I’ve written about Duolingo before, and I have no doubt that I will write about it again.
Why? Because I am a very lazy person, and I appreciate all the help I can get when it comes to building good habits. Writing daily on this blog is a good habit – it is, alas, not one that I have perfected yet. Taking my dog out for a walk everyday is a good habit – a necessary one for the dog, and so also for me now. Practicing a language (currently Italian) daily on Duolingo is a good habit, and while I’m not at 1435 days yet, I’m a little more than halfway there, and hey, that’s progress!
Exercising daily is a habit I’ve tried to build and failed at (one day, one day). Eating healthy on a daily basis is a habit I don’t want to build, but eating mostly healthy on a weekly basis is something I’ve more or less succeeded at – and that’s good enough for me. The point is that given that I’m so lazy, building up a habit is the only way to stick at doing something. And anything that helps me enjoy getting into a habit is, to me, a fascinating thing to study.
Which is why I have no doubt I will write about Duolingo again.
Lenny’s newsletter is worth reading in any case, but his latest post is really very, very good. It’s not written by him – this one is a guest post by Jorge Mazal – but that’s all the more reason to read it. If you’re interested in learning about metrics, user retention, driving growth, this article is self-recommending – and that would be a good reason to read it carefully.
But even if you are not interested in any of those things, it still makes sense to read it. My framing of my own incentive while reading it was “Can this article teach me how to gamify my life?”, and from this perspective, it is an eminently readable article.
I had a very interesting conversation with a friend this past Sunday, and his take on habit formation and productivity techniques was that this has perhaps been taken a little bit too far in today’s day and age. I actually agree with him on that point – we try to wring every little bit out of every little hack, to our overall detriment. But that being said, I think it makes sense to take a look at our own lives and ask to what extent we could make our lives a little bit better along dimensions of our choosing. To each one of us goes the right to choose which dimensions, and to each one of us goes the right to choose how to improve our life along those dimensions, and finally, to each one of us goes the right to choose the magnitude of improvements.
But once you’ve answered those questions – which dimensions, how to improve, and to what extent – you could do with help regarding tips and tricks re: Making It Happen. And that’s where this article is worth reading.
My key takeaways:
- Gamification matters, and it helps. Try gamifying those aspects of your life that you want to get better at.
- A blind CTRL-C CTRL-V of gamification done well elsewhere is a pretty poor way to go about it. Think carefully about which incentives matter to you, and design your gamification strategy accordingly.
- These three questions are a good way to frame this:
Why is this feature working in this product? | Why might this feature succeed or fail in my context? | What changes do I need to make to make this feature succeed for me? - Compounding the benefits of a habit is an excellent, always underrated idea.
- We like to win. Set up a competition for yourself, and make sure there are tangible rewards (and punishments!)
- Reminders help, but don’t end up irritating yourself out of a habit.
- Streaks are a great way to compete with yourself (related to pt. 5), and preserving that which you have is a great motivator (the endowment effect matters)
- The social aspect matters – get other people to join you on your journey (hello to all of my friends on Duolingo, and thank you!)