Comments on: When you need a streak freeze (or when you don’t)

By: Pavithra N

Pavithra N — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 02:21:22 +0000

In reply to Kris. This is a great idea! I'll follow this too :)

By: Kris

Kris — Wed, 30 Jun 2021 16:32:30 +0000

I’ve started what I call a Five Out Of Seven practice. There are seven habits/practices I’m focusing on (gratitude, Duolingo, writing for 10 minutes, eating at least one plant based meal, etc ) Each day I aim to do at least 5 of them, and in each week, I aim to do each habit at least five times. This gives me some wiggle room while still reinforcing the behaviors. I really love being able to count the day as a success even when it wasn’t perfect.

By: Calee

Calee — Tue, 29 Jun 2021 13:42:04 +0000

I love to plan but hate streaks. There’s something in them that makes me want to push back. It took me more than a few years to stop seeing that as a personality flaw that had to be overcome and to just focus on building good routines (that can rebound when interrupted) and allocating my time the best I can.

By: Laura Vanderkam

Laura Vanderkam — Tue, 29 Jun 2021 13:03:09 +0000

In reply to Caroline Starr Rose.

@Caroline – that sounds like a good approach — 300 days a year (or even 360 days a year!) allows for some leeway. I’m glad Beth found the framework helpful 🙂

By: Caroline Starr Rose

Caroline Starr Rose — Mon, 28 Jun 2021 18:25:42 +0000

I’ve done streaks with built-in freezes, like jumping rope a minimum of 300 days out of the year. This allows for illness, forgetfulness, injury, days off here and there, times I left the rope at home on a trip, etc. I’m an Upholder like you, and I’m generally great about keeping to a habit or plan. The problems come when I don’t meet my goal. I can be overly harsh with myself. The challenge for me is to challenge myself, to enjoy the process, and release any imperfect outcome.

PS — I had a conversation with my running partner last week about the anticipating self, experiencing self, and remembering self. It got her through a trying weekend. Thank you for helping me frame big and small life events. Beth thanks you, too!

By: Elisabeth

Elisabeth — Mon, 28 Jun 2021 17:08:46 +0000

I like to do shorter, clearly defined, streaks. Every other month I make it a goal to close all my rings on my Apple Watch (these are pre-set goals for: calories burned, minutes spent exercising, how many hours I’ve stood up and moved around) + record a workout of at least 1 km. While I’m always glad to get to the end of the month, it feels so much more doable than an indefinite streak. I’ve now done this about a dozen times!

I also record my monthly distance totals (walking + running); this month will have the highest combined tally of any other month since I’ve started recording the data. That alone is incentive enough to think about doing a month-long streak again in August.

I’m really looking forward to July; it’s nice to have some time off (mentally and physically) from a streak, but looking forward to August, too, when I’ll likely start up another “streak” again.

By: Kenia

Kenia — Mon, 28 Jun 2021 16:13:31 +0000

Sometimes there are days where, literally from waking to WAY PAST bedtime, there is thing after thing after thing, and because you’re already past your bedtime and are losing precious sleep as it is, it means that even making 15 minutes for a ritual isn’t doable (unless you want to tack on another 15 minutes of lost sleep on top of the already 1-2 hours of lost sleep).
Granted, these days don’t happen too often, but often enough where I can understand why people feel that “finding” just 15 minutes for things is hard, even though there are 24 hours in a day. But this is why your concept of a weekly mosaic is so wonderful, and opened up a whole new world for me with respect to thinking about and prioritizing my time. I’m afraid that a daily streak runs counter to the concept of the weekly mosaic and its shifting tiles….and, frankly, the longer a streak runs for, the more anxiety-inducing it is, and (based on personal experience using the Headspace meditation app) when life interrupts and breaks a long streak it’s so dang frustrating that I quit ALTOGETHER. Whereas your idea of “3x/week is a habit,” means that I stick with things.

By: Barb

Barb — Mon, 28 Jun 2021 14:27:47 +0000

And you could have listened to a chapter of the audiobook version of War and Peace in the car! I “read” Oliver Twist again on my daily commute. The commute was only 15 minutes each way, so it took a very, very long time to finish it. (And I didn’t have kids in the car. A lot of it is not for general audiences.)