H·08
Habits & Behaviour
The Reward Must Be Now
Persistence is predicted by how much you enjoy the activity, not by how much you value the outcome.
- Evidence
- solid
- Topic
- Habits
- Things to do
- 3
- Read
- 1 min
solidHow strong is the evidence?
Good evidence behind it, but fewer people have checked it independently.
- Woolley & Fishbach, Personality & Social Psych Bulletin, 2016/2017
Check it yourself: find this on Google Scholar
Why it works
Delayed rewards motivate the choosing, immediate rewards motivate the continuing. Health in 20 years cannot compete with comfort in 20 seconds.
What to do about it
- Engineer one immediate pleasure into the activity itself: good coffee, the right music, a better tool, a nicer notebook.
- Ask “how do I make this more enjoyable” before “how do I get more disciplined”.
- Mark completion physically — cross it off, move the marker. The tiny hit is the point.
Where people go wrong
Rewarding yourself afterwards with the thing the habit is meant to reduce.
Read next
- Temptation BundlingChain the thing you should do to the thing you want to do, and let the want carry both.solid
- The Fresh Start EffectPeople act on aspirations after a temporal landmark — a Monday, a birthday, a first of the month, a new job.solid
- Small Wins Run the DayThe strongest driver of a good working day is visible progress in meaningful work — ahead of recognition, incentives and clear goals.shaky
- Self-Criticism Is Not MotivationSelf-compassion after a failure produces more subsequent effort and improvement than self-criticism does.solid