Why streaks work, and when they turn on you

A streak converts a vague intention into a thing you own. Twelve days is a possession, and losing a possession feels like something in a way that failing to continue an abstraction does not.

It also collapses a hard question into an easy one. Not do I want to be the sort of person who does this, just do I want to keep the twelve.

A long streak becomes fragile. At day ninety the cost of one bad evening is enormous, and people start protecting the number rather than doing the thing.

Then it breaks, as it eventually must, and the loss is out of all proportion. The classic failure is not the broken streak. It is the fortnight afterwards, when there is nothing left to protect and no reason to start again.

• The longer the streak, the worse the break, and the break is not optional.
• Protecting the number and doing the thing come apart quietly.
• The dangerous day is the one after it breaks, not the one it breaks on.

It should not be the only thing on the screen, or the number becomes the product.

It should not be recoverable by paying, which teaches that the number is currency rather than a record.

And it should not be the thing that punishes you. If breaking it triggers a lecture, you will delete the app rather than face the lecture, and now nothing is blocked at all.

Deliberately, occasionally, on purpose. A streak you have chosen to end once is a streak that has stopped being able to hurt you.

We reset the streak when the emergency override is used, and that is the entire consequence: the number goes back and the person holding your key is told. No score, no penalty, nothing to buy back. The second streak is usually the one that lasts, because by then you know what the number is worth and what it is not.