If my profile is set to private am I still eligible?

yes , still eligible

another question: could I study a few seconds for 23 days and do a crazy study session on the last two?

@wb, do you want to pull a 48 hour Skritter lock in marathon?

I wonder what the highest daily amount studied is...?

It would be interesting to run a marathon challenge, like an 8 or 10 hour session or something. Of course that would need to be a once in a year thing otherwise you'd have to say goodbye to your social life. It probably wouldn't be very healthy or even efficient in terms of learning, but it would be fun.

Or maybe I have a weird definition of fun...

Yeah, wb, we're just going to look at average time. You could even miss days entirely and still make up for them later, although I wouldn't recommend it.

The one-day record is something like 10 or 11 hours (by the Skritter clock), by someone who was studying for HSK and pulled something like 44 hours in that one week.

I don't think we'll go for an extreme one-day study challenge, as that would be like to mess up your studying for weeks to come with all the new words added. I personally can't Skritter for anywhere near that long before my brain is fried.

Yeah aren't there limits as in how much one person can actually learn in a day?

@followtheflow that's a very interesting question. I'd like to see some research on it if anybody has seen anything relevant.

My personal impression is that there is a diminishing returns effect as I get tired. I also think it's very important to get enough sleep to consolidate memories, so at some point it might be more efficient to stop studying and take a nap. But I'd love to see some science on this.

James