"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about." - Einstein

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Ryan has decided to learn Spanish. He downloads Michel Thomas's tapes, buys a book on language learning , signs up for Duolingo, installs Anki, and gets to work.

In the beginning, he's flying. He learns hundreds of words, gets the basic grammatical structures down, he even signs up for iTalki and has some conversations with natives. He's on top of the world, confident that he'll be speaking fluently with his Latin American friends in no time.