The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 134 - Breaking Streaks

Transcript:

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hello, Pete.

Pete: So, I broke a streak. I was trying to work out a clever way to come up with this introduction, but that's it. I'm just going to come out with it. I broke my streak of writing. And it is blowing my mind how hard it is to get the streak reignited. And I think I need some Jen Waldman wisdom to help me unpack some of this.

Jen: Ooh. I don't know if I have wisdom, or just commiseration. Let's find out. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: So, I guess a little context. A few episodes ago, we talked about our writing practice. And I shared that I was doing a sixty-minute block every weekday (was my original intention), which started at the start of this year, 2021. And, I came out of the gate hot. And I was flying. And I got my streak to...it's actually, I've got the number staring at me on my whiteboard. I got the streak to forty-one days, consecutive. I was pretty happy with that. And then, I think it was a long weekend, or there was a holiday, or something happened. And it was about ten days ago, two weeks ago. And I thought to myself, "That's okay. It's a public holiday. I'll just take this day off."

Jen: Yep.

Pete: Even though it was still a weekday. It was still a weekday. And I thought, "I'll just restart again the week after." And I think in the last two weeks, I may have written one day. And I just am like baffled by how missing one day has completely derailed my entire streak. And I just...I don't know. I feel like we need to talk about this. Because there's a few other things related to this, but let's just start there.

Jen: Oh, my friend. I feel you so hard on this. Well, this will have a happy ending. But for several years, I woke up in the morning and the first thing I did was put on my workout clothes and do something physical.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah.

Jen: Then back in November of 2020...

Pete: Mmm, what a year.

Jen: ...I quote, "Took a break," from doing that every day. And since taking the break, it has been an epic struggle (aka epic failure) to reinstitute my daily exercise routine. Until a couple days ago, where I was like, "I think I have a streak of not working out enough days in a row, that I could break this and just decide that that streak is over." And now it's been a very short while, but I have woken up early every day since I made this decision, thrown on my workout clothes and either gone outside for a run, or if the weather has been too cold, I've done something in the living room. So, my streak has turned around. But oh my gosh, has it been hard.

Pete: It was like you reversed the streak. You said, "Oh, I see that I'm on a streak of not exercising now."

Jen: Right. Because my streak of exercising was years long at that point. I was like, "Am I going to actually go years in the other direction? Like, I can't do that. That's a terrible idea." So don't hold me to anything I just said because, you know, check back in in a couple weeks and see...but I have to say, I feel so much better reimplementing: at the same time every day, doing the thing.

Pete: Mmm. Yeah, it's...I don't know why or how the simple act of breaking a streak by one day, just skipping one day, why that cascades into multiple days. I still...I just can't quite work it out. I've written on my whiteboard, "Streak P.B.", and there's a big number "41" there. And my current writing streak is "2". Two days.

Jen: Wait, what doe P.B. stand for?

Pete: Oh, "Personal Best". P.B.? What would you call that? "P.R."?

Jen: Oh. I don't know. I just never heard anyone say that before.

Pete: Oh, "Personal Best". I think it's like an athletics term, maybe, I stole?

Jen: Oh, well, of course I don't know that then.

Pete: So, my P.R. (I think Americans might say P.R., "Personal Record", "Personal Best", "Personal Record") is 41. And I have this number "2" staring at me. And I'm like, "Oh my god, that is so far away from 41."

Jen: Yeah. Yeah.

Pete: And I wonder if there's something in that. Because it feels so far away, I'm like, "I'll never get there, so I'll just skip this day as well." I don't know why it feels so hard to get the streak going again. Like, what is it about that?

Jen: Well, I would encourage you to rethink whether it's helpful to you to have your personal best staring at you when you're on day two.

Pete: Mmm. Mmm. Yeah.

Jen: I'll tell you from where I'm sitting, the hard part is the voices in my head. I have shared this on previous episodes we've done about running. So, here is a callback to days gone by. I shared how hard it is for me to run, but I was still able to combat it and run, until I guess I broke my streak and stopped running. But I had forgotten (and maybe I liked living without them a little bit) the voices in my head. That the second I pull out the workout clothes, are like, "Come up with an excuse to not do it. Put the clothes away. It's a little cold outside. Aren't you feeling tired?"

Pete: "Your hamstring's a little sore?"

Jen: Yeah. I mean, it's unbelievable to me how loud those voices are. And they don't stop until the workout is over. There is not a moment of reprieve. Even today, I'm ashamed to say. I worked out, and it wasn't even that hard. But I found myself nauseous by how I was pushing myself. And it's probably because I had broken my streak and needed to like get back to where I was. And I stopped to catch my breath, and I was like, "I should just let the workout keep playing while I catch my breath." And then I was like, "No, Jen, you have to push pause." So I pushed pause, I had a little water, and then I was like, "I did most of the workout. I could just stop." I mean, really, it's so insistent, that voice that is telling me to quit. So anyway, I wonder if part of my own resistance to starting up again was, I prefer the quiet of not having that voice yelling at me.

Pete: Mmm. Yeah, wow. Well, it's easier, in the sense of you don't have that mental battle.

Jen: Yeah, sure.

Pete: What I think is the best book on a lot of this resistance is The War of Art by Steven Pressfield...

Jen: Brilliant. So good.

Pete: ...which is basically a book on the resistance that you're describing. It's a book on that noise in your head that everybody has. And I remember when I read this, and I was like, "Oh, other people experience this."

Jen: Yep.

Pete: Like, that voice that basically its sole job is to stop you from doing the things that you're trying to do, like creative work or exercise. It always tends to be, for some reason, the things that...I don't know, it's like on some level, we want to do them. On some level, we know they're good for us. On some level, we know that it's going to push our work forward. But there's this force that's like, "Nah, don't do that. Don't do that. Do this instead, Just sit on the couch instead."

Jen: Well, I think you answered your earlier question of: What is it that's making it so hard to start the streak back up, and what made it so easy to skip the one day? It has a name: Resistance (with a capital friggin "R"). Resistance.

Pete: A really big "R". You're right. Huh.

Jen: So I guess the logical follow up question is: What does one do to combat Resistance? I think Seth Godin answered this question with his book, The Practice. And Steven Pressfield's other book, Turning Pro, which is, "Treat yourself like a professional, and show up."

Pete: Yeah. Yeah. A professional sits down and does the work each day.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Which is so annoyingly simple.

Jen: Doesn't it make you want to throw your computer out the window?

Pete: Yeah. Like your workout, a professional just shows up and does the workout each day. Think of an Olympic athlete, think of any elite sports person, they just show up and do the workout every day.

Jen: Okay, so this then brings me to the identity crisis part of this. Which is, "Okay, so if I'm showing up as a professional writer," (and notice I've avoided talking about my own broken streakwith my own book, we'll sidebar that)...

Pete: I did wonder if that was coming up at some point. I didn't want to...

Jen: I'm back though. I'm back. I've started pairing it with my morning exercise outside. So when I'm outside, my voice memo is on.

Pete: Woah. Okay.

Jen: Yeah. So, I'm speak-writing while I'm working out.

Pete: Speak-writing. Okay. Okay. I feel like we'll need to come back to that.

Jen: I'm killing two birds with one stone, which is good. But, so the identity crisis is, "Okay, I'm showing up. I'm treating myself like a professional writer. I'm showing up every single day. I'm doing my work. Uh-oh, I missed a day. Uh-oh, I missed two days. Uh-oh, I missed three days. I'm not a professional writer. I'm a fraud. Good bye. See you later." So there is something about forgiving yourself for the misstep, and then recommitting yourself to the professional posture, to stepping into the version of yourself you want to be. And I just feel like it's worth saying that out loud. Because I know I had this whole wrestle in my own brain around the book, going like, "Well, maybe it's because you actually shouldn't be writing a book. Maybe you're not qualified to write a book. Maybe nobody wants to read your book. Maybe this book was a terrible idea. Oh, this topic? Nobody's interested in this topic." So, there's the Resistance voice again. And that's what breaking the streak unleashes, is like the pent up voice of Resistance that you have been able to quell during the streak time.

Pete: Yeah. That's so true and quite profound. Like, I feel like the voice is...it's there a little bit when you're in the middle of the practice, or you've got the streak going and you're like (you know, I think I've joked on this podcast before), some days you're writing and you're like, "I feel like Hemingway," and then other days you'll feel like you're just mashing the keyboard with your fingers and just like nothing makes sense. But at the end of it, you always tend to have some level of accomplishment, a little bit.

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Pete: And you kind of just...we talked about the Jerry Seinfeld, "Pat yourself on the back and say, 'Good job, you did the thing today.'" And it is like an unleashing. The moment you skip that day, it's like, you know, the voices were behind a cage and all of a sudden, the cage just opened a little bit. And they're like, "Oh, here's our chance to come out and really emphasize the fact that you don't actually want to do this thing. You don't actually think you're qualified for this, do you?" Hmm.

Jen: Wow. I'm just imagining myself circled by these swirling evil thoughts that I have perpetrated on myself. And I also recognize that if I unleash them, I also then have the capacity to leash them.

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: Hmm. I feel like just saying this stuff out loud is forcing a decision in this moment. I see you nodding. Are you feeling that way too? Where it's like, "Okay, we're deciding to get back to our streaks." Okay.

Pete: Yeah. I feel like this is creative therapy, is what I was thinking. I was like, "Oh, I think I've got everything I need out of this session now. Thank you."

Jen: "Thank you so much. I'll bill you for the hour."

Pete: "Thank you, yeah." But I wonder if even in that, there is a potential path forward for when we break our streaks. (Because we will break our streaks, because we're all human.) Is, one way to navigate that is perhaps find a friend and talk about it, and like admit it out loud. To hear it both yourself, but also to hear it reflected back from a friend. And then, as you're saying, you kind of find yourself in this stage of like, "Okay. Now that I've talked this out, like the moment Jen and I get off this call, I'm probably going to write."

Jen: Yep. Okay, so that's another way to beat the Resistance. So we talked about identity, like leaning into the professional posture. But the other thing is that the Resistance can bring up these shame feelings, where it's like, "Ooh, I don't want to admit to anyone that I broke my streak." But the way to combat the Resistance is to actually own that you broke your streak and tell someone, so that you can get back on the path rather than hiding in your own dark corner with the shame of the broken streak. So I am declaring to you, podcast audience, I have broken my streak. Which means I'm now getting back on the horse, and I am going to ride this horse to a new streak.

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: I feel, actually, energized.

Pete: You seemed fired up. But I feel like, now that we are confessing...

Jen: Oh no. What next?

Pete: I should confess one more then, because this seems like a productive thing to do. I'm having a lot less of a hard time with this one, which is maybe interesting in its own right. So a while ago, we did an episode called 100 Swims, or 100 Days of Swimming. And I shared with everybody that I did one hundred days in a row, swimming in the ocean. And I had no intention to break the streak, which I did not. Then like two weeks later, my partner Tracy and I, we actually went away for a weekend. And we went like rural, so there was no beach. So I had a day where I didn't swim. And I was like, "That's okay, because there's literally no beach around here." So, it was forced upon me. So I missed a day there. The streak continued. And I guess up until...it was two weeks ago. It would have been close to like 200 out of 201 days, or something like that.

Jen: Wow.

Pete: And I had this day that...I don't know if I was so busy, so distracted, a little bit anxious. I was probably beating myself up about my writing streak. And it got to like 9pm, and I went, "Oh my god, I didn't swim today." And I felt like, "Oh, that explains why I had such a terrible day."

Jen: Hmm.

Pete: And then the next day, I just picked it up again. And I have swum every day since. So every day this year in 2021, I've swam except for one day, which was a complete mistake. And that streak, I haven't found hard to reintegrate with. So, that's...I don't know, just for the sake of sharing.

Jen: That's so interesting. Because, okay, I'm trying to ask myself, "What is different about the swimming streak versus the writing streak?" The swimming streak is not supposed to produce anything.

Pete: Mmm. Ooh.

Jen: And the writing streak is supposed to end with a book.

Pete: Right. Yeah, that's interesting. It's like one is for the enjoyment of the thing, which is the swim. You do it because you enjoy the feeling of the swim, that's it. There's no expectation of what might happen. You know, I feel like this applies to probably any creative endeavor, any business, any project, and maybe even any workout. We have this, like this expectation or this outcome in our head, like, "I'll be fitter. I'll be stronger. I'll have a book. It'll sell this many copies. Or I'll have a podcast, and we'll have this many listeners." There's all these weird things attached to it. So I wonder if that could be another way to navigate the Resistance. Is, how do we frame our streaks as like joyful activities that don't necessarily need to lead to anything?

Jen: That's really interesting. Because I'm like, "Wait a minute, what do I think my exercise streak is leading to?" And I wonder if I might be someone who is working in the opposite direction from that. That if I actually set a goal for myself with my workout practice, if I actually set the goal of like, "I have to make it to 100, so that I can have my 100 Days party, or I have to actually knock this many seconds off my mile," if that would motivate me more to keep it up. That's an angle I hadn't thought of.

Pete: Hmm. Hmm. And feels very relevant, and very on brand for us. Is, you to have a goal and work backwards, and me to just be like, "Just show up in the moment and do it because you want to."

Jen: Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, that's so funny, and so true. Okay, so what do we take away from this, Pete?

Pete: Well, I think we take away that the Resistance is hard and real, and is kind of always there, regardless of where we're at in our streak. But that breaking the streak has the potential to unleash some more of those voices, some more of that Resistance, which can create more temptation to start a new streak of not hitting your streak. So, I think there's that. And then, I think that we shared a bunch of different ways that we might navigate those voices of Resistance. So you might have to remind me of some of them, but one of them was (working backwards, I guess) can we create moments of joy, or frame them as things that don't necessarily have to be attached to anything? That we do them because we enjoy doing them, like me and my swimming.

Jen: Or for me, perhaps setting a goal for the streak and then seeking to meet the goal, and then setting a new goal when the goal is met. The other thing we talked about...and I realize (hello, meta) we talked about reaching out to a friend and saying, "I broke the streak." And what's really interesting about friends and streaks, Pete, is it would never occur to me to break the streak of this podcast. We've been doing this for years now and we've never, ever, ever missed a week. So, congratulations to us for not breaking this streak.

Pete: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.