Year 2: Thought 7: Self Reward

Elephant in the room: Yes even in year 2 I have once again fallen off the wagon after 6 weeks.  Oh well.  Back on the horse (to change metaphors mid-stream).

So, sometimes I do things I don't want to do.  Then afterwards I feel a strong desire to give myself a treat.  Whether it is doing something I wouldn't normally do or buying myself something with money that isn't in the budget for that thing these treats are generally not trivial things.

For instance tonight I had to go back out to the store to get something that I forgot to get the first time.  It was irritating and not something I wanted to do but it was necessary due to a commitment for the next day.  I was at the store getting said thing when I thought "I should get a treat for going back out"!  Now I was thinking of getting a Pepsi.  I rarely buy soft drinks and most often I have to settle for Coke products even though I prefer Pepsi products.  My office has free Coke drinks so it feels like a waste to spend money getting soft drinks when I can get them for free.  (As an aside I'm drinking fewer soft drinks now because it turns out drinking lots of them is bad for you.)  Back to my narrative my rational brain kicked in and said that drinking a 20 oz caffeinated beverage at 10 pm was perhaps not a smart thing to do.  I decided to not get the Pepsi.

Then a few seconds later my brain produced another thought.  Why in the world did I think of rewarding myself?  Does driving out in the rain (which I admit I do hate) to get garbage bags really warrant a reward?  If I had a child who did that would I reward them?  Now again in the large scheme of things a Pepsi is not a large reward.  They are $1.69 for a 20 oz drink.  But if I give myself that kind of reward often enough it would start to add up.  Cost isn't even really the point.  I think that constantly rewarding myself for doing menial tasks that meet the bottom level of responsibility is a bad idea.  It puts me in a mindset where doing what I am supposed to do is "being good".

That isn't a mindset that I want my children to have and it isn't a mindset I want myself to have.  Don't get me wrong, rewarding good behavior is important.  I just think that the bar needs to be set higher for the definition of good behavior.  It is too easy to look for any excuse to treat myself.  I am currently reading a book that talks a lot of incentives and behavior (Nurture Shock).  Looking at it from an objective point of view it is hard to not think of myself as soft.  I need a lot of positive reinforcement.  While I can persevere I will probably complain quite a bit.

I find the more I over reward myself in certain areas of life the less resolve I tend to have to continue on in other.  Of course sometimes getting burned out in one area (specifically work lately) of life leads to other parts having less resolve too.  That doesn't feel entirely fair as it seems like one of those two things shouldn't be true.  I think that what I'm working on now (a schedule of two 'burdensome' tasks that require perseverance a day) is ideal.  It seems to have worked for me in the past, but once I start to slide it tends to tumble down quickly.  The key is having at least one time per day where I take stock of what 'productive' things I have done that day and making sure that I apply my force of will to accomplishing something.

We'll see if that translates to more frequent blog postings.  One of the nice things about this blog is that it does serve as an excellent barometer of my force of will.  Once it starts slipping I rarely post to the blog anymore.