It's been 8 days since I wrote the article "A possibly good idea" in which I talked about a little experiment that I wanted to conduct. In short, I was hoping that by making Duolingo one of the websites that open automatically once I start using my browser, thus making it very easy for me to start at least one lesson as soon as I get on my PC or laptop, I would be able to keep a consistent learning habit and practice my German every single day.
That idea was the result of learning about the limited amount of decision-making power that humans have that is usually spent during the day. Once your ability to make decisions goes down it becomes very difficult to force yourself to do the things you must do in your free time.
There are two main ways in which you can fix this problem.
The first one is to take a break, to eat a meal, to go for a coffee with some friends, to watch a movie, or anything that would help you relax. Apparently a break is enough to help you recover your decision-making energy and to make it easier to make difficult decisions after.
The second option is to make the task that you need to do every day as easy to begin as possible and to put it right there in your face, so that you don't have to put any effort into making the decision to take care of that task. It's there, for you to do.
Since my free time is very limited and I can't really afford to spend my time relaxing, going out for coffee or watching movies, then spend a few hours writing or learning, I had to try the second option and see whether by making my tasks very easy to begin doing, I would be able to consistently take care of them.
I chose to try this with Duolingo since I need to learn more German, and because it was one of the things that I avoided, because I was always tired after work and in no mood to spend extra time doing something I didn't particularly like.
So, I made it so my browser would open Duolingo alongside the rest of the websites that I use every day. I would go through each of them to see what's new, and I would inevitably stumble upon my German lessons. I hoped that this would "motivate" me to at least do one of those lessons every day.
And it worked!
I currently have a streak of 9 consecutive days of learning (I already had an extra day when I posted the article). Considering just how little time I have at my disposal and how exhausted I come home from work sometimes, 9 days of consecutive learning is quite good in my opinion.
My German is improving, I understand more and I am able to better communicate with people. A lot of things led to this improvement, but the lessons on Duolingo are one of them.
This is a very simple thing that you can try yourself. If you're having trouble taking care of one or more tasks that you'd like to do regularly, then try to make them as easy to start as possible, so that you don't have to always make the conscious decision to sit down and work when you're tired or bored.
My next move will be to try to apply this trick to other activities that I'd like to do every day, such as reading, watching some courses and, when I get back to Romania, using Blender every single day to create art.