Habit tracking streaks are demotivating

Keeping streaks (e.g. when tracking a habit) is the worst. It's so demotivating when you "lose your streak".

There are better alternatives.

Following the two-day rule

The two-day rule works like this: you allow yourself to lose one day, but not two days in a row. I originally learned about it from Matt D’Avella.

This is still kind of a streak, but by giving yourself permission to skip a day here and there, you create opportunity for still living the inevitable moments of life that would ruin a dogmatic daily streak. Say your significant other invites you out and you go late to bed? No need to suffer about not hitting the gym early the next morning as you usually do.

Better yet: use percentages

Track the days you've followed the habit out of the total number of days you've been trying.

It has all the advantages of the two-day rule, but it's even more forgiving. And you'd think all this forgiveness will work against you, but it doesn't. You still track your percentage, and you'll not want to move down too much for too long.

Bonus: use averages

Say you're tracking a habit that's not just about whether you did it on a given day or not. You also track a metric, such as the number of steps you walk daily. And say you have a daily goal of 10k steps.

If you're anything like me, not every day it's realistic to walk the 10k steps. But then you feel guilty. Well, in that case, aim for 10k steps on average. Some days you'll walk 6k, but other days you'll walk 14k. On average, you should be close to 10k (or else adjust your expectations).

Conclusion

The bottom line here is: be forgiving to yourself. Unfortunately, dogmatic daily streaks aren't forgiving at all. One day your streak is 65 days, and two days later you're back at zero. And psychologically this feels like you've failed, when in reality, you've been rocking it for over two months! Give yourself some credit.