· 1 min read
Against streaks
The single most requested feature, and the one we are most confident about refusing.
Drift
We get asked for streaks more than everything else combined. It is the clearest no in the product.
What a streak actually does
A streak is a loss-aversion mechanic. It works by making the absence of use painful, which is effective right up to the first missed day — at which point the accumulated value collapses to zero and takes the habit with it.
For someone whose attention is already unreliable, that first miss is not a maybe. It is scheduled.
The alternative we shipped
A quiet count of things finished this month, with no comparison to last month and no visible run length. It goes up, it never goes down, and missing three days does nothing to it.