Streaks Are Broken

Lex Friedman, writing at Lex on Tech about streaks in apps and games:

A streak is a loss-aversion machine you carry in your pocket. Every day you extend it, it gets a little more painful to lose, which is exactly why day 500 is harder to skip than day five. Apps with streaks aren’t building habits. They’re building hostages.

As someone who’s addicted to checkmarks, I feel the pain of being bombarded by streaks acutely. They’re everywhere, and they’re alluring.

I play six short games as part of my daily morning routine (Wordle, the Apple News+ Mini Crossword, Good Sudoku, Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, and Family Feud), and each one of them has some kind of streak mechanic meant to keep you coming back every day. They’re built into social media (thanks, Snapchat), fitness apps, and habit trackers. At one point, even my banking app encouraged me to build a daily streak of checking my balance by literally paying me to do so. (Joke’s on them; I would do that anyway because I’m a budgeting maniac.)

I believe there are specific instances where streaks can be beneficial, such as when you’re just starting to build a new habit and need all the motivation you can get. But before long, the point of any streak becomes keeping the streak alive, not actually improving your life or having fun, and that’s when they become a problem.

This is yet another example of companies trying to hack our natural brain processes for financial gain. Using positive reinforcement, they shift our motivation away from the initial intent (such as learning a new language) to a goal that benefits them (opening the app every day to continue the streak, thus boosting usage metrics and company profits). On the surface, it seems like a fun mechanic, and maybe that really is the intention behind some who implement it, but the impact is detrimental to users in the long run.

It was a hard-fought battle, but I’ve gotten to a place where I actively choose not to care about streaks of any kind. (The one exception is my 2,300-day Snapchat streak with my spouse, which in my heart of hearts I wish would break so I could get out from under the weight of it.) I ignore them as much as I can, and if I ever notice that I’ve broken one, I just move on and let it go without even looking for a loophole to restore it. I’ve had to do this for my own mental health; otherwise, I’d spend my days obsessively extending streaks that do nothing to make my life better.

This dynamic has also led me to cut down on the tracking apps I use. Habit trackers are amazing for forming new habits from scratch, but after a certain amount of time, any good habit tracker should render itself obsolete. If an action is truly a habit, you don’t need any external signal to perform it. At that point, tracking becomes all about streaks, and that’s where I say, “Thank you, next.”

Streaks aren’t required to have a successful app or business. I’m grateful for developers like Rebecca Owen of Chronicling who purposefully exclude streaks so users don’t feel pressured or guilty when tracking events. And I also appreciate what Florian Grossmann has done with On This Day, where streaks are available but can be hidden completely with a single toggle. I turned streaks off the day I downloaded it and haven’t been bothered by them since.

The fewer streaks in my life, the better. May it be so for each of us.

My thanks to Lex for writing about this subject, which I obviously feel passionate about as well. If you haven’t yet, check out his new website, Lex on Tech, where he's doing some really interesting writing every day.

Phantom Stress

It’s a busy time of year for Apple fans and commentators. If past is precedent, we’ve got a lot to look forward to over the next two weeks:

  • new iPhones, Apple Watches, and possibly other hardware announced this Wednesday
  • online preorders for the new hardware this weekend
  • major updates to the operating systems for every Apple product early next week
  • new devices in customers’ hands and storefronts at the end of next week

That’s a lot to pack into such a short time period, and it’s part of why I enjoy this time of year so much.

Normally, all of this excitement comes with a ton of work for me. In addition to new iPhones, early September has to come to mean event coverage, visionOS review writing, and editing other OS reviews under short time constraints that have the potential to change as quickly as Apple can publish a footnote in a press release. In short, September used to be a whirlwind.

This year, the winds have died down. I’m not furiously writing chapters, sending off editing notes, testing last-minute beta changes, or outlining which parts of Apple’s announcement video I’ll have to take extra-detailed notes on. I’m just… getting ready to watch and react along with everyone else. There’s no stress at all.

So why is it that I’m feeling stressed all the same? As I read about the rumors and count down the days to the big event, I find there’s a pressure building within me, a feeling of urgency with no real source or outlet. It’s like there’s a voice telling me, “You’re missing something!” but I check my to-do list, and there’s nothing there.

I’m a naturally anxious person, so I’ve experienced this sort of thing before, but it’s been a while. This time around, I’ve put a label on it that I’m finding helpful: phantom stress. There isn’t actually anything wrong, but I’m used to being under a lot of pressure this time of year, and the gap between expectation and reality gets filled with worry and distress.

Basically, I’m stressing myself out about not having anything to stress about. Productive, right?

Maybe you’ve experienced something like phantom stress before. If so, you’re not the only one. It’s bizarre, and it’s ultimately pointless, but it’s human, too.

Our brains are amazing things that are far more capable than we often realize, and sometimes, that capability can have unexpected consequences. In my case, my brain is so used to running in overdrive this time of year that it’s searching for something to latch onto, some external deadline or task to direct its energy towards. That practical motivation may be missing, but the habitual energy is still there, spinning in circles, waiting for me to redirect it.

I guess that’s what I’m doing right now, writing this and forcing you to come along with me on such a meandering mental journey. Maybe this is my way of turning phantom stress into something positive – for me, at the very least, and hopefully for somebody else. Investing more energy into this little online space lately has been great for me on a lot of levels, and if a story I publish here does end up helping someone out there, then it’ll certainly all have been worth it.

Besides channeling my creative energy in a different direction, the other thing I’m trying to do is just take it easy on myself. It would be easy to beat myself up for wasting time on worrying for no reason, but I’m not sure that anyone’s ever shamed their mind into working better. The best thing I can do is recognize this feeling for what it is, remind myself it’s temporary, and do what I can to make something positive out of it.

Eventually, my mind will adapt to a new schedule, the sting of realizing things are so different will wear off, and I’ll feel lighter. I look forward to it. But even as I’m working through it all, I’m not going to let phantom stress keep me from enjoying a time that I truly love. I’ll carry on and lean into the strangeness of going into an event day on the sidelines. After all, there’s no time to fold to the pressure when there are so many exciting things to focus on.

Modeless

I’ve spent a lot of time and effort making my devices work contextually, adjusting how they function based on whether I’m working, spending time with family, sleeping, writing, or doing something else entirely. Apple offers a robust set of features for this sort of thing:

  • Focus modes allow you to change who can contact you and which apps can notify you at any given time. They can also be used to show different Lock Screens, Home Screens, and Apple Watch faces depending on which mode is active.
  • Focus filters adjust what information apps can show you based on your Focus mode, such as hiding your work email or calendar when you’re at home.
  • Safari profiles contain different sets of account logins and bookmarks that you can switch between as needed.
  • Shortcuts automations can run in conjunction with these other features to adjust just about anything you like, including device settings, the lighting in your home, and more.

These features can be activated and switched between based on a variety of triggers, including the time of day and your location. The feature set is truly comprehensive, giving users the ability to finely control every aspect of their devices to fit whatever context they’re in at the current moment. And despite the power of these features, they’re also easy to set up and intuitive to use.

I’ve used all of these options extensively over the years. I never went deep enough into the Focus system to create custom Home Screens and Lock Screens for every area of my life; after all, my core apps don’t really change from context to context. But when it comes to muting notifications, filtering information in apps, and switching between accounts in the browser, I’ve been all in.

My Work Focus mode would kick on as soon as I arrived at the building, allowing group chats with coworkers to notify me and switching to my Work Safari profile so I could access my Google and other accounts for work. When I left work, my devices would automatically switch to my Personal mode, muting work texts and emails. My Freelancing mode would grant access to other accounts and tab groups in Safari. My Writing mode would block out everything except texts from my wife and open my writing app automatically. Exercise, Mindfulness, and Sleep modes would automatically activate when I needed them, muting notifications altogether. And when it came time to record a podcast, my Podcasting mode would not only mute notifications from everyone except my co-host; it would also turn off my air conditioning and open my notes for recording.

I created modes for everything so that no matter what I was doing, my devices were always perfectly in sync with my needs and availability. It kind of felt like magic.

All of that changed recently, though, when I wiped out all of my Focus modes and Safari profiles across my devices. That’s right: I’ve gone modeless.

I want to stop for a moment to note that I am not being prescriptive here. I am not saying that these features are bad or that you shouldn’t use them. I’m not even saying that I’ll keep my devices this way forever. But it’s a new approach I’m trying after years of the same, so I thought I’d share it.

Several factors influenced my decision to de-contextualize my devices:

  • My life has become less segmented as of late. I used to constantly switch between personal time, work, freelancing, podcasting, and more, with each context needing its own setup, but things are more simplified now. I pretty much divide my time between work, personal time, and sleep, and that’s it.
  • I’ve found myself spending more time fiddling with my settings than the time I’m actually saving by using them. Whether I’m using a finalized OS release or a beta version, I find that keeping the Focus system running smoothly requires some amount of maintenance – often, toggling settings like automations and filters off and back on to get them working again when I notice they’ve stopped.
  • Even when everything works exactly as expected, I still find myself sometimes needing to do mini context switches or blend aspects of different contexts, such as checking my personal Audible account while I’m in my work Safari profile, and that can be painful when I’ve set up such a rigid system.
  • The filtering features of Focus modes, which are meant to keep irrelevant information out of sight, can be easily bypassed. I developed a bad habit of turning off the filters to check work messages all the time anyway, sort of defeating their purpose.

After realizing I was signed out of a website because I was in the wrong Safari profile (again), I thought to myself, “What if I didn’t have to switch? Could a more unified approach work?” After pondering that idea for a couple of days, I decided to give it a try.

I started by moving all of my Safari bookmarks into my Personal profile, trimming the ones I used the least to keep the list to a manageable size. I’m probably the only person in the world who cares about this, but I’ve found that having 12 favorite websites in Safari looks the best across devices because it divides evenly by the number of sites in a row on my iPhone (4), iPad mini (6), iPad Pro (12), Vision Pro (6), and Mac (12) with no blank spaces. Yes, this is the kind of thing I spend my time figuring out.

I also had one Safari tab group that I wanted to keep around for work, so I moved it over to the Personal profile as well. With everything consolidated, I was able to delete my Safari profiles, simplifying my setup into a single set of bookmarks, tab groups, and history.

Then, it was time to clean up my Focus modes. I was planning to delete every mode except for Do Not Disturb, giving myself a single option for muting notifications anytime I needed to, but I found out that detailed sleep tracking on the Apple Watch requires the Sleep mode to be active, so I left it on the list as well. I went from nine Focus modes down to two, though, so it was a major simplification. (In case you’re wondering, I don’t use the Driving mode because CarPlay blocks most notifications on its own, and I’ve never tried the Reduce Interruptions mode because I don’t want AI anywhere near my notifications. I’ll handle them myself, thanks.)

It’s been about a week since I made this change, and so far, I’m quite happy with it. I’m no longer spending time fiddling with settings or switching between modes to access the information I need, so ironically, removing Focus modes has meant I’m spending less time on my devices. I’m having to exercise more self-control, choosing to let some messages and notifications sit without being dealt with while I’m spending time with my family, but I think that’s a good thing. And I enjoy having a simple Do Not Disturb toggle when I need it. The all-or-nothing approach to notifications seems to be working for me.

The only real pain point I’ve run into is dealing with websites where I have multiple accounts, such as Google and Amazon. Their built-in account switchers help to a point, but they’re still not as elegant as using Safari profiles to keep things separated. If needing a couple of extra clicks to access my work’s YouTube Studio page is the worst of my problems, though, I’d say things are faring well.

When life changes come your way – whether you’re happy about them or not – they serve as opportunities to rethink things. This has been one of the results of rethinking things for me, and I believe it’s part of a positive trend. Less compartmentalization and more cohesiveness. Less tinkering and more living. No modes, just me. Yeah, I think that sounds pretty good.

At least, for now. Who knows if it’ll last forever? If there’s one thing we can be sure of, it’s that none of us can predict what the future holds. But for the time being, the modeless life is the one for me, and I’m making the most of it.

There Is No “Them”

Stephen White, writing for Red Letter Christians:

Us versus them. It is one of the oldest sentences the human heart knows how to say, older than language, certainly older than scripture. Us is the circle drawn warm and close, the people whose grief is our grief, whose children we would run into a burning house to save. Them is everyone on the far side, the ones we have decided, somewhere below conscious thought, we are allowed not to love…

There is us. There is them. Everybody knows that. And then a man came walking out of Galilee, dust on his feet, and said the single strangest thing anyone had ever said about it, a thing so strange that two thousand years later we still have not really begun to believe he meant it.

He said: Love your enemies.

Removing the us-versus-them mentality from my worldview is something I am constantly working on, because there’s no room for it in the heart of someone who has compassion for the world. If I truly believe – as I claim – to see everybody I come into contact with as a full person deserving of the same dignity, consideration, and respect that I desire for myself and my loved ones, then I can’t really see anyone else as “other.”

We are all people with feelings, desires, dreams, needs, and full inner lives, and we each deserve to be treated as such. We each deserve to have our needs met. My faith teaches me that every human being is created in the image of God, and it’s my job to recognize that divine reflection in every person I encounter, whether they’re similar to me or not.

I highly recommend reading White’s piece in full because it beautifully illustrates how Jesus serves as an example of what loving our enemies and crossing us-versus-them lines looks like, as well as how we can follow his example today. Making the world a better place starts with empathy, and it requires that we tear down the walls we’ve built in our heads between ourselves and those we don’t see as part of our in-group.

There is no them, only us.