Celebrating someone’s ability to continue a winning streak is harmful to them and to us. We celebrate the retiree who never missed a day of work by featuring them in news articles.* But showing up every day and doing the thing, without missing a day, ever … under any circumstance, is problematic. It’s time we celebrated general consistency and not perfection.
Putting The Streak Above All Else
Continuing a pattern of behaviour without any allowances for physical and mental health, family situations, and life emergencies, places the streak above all those things on your list of priorities. For the retirees mentioned above, they put their job above all else.
Next week, Mike Turner will achieve a stunning milestone: 36 years on the job without ever taking a sick day. There was one day, though, when he missed 15 minutes of work. He had a good excuse: a kidney stone was working its way through his body.”
Re-thinking Commitment
Wait a minute! Aren’t tenacity, persistence and commitment admirable values that we should be working towards? Yes, I think they are. But, the commitment doesn’t come from doing it every day without fail. The commitment comes from returning to a pattern of behaviour after being sick, taking care of a life emergency, being there for a family member. It’s the returning that requires the tenacity.
Give Grace To Yourself And Others
While it is true that you need consistency to establish a habit, it is also a myth that breaking the consistency, the “winning streak,” is something bad. It’s inevitable that the consistency will break from time to time. If we no longer celebrate others who continue patterns without breaking them under any circumstance, we will give ourselves (and them) grace to have “wobbly days,” and not feel like failures. Grace allows us all to get back to our routine without feeling like we’ve lost anything. That’s something to celebrate.
*https://www.unilad.com/news/health/90-year-old-woman-never-taken-sick-day-212618-20231121
*https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/hospital-worker-nova-scotia-never-missed-work-1.5230569
Retired, And Now What 
Excellent point.
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