streaks app: building habits in 2023

When I started this post several days ago, I didn’t realize how much I would need it for myself as a reboot. Basically, my family, including myself, got sick this week. My daughter and I were the sickest. She ran a fever for several days while I had a low-grade fever. My youngest son was almost as sick, and my second oldest son and my husband experienced the virus more as a cold. I think we had COVID though we didn’t test ourselves.

This brings me to why I need to talk about the Streaks app and building habits. After doing my Annual Review, I wanted to create a new environment for myself which included some new habits and some older habits that I struggled to keep in my new environment. I like to experiment with ways to build habits. I call it tweaking, but it’s really experimenting. I’ve come to realize that not only do habits change over time, but the ways I reinforce those habits also change over time. I started using the Streaks app as a way to track my habits.

Thanks to my illness, I haven’t done any of my habits that I’m tracking in the Streaks app since Tuesday. All my habits are broken at this point which is okay. I can either be frustrated that I need to take half a step back on my habits and half-marathon training, or I can use this as an opportunity to tweak what I’m doing. Honestly, I have a lot of habits in the Streaks app. Do I need all those habits right now, or do I want to build up to some?

Before I go, let me give you the details on the Streaks app. There’s a one-time fee of $4.99. The app only works on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch. I have it installed on my iPhone and Mac. However, I can’t access the app on the Mac for some reason. I think it’s because I installed it originally on my iPhone and that takes precedence over the Mac. You can do up to 24 tasks on 4 different colored screens. You can also move a task to a different screen if you decide to re-organize the task. You can set up notifications for automatic or specific times, including adding reminders to Siri. The app has been easy to use so far, though I’m still tweaking the reminders aspect.