Why we do not do streaks
Nora Ellison
Co-founder and CEO
A streak is a clever thing. It turns a habit into a number, and the fear of losing the number into fuel. It works, for a while. Then one hard day breaks it, and the number that was keeping you going becomes a small daily reminder that you failed. The tool that was meant to help now makes the good thing feel like a debt.
Guilt is not a feature
We think the pressure is the point of a streak, and we think the pressure is exactly wrong for what Sundial is about. The small good things in a day are not obligations. A walk you take because you will lose a number is not the same walk you take because the afternoon is soft and you wanted to be in it. We would rather protect the second kind.
What we built instead
- A gentle nudge at the right moment, that you are free to let pass.
- A weekly look back that is kind, and shows how close your days came, not how many you missed.
- No number to protect, so a hard day is just a hard day, not a broken record.
If ignoring Sundial for a day makes you feel worse, we built the wrong thing. So we did not build that.
A day you skip is not a failure. It is a day. Sundial simply learns, and leans a little softer tomorrow.
Written by the team at Sundial. We build gently, and we write the same way. Your ordinary days are yours.