Ask HN: What do you think of Streak Gamification

It's pretty common these days for apps to implement Streak Gamification, where you gain a streak for doing something each day, and loose all the streak if you skip one day.

What do you think of Streak Gamification?

- Does Streak motivates you to do things?

- Is it counter productive?

- Are you worry about losing streak when you are sick or going for holidays? Or do you still clock in just to maintain the streak. How do you feel about this?

- Is a less strict Streak still meaningful (or defeat the purpose)? e.g. you don't loose all your streak if you skip one day (maybe some penalty), or ability to pause.

- Do you have a better gamification idea than streak?