Streaks (By Seth Godin)
Today’s the 11th year in a row of daily posts on this blog. Nearly 5,000,000 words since my first post twenty years ago, and I haven’t missed a day (given some time-zone wiggle room) since 2008.
Streaks are their own reward.
Streaks create internal pressure that keeps streaks going.
Streaks require commitment at first, but then the commitment turns into a practice, and the practice into a habit.
Habits are much easier to maintain than commitments.
I’m pretty sure that the blog would still have an impact if I missed a day here or there, but once a commitment is made to a streak, the question shifts from, “should I blog tomorrow,” to, “what will tomorrow’s blog say?”
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Why streaks work..
Seth Godin has been a long time hero of myself and Fergus with his prolific blog always challenging the status quo and providing opportunities to critically think about the world around us. Yesterday’s blog (SEE ABOVE) was of particular interest to us as it was all about Streaks! In this case Seth was writing about his streak of writing a blog every single day for 11 years but the principle of streaks and the benefit of maintaining a streak in anything in life applies perfectly to our learning streaks which are now in their 75th day. As Seth rightly points out:
Streaks require commitment at first, but then the commitment turns into a practice, and the practice into a habit.
If you are already a customer of ours you will know that we are passionate and committed to supporting students to develop the behaviours and habits that will support them at University and beyond.
Developing the habit of consistency of effort and being willing to make mistakes on the path to conquering your HSC will set you up to develop into a lifelong learner which will be much more important than the number that is generated at the conclusion of the HSC.
- Streaks demonstrate that a student is engaged with their vision. By completing an extra task today they are one step closer to making their vision their reality (Key Behaviour #1 – Engage your vision)
- Streaks demonstrate that a student is committed to training daily (Key Behaviour #3 – Train.Daily)
- Streaks demonstrate a commitment to pushing outside one’s comfort zone as the tasks that maintain a streak are inevitably going to be more challenging than tasks that are not recorded.
- Streaks demonstrate that a student has Grit by showing they are willing to continue to show up to maintain the streak even when they get something wrong.
- Streaks demonstrate a commitment to taking responsibility for the result (Key Behaviour number 6 – Own it!)
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Check out just a few of the streak milestones achieved in the last 48 hours from our students.
