A new 750 Words milestone
And some thoughts on the importance of streaks
Well, would you look at that! When I logged in today for my daily writing of 750 words, I was greeted with a shiny new badge and informed that I have written on the site for an amazing 500 days in a row. I'm pretty darn proud of myself. And I should be right? This is one of the longest streaks of anything I've ever done. But does that make it good? Are streaks really that important in life? Are streaks the very thing that make us who we are?
I don't know how deep I should get with this. I’m basically just putting some words on a virtual page everyday. And most of the time, those words are just a whole lot of nonsense. No, I'm not literally making up words and just typing letters in any old order, but I suppose that would be possible. I think the word count is just based on groups of characters separated by a space. So they wouldn't technically need to be actual words in order to meet the criteria. But anyway, I digress.
The daily writing has been really good for me. It's not usually anything profound. Some days, I don't even feel like it's all that personal. You may consider it to be a daily journal entry or a form of "morning pages". Morning pages are just kind of a buzzy term used to get people excited about writing.
There is a natural romance to the idea of someone rolling out of bed on a sunny morning and grabbing their paper journal and pen. They'll glance wistfully out the window while you see steam rising off their warm beverage of choice. And then the most beautiful prose just comes pouring out of them like it's been trapped during the past night's slumber.
No, I don't really see my 500 consecutive days of writing like that at all. I've been that guy who does the hand written morning pages in the past. I distinctly remember doing the writing at an ungodly hour while I gazed out the window of my San Francisco apartment eyeing the downtown skyline. That was nice, and it lasted all of a few weeks I'd say. It certainly wasn't close to the 500 days in a row that I've had with 750 Words.
There is nothing special about the interface or the app. It's great that they keep track of streaks and data and themes about your writing. But I'm not really into those things. I just like the routine of getting these words out of my brain and onto the digital page. Although, I suppose they almost force you to stop and reflect on these milestones like I did when I hit a year of consecutive writing.
The interesting thing for me is that I actually don't write at the same time everyday. It's actually been all over the place for the last 500 days. In an ideal world, I would make these entries feel like morning pages as soon as I wake up. But alas, that usually isn't possible with my duties as a dad of both humans and pets. I'm usually making breakfasts and lunches and taking dogs for walks rather than gazing out a window writing beautiful words.
But therein lies the power of the 500 day streak! I found a way to write everyday no matter what I had going on. Sometimes it was in the morning, often it was in the afternoon, sometimes it was before bed. I’ve just made the habit fit into my schedule no matter when.
I actually had been writing on the site for longer than 500 days, but I had trouble keeping the streak going on the weekends. Writing during the weekdays has never been much of a struggle for me. Sometimes it may slip my mind and then I remember at night and have to rush to submit before midnight, but those instances are very rare.
At the start of the 500 days, I decided to push myself to do the writing everyday rather than skipping the weekends. Did it help my mental well being? I'm not really sure. But we all know that the unstructured nature of weekends can make any habit hard to stick to. Typically, I shoot to do my weekend writing pretty early in the day. If I wait too long it's bound to get forgotten until the last minute. I do think that it acts as a brief respite from whatever I have going on during the weekends. It's also been great to do on vacations or busy travel days. I've completed those 750 words in cars, buses, trains, ferries, and airplanes over the course of 500 days.
It does make me think about the difference between 7-day per week streaks, 5-day per week streaks, and maybe 3-day per week or just once weekly streaks. Does a streak necessarily need to be consecutive? I suppose so by definition, but we can change our definition of consecutive can't we? Yeah, I think so.
Am I going to keep this streak going for another 500 days to match that 1,000 day hydration streak I hit earlier this year? I'm not so sure. I like keeping up with my writing, but I'm certainly not opposed to cutting it back to weekdays only. Or maybe just taking strategic break days to refresh my brain when I need it.
I guess the point of all of this is to take stock of our streaks and see which ones are actually serving us and worth continuing. And which ones are just marketing gimmicks by apps and software that are trying to find the fastest path to our wallets.
What types of streaks are you in the midst of? Which streaks can or even should be broken?
Thanks for reading, I’ll see you next week!
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