Nothing’s quite as annoying as nagging. If you’ve made a behavioral adjustment to do something (and you actually do it), reminders are like gravel on glass.
If those allegedly helpful notifications are inflexible, and Duolingo’s are, they go beyond annoying to irritating and engender feelings of appicide — the desire to kill software. So, during the week between Christmas and New Year’s when people have more fulfilling ways to fill their time with family and friends, Duolingo never relented in telling me that my streak was at risk.
Not only did I not care (I’d been going non-stop for the other 51 weeks of the year), I could not be made to care. If I was going to let a piece of software tell me what to do and threaten me with retribution if I didn’t do it, I would be susceptible to Newspeak (which, in 2024, is just as insidious as it was in “1984”).
GROW ACCUSTOMED TO THE PACE
When my firstborn child awakened with inconvenient regularity at 5 am, I became accustomed to finding something to do between the time she went back to bed and the time that I would normally arise. I exercised. It was beneficial to my physical health and, because it gave me time alone with my thoughts, my mental health, as well. Yet, when she began sleeping through the night, I was attuned to rising well before dawn. Sleep became a total waste of time. Except to her.
If there had been consumer-level software and mobile devices and apps then, I might have used that time with Duolingo. Or an industry-specific news site. Or an exercise program. But I wouldn’t need the enticement of a streak. Self-improvement is its own reward and, if you want that reward, you do the work… and you do it without being noodged.
It is, of course, a very individual problem. The idea of accomplishment is often far rosier than the effort required to achieve it. It’s why I label all those people — the ones who show up at the gym in January only to vanish by Valentine’s Day — resolutionaries. They fight one minor battle and abandon the war.
THE PARTS ARE GREATER THAN THE WHOLE
A psychoanalyst might say I’m a little, well… obsessive/compulsive. I probably am. But it’s helpful, and it’s learnable.
Set a goal and break it into parts. Don’t look weeks or months or years into the future where the objective resides. Focus on reaching step one at the end of a day or a week. If someone, besides yourself, has to remind you to do it, it will not get done. It didn’t really matter enough. Or you hit a snag and abandoned the quest, admitting deep inside that you can’t solve the problem (you can) or that the goal was unrealistic (only if you quit) or there are other things much better (and easier) to do.
It’s bad enough that others might think you’re insufficient. It’s worse when you think they might be right. They’re probably not. And neither are you.
If you’re really, truly, actually not succeeding at something for which you’re sure you have (or can acquire) the skills, it might not be a fit for your strengths. If you want to learn French but, no matter how hard you try, merci beaucoups sounds more like murky buckets, try another language. Or study phonics to understand pronunciation; it helps in English, too. So, when you visit Boston, you’ll know how to say “I need t’pahk at the hahbah” when you want to find a garage at the dock.
YOUR THING MIGHT NOT BE “THE” THING
Not everybody’s good at everything. Do what you’re best at, which is usually what you love most.
There are too many challenges that people abandon. I developed asthma in my teens and listened to my doctors and relied on medication. When I did my own research, changed my diet, increased my level of exercise, and abandoned bad habits, the asthma vanished. [Note: doctors do not know everything. They know averages. So if you’re not average (and you’re not), they need to spend the time to understand how you work and why. There’s a difference between “normal” and “normal for you.”]
So the Duolingo effect is only good when a task is a painful duty. If you need to be encouraged, you didn’t want to do it in the first place.
If those allegedly helpful notifications are inflexible, and Duolingo’s are, they go beyond annoying to irritating and engender feelings of appicide — the desire to kill software. So, during the week between Christmas and New Year’s when people have more fulfilling ways to fill their time with family and friends, Duolingo never relented in telling me that my streak was at risk.
Not only did I not care (I’d been going non-stop for the other 51 weeks of the year), I could not be made to care. If I was going to let a piece of software tell me what to do and threaten me with retribution if I didn’t do it, I would be susceptible to Newspeak (which, in 2024, is just as insidious as it was in “1984”).
GROW ACCUSTOMED TO THE PACE
When my firstborn child awakened with inconvenient regularity at 5 am, I became accustomed to finding something to do between the time she went back to bed and the time that I would normally arise. I exercised. It was beneficial to my physical health and, because it gave me time alone with my thoughts, my mental health, as well. Yet, when she began sleeping through the night, I was attuned to rising well before dawn. Sleep became a total waste of time. Except to her.
If there had been consumer-level software and mobile devices and apps then, I might have used that time with Duolingo. Or an industry-specific news site. Or an exercise program. But I wouldn’t need the enticement of a streak. Self-improvement is its own reward and, if you want that reward, you do the work… and you do it without being noodged.
It is, of course, a very individual problem. The idea of accomplishment is often far rosier than the effort required to achieve it. It’s why I label all those people — the ones who show up at the gym in January only to vanish by Valentine’s Day — resolutionaries. They fight one minor battle and abandon the war.
THE PARTS ARE GREATER THAN THE WHOLE
A psychoanalyst might say I’m a little, well… obsessive/compulsive. I probably am. But it’s helpful, and it’s learnable.
Set a goal and break it into parts. Don’t look weeks or months or years into the future where the objective resides. Focus on reaching step one at the end of a day or a week. If someone, besides yourself, has to remind you to do it, it will not get done. It didn’t really matter enough. Or you hit a snag and abandoned the quest, admitting deep inside that you can’t solve the problem (you can) or that the goal was unrealistic (only if you quit) or there are other things much better (and easier) to do.
It’s bad enough that others might think you’re insufficient. It’s worse when you think they might be right. They’re probably not. And neither are you.
If you’re really, truly, actually not succeeding at something for which you’re sure you have (or can acquire) the skills, it might not be a fit for your strengths. If you want to learn French but, no matter how hard you try, merci beaucoups sounds more like murky buckets, try another language. Or study phonics to understand pronunciation; it helps in English, too. So, when you visit Boston, you’ll know how to say “I need t’pahk at the hahbah” when you want to find a garage at the dock.
YOUR THING MIGHT NOT BE “THE” THING
Not everybody’s good at everything. Do what you’re best at, which is usually what you love most.
There are too many challenges that people abandon. I developed asthma in my teens and listened to my doctors and relied on medication. When I did my own research, changed my diet, increased my level of exercise, and abandoned bad habits, the asthma vanished. [Note: doctors do not know everything. They know averages. So if you’re not average (and you’re not), they need to spend the time to understand how you work and why. There’s a difference between “normal” and “normal for you.”]
So the Duolingo effect is only good when a task is a painful duty. If you need to be encouraged, you didn’t want to do it in the first place.
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