There is a great language learning service called Duolingo. One day, I decided to try an experiment in which I would use this service to stream my Chinese language study on YouTube Live. I would like to introduce this mysterious experiment and share with you what I think about it.

Motivation

First, I had the following motivations:

  1. It makes me kind of happy to understand Chinese
  2. I would like to have the experience of setting up a business from scratch

1． It makes me kind of happy to understand Chinese

I have never studied Chinese seriously before. There are many Chinese people around me at work, and they all speak fluent Japanese or English. In a situation where I could communicate adequately in either Japanese or English, there was no need for me to learn Chinese. In other words, being able to speak Chinese would not help me in the short term.

However, suppose I were to encounter the following situation. I thought that if I could understand Chinese in such a situation, I could get a sense of self-satisfaction, that I am happy I studied Chinese.

  • I can vaguely understand the meaning of Chinese-language materials that are sometimes caught in a search without bothering to translate them.
  • I will be able to somewhat respond to Chinese tourists who come to Japan when they talk to me.

On the other hand, I did not want to spend a great deal of resources to achieve this kind of self-gratification. However, I also thought that it would be reasonable if, for example, I could generate 10 minutes of my time a day, continue to do so over the long term, and eventually achieve my goal.

2. I would like to have the experience of setting up a business from scratch

I am accustomed to spending my days as a company employee and getting paid for continually contributing to the company’s goals. However, I have always had the desire to start a new business from nothing and create my own flow of revenue generation.

Recently, YouTubers, businesses that make money by streaming videos on YouTube, have become popular. Most YouTubers whose uploaded videos receive hundreds of thousands of views and are considered to be able to make a living only by distributing videos have gone through a difficult period of underdevelopment, during which their hard-worked videos are rarely seen at first.

What if I, with little to no experience in YouTube video distribution, can grow my channel to the point where it can produce revenue? I will probably go through that “difficult period of underdevelopment” as well. During that time, I thought there would be something to be gained by thinking about how to get customers to watch my videos and repeating the trial-and-error process.

“Ideas are something which solves multiple issues at once”

Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo said “Ideas are something that solves multiple problems at once”. I have come up with an “idea.”

The “idea” is to study Chinese on Duolingo for 10 minutes every day and then stream it on YouTube Live. Creating my own videos on YouTube requires a lot of time and effort to shoot, edit, encode, and upload them. However, when I stream on YouTube Live, I only need time to shoot and create content. Even on busy days, I can usually easily squeeze in 10 minutes a day.

For this “idea” to produce results, I need to keep doing over a long period of time. To do this, I need to make my daily video delivery operations lean. Otherwise, I will get bored and throw it away. However, 10 minutes is quite a lean operation to produce a day’s worth of content, and I thought it was worth a try.

I tried

So, in mid-June 2023, I started a YouTube Live post titled “Studying Chinese with Duolingo”.

The specifics are simple: install the Duolingo Chrome app on your Mac and stream that window using OBS. For audio, I use the microphone from my own Jabra Evolve 75 headset.

Each day, at the time I want to stream, I create a new YouTube Live stream in OBS. Once created, I tweet the URL of the stream on Twitter as follows.

Next, I press the Start button on OBS and study Chinese on Duolingo for 10 minutes, talking to myself as I see fit. 10 minutes later, I press the Stop button on OBS. This is all I need to do to get the following video.

Evaluation

As of July 27, 2023, I have been able to continue for over 40 days. I still need to continue for a while to achieve my initial motivation, but I believe that the fact that I have been able to continue for this many days is due to the fact that I have built a lean operation.

Since I study only 10 minutes a day, I have little sense that my Chinese has improved so far. Also, there are very few people who watch the videos we stream on YouTube Live. Live or even in the archives. I have the feeling that I am talking to a void, but well, I am kind of getting used to it. Figuring out how to get more people to see them is a task that remains to be done.

So far, I don’t think I’m getting very interesting results, but I have discovered that for me, it’s not that hard to keep doing this every day. I hope to continue this for a while longer and report back to you all if I find anything interesting.

Well, that’s it for now.