To be honest i hate “study streak” mechanism. It’s demanding and it takes out all fun out of learning language. Good thing is BUNPRO is not nagging and pushing you into those streaks as some green owl does (streaks and “point league” was reason i left it to hoot at someone else).
Consistency is good, don’t get me wrong … but forced consistency leads to anger/sadness and loss of interest (and yes, trading daily attendance with badges IS forced)
When I started WaniKani, I read all the things where they stressed to do it every single day no matter what, and I was determined to do that. With a popular userscript installed on there, I could also track my study streak like you can in Bunpro. I became attached to that number so much, making sure to log on every single day to complete my reviews. Whenever I would check back on my streak number, I would feel good about myself that I had studied every day for so many days.
I kept this up for months, going on to do all my reviews multiple times in a day. But soon enough, the rest of life took over. Other things I had to attend to. Schoolwork. Exams. Studying for other subjects. Everything else that makes life busy. And all the while, I was reaching the point in WK where the pace started to ramp up. Fast.
Soon enough, on most days I was doing 100, 200+ reviews, and even 300+ on some days. I was a completionist, someone who would finish every review they had in queue. I tried to keep the mindset alive, but the most important thing for me was keeping that streak. Almost 200 days.
But as I said before, life happens. There were days where I had no time, or days where my brain literally pushed WK reviews out of my head because they became something I didn’t look forward to anymore. And it happened on one of those days. It was one day where I had a big stressful event, and I finally finished all my work and could relax for the first time in a while. I made sure I had nothing left to do, then spent the rest of the night in leisure. It was an hour past midnight when I finally realized -
I hadn’t done my reviews yet.
I frantically opened my browser, logged into WK, and there it was: a gray gap between the new day and 2 days ago when I last studied. My streak: 0/197. I sat there in silence, a lot of things going through my head, the most damning one being, “If I’ve lost my streak that I’ve worked so many days to keep, will I even have the motivation to restart and keep doing this?”
It took me some time to think, but I eventually asked myself, “Is losing one number really that important?”
When I looked back, I saw that recently there were quite a few days that I literally did 1 or 2 reviews, just to keep my streak. Whether I was genuinely too busy or just lost the motivation for that day, it didn’t matter. It made me realize that even though a number on my monitor showed that I had been “dedicated” and “studied every day,” it was actually a number that made me lie to myself.
After that day, I decided that one number wasn’t going to stay in my head and make me sad. I never could have thought it would happen, but I kind of… stopped caring about my lost streak shortly after. I even lost it for a day again a while later. But the most important part is that I kept my consistency. Soon, the SRS system let go a bit and I regained my determination to learn and review new Kanji and vocab.
You’re on platforms like Bunpro or WaniKani to follow their method, and most of all become better at Japanese. Don’t beat yourself up just because you missed one day of studying. Remember that you’re working for the SRS system, not the daily streak system. As long as you’re mostly consistent, there will be virtually no difference between someone who studied every. single. day. versus someone who tried to do the same but missed a couple of days by mistake or by circumstances outside their control, but got right back up after that and still kept the same attitude about studying and consistency as they had before they lost it the first time.
I know there are many people who would argue that streaks is a great motivator for them and others, and that they wouldn’t have gotten the encouragement for consistency otherwise. And I agree that that’s the case when you’re first starting out and you need that little extra dopamine push seeing that number rise. However, when that consistency develops and the daily studying becomes an engrained habit, that number might not be as important as you think it may be.
So, if on any day, god forbid, you lose your streak, or if you just want to do some introspection, I hope you’ll think back to this random user’s experience and hopefully not take it as hard as you would have.
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The same thing happened to me today. I wrote to the support team. Hopefully, they can restore it and figure out what happened. My guess is that it has something to do with me activating the Beta Reviews 2.0 or using the Android app since those are the only recent changes for me.
Same here. Seems like the reviews 2.0 feature is not counting properly for the streak? My review activity has entries every day but the streak was apparently broken. 
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@daleksbride Sorry for the trouble there. The issue that was causing this should be resolved now I can adjust your streaks back as well. Out of curiosity, what does the Recalculate Streak here show ?
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Hi @Jake, here’s a screenshot. No problem, it’s no big deal for me, the intention was more to raise awareness to the issue. Should I recalculate? Thanks!
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You can use that to recalculate your streak. With the new Reviews beta, it looks like we were still tracking the proper data just not saving the streak properly.
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done. seems to have worked. thanks! 
goodbye one day streak, see you soon 
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@Jake I recently reset my timezone and the review streak went back from (about)150 to 90. I think this is because I had vacation mode on(at least date and review streak of 90 fit) and now it doesn’t recognize this anymore, but thinks i didn’t do any reviews so my streak must be stopped. Can I get help?
Hey! I have updated your streak 
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Could I also get some assistance with my streak? I apparently missed the review window while I was on a long flight to Japan 
I even bought some internet to keep my streak alive during the flight but it was already lost when I had the opportunity. In the stats page is however seems like I properly did my reviews each day.
Edit: I’ll let my streak end. I don’t have time in Japan to study grammar everyday and I don’t want to use vacation mode since I still want to touch up on my grammar at least every few days.
Not sure if this is a bug or not: whenever I’ve gone on vacation mode and come back, the days studied is incremented but the study streak is not. Here you can see I’ve done vacation mode 3 times.Maybe it has something to do with there not being any reviews until the day after turning off vacation mode?
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Mine is the same. I haven’t missed a day since starting, but have used holiday mode (after doing reviews on that day, and the day of ending holiday mode) and each time the days studied go up but the streak is static for a day.
I just assumed it wasn’t a ‘streak’ until you had done 2 days in a row, therefore you always dropped behind 1 day after using holiday mode.
Hi, I lost my 269 day streak yesterday due to being terribly busy all day (I went to bed around 00:20 and realized 5 minutes later that I never sat down with Bunpro). Did you ever implement some version of that “once a year streak protection”? Sounds like a good feature to me so please reconsider making it.
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On days I use the vacation mode I do the reviews and then turn it on. When vacation is over, I turn it off but reviews don’t come in until the next day so on that day I would not have done any reviews.
I think in the short term, keeping a streak is a good way to build a habit. For me, at this point, it just makes me anxious. Maintaining my 3,400 day streak with a certain unnamed green owl seems like an accomplishment of some sort but I think I spend more time worrying about losing it than actually studying with the app.
Khan Academy used to have a streak system. When they removed that feature I was initially upset about it. Now I feel better knowing that I won’t miss anything if I take a break for a day or two here and there and feel less guilty about taking time off.
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Yeah, I’m kinda tempted to petition again for the Duolingo style of streak freezes, because if one is consistent enough, you care about not using the 2 streak freeze grace. And during busy days, you don’t feel as demotivated after losing one or two days off.
I mean, one could argue that 2 days off might be for an important event with family, a loved one or work, which happens once in a while. Not to mention the occasional Bunpro technical update glitches, timezone changes or simply not having an Internet connection over the weekend camping in nature.
Maybe the “payment” to replace the streak freeze could be a larger sum of XP points? Maybe adding a code for a 2 days grace without thinking of a repayment system is fine too? Just throwing off random ideas here.
For me, it’s either the 2 days grace streak freeze or ban streak system, lol. Implementing this could also mean one less task for Bunpro staff to worry about fixing someone’s streak again and they could focus on other more important matters. At the moment, I’m no longer motivated to get the streak badge.
P/S: Of course, not to undermine the efforts of those that have worked hard previously (and in the future) to preserve their longest streak, I think the existing streak badges need to be rightfully awarded anyway.
Perhaps let the current streak badge exist for those who like to go the extra mile and be awarded, but it will be neat to give the average learner the two-day grace for the more common issues that I’ve stumbled upon in the “lost streak” threads.
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As for a suggestion of how it could be implemented, how about awarding everyone a one day streak protection when their streak reaches 100 days, then another one day streak protection when the streak reaches 365 days, and another extra day of protection yearly after that? That seems fair to me, in terms of providing leeway for extenuating cricumstances without diminishing the achievements of those who have maintained long streaks.
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The thing with streaks is it can be a really powerful motivator to keep it going, but conversely losing a long streak can be a really powerful demotivator, especially when it’s due to something small or out of your control, like a network/power outage or starting your reviews 2 min past midnight because your ADHD kept you hyperfocusing on a new project all day… Not to mention at later levels you might not even have reviews to do every single day.
Long story short, I’m all in favor for a small streak buffer; maybe for every 10 days you earn a buffer (or “streak freeze”) and can keep up to 2 at a time.
And if you think that’s too forgiving consider this: A 500-and-going streak with a few one-day gaps here and there will do a lot more good than a streak you lost at 300 and never came back to. In the end, while gamification is a strong tool for learning, it shouldn’t risk pushing those away who aren’t “hardcore” enough or simply need a few days off every now and then for whatever reason, in my opinion.
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@Jake Hey Jake. I went to the anime (japanese culture) convention in germany and forgot to put in the vacation mode. T-T
Is there any way I can fix my streak now?
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