven’t gotten back to it. Letting that streak break was pretty devastating. So devastating, in fact, that my motivation to try and get back to that number nosedived. As I was thinking this week about the utility of tracking streaks of activity you want to accomplish, I noticed this particular downfall of that too. Having to stare down a previous streak that you accomplished knowing it is going to take forever is rough. What is there to do? We need to build humanity into our streaks. What if instead of saying, “I have gone 10,000 days in a row bench-pressing 300 lbs.,” we said, “I have lifted 300 lbs. each day 80% of the time in the last 100 days.” I think that mindset could have dramatically helped me not fall off the wagon of Anki streaks. What is the principle here? The principle is this: small, consistent efforts over time to become our best selves will produce better results than large, intermittent efforts. I think the daily streak represents consistency until it becomes a behemoth number. Then, if for whatever reason that streak gets broken, it takes the metaphorical wind out of our sails. If we tracked the percentage of time in the past that we have performed a particular task each day, we should stay motivated to keep going on that path even if we let one day slip by. Knowing that you were 80% compliant with a particular habit over the last 10 years is going to serve you better than being 100% compliant with that habit for 10 days. Self Improvement