Weekly Goals vs Daily create more consistency for many!

Since many people can’t study every day with the way they work or other reasons, they loose their streak every few days, so it just doesn’t work. It’s also very disappointing. Getting notified daily just becomes a nuisance and has no real context for the person who can only study several days per week.
For us and others it would be wonderfully motivational to set a weekly goal so we wouldn’t fall off our record and as long as we stay consistent on a weekly basis we’re good.

I know so many people who will just never be able to study every day. Take people who work four 12 hour shifts in a row each week- say in health care or in many industries & occupations. Or others who work 2 weeks on, then 2 weeks off. I’ve got several friends who fall into that category. So for them they’d rather just have even a monthly goal.
And for others a 2 week goal would be best.
But if you could start by adding a weekly goal option that would be great.
Ideally this would be a rolling 7 day total. But even if it were simpler to implement based on a chosen day of the week that would be fine too. Whichever is easier to implement in the software would be greatly appreciated!!!
Thank you for any support!

1 Like

Thanks for your interesting suggestion. We’ll see if there is anything we can do.

Regarding the Daily Goal and loosing the streak, you can always use the repair streak option if you miss a day. But it needs to be a maximum of 1 day break.

1 Like

Thx for your comment. Yes I knew about the one day repair- it’s just not enough. Thanks

I think for the most part it’s always possible to find time, but I agree on some days it can be extremely challenging. I just stopped caring about the streak and I write it down on a piece of paper or excel. I set a minimum goal of 2k words to read each day, with an ideal goal of 5k.

Most of the time I get around 5k-6k read nowadays, but on days that I have to drive across the country at for work 5.00a.m. and then get back at 8p.m. , I just have to be realistic in what is actually physically possible while also being careful not to burn myself out. For those days I don’t mind if I hit my minimum (I get 5 minutes of reading here and there and then maybe another half hour to an hour when I get home) goal, as long as I can compensate in my weekly average (I try to do a bit more reading in the weekend then).

This way I ignore the lingq streak and focus on my own streak. better for my peace of mind.

1 Like

As far as we know, the reality is that if you want to build a strong habit you need to daily engage with it. Like brushing your teeth!

So, the reason for using a daily goal is only that, helping yourself to build a habit and be consistent. Doing 13 lingqs a day requires 10 minutes, no more. You can read a news article per day and it’s done. Even if it’s not perfect.

It’s not a “game” to have numbers but a strategy. Doing 13 LingQs daily is not the same that doing 91 LingQs weekly.

It’s true that there are different work and life conditions that can change things but if something it’s very important you can try to find the way. It’s a question of priorities. If you decide that study that language it’s your absolute priority than you’ll do your best to build that habit.

Otherwise, don’t care about the daily streak, it’s just a number that you don’t need for learning and improving a language. It’s not a game or a reward that you should think about. It’s a productivity tool to make your language stronger and daily learning is stronger than weekly learning. If you don’t have time to do it, just adjust yourself on what you can do and don’t think about it anymore. Imho.

4 Likes

Hey Blingq, As davideroccato mentioned, a daily habit is ideal for learning. But obviously, life gets in the way sometimes.

We already have the 90-Day challenge which serves a more longer term goal (the hardcore challenge even includes granular goals like words read and hours listened). And you can track your progress for the 90-Day goal on the challenge page.

Still, I think it would be great to give users more options for goal tracking, including:

  • weekly goal tracking
  • monthly goal tracking
  • Words read goal tracking
  • Listening time goal tracking

The reality is, however, right now our dev team is focused on building LingQ 5.0. And we’re not going to add any new functionalities. In order to get the new app live, we can’t keep introducing new features. It’s unfortunate, but necessary. We have to make tradeoffs.

That being said, I may be able to build a messaging sequence which sends emails, push notifications and/or in-app pop-ups based on your weekly and/or monthly progress in LingQs created

  • If after 6 days, you’ve created less than 6X your daily LingQs goal, then we can send a message to encourage you to increase your activity in the last day of the week.
  • If after 3 weeks, you’ve created less than 21X your daily LingQs goal, then we can send a message to encourage you to increase your activity in the last week or so of the month.

If we find that this has a measurable and statistically significant increase in logins and LingQs created, then it would improve the chances of us dedicating developer time to build more advanced options for goal tracking into the app itself.

1 Like

@azarya Did you know that Words Read is automatically tracked in your LingQ profile (no need to write it down on a piece of paper or excel)?

As I mentioned above, it’s unrealistic that we’d be able to add a weekly or monthly goal/streak to the app any time soon. Because our development team is focused on the existing plans and fixing bugs for existing functionalities within the beta app.

However, I may be able to build a messaging sequence to help with your use case, as I’m sure a lot of other users would benefit from weekly or monthly progress updates and messages.

And if that messaging sequence were to show a measurable improvement in logins & LingQs created, it would increase the chances that we’d build this into the app itself.

I do and it’s very helpful. But I always write down the number at the end of the day, because it’s easier to keep track of my own streak when I write it down on a piece of paper, since I don’t always get even the minimum of 13 lingqs (which is because I sometimes read too much similar content, but that’s a conscious decision…) .

That way it motivates me to get to 90 days of reading my target number of words.

1 Like

That’s great. At the end of the day your own streak is what’s really important to get the results you can achieve due to your precise situation and goals. And writing it down it’s a perfect way to be mindful and focused on what you’re doing every day.

Yes daily may be ideal, however as I’ve said some people just aren’t able to, I know so many people who will just never be able to study every day. The people who work extremely long stressful shifts for several days in a row in various occupations. Even further friends who go up north to a remote location, don’t have internet and work long hours for 2 weeks and then have 2 weeks off It’s just not physically possible for them. I’ve got several friends who fall into that category. So in the end, for a significant number of people they would benefit with something else.
But that aside, regardless of the ideal not everyone fits that statistic there will always be those that do better creating their own routine that will ebb and flow in intensity and yet will still benefit with the motivation of the weekly, bi-weekly or monthly marker or goal. For some flexibility too is incredibly helpful psychologically in sustaining motivation too.
Anyway there are many opinions just as there are many types of individuals.
All that said, YES to your suggestion "I may be able to build a messaging sequence which sends emails, push notifications and/or in-app pop-ups based on your weekly and/or monthly progress in LingQs created

  • If after 6 days, you’ve created less than 6X your daily LingQs goal, then we can send a message to encourage you to increase your activity in the last day of the week.
  • If after 3 weeks, you’ve created less than 21X your daily LingQs goal, then we can send a message to encourage you to increase your activity in the last week or so of the month."

For many people that would be marvelous to be able to try. I look forward to it. Thank you!!!