The end of the streak

Motivation needs more

I try hard every day, not to give in to the temptation.

But I already know that before this day ends, I’m going to do it anyway. I can’t help myself.

Every day, for the past 1139 days, I’ve been learning Spanish online.

And I want to quit.

Addicted for good

The addictive power of social media is pretty clear nowadays. Techniques like variable rewards, personalization algorithms, and gamification are used to keep people on the platform as long as possible.

As Duolingo founder Luis von Ahn explains in his TED talk, his app uses these same psychological techniques but ‘for good’. To help people learn a language.

And it’s working. I’m addicted.

Seriously? Addicted to a language-learning app? I’m sure you can stop when you want to. Just quit!

That’s easy for you to say.

If I decide to quit, I break my streak.

That’s 3 years and 44 consecutive days of Spanish exercises. That's 5,695 minutes of my time I invested. Dropping this would be like losing a limb. It's part of me now. I can’t just throw that away.

I don’t even want to learn Spanish anymore, but I simply can’t stop.

The streak has grown too powerful. I’m in its grip. I need help.

When the spark is gone

When I first started learning Spanish I was excited. Spain is the country I’ve traveled to most and I always thought it was such a shame that I couldn’t speak the language. I had tried Spanish courses in the past but nothing had stuck.

Duolingo would be part of a bigger constellation of learning modalities, like watching Spanish movies, finding a talking buddy, maybe even a trip to Spain to put it all into practice. It would be full immersion this time.

So what happened?

I ended up just doing Duolingo for three years.

Although I was hyped in the beginning, I never found the motivation to actually dive in deep.

Today, my goals have changed. Although speaking Spanish would be a nice-to-have and still has a warm place in my heart, other things are more important and exciting. Like, writing, teaching, and being the best coach and father I can be.

And even though I know all this, I still can’t quit.

Starting on Duolingo all those days ago is a distant dream now. All I know now is to protect the streak at all costs.

The motivation crossover

Because of Duolingo’s emphasis on external motivation (keeping me engaged artificially), I didn’t sustain, cultivate, or further develop my intrinsic motivation. I was leaning on the app to take care of my motivation for me.

The streak had become more important than learning Spanish and when I realized that, and still didn’t stop, I knew that something was seriously wrong.

When engaging in a new practice, at a certain point a crossover needs to take place from external to internal reasons.

Streaks will undermine intrinsic motivation after a while. They will keep people addicted (so superficially ‘it works’) and leaning on them so they’ll be less likely to search for their own motivation.

All of us streakers have lost something. We got into the game with enthusiasm and we needed some help to get started. But after a while, when we should have been encouraged to look for our own reasons to continue, we were being held up by an external system of eternal crutches that was provided for us.

While the intention to keep us engaged comes from a good place, it’s actually keeping us dependent.

Ultimately Duolingo is providing us with a fresh daily fish, instead of a fishing rod. Luring us into thinking that we’re progressing, and maybe in terms of language learning we are, but not in terms of building the motivation to learn ourselves. And maybe we don’t even like fish anymore.

Get off the runway

Getting a habit going is very important, especially with something difficult. We can use all the help we can get in that first phase. But there comes a time to go deeper and find out why we’re doing it to sustain our habit long-term.

For example, another streak that I currently hold is this newsletter.

58 consecutive, weekly editions. Unbroken. But in this case it’s not the streak that is keeping me going. The streak is a symptom of knowing why I want to be doing this in the first place. 

It started the same way. I got excited, set a goal, gave myself some boundaries (and freedoms), and even wrote them up in a manifesto of sorts.

Only a couple of months in I discovered the value: I write to clarify my thoughts. Not to publish great articles, not to promote my business, not to find my audience. Clarifying my thoughts is the number one reason that drives me to write each week.

And I don’t need a streak to keep me going.

A streak is a great tool to get started and it works extremely well as a runway. But leaning on streaks (or any external motivation) is counterproductive in the long run.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I haven’t done my Spanish exercises for today yet.