The daily habit

How the daily habit works

A workout takes a few minutes, so it fits into a day. The app helps you come back.

• In the Android app, optional daily reminders at the time you usually play, skipped on days you have already trained.
• Day streaks and badges mark the days you practise.
• The daily trio brings something new every day.

Doc explains

The science idea

Habit researchers give a simple recipe: choose an action, and repeat it in the same context, such as the same time or place, until it becomes automatic and effortless.¹

There is a learning reason for little and often too. Spreading practice out over time leads to better long term learning than cramming the same amount together, and adding quizzes to spaced practice makes the benefit bigger.²

What the research found

In a real world study, 96 volunteers repeated one daily behaviour of their choice in the same situation for 12 weeks. Their habits grew stronger with repetition, and missing a single day did not materially slow a habit down.³

A review of spaced repetition research for teachers and policy makers summarised hundreds of studies: spaced practice beats massed practice for long term learning, and adding quizzes makes the benefit bigger.² In a classroom study of 48 third graders, short one minute addition sprints spread through the day grew fact fluency faster than the same sprints done back to back.⁴

Daily mental exercise pays off later in life too. In a randomised controlled study in Japan, 124 healthy adults aged 70 to 86 solved basic reading and arithmetic problems every day for six months. Their scores on tests of frontal lobe function and processing speed improved, and the gains were still there at a follow-up six months later.⁵

Game elements such as badges and points had positive effects on learning, motivation and behaviour in a meta-analysis.⁶ The kind of reward matters, and feedback is the kind that helps: a meta-analysis of 128 experiments found that positive feedback raised people's own interest in an activity.⁷ And streaks work. Across seven studies, seeing an unbroken streak made people more likely to do the behaviour again, and when a streak did break, the drop was smaller when people could repair it.⁸

How the app builds the habit

• Reminders are off until you switch them on, in the Android app. Then there is one a day at your own training time (the time you last finished a session, kept between 9:00 and 20:00), and none on days you have already trained: the same context, again and again.¹
• If you stop playing, reminders come on days 1, 2, 3 and 7, then stop until you come back.
• Rounds are short, so practice comes little and often instead of in one long cram.²
• Day streaks count the days in a row you practise, with badges at 3, 7, 30 and 100 days. Missing a day starts the count again, but it does not undo your practice.³
• Badges are symbolic: there is no money or prize to win. Score screens give feedback on your own progress, such as a new personal best, the kind of reward that raised interest in the research.⁷

What this means for you