What I Learnt From My 299-Day Duolingo Streak
…And Why I Never Hit 300
Bonjour ! Je suis Braden. Je suis Australien. Je suis a bit of a Francophone. For most of 2017, I had a habit of practicing my French once a day. To do this, I used the language learning app Duolingo. My “streak” of continuous days almost reached a milestone of 300 days in a row — but never quite got there. What took me most of the way was a routine and a goal. Duolingo taught me many lessons, most of which were in French. But the most important were the 5 lessons I learnt about habits.
A habit is made easier by a friend
This wasn’t my first foray into French. I’d taken an 8 week course with some friends a few years prior. We’d even watched The Lord of the Rings in French. I’d used Duolingo previously — and had subsequently stopped using it. So in 2017, when I opened up the app with the talking green owl again, I didn’t think, “this time, things will be different”. I just started to learn.
At the time, I had just started seeing someone. They were also learning a language — I had a companion in my journey. This fact made the start of my language learning practice that little bit easier. This was a lesson I’d learnt years earlier watching Tolkien’s stories on the big screen, and now taught again:
