Programming Streak Recap: 550 Days of Code
While working through the 100 Days of Swift challenge last year I started a programming streak to help motivate myself to be more consistent. The deal was that I could count a day towards my streak if I spent a minimum of 20 minutes programming, with the original goal of getting at least 30 days in a row. I also happen to track my time generally (using the 15 minute increments, as in the method described in Laura Vanderkam’s Off The Clock), so I know almost exactly how much time I’ve spent programming over the last few years, including before the streak started.
The streak recently passed 550 days— about a year and a half— and I thought I’d run some numbers to see how it’s been working out. First, let’s look at some summary stats as of that 550 day mark:
Total streak hours: 1080.75
Total streak hours in 2021: 722
Streak theoretical minimum total hours: 183.33
Total pre-code streak hours: 59.75
Streak average hours per day total: 1.97
Streak average hours per day 2020: 1.14
Streak average hours per day 2021: 2.25
Streak average hours per working day: 3.13
Pre-code- streak average per day: 0.44
One thing that caught my eye immediately was that even though all that’s required to keep the streak going is 20 min/day, the actual average output is nearly seven times the minimum (2.25 hours or 135 min/ day). This shows that the return value on maintaining a streak is that it acts as a multiplier by creating momentum at the level of individual sessions and between sessions as well. The low minimum time requirement is helpful because it makes it easier to keep the streak going without burning out.
Additionally, the average time spent programming daily increased greatly from before the streak started (0.44 hrs/ day) to during the streak (1.97 hrs/day average overall). It also increased year over year as well, with an average of 1.14hrs/day in 2020 shooting up to an average of 2.25hrs/ day in 2021. This jumps up further to 2.69hrs/ day by September of this year.
There is also immense value in not having to restart projects over and over after time off. It’s easier to be productive when you touch a project frequently—even for a short period of time— because starting is harder than continuing. Additionally, it’s pretty easy to extend that daily time far beyond the minimum because once you get engrossed in a project you’ll likely just keep going anyway. That sense of flow and getting lost in the work is what makes programming so enjoyable in the first place, and produces better outcomes overall.
Alright, let’s talk about the elephant in the room: the average full-time employee puts in 8 hours per workday, so how can 2.25 hours be considered a good effort? Well, it’s not that simple. Study after study has shown that the most workers (including programmers) aren’t productive for a full 8 hours. While the average employee is clocked-in for 8.8 hours a day, they tend to be productive on their primary responsibilities for only 2.88 hours a day, with the rest of their time spent on personal activities like reading the news, checking social media, and answering emails.
I put in time towards my streak every day—because that’s how streaks work!— but if I wanted to compare my productivity to that of a full-time developer, I could instead average my total 2021 hours over only the working days that occurred in this period (this subtracts government holidays and weekends). Then the streak’s average becomes 3.13 hours per day, which is a quarter of an hour more daily productivity than the average worker. And because a streak is a multiplier day over day, this tiny bump adds up to 57.75 more hours of coding in 2021 than the studies linked above would predict.
Because of how my time tracking system works, pretty much all of the time that gets counted toward the streak is “head down” work that is on task. I’m by no means 100% efficient with my time generally (no one is!) but the time that gets counted toward the programming streak represents the reality well because when I’m doing anything else for more than a few minutes things it gets attributed to other activities in my timesheet (hence why I’m not logging 8 hours a day of programming even if I’m at my laptop for 8 hours or more). There is a margin of error for rounding, but I’ll save the discussion of my time tracking and statistical methodology for another time.
As these numbers demonstrate, I’m getting a lot of personal value (not to mention eudaimonic joy) out of this streak, so I plan to keep it going for a while more. But I understand that this wouldn’t work for everyone and that some people would be left feeling burned out by the “do at least a little of x thing everyday” approach and that’s okay. I know many programmers sing the praises of staying up all night on a 13hr programming binge (though no one ever mentions how the day after that goes), and I’m offering a less glamorous counterpoint. It’s a bit of a tortoise v. hare situation. I only have data to support my slow-and-steady approach, so if any hares want to chime in with their data I’m all ears!