Following on from the newsletter a few weeks back about social media dark patterns and how they work their darnedest to keep us hooked to their platforms, I thought I’d write about a pattern I didn’t mention last time, but that is becoming more prevalent: streaks.
I’m not sure if it’s an individual thing, or if streaks work the same on all of us, but I can honestly say that I’ve known streaks are an incredibly effective motivational tool, for me at least, for probably close to two decades. Yes, of course, my claims would have been entirely anecdotal with a sample pool of one (me), but I’d tell anyone who’d listen.
Back in my twenties, working hard and often long hours, I found myself having a drink at home most nights, and I decided to be healthy and decided to stop drinking alcohol during the week, saving it for weekends (including Fridays, obviously, I wasn’t a maniac). Monday to Thursday, a pretty easy and usually achievable task, but let’s say I had a particularly tough Tuesday and decided “screw this, I’m having a drink”, then that would be it for that week, Wednesday would come and regardless of how the day had gone my mindset was “well my streak is broken now, might as well have a drink”. It was like any early, more admirable, motivation such as being healthy was out the window and without a streak there was simply no point. I should add, this simple achievement of not drinking for four days was not an achievement of will-power. I had close to no will power, sometimes I’d think to myself “I won’t have a drink tonight” on a Friday or Saturday night, and would last all of about 30 minutes before succumbing. I needed that sweet, sweet streak to help me abstain.
Beyond that, I started doing the occasional dry-some-month-ary and I would inevitably keep going for usually at least another half a month. After all, once you hit the 31 day streak, it seems silly to break it just for a glass of whisky at home, it needs to be a bigger occasion, it has to be a special reason to break it.
I have currently kind-of stopped drinking altogether. That is, for the time being, I’m not drinking. If there is a special occasion, a birthday party or a night out, then I’ll have a drink, but no more casual drinking in the garden or whiskey on the weekends. The problem is, the last time I drank as April this year, and as time goes on and my dry streak grows, so does my expectation for what counts as a special occasion!
(it’s a coincidence that the library image for Wordle uses the final word “tipsy” whilst talking about alcohol. All I think of though is J-kwon and everyone else in the club getting tipsy)
Of course now, many years later, this trick is being deployed everywhere - lifestyle apps, games and social media, always counting your streaks. Maybe you’ve heard someone proclaim (or maybe even uttered it yourself) “oh I still need to do Wordle today”.. Somehow this (ultimately) pointless 2 minute game created for entertainment and as a vague distraction from boredom has somehow transformed in to a daily chore? As always, no judgement, I have enjoyed Wordle myself. I currently have a fairly routine habit of sitting down at about 10pm and playing Globle and Connections (the latter another NYT game, the former a guess which country I’m thinking of daily game). I don’t look at the streaks, and I have missed a few, but its a habit, and ultimately that’s all these apps want from me.
I have also been using a workout-at-home app that utilises streaks and sure enough, it’s a pretty reliable motivator to keep me going and I’m currently on a decent streak with that too (approaching 100 days exercising at home) - having forced myself to get the work out in whether it be early morning, late at night, hot weather or when I just can’t be arsed.
Of course, using these psychological tricks for good is surely a commendable thing, right? Reducing alcohol, more exercise, even Wordle might generously be considered brain training? (anyone remember when those apps had their moment? I think it early 2010s and they were seemingly everywhere. They very much utilised streaks as a motivator too. Side note: what is that decade called?). But these things are getting into social media too, SnapChat apparently has something called SnapStreaks that is proving to be pretty effective at keeping young folks on their platform. My older boy has downtime on his phone in the evenings, and he has often come to me late at night asking to extend his time for a minute just because he has to keep his streak.
How does it work?
Time for what I assume is everyone’s favourite part of the newsletter - my half-baked pop-psychology bit..
There are a few different levers that streaks seem to operate on that can all lead to them being very effective (considering they are meaningless - if I exercise 100 days in a row, then miss a day, then keep going, there is no real loss, or cost to me, but psychologically my brain doesn’t want me to break that streak).
Higher level, lower level goals: Before we even get to the streaks, there is a fundamental delight in completing a task. No matter how menial, setting and completing a task or goal releases dopamine in the brain, so by having a daily-goal-streak, at the very lowest level we have a daily goal we have set our selves and achieve. Hooray! But on top of that, we have the overarching goal of keeping the streak going, which we also achieve at the same time. Double-whammy goal success! This is a self-repeating cue-action-reward loop starting (knowing there is an increasing tally is the cue for action, the action is the task itself, the reward is having completed/increased the counter, which is then a cue..).
Loss aversion and the endowment effect: Firstly, most people are more intrinsically risk averse. Most folks would aim to minimise loss than maximise gain, that is they are motivated more by the risk of losing something than the chance to gain something, and this applies to streaks. It can often be less about how important it is to get to day 17 and more about not loosing the 16 days accrued so far. There is also a phenomenon known as endowment effect, which is basically the idea that people believe things they own as being more valuable. They may look on at someone else’s streak as pointless, or just numbers, but when it is their own streak they consider it far more valuable.
Competition, social proof and personal brand: As we know, streaks and performance are now so easily shared and broadcast on social media, they are more valuable. Even if you aren’t someone who’d want to do that, you still have that knowledge, the potential competitive edge over others.
Why do I care?
It’s interesting, no? Human behaviour and why we do things is pretty interesting in itself, but also interesting if you enjoy thinking about (or even building) products. Elements of human behaviour in product design that make things pleasing to use, easy to use, harder to use are all useful things to think through.
If I was building a fitness or diet app, then yes of course, it goes without saying that gamification and streaks would be a fairly key component to keeping people engaged and motivated on their self improvement journey.
If I was dealing with a more social app, I’d surely be more aware of these behaviours and techniques.
For now, I’ll just keep on trying to exercise and not drinking.
(until I break my streak, then I guess it’s a purge-style situation)