When I was in 5th grade our teacher Ms. Duncan had a big chart with the name of everybody in the class on it. Whenever you finished reading a book you got to put a shiny metallic star in the column with your name. If you finished 30 books you got ice cream. The ice cream was nice but the really exciting part of the system was that with every book you read, you could choose what color star to reward with yourself with. Would you choose a flashy red, or perhaps silver or green, or the ever-popular gold?
Years later, as an adult I find that rewarding yourself for a job well-done can still be a simple but powerful motivator. On some level we never really grow out of wanting to earn a gold star, to be given a pat on the back and a little spritz of dopamine. You can make use of this simple mechanism to motivate yourself by setting up a reward system.
What you choose should for a reward depends on what you’re into. Let’s use donuts as an example. What I like to do is pick something a little bit decadent (and what’s more decadent than a doughnut?) and use it as a weekly reward. For instance, right now I have the goal of writing 1,000 words a day, 5 days a week. On weeks when I hit my goal, I have earned a donut (or some weeks a Café Au Lait, I like to mix it up.) My favorite is apple fritters washed down with a strong black coffee. It isn’t as though the donut itself is really that motivating—it’s more that it is an acknowledgement to myself of a job well done. I suppose a psychologist might say my inner adult (who wants to get the work done) is rewarding my inner child (who just wants to play) for concentrating long enough to get the work done. If you balance taking care of the needs and wants of your inner child and those of your inner adult they can work together.
For me, eating a donut every single day would be way too much, and probably lead to health problems or at least gaining several pounds if nothing else. So, the one a week deal is perfect. (You have to follow through and NOT eat a donut if you fail to hit your goal, of course.) You want the reward to feel special, it can’t be something that you are already doing. The reward can be whatever feels like a treat for you: buy yourself a record, sleep in, order takeout, you get the picture. It could be as simple as taking a walk when you finish your tasks for the day. Or you can come up with a fancy and complex system. One year, my wife and I wanted to make sure we had an active summer outdoors. We came up with a complex reward system that we tracked on the fridge—going for a bike ride was worth a point, going hiking was 2 points, and camping was 3 points and so on. At the end of the summer if we earned 100 points, we would take ourselves out for dinner at our favorite fancy restaurant. We earned the dinner—but more importantly we had an incredibly active summer because we were paying attention and keeping score. The daily tracking of activities made us twice as likely to get up and get outside and enjoy each summer day. Personally, I enjoy the process of tracking my weekly progress towards a goal, but you can keep it super simple as well.
A donut is a very straight forward reward: it translates directly into dopamine for your biological system immediately via sugar. That is what makes a treat like a donut, cookie or ice cream so rewarding, it’s talking to your monkey brain/animal body in a very simple language that it understands. It is a little decadent —but decadence in moderation is okay! If you want to set up a daily reward you may think about making it more activity based rather than sugar based.
You can really get a lot of mileage out of training your own Pavlovian response if you link the reward and the work really closely through repetition. Another easy way to reward yourself—besides junk food is jumping down your favorite internet rabbit hole, be it Youtube, Tik Tok, Twitter etc. Or playing a video game or some mindless app. Of course, these are only going to feel like rewards if you don’t use them at other times. And, pretty much every app is about as potentially as addictive and bad for you as eating too many donuts. So, be careful with this method, but like the desert method it can work just fine in moderation. For example, I have trained myself to only look at Tik Tok in between strength training reps. After doing a set of squats I’ll watch a funny Tiktok video and then it’s time for the next set. With the exception of road trips, I pretty much only listen to podcasts while I’m doing my daily house chores, washing the dishes, doing the laundry etc. Unless I’m working out—no Tik Tok. Unless I’m doing house chores no podcasts. This links up WORK = REWARD deep within the wiring of the brain so that on a biochemical, dopamine craving level I’m hankering to work out and clean the house, so I can get in my internet vegging out time.
Both the internet fix and the sugar fix are effectively ways of bribing yourself. And they work! Of course, the really next level ultimate trick is if you can bribe yourself with something that’s actually healthy. As a reward for doing the task of the day if you can reward yourself with an activity like going for a bike ride, doing yoga, calling a friend, going dancing, taking a hike, that sort of thing—that’s probably the ultimate gold star, because the treat itself is something good for you, so the more you reward yourself the better! The recipe for this is to schedule something fun to do after you get your work done. Work hard, play hard. Rinse, repeat.