Why I decided to break my 50-Day Duolingo streak ⛓️💥
Duolingo is a great app. There’s a reason it’s lauded as one of the best gamification designs, given so many people use it.
My wife uses it everyday (her streak is over 1500!) So I decided that it’s high time I jumped back in to it and try my hand to hablar un poquito Español (I hope that’s correct?!).
For 50 days straight, I opened Duolingo and tapped my way through a Spanish lesson. I wasn’t travelling anywhere Spanish-speaking, I didn’t need it for work, and none of my close friends speak the language. But I kept the streak alive—until I didn’t.
On day 51, I made the decision to let it go voluntarily which was hard given I kept opening my phone and seeing this…
As someone who practices gamification and behavioural design, this streak (and the decision to break it) taught me a lot. It also highlighted the limits of extrinsic motivation, as well as the power of aligning behaviour with something to make it more meaningful.
The Power of a Streak
Streaks can be incredibly powerful. I’ve written before with Massimo about how streaks can be effectively designed. They use a combination of techniques that we can find in the Make It toolkit, including:
Make it rewarding – Seeing your streak number tick up each day feels satisfying and motivating, especially as it grows. It’s a simple way to recognise achievement and progress.
Make it goal-oriented – A streak becomes a visual record of consistency. The bigger it gets, the more it reflects your commitment and effort—building a sense of pride and identity.
Make it aversive – The fear of losing a long streak can be a powerful motivator. Thanks to loss aversion, we’re more driven to avoid breaking it than we are to keep going for the reward alone.
Make it social – If you can see your friends’ streaks, and share a streak together, this social link can make it even more motivating.
Duolingo uses all of these strategies very well. Every night, I’d get a reminder to extend my streak, I’d open the app, and complete an easy Spanish exercise to extend my streak. And that was fine… for a while.
Why I Let It Go
At first, I was excited to get back into language learning. I’ve studied languages before, and I’d been to Spain last year so Spanish was on my mind. But as the streak continued, the motivation shifted. I wasn’t doing it to learn any more—I was doing it not to break the streak chain.
The turning point came at 50 days. It felt like a milestone but also a burden. I asked myself: Do I want to keep learning Spanish right now? The honest answer was no. I didn’t have a strong reason to continue. No planned travel. No Spanish-speaking friends to practise with regularly. No real drive to learn the language.
And that’s the key insight: there was no more internal drive behind the habit anymore. It had become extrinsically motivated—a routine I kept for the reward of the streak itself. Yes it aligned with my values, learning a language is a great thing. But I had competing priorities and picked probably the worst time to embed the habit into my routine (I did the Duolingo activities right before bed which in hindsight… is when I’m at my least motivated to do anything but sleep!).
What Could Have Changed It?
Behavioural design isn’t just about helping people stick to habits. It’s about making sure those habits matter, that we make them meaningful.
Looking back, there are a few things Duolingo could have done better to keep me engaged for the right reasons:
Make it empowering: Let me set goals that feel personal. Not just “do 5 minutes a day,” but “understand directions before my next trip to Spain or learn how to order a coffee.”
Make it yours: Ask me why I want to learn, then tailor the content. Show me stories or vocabulary about topics I care about—like travel or games.
Make it meaningful: Link language learning to a deeper purpose—connecting with people in the app beyond leaderboards and shared streaks, unlocking culture learning, or achieving a personal goal.
There are glimpses of this in Duolingo—like the stories feature—but they’re buried behind a premium paywall or hard to access regularly in the free version.
Don’t get me wrong, Duolingo is great and is touted as one of the best examples of gamification design. But it’s not for me right now, and that’s okay.
The Behaviour Design Behind My Other Streak
In contrast, I’ve kept another streak alive for longer than 50 days: going alcohol free.
Why? It’s not necessarily intrinsically motivating but it’s meaningful to me. I feel better. I sleep better. I know the science behind the benefits, and I’ve reframed the streak from a restriction to something that empowers me. It was hard at the start, but has now flipped and as the days have ticked up, so did my sense of achievement and empowerment.
It taps into the same behavioural design strategies as the Duolingo streaks—but with stronger internal desire to keep me going using the following strategies:
Make it goal-oriented: There’s a clear, personal goal—feel healthier and more mentally alert.
Make it meaningful: I’ve attached it to values around wellbeing and energy.
Make it empowering: I chose the goal, and I feel in control.
I also use the Streaks app, which is beautifully designed and is rewarding and fun to use and have used the make it scarce tactic to help reduce the behaviour.
The Takeaway: Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivation
Streaks are great for getting you started. But to keep going, we need something more. We need meaning. Personal relevance. Ownership.
How can we apply these strategies effectively? This is where the Make It toolkit comes in. It’s a collection of 15 behaviour change strategies, built around psychology, habit science, and gamification. Strategies like:
Make it attractive – Reframe the benefits of doing something.
Make it immersive – Create engaging contexts for learning or action.
Make it social – Leverage community and peer motivation.
Make it timely – Nudge people at the right moment.
Want to learn how to use these strategies to build better habits, products, or experiences?
👉 Check out our self-paced course on behavioural design: Make It Starter
You’ll learn how to design for real human behaviour—and help others build habits that last, not just streaks that fizzle out.
