The power of rewards
That gold star on your homework or treating yourself to a fancy dinner out after completing a particularly arduous work project—rewards can be seen as a nice-to-have when accomplishing something. Should we only luxuriate in the satisfaction of the task itself? Are rewards frivolous and indulgent? You’ll be happy to learn there’s science to back up that rewarding yourself is a good habit to get into.
Rewards are essentially positive reinforcement
Dog owners and parents are familiar with positive reinforcement, which is essentially pairing a desirable or pleasant stimulus after a behavior. Examples include, a parent giving their child an allowance after doing chores or a manager praising her employee after exceeding her sales targets. There’s a biological component to this connection, with dopamine playing a huge role in reward reinforcement. Dopamine is that feel-good brain chemical that we crave, which is why you’ll likely continue a behavior that results in a release of it. Social media beautifully illustrates this dopamine/reward cycle and why we’re all so addicted to it.
Why mini-successes are worth celebrating too
Last month I completed the draft of my novel (86K yay!) and one of the first questions a writer friend asked me was, “How are you going to reward yourself?” Although I’m not one to shy away from rewards, part of me felt a bit guilty about treating myself with something since it wasn’t like I had gotten an agent or made the New York Times bestseller list. Then I realized how much time and effort went into writing my draft, and decided to take the day off from all writing projects and visit this Nordic spa I’d been wanting to check out for the past year (definitely worth it).
It’s not just the “big” events that deserve celebrating, those mini milestones warrant pick-me-ups too. Even along the way, I found small ways to reward myself with the daily grind of writing. For example after a 45-min writing stretch I would reward myself with a 10-minute break on social media without feeling guilty that I was wasting time.
Effectively reward yourself
While it’s a good idea to continually reward yourself to perpetuate behaviors you want to keep eliciting, there are ways to not let your rewards slow down your progress and find rewards that actually motivate you.
Consider the effort you put in. Rewarding myself with a trip to the spa after writing a chapter isn’t really proportional to the effort I put into the task. It made much more sense to reward myself after completing the entire draft, which took me months to complete.
Don’t let it cancel your efforts. Just like you probably wouldn’t reward yourself with a pint of ice cream after losing a pound, if I rewarded myself with an hour of Netflix for every hour of writing, it kind of negates the effort.
Non-materialistic rewards. It’s pretty easy to come up with material rewards for yourself, but there are many free rewards you can give yourself such as: a extra hour of sleep, free time on social media, or something experiential like visiting an art gallery when it's free for guests.
Pick a reward that you value. It goes without saying that you need to pick a reward that you can appreciate and enjoy. If it doesn’t entice you then it’s probably not a good choice.
