Don’t Miss Twice

This hit me like a ton of bricks. I was listening to podcast with James Clear, author of “Atomic Habits”, you know that best selling book everyone talks about, and he was discussing the importance of keeping a streak.

He alluded to story of Jerry Seinfeld who used to put big red Xs on his calendar when he would write jokes. The idea behind it was to keep the streak alive, or keep the chain going. This gamified the process to keep it going.

Let me digress for just a minute and talk about gamification and human behavior. When we gamify something we actually become more in tune to the process. Think about it, if you tossed bags (aka cornhole) by yourself for “practice” it’ll get boring pretty quickly, but when you put yourself in a competition it becomes for fun. Likewise, if a NFL kicker missed one Field Goal, it’s recoverable throughout the game, if he misses two, that’s a touchdown worth and could determine if the team wins or loses.

Additionally, gambling, namely slot machines, opens a loop in our brain. That loop will never get closed. As you play you watch those dials “spin” (they don’t really spin anymore as it’s all a screen) you’ll notice the last one might take just a second longer to finish. This keeps the loop open so you will pull the handle again. The loop is all based on winning. I put in $100 and now I’m down to $25 but wait, I’m up to $50, now down to $15, and up to $75, now down to $10, and up to $35, now down to $5, but now I’m up to $125… When you get above your starting point, do you pull that handle again or you keep on playing? The Jackpot says $10,000. What do you do? Most people will just play until they run out of money. “But I was so close” they say.

Gamifying is a really powerful tool to keep us motivated and active. Psychologists think it goes back to our primitive roots when we would hunt and gather. As we got close to that deer or elk and missed our brains want “more” of that adrenaline rush of eating. Remember, we didn’t have grocery stores when we lived in caves so the rush and thrill of the hunt was a primitive pull of the slot machine.

Now back to the streak. Snapchat does this really well. When people send snaps to each other they start a streak. This streak keeps them coming back to the app day after day. It also gives a “score”. You can compare this score with others to see how has used the app more. We keep going back to the app to keep the streak alive and to increase our score.

As a father, I try to gamify my life with my kids and my wife. It’s less about who’s winning but doing something everyday with them. I’ve noticed that when it is bed time, I give my kids a kiss each night, or in the morning before work, and I find it hard to fall asleep if I haven’t done that. My brain is keeping my streak alive.

Now after all of this meandering here is the crux of the story – don’t miss twice. We all will fail at some point on our streak. Working out, playing with our kids, our diet, maybe even missing the board on cornhole we all will miss. But when we miss twice we start to get in our heads. We think to ourselves, “I suck.” or “Maybe I’m not meant to do this.” and it drives a wedge between us and our goals. That’s negative self talk which is a different post for a different day but it doesn’t help us achieve our goals or keep us motivated.

The moral of the story is when you start a streak keep it going. If you fail, don’t miss twice. Get right back to it where you left off and keep going. The consistency will be worth it.