Many self-help books and blogs stress the importance of rewarding yourself after you’ve done something “good”. This is a grave misunderstanding and mistake!
Let’s take the example of learning: Imagine you are a student and have to regularly learn things for a certain subject, e.g. psychology. You will usually work in the same style, e.g. read a book, take notes and reread the notes. Now, for simplicity reasons let’s assume you do that every day for around 30 minutes at the same time and same place (as it is recommended: always learn in the same environment and around the same time, that primes your mind for learning!). And every time while you’re learning you reward yourself after you finished your 30 minutes, because that’s what you’ve been told. Let’s say you eat a piece of chocolate.
This is the wrong approach for two reasons: First the anticipation of the piece of chocolate will make you work more inefficient: You are not focussed on what you’re doing, because you’re not learning for the sake of learning but you learn because you get rewarded for it.
Now, there were many studies that conducted, I will just describe one of them[1]: The citizens in two Swedish villages were told that a new waste disposal facility was planned in their village. The scientists initially asked both villagers of their approval ratings for such a project, which was about equal. Then, in one village the citizens received the information that they would get a compensation if the facility was built in their village. The others were told nothing further despite a thanks for their sacrifice. A week later the citizens were asked again for their approval ratings. In the second village, where no compensation was offered the approval rating increased: the citizens accepted the necessity and felt it was ok that it was in their village. But in the first village, where the people were offered a compensation the approval rating massively decreased, decreasing around 70%. So, those that were offered nothing approved, those that were offered compensation disapproved! The first one felt the necessity and accepted their fate, but those that were offered a compensation felt that something negative would happen to them – why else would they be paid for it?
The lesson is: If you get paid for something you like it less! So, if you reward yourself for working on something the work, that you initially might have liked, suddenly looks like a burden that you need to be compensated for. What might have been fun reading (most people say they want to and like to learn!) So, in the first place, if you know you will be rewarded (and be it by yourself) for your work you less enjoy doing the work, and thus you are a) less likely to do it and b) learn less (as a positive attitude is one of the major factors for retention).
But a second point might be even more important, which does not stress the reward itself, but the timing:
A basic rule for neuroscientists goes as follows:
Neurons that fire together wire together!
That means: if neurons are activated at the same time, especially if that happens a lot, they connect and from then on work together – when one is activated the other fires too! For example naturally humans and apes have different brain areas control different fingers. Now, if two fingers are forced to always move the same and always receive the same stimuli (in the study they were sewn together [2]) the brain areas that controlled them, which were formerly separated, now merged to one area controlling both fingers at the same time.
And that is the case for all action in your brain: What happens together is linked. That is, e.g. if you always do the same actions together (e.g. listen to the same song while reading a certain book) they become associated – this is not just the case for memories – actually the neurons that are responsible for doing certain actions connect if they often are activated together (that is, if you always hear similar music while reading this type of music gets associated with reading and helps you to do so).
So, when you finish your 30 minutes that is a certain stimulus. If you now reward yourself with chocolate when you finished your session the chocolate (which is known to activate “happiness” receptors) you do the following: You reward yourself not for learning, but for stopping! So, in the future, when you keep this habit up, every time you learn you want to finish as fast as possible to get that pleasant feeling that you get only when you stop learning! The more often you do this, the less you enjoy and concentrate on the learning, as you only look forward to the end.
The trick then, if you want to reward yourself at all, is to reward yourself while doing it. E.g., instead of eating chocolate after you finish, eat it while you are still working, for example at minute 10,20 and 25. This way the feel-good effect of the reward will not be associated with finishing, but with the learning itself. That means, in the future you will like and enjoy the learning, not to end learning!
So, even if the first point didn’t convince you completely, remember to never reward yourself for finishing work, but for actually doing it. If you do so, you will maybe feel good for the moment, but the next time you work you will enjoy it less.
So, two points to take home:
- If possible avoid “bribing yourself” for doing unpleasant things. In general your reward system will make you feel good anyway after something hasslesome is out of the way, so don’t support that further.
- If you do reward yourself, do it not for finishing something, but for doing it. Also remember that e.g. the happy-effect of chocolate takes a moment to kick in, so leave at least 5 min. between the last reward and the end of your session.
Enjoy your work!
k
Related reading:
Boston Globe: Studies find reward often no motivator
Citations:
[1] The title and date of the study is in my psychology textbook which I don’t have with me right now. I will deliver the link as soon as possible.
[2] S. A. Clark, T. Allard, W. M. Jenkins and M. Merzenich. 198. Receptive fields in the body-surface map in adult cortex defined by temporally correlated inputs. Nature, 332(6163):444-445 and T. Allard, S. A. Clark, W. M. Jenkins and M. Merzenich. 1991. Reorganisation of somatosensory area 3b representations in adult owl monkeys after digital syndactyly. Journal of Neurophysiology, 66(3):1048-1058
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