Rewarding yourself?

[Zulu]

I'm curious what you guys think, about giving yourself rewards for accomplishing a task.

Personally, I tend to dislike the idea. Cognitively, I think it re-emphasizes the fact that "this sucks, so I gotta do something fun after". It strikes me as a better idea to learn to be motivated and enjoy what you're doing.

Paul

[Sunnybayes]

Yea. Same. If you are in the process of being creative then you are having fun and highly motivated. Society values new things. Therefore you will be having fun and making money if you are being creative.

[Shamou]

Right on Zulu... unless you enjoy what you are doing... you can't do the best that you could... the task is its own reward...

.

[Freelancer]

Yeah I agree scheduling rewards for yourself doesn't seem so productive.

I find that unexpected rewards do work miracles though.

[Sunnybayes]

Originally Posted by Zulu

I'm curious what you guys think, about giving yourself rewards for accomplishing a task.

Personally, I tend to dislike the idea. Cognitively, I think it re-emphasizes the fact that "this sucks, so I gotta do something fun after". It strikes me as a better idea to learn to be motivated and enjoy what you're doing.

Paul

Just wanted to add that sometimes you can't do stuff that you want to do. Sometimes you have to pay the bills, sometimes you have to make do with a temporary job until you can figure out how to escape.

If you keep on plugging through the bad stuff then you will just unmotivate yourself. Therefore you need to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The reason that you go through the bad stuff is so that you can get yourself to the point where you can do the stuff that you do like.

As I've stated in my framework, you can only be happy with your work if you can spend large chunks of time working on being creative on one thing. That way you can get passionate on your work. This way you don't have to go through draining transitions. Like what Steve does when he works on writing his blog. Take a look at his post on his experience on being creative. He almost makes it seem like being creative is the best thing that could ever happen to you.

Here's Steve's
My Experience of Creativity

The act of creating something, whether it be an article, a poem, a website, a computer program, or some other creative human expression, is one of my most cherished activities.