Streaks reduce the need for decision-making

One of the darkest places creative people can go in their minds is asking themselves whether or not they should create today. We consider a few ideas, thinking of what to create. None of them feel good enough. We wonder if we should create at all. Anyone who has spent time creating knows the feeling of looking at a blank canvas, an empty project file, or a blinking cursor. It’s soul-sucking. 

Danny Weathers, a professor of Marketing at Clemson university, wrote a piece in Scientific American called “Why Keeping a Streak Boosts Your Motivation.” In it, he breaks down the benefits of keeping a streak ( an unbroken chain of days in which you complete a specific activity). 

“In general, a streak adds a higher-level goal (keeping the streak alive) to a lower-level goal (completing an individual activity).” You may not be motivated on any given day to do the work. But you might still be motivated to keep your streak alive. 

“Streaks also add structure to an activity, and structure can simplify thinking and decision making,” Weathers writes. Instead of considering whether or not we will create today, the streak tells us that we must. Instead of wasting creative energy deciding if we will create, the streak saves that energy for what and how we will create.