Kill Your Streaks

Forgive me this neurotic post about digital strictures and the gamefication of hobbies.

As 2025 drew to a close, all the apps wanted to make it about them. They shared “Your Year in Review!” with stats and graphics, downloadable to share on every social media platform. DuoLingo informed me that I’d spent 24 hours learning Spanish. Learning Spanish is a goal I’m working on, but discovering that I’d spent a full day on the app didn’t make me feel proud. Instead, it was confronting.

I’d spent a full day of my one precious life doing what, exactly? Listening to animated characters’ grating AI voices? Watching Lily’s eyes roll in irritation (what is her attitude problem!); tap-tapping through yet another inane story I’d definitely been fed before; listening to the repetitive, boring English intros and outros to Oscar’s Antique Roadshow and Falstaff’s Guide to Humans? Not to mention listening to Lin’s lazy radioshow (in a nutshell: she’s lazy) or Lucy’s conspiracy theory one (in a nutshell: she’s QAnon)? Don’t get me started on all the other one-note characters: Junior, Vikram, Eddy, Zari, Bea… Why do I know all these names and what do they have to do with learning SPANISH?!

At least I never paid a subscription fee — although I considered doing so many times! To avoid lengthy advertisements, I had quit the app immediately and then reopen it to use it again. Recently, Duolingo updated their “hearts” feature to “energy,” which docks points if you miss a question (or if the app’s voice recognition feature glitches, which it often does). Energy is so limited that you can only complete one lesson or so before you’re booted off —unless, of course, you subscribe monthly! Almost makes me think this app isn’t really about learning languages…

What had started as a fun, gamefied learning process had become a chore. A thorn in my side. The only things I still liked about the app were the Match Madness game and Lucy’s little blue cat who sometimes showed up on the final page of a lesson. The little blue cat had nothing to do with anything, but it was cute. Signs were pointing me towards the exit door. But my streak was well over 400 days! What was I going to do? Stop?! Maybe I should just subscribe after all…

DuoLingo’s Lucy (boo!) and her blue cat (yay!)

Then, a seemingly unrelated incident occurred in late December. After getting home from a delightful jaunt to NYC, I hopped onto my Peloton™️ to do a little ride, and what do I see?

“Start your streak!”

Excuse me, start my streak? I left LA just days earlier, the proud holder of a 150+ WEEK streak! I’d let it lapse, purely by mistake! If only the day before I’d thought to login, perhaps in the JFK airport during a four hour flight delay, to listen to a little ten minute Peloton meditation — then my streak would still be streaking!

I was disappointed. I let out a moan and groan and called Josh over to the bike to lament the loss of streak. Then I did my little stationary bike ride while watching the season one finale of I Love LA on my iPad, and after a few minutes of laughter and endorphins, the disappointment I felt faded away. Instead I felt… FREE!!!!!!!

Without a 150 plus week streak, I didn’t need to use the Peloton app unless I wanted to! For the past THREE YEARS, every time I went out of town, I made sure to maintain my streak. “Exercising is good for you,” one might argue. Sure, sure. But this was a digital streak to maintain, not a healthy habit. A chore, a box to check. On vacations, I’d do a short yoga class or a meditation just to save my streak, even though I much prefer guided meditations that are not offered under the Peloton umbrella. But exercise and mindfulness outside of the app don’t count, now do they?

Now that my streak was broken… I decided to unsubscribe from Peloton altogether. I wanted to be free! To bike whenever I want to, without saving any data about how hard I worked out or how often or when. I wanted to Just Ride! Without listening to motivational chatter, or observing the fit-fit-fit instructors and their filler-ed faces and feeling like an ugly wrinkly troll, or being told my exact ranking on the ride, which was always at least 60,000th. In writing, you must kill your darlings. In this digital age, I would kill my streaks.

So, circling back to DuoLingo, after a bit more deliberation, I decided to delete the app. Oh, the green owl tried to intimidate me into submission. But I stayed strong. Delete, delete, delete! Goodbye 400+ day streak! Goodbye all you annoying characters! Goodbye notifications, goodbye mysterious unexplained grammar rules, goodbye frustrating glitches, goodbye ads! I don’t think I’ll miss you.

At In-N-Out on New Year’s Eve 2025, feeling free!

**NOTE: I realized the day after writing this that I’d accidentally doubled my peloton streak! It was 150+ weeks, not 300+. Haven’t even had the bike for 300 weeks! Kind of funny that in a post about streaks I misquoted my own streak… but once the streak is broken, it ceases to matter! An impressive number’s just a number.

Enjoy this post? Take a dip back into the related archives…

Without the Peloton app, I’ll be doing a lot more TV-watching-while-exercising. An elite tier of shows, actually!

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