There’s a sense of satisfaction in watching the screen fill up when the progress bar reaches 100 percent. After another day of such streaks, the trophy appears, and the profile page fills up and turns green. On Steam, achievements and stats are linked to your account and displayed on the user’s community profile page; PlayStation allows players to open the trophy list in the overlay to track trophy progress across multifarious outlets.

Duolingo describes a streak as the number of consecutive days you’ve completed a lesson; GitHub visually maps a user’s contribution history; Letterboxd encourages users to keep a daily log of the number of movies watched and displays favorites on the profile page; and Habitica turns goals and tasks into a game of checking off what’s been completed. Such features have become commonplace in our digital lives and help us understand what it means to complete, prove, and count.

The first thing that comes to mind regarding the concept is simplicity. Isn’t there something gratifying about completion? The sense of neatness that comes from checking an item off a list, for instance, is more enjoyable. The moral virtue of filling in a box on a grid is far greater than the virtue of not doing so.

However, the issue here isn’t what makes it satisfying, but how it’s represented culturally. Why is completion seen as a positive thing? Why is anything left undone considered a sign of a lack of discipline when it’s simply a matter of how work is naturally done?

According to Byung-Chul Han in his book The Burnout Society, modern times are structured around positive ideas; not “you must not,” but “you can,” and ultimately “you should do more.” As the title suggests, it is a critique of a cultural trend toward an excess of positivity. However, Han’s diagnosis is described as an “achievement society” in which pressure is drawn from within and directed inward. The magnetism of striving for perfection, improvement, and achievement, in such a sense, cannot be dismissed as a trivial byproduct of digital design.

When we flip the logic in such a way in which the structure becomes complex, we can draw on Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. According to him, “techniques of discipline” create “obedient bodies,” in which “the body’s functions and movements are segmented and measured to be optimized and controlled.”

In addition to being specifically designed for today’s achievement interfaces. Progress bars divide time, achievement streaks divide the habit-forming process, and trophies divide leisure time into fathomable tasks; whether in games, journal entries, contribution charts, language-learning apps, or fitness trackers, it promotes freedom. However, it teaches individuals to monitor, manage, and report such to the system. Therefore, completion is no longer the result.

It is where gamification comes into play—the application of game design elements in non-game contexts. Simply put, gamification refers to how points, badges, levels, streaks, and rewards can be used and applied to non-game areas such as work, learning, reading, fitness, and personal development.

The achievement feature of Steam was built for tracking and displaying information about accomplishments; Duolingo’s streak system makes language learning a visible daily process; the Habitica application promotes itself as a free app that turns habits into games; GitHub’s contribution charts are an example of work being visualized as an annual graph; and so on.

Regardless of the consequences, if you can measure something, you can rank it; if you can rank it, you can compare it; if you can compare it, it can become a benchmark of value. The game is over, a perfect year of reading, an impeccable contribution chart, a string of setbacks—everything becomes a visual statement of character. You see it through, persevere, and keep striving, become proof of your character, and it’s why a small green box, a trophy symbol, or a “100%” marker carries such great weight.

However, the resolve fibs in play. According to Johan Huizinga in his book Homo Ludens, play must be free, separate from experience, and immune to being reduced to the pursuit of profit. Play is a cultural component that, according to Huizinga, governs the world, but in the domain of freedom.

In the case of the “problem-solving” culture, you who refine it harness the joy of play but incorporate the organization of work. What began as a choice turns into an unrewarded obligation, and what was once a pleasure becomes yet another part-time job focused on accumulation. The problem is: play has become organized.

While Huizinga explores the tension between play and order, Pierre Bourdieu proposes perspicuity into the social dimension of achievement. As defined, cultural capital consists of symbols, ideas, tastes, and preferences, which are used as resources in action. Completing all the important movies, reading difficult books, undertaking challenging missions, winning the highest trophies, or preserving the longest-standing records formulates a perception of belonging. Accomplishment becomes a social marker—a way of communicating, “I have accomplished it, and I belong here.”

A culture of tracking is rapidly growing in areas such as movie-watching journals, reading challenges, productivity apps, and hobby clubs. Each acts as a platform, and occasions are transformed into metrics. Watching movies becomes an entry in a journal, and reading books becomes a tally of books read. Habits become lifestyle patterns and routines, making it easier to archive, sort, and rank. It can be empowering. At times, however, it can also feel hollow. The more we document, the easier it is to lose track of what’s truly important.

On the other hand, certain reward mechanisms allow individuals to develop habits. It enables a sensation of community through increased engagement. In this regard, even Steam’s official documentation notes how achievements can urge cooperation and player interaction, while also providing motivation to spend more time in the game itself. Duolingo considers a user’s string of achievements to be an integral part of the goal-setting process. Letterboxd’s journals and lists can encourage a film culture by making the act of watching movies more social and more contemplative.

Instead of working for the practice, the practice works for the structure. Han’s theory of achievement provides us with a rationale for why it seems like a logical shift. According to him, the former “you must” discipline has been replaced by “you can,” which is far more appealing and leads to exploitation. The subject manages, recruits, and acts as both its own critic and accountant. In Foucault’s theory, it is observed. However, the subject in Han’s theory of achievement voluntarily observes itself.

One of the most successful ways to do it is through a culture of completion, as it offers a measure of comfort to the observer. Just finish it, and you’ll feel complete.

The platform needs you to be in the system and active, engaged, responsive, and online. The app requires regular visits and systematic exchanges; your profile needs consistent activity; and a series of achievements, trophies, charts, checklists, and progress bars act as mini-deterrents against disengagement, forcing users to return to the interface, and the interface to return to the user.

The more hectic life and work become, the more valuable these small signs of continuity are. The sense of completion provides an illusion of protection against deviation, as if enough checkmarks on a list and enough repetition of certain rituals will make you feel like you’re mastering time itself. Of course, time won’t listen; the list keeps growing, achievement streaks can be broken, and charts can stop moving.

Although it does not need to be explicitly stated, it is also related to social class. Cultural capital always requires knowledge of which achievements are considered important, since not all achievements are esteemed open-mindedly.

While a platinum trophy may impress one group of people, it may mean nothing to another group. While completing a reading challenge may be interpreted as a sign of dedication in one group, it may be viewed as compulsive behavior in another. A contribution chart is seen as a sign of professionalism in tech culture. However, it may be viewed as an aesthetic of overwork elsewhere. Socially, criteria for completion are established.

Few also explain the intimate nature of completion, shifting from utility to memory and myth-making. Most people have fond memories of their first to-do list, first trophy, and first glimpse of the accumulation of evidence on their profile page. Significantly, completion is akin to closing a circle. Completed activities affirm a person’s sense of accomplishment. There is no tangible takeaway; it is entirely symbolic, a disrupted sense of continuity, and a way to tell a story about the person.

We measure, collect, and account for our successes; we need to know how we’re moving forward because movement is proof of how our efforts have direction—and it’s damn true. Huizinga would certainly have hoped for it to happen: how play gives rise to systems, and systems inspire devotion. However, it has taken the ancient desire and made records transferable, shareable, and permanent. Games are recorded, hobbies are documented, and habits are measured. We must acknowledge the sight of measurement in our cultural outlook nowadays.

But what exactly is the culture of completion? Personally, it is a method in which desires become structured in digital visibility and financial rudiments, a way of life in which subjectivity is increasingly defined through the medium of tasks, habits, and metrics, a micro-economy of virtue in which acts of completion become representations of competence, discipline, taste, and virtue—a cultural technology insofar as it transforms the simple fact of life’s incompleteness into the management, optimization, and visualization of problems.

Ironically, of course, the completeness of life in the picture always equates to exhaustion in reality. Still, the subject remains unfinished. Therefore, completion is one of the ways culture teaches us about value.

References

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