If you get asked to do something that would take place down the road (say you get asked to speak at a conference that's a year away) and you wouldn't want to do it if it were taking place next week, then don't do it. This advice has helped me evaluate the opportunities that I truly want to dedicate my time to and those that I don't.

Luis von Ahn

Categorized in : Years Next Week Opportunity

Before the Internet, coordinating more than 100,000 people, let alone paying them, was essentially impossible. But now with the Internet, I've just shown you a project where we've gotten 750 million people to help us digitize human knowledge.

Luis von Ahn

technology motivation inspiration

The question that motivates my research is, if we can put a man on the Moon with 100,000 [people], what can we do with 100 million?

Luis von Ahn

technology moon men

People are good at figuring out what's attractive, and computers are good at quickly searching and finding. You put them together, and bang!

Luis von Ahn

bangs together people

I co-founded Duolingo with the mission of bringing free language education to the world.

Luis von Ahn

missions language world

[Captchas] are not only annoying, but they kill 10 seconds of your time.

Luis von Ahn

seconds annoying

Every time you buy tickets on Ticketmaster, you help to digitize a book.

Luis von Ahn

tickets technology book

The current business model for language education is the student pays — in particular, the student pays Rosetta Stone $500. The problem with this business model is that 95 percent of the world’s population doesn’t have $500.

Luis von Ahn

population pay world

Together with my advisor, Manuel Blum, I co-invented CAPTCHAs, or computer-generated tests that humans are routinely able to pass but that computers have not mastered (they are the squiggly computer letters that are prevalent across the web).

Luis von Ahn

tests together letters

My ultimate research goal is to transform our human existence to just eating, sleeping, drinking, playing - nevermind.

Luis von Ahn

goal drinking sleep

I watch a lot of TV. That's how I spend most of my time outside of work. If I had more time, I would fill it 100 percent with watching TV.

Luis von Ahn

watching-tv tvs watches

In 2011, after spending a couple of years working at Google, I decided that I wanted to dedicate myself to helping to transform education. I was particularly inspired by my upbringing in Guatemala, a poor country where high-quality educational opportunities are limited to those who have money.

Luis von Ahn

educational couple country

Because education is such a broad area, I chose to focus on language learning.

Luis von Ahn

broads focus language

One fact we're particularly proud of is that there are more people learning languages on Duolingo in the US than there are people learning languages in the entire US public school system.

Luis von Ahn

proud people school

It's hard to think of a time when I'm not working, but when that is the case, I like to travel and eat good food.

Luis von Ahn

good-food cases thinking

I am always able to keep a laser focus on one thing at a time without getting distracted. It helps that I try to break everything I do into small, achievable tasks.

Luis von Ahn

able focus trying

I worked on a number of projects that were used by millions of people and that also served as inspiration to what we now call "crowd-sourcing."

Luis von Ahn

inspiration numbers people

I am an early riser, and always wake up between 5 and 6am.

Luis von Ahn

wake-up

I finished reading High Output Management by Andrew Grove, which had such valuable insights for leaders that I've been forcing managers at Duolingo to read the book.

Luis von Ahn

leader reading book

I usually make to-do lists with timelines, and pen and paper does the trick for me.

Luis von Ahn

lists paper doe

This sounds strange to many people, but I work out for exactly 16 minutes every day, and do so at maximum speed by running 2.5 miles. This keeps me healthy without taking up too much time so I can stay focused on other things. It's one of the most efficient things I do each day.

Luis von Ahn

work-out running people