The return is the practice

Why coming back to your practice matters more than never leaving it.

Nobody does a guilt trip like Duolingo. Every missed day that big-eyed green monster doesn’t forgive, doesn’t forget, and definitely doesn’t let you just pick up where you left off. Which is funny, until you realise you’ve been doing the same thing to yourself for years.

I have this thought in my head, and I bet you have one too. It goes something like this: if you can’t do it properly, don’t do it at all. And “properly” means every day, without fail, until you reach your goal, which is an absolutely wild standard to hold a habit to. Is that consistency or perfectionism?

I think I’m scared of inconsistency. Scratch that, terrified. The mean little voice in my head keeps chanting: better not to start at all and keep the potential intact. Oh, all the untapped potential.

And it’s not just about big goals. I’ve been meaning to start a morning skincare routine for way too long. But even doing something small like that feels risky. And not starting on the other than not starting, feels safe (even if the result is not desired), which is genuinely one of the most counterproductive things our brains do to us.

The problem is it’s not laziness or lack of motivation. Too many people just can’t face the quiet dread that if they begin and then fall off, that somehow proves something. Maybe they’re not disciplined, or not good enough. So better to not start at all and keep the potential intact.

Streaks are overrated

A lot of habit-building culture runs on streaks. And the rule is: if you break the chain, you start over. There’s something appealing about it — it’s clean, it’s measurable, it creates momentum. But it also sets up this brutal logic where every interruption becomes evidence of failure. Miss a week, and suddenly you’re not someone who exercises, or writes, or meditates. The streak becomes the point instead of the practice.

Last year, I did something I called the 75 Reset - my own version of those 75 Soft/Hard type challenges, built around six things I wanted to do consistently to jumpstart my life after feeling in a slump after a bit of identity loss. I aimed for 70% completion across twelve weeks. I landed at about 65%. By hustle culture standards, that’s a fail. A big fat fail. But when I look back at those twelve weeks, the weeks where I only got 50% done didn’t erase the weeks where I was close to 100%. There were days I completely missed. They were just part of it. And in the grand scheme of things, I made progress. And honestly, that’s the only thing that matters.

The streak model assumes a broken run is a failed run. That the bad days cancel out the good ones. But that’s not how any of this actually works.

What do you keep coming back to?

What you’re actually training

I’ve read somewhere recently that discipline isn’t consistency, it’s how you return to your practice. There’s another really good piece on this that puts it clearly: consistency is staying on track, discipline is returning after drift. The streak may look more impressive, but the return to practice is the more durable skill.

And here’s the best bit, the research on perfectionism and habits that keeps coming up: it’s not laziness that makes habits fail, but how you interpret the bad days. Perfectionists miss a day and quit. Non-perfectionists miss a day and carry on. The gap between the first missed day and total abandonment is almost entirely the story you tell yourself about what that missed day means.

And there’s something much better…

…the bounceback rate.

This’s the reframe that’s been useful for me: stop tracking the streak. Focus on how you get back into it. Not whether you showed up every single day, but when you fall off, how do you come back?

A bad week doesn’t always become a bad month. But even if it does, it doesn’t have to become a bad year. You don’t restart, you continue. The practice is the thing, not the perfect execution of it.

And there’s something in not having a fixed destination either. When you have a very specific goal, it’s easy to feel like you failed on any given Tuesday. But when the point is the practice itself, Tuesday doesn’t really matter. You came back Wednesday. Or Thursday. Or next week. That’s the whole point.

My longest on-and-off commitment has been writing. When I look back on my writing journey, there were months, if not years, that I didn’t write. But in the grand scheme of things, I’ve spent more time writing than I haven’t. And there’s no destination either, perhaps a few milestones. This Substack, books, who knows what else.

The best advice I’ve ever gotten: when you fall off, don’t ask yourself why. Just do the smallest possible version of the thing. Two minutes. One page. One set. The return doesn’t have to be impressive; it just has to happen. You never really start over from scratch.

65% that you actually did is more real than 100% that existed only in your head. The version of you who kept going through the 50% weeks is more interesting than the version who had a perfect streak under perfect conditions.

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Thank you for reading!

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P.S: Speaking of writing and doing uncomfortable things: I’ve started a free writing circle for people who want to write alongside others. We’ll be writing early in the morning, at 7 am GMT, and there will be some seasonal prompts, but you are also very welcome to bring your ideas, drafts, work-in-progress, or anything you want to work on. You can sign up for the next one here!