Every habit app I've ever quit, I quit on the same day: the morning after I broke the chain.
You know the feeling. Forty-one days of flossing, a late night, one missed evening, and the counter drops to zero. The flame goes grey. The app doesn't say "you've flossed on 41 of the last 42 days", which would be true and quite impressive. It says zero. So you stop opening it.
Streaks are a clever piece of design. They turn a small daily action into something you don't want to lose. But they only work for things that genuinely happen every day, and they punish you precisely when life gets busy, which is exactly when you'd most like a bit of help.
Most of life isn't daily
Here's what I actually wanted to keep track of when I started building Last.:
- When did I last change the sheets?
- When did I last replace my toothbrush?
- When did I last get the car serviced, descale the kettle, test the smoke alarm?
None of these happens every day. None of them should. A streak is meaningless for a haircut. What I needed wasn't a chain. It was a number: how long it's been.
A number that can't break
So that's the whole idea. Every thing in Last. has one big number on it: the days since you last did it. When you do it again, you tap once and the counter starts over. There's no "missed day", because there's no schedule to miss. Twelve days since you changed the sheets is simply true. It isn't a failure. It's information.
And when you want a gentle reminder, you can ask for one: roughly monthly, every three months, yearly, or never. It's a whisper when it's been a while, not an alarm.
What happens to the old number
Resetting a counter felt a bit sad at first. You had a nice 94 going, and now it's zero. So in Last., the old number doesn't vanish: it becomes a print. A poster with the count, a clay object and the date. Replaced the toothbrush after 94 days? That's a print now.
After a few months you end up with a little gallery of your ordinary life. It's oddly satisfying, and it's the opposite of a broken streak: every reset leaves something behind.
No red X's, even for "without"
In the next update, Last. learns to count days without something too: a no-spend run, no takeout, whatever you're proud of skipping. It was tempting to add a streak there. I didn't. Milestones earn a print, and if a run ends, there's no red X and no guilt. You just start again, and the run you had still counts.
Streaks are a trap. Counting since is just honest.
