Complex Numbers

The Streak

At first, I thought this was going to be another "you're doing it wrong" article, but no. Well, a qualified no. From Fast Company:

    The Duolingo effect: How keeping the ‘streak’ is changing people’s behavior  
Maintaining a streak is a major motivator, and apps have caught on.

"Duolingo" in the headline of course caught my eye, but that's not the only streak I have going.

An activity streak has the power to compel behavior, and marketers have taken note. Marketing researchers Jackie Silverman and Alixandra Barasch recently documented 101 unique instances, including Snapchat, Candy Crush Saga, Wordle, and the Duolingo language learning platform, of apps that have incorporated streaks into their architecture by tracking the number of consecutive days users complete a task.

Thing is, though, when I started with Duolingo, I was well aware that it was gamified. That is, it's deliberately structured to reward obsessive behavior, like how a fantasy role-playing game might dangle the promise of the next reward, or play triumphant music when you succeed at a quest, or whatever myriad little tricks game designers use to keep people playing.

That was, for a gamer like me, the whole point. Self-motivation almost never works for me; I get frustrated and go play video games.

But even that doesn't always work for me. The linked article displays someone's Wordle streak chart. Remember Wordle? I think it's still around. I got up to 101 consecutive days' wins, then failed one day. Rather than slog through trying to get another streak going, I just quit playing altogether.

Still, there's a difference (something the article does note later). Wordle doesn't have an overall goal, apart from the streak (I remember one day, my habitual first word, which was STEIN, was the actual answer, so there wasn't any motivation left to go for even that, anymore). Not so with Duolingo. My streak there is just the motivation; the goal is to become more facile at languages. Still French. At one point, I'd finished all their French lessons, but then they went and added more. A lot more. So I'm still slogging through French.

As an aside, some of the more recently added sections discuss cooking terms. You'd think that would be pretty damn basic in French, but no, many of those lessons were added fairly recently.

Based on input from people maintaining streaks and how streaks are described in the popular media, I suggest they have four underlying characteristics.

Keep in mind these are one person's definitions, not a generally-accepted scientific result.

First, streaks require unchanging performance and temporal parameters.

I'm skeptical about the "unchanging performance" thing; when I'm traveling, I have less time to maintain my streaks, so I let myself do the bare minimum; however, when I'm home, I do more.

Second, the streak-holder largely attributes completing the activity to his or her resolve.

I question this, as well. As I implied above, I consider my Duolingo streak to be mostly the result of the program's game-like design. This blog, in its fifth year of daily entries? Maybe that's my own stubbornness.

Third, a streak is a series of the same completed activity that the person maintaining the streak considers to be uninterrupted.

By Duolingo's own parameters, a participant can miss a day, occasionally, and have their streak automatically "frozen." This maintains the streak in their records through a day of inactivity. I would still consider it a streak if that happened, but in my 1622-day streak, that hasn't happened yet. The downside is that I find myself reluctant to go anywhere that doesn't have reliable internet access, but let's be real, here; that would be a consideration anyway, as my longest streak of all (besides being alive) involves being on the internet in some manner every day for 20 years.

Fourth, the streaker quantifies the series’ duration.

Which I just did for Duo. But I had to look it up. It's not like I spent all morning going "This is my 1622nd day for Duolingo." No, I just thought to myself, "Blog, then Duolingo lessons, and then I can get back to playing Starfield."

I have at least one other streak going, which is WDC newsletter editorship. I'd have to look up the numbers there, too, but I haven't missed an assigned issue of the Fantasy or Comedy newsletters since I started being a regular editor there. Both began in the late noughties. Those are monthly, though, not daily.

This definition distinguishes an activity streak from winning streaks and lucky streaks.

Wordle, as above, isn't necessarily an activity streak; unless you're really good, or you cheat, you're not going to hit every one. (If you really are that good, great! If you cheat, whatever; that's on you.)

There's a lot more to the article, but this is already getting long. Just a one more highlight:

Streaks can serve to gamify the underlying activity by creating rules and quantifying the outcome, and many people enjoy the challenge of a game.

And some don't, and that's okay, too. Everyone finds their own motivation. Or doesn't.

The author ends by suggesting starting a streak rather than making a New Year's resolution, though the date on it was January 3, by which point most people have already failed at least one resolution. By today, it's probably safe to go back to the gym. Which was a streak I had going for a few years, myself, until... you know what... made it hazardous to be around sweating, heavily breathing people.

That's a streak I might try to restart, but never in January.