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izmeinaYesterday I finally made the 2,000 day streak milestone on Duolingo.
I was supposed to do a quick Dreamwidth squiggle to mark the occasion but ended up crashing and hitting the sack instead. Just as well I had the morning off. Because I had churned out the day's quota of Nanowrimo words then, I did not have to feel guilty for an early bed time nor did I have to worry about making up quota next day because deficits have a habit of ballooning very very quickly in Nanoland. Unless you are a dedicated last minute sprinter, slacking off for even a couple of days can mean the difference between purple laurels and a sad blue unfinished line.
2,000 days ago back in early 2017 when I signed up for Duolingo, Petunia was still alive and quite a few of my leaf babies had not been born yet.
I had never heard of Duolingo until I came across a couple of people posting their New Year's resolutions.
Years ago I had the 100 items in 1,000 days bucket list but I no longer have the dedication for that.
So this woman said that her 2017 New Year's resolution was to learn French from scratch using Duolingo.
I googled this strange name and aside from the cute green owls and stuff, I was drawn in by the F word.
Did I mention that it was FREE? I am old enough to remember the over rated and over priced Linguaphone. I am sure their marketing budget made up a giant chunk of the Reader's Digest magazine and the mainstream Sunday papers at that time.
I decided to also learn a new language from scratch rather than brushing up on an old one. The one that I chose was Spanish. Turned out that it was not really a good choice for such an experiment because there is just so much vocabulary in common. It is almost like cheating.
When it comes to native English speakers, I cannot really think of a good language for a test case since many of us have often done some French or German in high school so we are not starting with a blank slate.
German and Dutch are also too similar to English to be a fair comparison. Languages using other alphabets or writing systems add too many variables and complications to make it a fair trial.
Living in Oz, I guess Indonesian would have been a good test case and also useful and usable. But it has a reputation for being ridiculously easy to learn so maybe not such a good test case either.
This time last year I was effortlessly clocking up 600 to 700 XP per week. Now I am struggling to come in at a measly 300 these days. I am happy just to stay out of the bottom 10 each week in the Obsidian League. The effort required to get back to Diamond Level is not worth the bother. Even worse is the effort required to merely stay there.
So aside from an excellent way of teaching the value of 'little and often' rather than 'fast and binge' when it comes to habits related not just to learning but to pretty much anything, I now also use Duo as a barometer for the state of the serpent's green cells.
It usually falls quite clearly into one of 2 states - powerless effort or effortless power.
The former is Red Zone hell and the latter is Green Zone goodness.
For some inexplicable reason, the Duo app on my phone has not yet gone over to the Dumb Side. I guess I better not speak too soon. But thanks to a recent post by the Cat and also wanting to leave up the big bright yellow 2,000 page for as long as possible, I went to the web pages to do a few more lessons for the day.
Stepping stones and pebbles everywhere. Just for a change of scenery, I switched to Russian and found myself on lesson 48 staring at the insufferably annoying Oscar. Movember and all that, what else did I expect. But i must admit, it was very disorientating.
I followed the yellow brick road right to the top of the screen. I don't think I had ever noticed the purple plums on the Russian tree that has now been turned into a path. They are pretty cheap at 10 points each with a payoff of 40 so I did a couple out of curiosity.
It was a pleasant break from constantly replaying all those Spanish stories which I got stuck on due to a combination of brain deadness and perverse incentives. Once I realized last November that reaching the second last lesson in a circle brings with it double up points for the next 15 minutes, then I suddenly stopped doing normal lessons once I had only 2 left in each fruit bowl because I so rarely felt that my brain cells would be up to doing even one 15 minute blitz let alone a whole string of the things. So I just stuck to stories in Spanish or the totally brain dead Cyrillic alphabet lessons simply to get the one lesson under my belt needed to continue my streak.
So I am happy to mix things up a little so I don't get bored. Strange that the same day I hit the big 2,000 on Duolingo, I get my greedy serpent paws on a book that I have wanted for quite a while now.
It is "Atomic Habits" by James Clear. Bright shiny and new, not even a crack in the spine for a pittance at a thrift shop. A quick glance led me to the concept of Goldilocks habits. I love that idea. and not too far around the corner from those is the much desired Flow State - which I call the Green Zone. I sure could do with a few more visits there lately.
So I recommend Duo even with the army of annoying drama llamas. Not so much for what's one the box -a fun free way to learn a new language - but more its lessons in the dark art of learning good habits.
I was supposed to do a quick Dreamwidth squiggle to mark the occasion but ended up crashing and hitting the sack instead. Just as well I had the morning off. Because I had churned out the day's quota of Nanowrimo words then, I did not have to feel guilty for an early bed time nor did I have to worry about making up quota next day because deficits have a habit of ballooning very very quickly in Nanoland. Unless you are a dedicated last minute sprinter, slacking off for even a couple of days can mean the difference between purple laurels and a sad blue unfinished line.
2,000 days ago back in early 2017 when I signed up for Duolingo, Petunia was still alive and quite a few of my leaf babies had not been born yet.
I had never heard of Duolingo until I came across a couple of people posting their New Year's resolutions.
Years ago I had the 100 items in 1,000 days bucket list but I no longer have the dedication for that.
So this woman said that her 2017 New Year's resolution was to learn French from scratch using Duolingo.
I googled this strange name and aside from the cute green owls and stuff, I was drawn in by the F word.
Did I mention that it was FREE? I am old enough to remember the over rated and over priced Linguaphone. I am sure their marketing budget made up a giant chunk of the Reader's Digest magazine and the mainstream Sunday papers at that time.
I decided to also learn a new language from scratch rather than brushing up on an old one. The one that I chose was Spanish. Turned out that it was not really a good choice for such an experiment because there is just so much vocabulary in common. It is almost like cheating.
When it comes to native English speakers, I cannot really think of a good language for a test case since many of us have often done some French or German in high school so we are not starting with a blank slate.
German and Dutch are also too similar to English to be a fair comparison. Languages using other alphabets or writing systems add too many variables and complications to make it a fair trial.
Living in Oz, I guess Indonesian would have been a good test case and also useful and usable. But it has a reputation for being ridiculously easy to learn so maybe not such a good test case either.
This time last year I was effortlessly clocking up 600 to 700 XP per week. Now I am struggling to come in at a measly 300 these days. I am happy just to stay out of the bottom 10 each week in the Obsidian League. The effort required to get back to Diamond Level is not worth the bother. Even worse is the effort required to merely stay there.
So aside from an excellent way of teaching the value of 'little and often' rather than 'fast and binge' when it comes to habits related not just to learning but to pretty much anything, I now also use Duo as a barometer for the state of the serpent's green cells.
It usually falls quite clearly into one of 2 states - powerless effort or effortless power.
The former is Red Zone hell and the latter is Green Zone goodness.
For some inexplicable reason, the Duo app on my phone has not yet gone over to the Dumb Side. I guess I better not speak too soon. But thanks to a recent post by the Cat and also wanting to leave up the big bright yellow 2,000 page for as long as possible, I went to the web pages to do a few more lessons for the day.
Stepping stones and pebbles everywhere. Just for a change of scenery, I switched to Russian and found myself on lesson 48 staring at the insufferably annoying Oscar. Movember and all that, what else did I expect. But i must admit, it was very disorientating.
I followed the yellow brick road right to the top of the screen. I don't think I had ever noticed the purple plums on the Russian tree that has now been turned into a path. They are pretty cheap at 10 points each with a payoff of 40 so I did a couple out of curiosity.
It was a pleasant break from constantly replaying all those Spanish stories which I got stuck on due to a combination of brain deadness and perverse incentives. Once I realized last November that reaching the second last lesson in a circle brings with it double up points for the next 15 minutes, then I suddenly stopped doing normal lessons once I had only 2 left in each fruit bowl because I so rarely felt that my brain cells would be up to doing even one 15 minute blitz let alone a whole string of the things. So I just stuck to stories in Spanish or the totally brain dead Cyrillic alphabet lessons simply to get the one lesson under my belt needed to continue my streak.
So I am happy to mix things up a little so I don't get bored. Strange that the same day I hit the big 2,000 on Duolingo, I get my greedy serpent paws on a book that I have wanted for quite a while now.
It is "Atomic Habits" by James Clear. Bright shiny and new, not even a crack in the spine for a pittance at a thrift shop. A quick glance led me to the concept of Goldilocks habits. I love that idea. and not too far around the corner from those is the much desired Flow State - which I call the Green Zone. I sure could do with a few more visits there lately.
So I recommend Duo even with the army of annoying drama llamas. Not so much for what's one the box -a fun free way to learn a new language - but more its lessons in the dark art of learning good habits.
