I enjoy the challenges. The coin system does seem a little wonky, but I understand it is hard to maintain an even playing field between learners of different levels, and it's probably better to encourage beginners. I actually love the fact that it gets harder and harder to get coins the more advanced you get (as there are less and less blue / yellow LingQs) so to maintain a high rank, the amount of input needed increases....so it encourages you to read & listen more and more than before.

As someone that has benefited greatly from the challenges I think the best way to approach them is as long term habit formation. As in not worrying about the specific rank, but striving to keep in the top 10 over months and years. Language learning takes an incredible, astonishing amount of input and time and practice, and the challenges help keep a habit of reading & listening every day and pushing yourself a bit even on off days.

Yes, challenges motivate me a lot. It is always important for me to receive new portions of motivation that make me improve, constantly learn the language and generally feel better. On the page https://artscolumbia.org/free-essays/emotional-intelligence/ I read useful information for myself about emotional intelligence and how our motivation affects our emotional state every day.

of course, how will your personality develop later if you just give up every time

I'm more motivated when I have high streak days.

Yes, to a degree, generally just at the beginning. But that motivation would fade in a week or so. Be it that the challenge is not as " challenging" as I expected. So you need more than motivation to complete a challenge. That's why I changed tactics. For example, I set my own goals before joining a challenge, then I consider a challenge as going to the library, where I would be surrounded by people reading, doing their homework or whatever they are doing, which can get me a little more motivated.

Yeah, I agree. The challenges can be motivating, but at the current way they are set up they are not 'fair'. Like listening is undervalued, while high frequency vocabulary LingQing when someone first joins LingQ is overvalued. I think this needs to be looked into. The person who can win these challenges can be someone who joins LingQ, already knowing the language, and just mark thousands upon thousands of new words as known. This 'unfairness' really reduces the willingness and desire to even try in the challenges.

The challenges need to depend on effort. For instance, just as there's a Monthly LingQing Challenge for all languages, maybe there should be a Monthly Listening Challenge for all languages and a Monthly Reading Challenge for all languages. This should only include listening and reading done on LingQ, not incuding activity added from outside LingQ.

What do others think?

Challenges always motivate me - but it's more about my actual interest in the topic. For example, if I'm reading a book in a different language, I want it to be a genre that interests me. Motivation comes from many different aspects for sure.

https://skinlyaesthetics.com/

Definitely! I always love a challenge <a href="https://skinlyaesthetics.com/">-</a> competition also motivates me sometimes. Keeps you going and adds just enough pressure to want to do well :)

I get some motivation from the challenges, but I often find that the targets are fairly arbitrary and do not match my priorities in the languages I study.

For example, in the hardcore challenge I have to listen ~30minutes a day on LingQ on average to finish it. As my priority in Greek is mostly the ancient form, listening is generally prioritized less and I have a hard time reaching the 45 hours. On the other hand, the other targets are way too easy for me and are often reached within 1-2 weeks (rather than the 90 days) if I study moderate amounts (maybe 4-5hrs a week) on LingQ.

Competing with others on the coin amounts is usually more motivating, but there's often very little competition over 90 days, especially on smaller languages.

I personally would love to see different challenge forms such as "90 day reading challenge", "90 day listening challenge" etc etc so that it is possible to compete not just on coins, but also on words read, lingqs learned, listening hours etc. I also wouldnt mind seeing challenges be non-language-specific so that I am competing against more than 2-3 people (at most)

Pleaaase let me know where can I find the challenges? I just signed up

Motivation, it seems to me, is in the eye of the beholder. My spouse has a very competitive spirt and loves to be at the top of leader-boards and challenges. Me, I don't care to compete with others and get no joy from being at the top. I am motivated based on my own standards and challenges. My spouse loves to "game-ify" learning whereas I hate it. I like the raw, brutal, nitty-gritty, deep learning and consider games a waste of time.

My suggestion is to try lots of different strategies, find what motivates you and chase that 'rabbit' as fast as you can while dismissing all the other strategies.

I always enroll in them but done really care where I finish. I use them as a way to gauge my progress by the number of challenges I’ve completed.

As Steve Kaufmann has mentioned before (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_kvvru_mRo), don't compare yourself with other people :-)

I did participate and even won a few of them. Actually I still participate but I have to say that I've lost interest and in these days I can't even push like I was in the previous weeks.

As @bembe said, the way these Challenges are made are not really balanced and the way words are counted right now is not really motivating (with all those fluctuations).

I've suggested to put a daily cap so to have a limit that people can reach and avoid those spikes from some users. After all is a 90 Day Challenge and not a 1 day 1 million coins!

But as already noticed, some actions get more coins than others and in the hard-core Challenges it doesn't matter if a user doesn't do all requirements, they still go up in the chart even if they do only one thing and get lots of coins from it.

As soon as you progress you have less known words to make (or less LingQs) and focus on other activities.

For all these reasons I don't find them very motivating anymore and I'm not even sure if they help me progress or if they even are counterproductive. In fact, I was even thinking to not participate anymore.

I wish they could be more balanced and engaging though.

I did the one 90 day challenge in Russian. I was motivated at the beginning with the rankings then my motivation from the competitive aspect waned as I got slaughtered by the heavyweights. I had to satisfy myself with doing just enough to stay top of the slackers.

Maybe a small bump when it first starts, but when I quickly realize there's no way I'll even be in the top 10, I slow back down to normal =D.

I might try to leapfrog some folks in the vicinity of me, but most of the time, I end up with "real life" distractions getting in the way from being able to consistently push harder than my usual plodding.

I occasionally look at you ahead of me on the “Hard Core” German challenges and think “If he can do it then I probably need to keep plodding along - and every day”!

The way the statistical analysis is set up, you earn a pile of “coins” at the start of your language journey, and then it gets increasingly difficult to find Linqs or indeed to learn Linqs, so I do not take where I am in any league table very seriously.

Additionally, as you switch from “input” by reading and listening to more “output” activities by writing and speaking you seem to earn very little “credit” in “coinage” or otherwise. I write essays in German most weeks, and necessarily battle for hours to do my best on formulating them correctly. But it is of little consequence in any Linq challenge league table, although it is supremely important in my current language journey in German.

However, I console myself that you can look at your own personal tabulation each Saturday and see roughly whether you are “level pegging” with your previous week, and also whether you are “firing on all four cylinders” in terms of reading, listening, writing and speaking.

Remember that “upturned hockey stick”? Inching up an interminable slight incline, also known as the “intermediate plateau”, it probably does assist to know you are, just about, making progress on what cyclists call a “false flat”, even if it seems occasionally of the “one step forward, two steps back” variety.

Even with the Linq challenges trying to spark some motivational “competitiveness” I think we all need to remind ourselves occasionally that we are actually only in competition with ourselves, and certainly not with any other Linqers, who are also struggling ever so slowly up that incline.