Lessons from my 250-Day Streak on Duolingo.

I wish there was a streak system designed for every area of life.

Hey guys, I hope you are doing well. The past couple of days have been wet and cold ❄ 🥶 - just a teeny tiny bit miserable - so I hope you have also been staying warm.

Guess who hit a 250-day streak on Duolingo? 🥁 🥁 🥁 Moi! J'apprends le français et le coréen sur Duolingo. Duolingo est mon professeur, un bon professeur!¹

Image from Duolingo

Flash back to my 4th year in uni, sometime in February 2018: peeks at my friend, A's Tablet and sees her learning something that looks weird on an app I've never seen before.

Me: what's that?

A: Oh, I'm learning Korean on Duolingo.

Me: What's Duolingo? Why are you learning Korean?

Can't remember the exact response, but she must have said something along the lines of 'I love South Korea and kdramas, and all of that, so I'm learning.’

I'd wanted to go back to learning French since forever, and I thought Duolingo would be useful for me, so I got it from her. I excitedly set up a profile and added the French course - hehe, people of France, here I come 💃. I tried to take my first lesson, but for whatever reason, I saw the modules and just froze?

How am I supposed to know all these things? I can barely even remember the basics. Blah blah blah, I made all sorts of excuses and I didn't open the app after that day.

How many times have you been excited about an opportunity to learn or do something new, and when it's time to just do it, you cook up a convenient excuse and chicken out? Whether it's working out, taking a cooking class, learning web design, naming the insects in your room, etc.

Excuses are always convenient. You're the one making them, so your brain just finds a way to justify them.

Some time passed, and I thought “oh, you should learn Korean, too. You pick up the words and expressions from the movie pretty easily, so learning it shouldn't be a problem. Yes, I'm going to learn Korean, assa!”

Fast-forward to 2021 and I was still going to learn Korean , I'd totally relegated learning French to the background at this point. I did not exactly freeze like I did when I opened the French course, but I did run away after the first few lessons, because who am I kidding? I never should have started this, I'm never going to get it. Their alphabet is made up of weird characters, 😖☹️ blah blah blah. Excuses, again!

Image by Yan Krukov on Pexels

During the long break between finishing law school and going for NYSC - this author is a lawyer - I convinced myself to learn again, it's not rocket science after all, and you're not a dummy. And so, I started, one lesson after the other till I went from ‘I'm never going to get it’ to ‘I can do this in my sleep.’

Photo by Yan Krukov on Pexels

Along the line, I remembered that I was also supposed to go back to learning French - I have to read that novel Nora Roberts wrote in French, and I want to read the original, so I will learn, someday.

So, I silenced the Bruno in my head and began to take the French course. As I reach day 250 in my learning, here are some of the life lessons that I have learned and I'm sharing them with you in hopes that you also learn a thing or two:

1. Whether it's on Duolingo or it's in real life, RUN YOUR RACE WITHOUT COMPARISON: I used to have this target of 500xp on Duolingo per day late last year that'd make 3500xp at the end of each week and I was confident enough that I'd finish in the top 3 by the time the league closes on Sunday evening (Duolingo users will understand what I'm talking about). And sure enough, it worked out a few times until one Sunday night. I was at number 1 and I was really sure I was going to finish there until one ‘crazy’ person suddenly came from nowhere the bottom of the table and pushed me to no2. Whattt? How dare you? And to make matters worse, Duolingo has this stjupid thing where you'll be feeling happy at number 1, and you'll suddenly get a notification that goes “oh no Bee, Ant has pushed you down to number 2 in the Sapphire league. Take a lesson now to reclaim your spot.”, and if you're not careful, you'll find yourself waking up at intervals in the midnight, so you can stay at number 1.² 😂 Needless to say, I started ‘chasing’ the ‘usurper’ despite the fact that I'd reached my own target for the day and I was going to finish in the top 3 anyway. Not only did I not finish at number 1 that night, but I also lost focus and made all sorts of stupid mistakes which made me lose all my hearts (you need hearts to take lessons) and I stopped learning anything, because I was comparing myself to and ‘chasing’ someone who probably had an XP booster or was just trying to reach the personal goal that they'd set.

You can't compete with me in my lane, because you'll run out of breath, and vice-versa. - Bukola O.

I was competing with someone in their lane, and I lost both my breath and focus. Of course, I got the reward for finishing at no2, but it meant nothing to me at the time, because I was too busy comparing myself to someone else that I did not see that I also did well.

How many times do we do this to ourselves? Undermining our accomplishments and the efforts it took to achieve them, because we're too busy looking at other people. Be like the racehorse who just runs in its own lane and is focused on the finished line. And when you make it to the finish line, give yourself a pat on the back. Yes, life's a race, but you don't have to compete with anybody or you'll be constantly out of breath like I was on that night, not to talk of making avoidable mistakes.

2. Circumstances influence outcomes, it's not always about your efforts: not only do I have a 250-day streak, but I've also been in the Diamond League (that's the highest league) for 18 weeks now - feeling my superstar 💃😂 - and I have been on all sorts of tables in the different leagues. Sometimes, you're on a table with ‘crazy’ people and you won't be in the top 3 with your 10,000xp, and at other times, you'll be at no1 with barely 1000xp (that's what I like to call a lazy table where everyone does just enough lessons to keep their streak 😂).

Someone with 9500xp is finishing at no7, and another person is finishing at no1 with 846xp. And it counts, because the number of Top 3 Finishes gets added to your profile. Your no7 doesn't mean you're lazy, it is just the table on which you found yourself. Conversely, your no1 doesn't also mean you're the best at duolinging, it is just the table on which you found yourself.

Life is like that sometimes, too, so I hope you don't beat yourself up too much when you don't get what you ought to even after putting in your best. Don't worry, your table will come. Your face will be fine, and your shoe will shine 🤭. Just don't stop giving your best.

3. The higher you go, the sharper your vision: before I started getting on to ‘crazy’ tables, I used to think that the idea of having a 50-day streak was crazy. I mean do Duolingo lessons for 50 days non-stop? Hell naw, it's not me and you. Might I add that when I started taking the lessons again during that break I mentioned earlier, I went on for about 40 days and I just stopped, and I did not start again till late October. The more seriously I took my lessons, the more serious the category of users I got placed on tables with and I saw people with 300k+XP with 800-day streaks and above. I was like wowwww, you mean there are people who haven't missed a day in almost 3 years?

That helped me toughen my resolve to never miss lessons and I showed up every day even on days when I was not really feeling it. If I'd never been on those kinds of tables, I'd have gone on thinking it was okay to miss some days - after all, nobody's going to beat me if I miss a lesson. But I learned that when you decide to do something worthwhile, you might as well go all in or go back home.

Now I can't imagine not doing lessons everyday, like, even on my wedding day, I'll still take a lesson unless I'm done with my courses by then sha. 😂

And that's it with life, too. When you do something good, you realize you can do even better. When you meet good people, you meet even better people, etc. Otherwise, you keep doing the bare minimum and think you're on top of the world. Read a tweet about exposure that I'm going to paraphrase as:

Exposure is the tool that you use in fighting mediocrity.

4. Nothing motivates you to succeed like the fear of failure: As I said earlier, the Diamond League is last league and when you're there, you're no longer fighting to go to another league. It becomes a fight to avoid the demotion zone (yeah, you get dropped to the Obsidian League if you're anywhere from no. 26 - no. 30 on the table).

Some weeks have gone by when I've been totally unmotivated to do anything beyond extending my streak (I wish there was a streak system designed for every area of life. That thing is so effective. It makes you show up every day), but you see Sunday evenings when I see myself in the red zone with 2 hours to go, I get supernatural strength and motivation, because I can't even imagine getting dropped. And I end up staying in the league by the skin of my teeth 😬 I l

What happens in life when you've gone all the way up and there's literally nowhere else for you to go? You fight tooth and nail to stay on top probably even harder than you fought to get there, because one step down might become a steady downward slide if you're not very careful.

5. Everything is difficult until you just do it: during lockdown in 2020, there were all sorts of Tiktok and Instagram challenges and the one that awed me the most was the #polyglotchallenge. People were speaking 5,6 languages in videos and that just blew my mind, but I thought ha, omo, that's so nice. Me sef will stick with the two I can speak. Look at me now, I can speak two well, fluently and I'm getting familiar with 2 more. I mean, I'm nowhere near fluent or whatever, but I won't get lost if I wake up one morning in France or South Korea. I can ask some questions;order food at a restaurant; ask for and give directions; pass compliments; express certain emotions, etc I try 😂.

All of that seemed impossible before I started to learn, and the first time I found a French conversation in the middle of a novel (just 4 sentences, really) that I could read and understand, it felt like holding the moon in my palm - okay, maybe I'm exaggerating, but it felt really good. And I was encouraged to learn more and moooree.

Point is a lot of us want to do amazing things, but we're so scared because we don't know how and we stay stuck in one spot, afraid to take that first step. Breaking news: taking one step after the other is how you get from Point A to Point B.

Don't be afraid to fail or look stupid or make mistakes or even sound ‘retarded’ (when I started learning French, I told any one of my friends who would listen that I hated doing speaking lessons, because of their ‘r’ and other factors. Like, were their ancestors retarded or something? Now, I look forward to having full conversations in French and it no longer sounds ‘funny’ to me).

You've probably heard/read/seen this a lot before, but:

The magic you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding. - Unknown

So, whatever it is, just start, and in 6 months time (thankfully, the 2nd half of the year just started), you'll be so glad that you took the first step today. Go kick fear in the butt.

And I will be rooting for you on your way to awesomeness.

♥️&💡,

🦋.

And because I love you for being here:

The most unlikely friendship between an A-class assassin who can filet more than just humans with his knife and a struggling man who's just one step away from being the ‘neighborhood idiot’ filled with moments of laughter and some twists is what you'll discover when you watch The Man From Toronto.

1. I am learning French and Korean on Duolingo. Duolingo is my teacher, a good teacher!

2. I've turned off the notification thingy since that day. I'm not a wicked person, why should I not be resting? 💁🏼