Fumbling 145 days long kindle reading streak

If my memory serves right, Snapchat popularised the streak phenomena. Later on, the amount popularity and stickiness it creates among the user, many companies jumped on the band wagon - fitness trackers, calories trackers and many more. What the streak does is it creates a habit among the users and make them to use the particular service on daily basis. Also, it creates a sense of pride with the longer streak on has.

I was using Kindle for quite sometime before knowing it has reading insights. All thanks to the guy who tasted the infamous bat soup and forced us stay indoor for well over two years, in the name of lockdown. Left with not many thing to do, I came across the reading streaks provided by the Kindle. Kindle Reading insights shows how many books you read over the year, and how many weeks and days you read via Kindle. It nudges us to read Kindle. The growing streak always gives a sense of pride.

The various streaks

I had a streak of 40+ once, 90+ twice, and 120+ once. The longest being 145 days. When I was new Kindle user, I bought several books via coupons, deals. The lockdown provided lots of free time and these books really helped me pass through the dreaded 2020. Later on, I came across way to use free books like Project Guttenberg and what not. This serves the purpose for sometime. Prime Reading too was a very good option during the time.

Then, I was reading Kindle books via Kindle Unlimited. KU provides several of smaller books. Its easier to finish and so just to fulfil the number-of-books-read-this-year, I loaned several inferior quality books and reading them for a while.

It’s true intention

The true intention of having the insights to impart a reading habit via Kindle. For sometime the reading became a daily habit and I was following the routine to T. Then the vaccine for the pandemic arrives, world opens up and things are going back to how it was before the guy tasting the soup.

This change of routine disturbs the habits built on the foundation of lockdown and staying indoor.

Gaming the loophole

With the lockdown receding, the pressure of squeezing in several tasks moves reading to back seat. But once you start measuring, there is a chance of unknowingly falling victim to Goodhart’s law.

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure - Goodhart’s law

Later on, I discovered the web articles can be sent to Kindle and reading them too contribute the daily reads score. This opened the floodgate. I have already subscribed to handful of newsletters. The newsletters in turn recommends more articles which gets sent to kindle. At one point of time I had 1300+ unread documents.

From reading high quality content, now I started consuming daily news article and building a streak out of it. Come on, reading is reading, right?

Initially, I was reading as soon as I woke up. Then, the reading time is moved to whenever-I-get-bored on a day. Finally, I was reading/scrolling through articles just to complete the day’s reading. On somedays I scroll through the articles just before midnight to keep it going.

How I lost it

Gradually, daily reading moved away from habit/routine into a chore. There is more chance of losing the streak than keep it going. Eventually, it did happen on April 17. The streak started on November 24, 2022 lasted for 145 days.

How to grow a streak in future?

1. Not losing the love for it; the moment it turns a chore its not worth the time.
2. Reduce the resistance to fulfil the daily tasks
3. Track true progress instead of doing it for the sake of it

See also

• Longreads with Kindle