I spent roughly an hour every morning, blasting through the early lessons. Steven Sacco, a retired language professor, spent 300 hours learning Swedish on Duolingo but still managed to fail the final exam of an introductory university course. One found Duolingo was equally as effective as learning in a classroom. Multiple studies speak to its effectiveness as a learning tool. Saturday Night Live even did a sketch on it back in 2019. Duolingo, along with its patented green owl mascot, has penetrated popular culture to its core.

It was named Apple's best app of 2013 and has well over 50 million users. So I made a little deal with myself: For the first 30 minutes or so, as soon as I woke up, I'd dive into Duolingo.ĭuolingo, an app designed to help people learn any of 40 languages, is extremely popular. Not necessarily work stuff, but exercise stuff, life stuff. It was good! I was getting lots of stuff done. Thanks to jetlag (from the aforementioned overseas trip) I'd been waking up super early, around 5 or 6 a.m. It was also a decision tied to a productivity kick.