Ever since I was a child I’ve wanted to learn Spanish for some reason. I finally got lessons when I went to university. However upon leaving university and living in a fully English speaking country there was little motivation to continue my practice. Until now…
I still live an an English speaking country, albeit on the other side of the world, however I began using a great little app called Duolingo which gives you short bites sized lessons daily and most importantly sends me mobile push notifications on my phone if I’ve forgotten. It also builds on this with regular challenges and the ability to build streaks (i.e. 10 day practice streak right now), which you lose if you miss a day.
It’s all very simple gamification stuff but when mixed with the underlying desire for achievement it seems like a very powerful mix. In fact today I picked up a new app called Streaks that lets you set daily goals for pretty much anything, so you can start building positive habits in almost any area. It’s still early days but it looks like positive Nag Tech may be a feature for a very long time!
