Master Your Metrics
The Duolingo Owl and I have a contentious relationship. On the one hand, I find Duolingo really helpful for practicing my languages. On the other hand, I have found myself addicted to the Duolingo streak on more than one occasion.
While Duolingo does provide a useful tool, it is also a business. As such, their job is to keep you engaging with their product as much as possible. One way to do that? Incentives such as streaks. Keeping a streak going feels like an accomplishment for most of us. We think of it as a demonstration of our dedication to a habit that we are able to do something every single day without fail. Feels great.
But the reason I joined Duolingo in the first place wasn’t to keep a streak going. It was to have a way to practice my languages on the go. It was merely meant as an extra tool on my journey to fluency. But it was easy to get lost in the incentive of merely keeping the streak rather than the incentive of improving my language. Fluency is a long slow process, but the streak? All I need is five minutes.
This is just one example of a potentially damaging incentive.
When you pursue something, you have a reason for it - at least when you begin. You want to learn a language, save money, get fit, pick up a new skill. There’s an incentive you’ve created for yourself - whether it’s your ideal body or the accomplishment of achieving something new. But maintaining the quality of that incentive is harder than we think.
I used to be the kind of person that thought if I didn’t work on my habits and projects every single day then I would never progress. I would lose momentum and I would be doomed for failure. This is pretty common thinking. People decide to pursue something and then think they have to do everything at once or it’s not worth it. For example, people who have never worked out suddenly decide they need to work out every day in order to reach their goals.
As we know, this kind of thinking isn’t sustainable. Firstly, because an all or nothing approach doesn’t account for the learning curve or the fact that most goals are achieved over time and have moments of failure and uncertainty.
But more importantly, this kind of thinking can immediately ruin the original goal. Now the goal isn’t to get in shape - the goal is to work out once a day. The goal isn’t to learn a language, it’s to practice duolingo ten minutes a day. Those may seem like they are the same, but they aren’t.
Working out once a day or spending 10 min on Duolingo are merely metrics through which we attempt to hold ourselves accountable. This strategy isn’t inherently bad. Making a plan and breaking down a goal into digestible chunks is usually a great way to progress on a long term project.
It is when the goal becomes only about the metrics that we have a problem. Missing one workout really won’t ruin your goal, but if your idea of successful fitness lies solely in working out every day, the devastation you’ll feel at missing one will be real, and it will be crushingly demoralizing.
This appears in so many ways - the need to keep up snapchat streaks, the need people with apple watches feel to close their rings each day, the app I use that tells me how many words I’ve written that day. They all present these little metrics by which we can measure ourselves and our progress.
When these are used in a controlled environment that has built in mechanisms for failure, they can be incredible tools, but when left unchecked, they can sometimes take over our lives and goals without us ever realizing it. Personally, this is something I have to reevaluate constantly. I love measuring myself using all sorts of metrics and it’s so easy for me to lose the quality of my goal in favor of completing the plan I laid out.
Since we are still fresh in goal-setting season, I encourage you to take another look at any plans you’ve made for yourself. Keep the real goal out in front always. The metrics and plans are the servants of the overall goal, don’t let them become the tyrants
An old pic from Tulum that makes me feel calm