The night the kids were sick

My wife was doing a seventy-five-day challenge. Then our kids got sick, and we were both up with them all night.

By morning she was too exhausted to work out on no sleep. So she didn’t. She rested, which was the right thing to do, and the challenge said she had failed. The rules had one solution for a missed day, and it didn’t matter why the day was missed. She lost her streak for taking care of her family and herself.

The wrong lesson

A challenge like that teaches something on a night like that one, and it’s the wrong thing. It says to put yourself above everyone else. There are times when that is the right call, but it often isn’t when you’re a parent. It says a parent up at four in the morning with a feverish child should have found an hour for a workout anyway. Most people who hear that don’t become more disciplined. They stop.

I didn’t want her to stop. I wanted her to be kind to herself, and I wanted the challenge to have empathy built in.

Ask first

So 75 Kind asks the question when you get started. What should a missed day cost? There are three answers, and you pick one:

• Grace day. Skip it and keep going. Three across the whole challenge.
• Streak freeze. Pause the count for a day. One a week.
• Reset to Monday. Start this week over. Your first ten days stay.

Whenever you have to miss a day, it isn’t a stressful decision. You’ve already answered, so you can go to the people who need you without a second thought. The app does what you said. Your family came first, the plan was ready for it, and in the morning you are still on your way.

Kind all the way down

Once that was the idea, it had to hold everywhere. A missed day is never drawn in red, in any theme. There is no price on the screen at the moment you miss a day, and extra grace days are offered only after you have spent one, never before you start. When the free week ends and you haven’t chosen a plan, the trail waits for you at day seven, for as long as you take to decide.

None of it makes the missions easier. They are as hard as you make them. It is kind about one thing, the day that goes wrong, and for a family with small children that turns out to be the thing that matters.