Do you struggle to stay motivated while working toward your goals? Do you find it difficult to maintain long-term habits?
Small rewards can be a powerful tool for fueling motivation and encouraging consistent achievement. By focusing on incremental progress rather than grand pay-offs, you can cultivate a sense of appreciation for the process of change itself.
Keep reading to discover how you can effectively integrate small rewards into your routine and transform your approach to personal growth.
The Power of Small Rewards
Maurer says that you’ll find it easier to consistently practice his other strategies if you use small rewards to fuel your motivation. He emphasizes that small rewards are more effective than large ones: Large rewards often spark intense pressure to do something really impressive to earn them. This pressure can misdirect your motivation, driving you to focus solely on earning the reward. As a result, once you have the reward, you don’t feel motivated to keep going.
On the other hand, small rewards don’t induce the pressure associated with grand pay-offs. Rather, they serve as tokens of recognition that validate your ongoing efforts and celebrate your progress. As such, they encourage you to engage in and appreciate the process of change—which motivates you to keep taking action.
For example, if you want to lose weight and set a large reward, like a vacation, for shedding 10 pounds, you might focus more on the vacation than on establishing healthy eating habits—which may lead you to adopt unhealthy measures such as crash dieting. As a result, once your trip’s over, you won’t have healthy eating habits to fall back on. However, if you reward yourself with something small, such as an extra five minutes of relaxation time, for each healthy choice you make, you’ll reinforce the process itself. This will help you establish and maintain long-term habits that support your goal.
| Emphasize Processes Over Results When Maurer says that large rewards may misdirect your motivation, he’s likely referring to the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Some experts believe that all behavior is driven by the need to fulfill one of two motivation types: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation comes from your internal self—you take action because you find it rewarding (for example, you exercise because it makes you feel good and you get a chance to enjoy relaxation time). Extrinsic motivation comes from your environment—you take action because you receive an external reward for doing it (for example, you exercise only so you can go on vacation). Although rewards of all sizes are technically extrinsic, smaller rewards for incremental progress foster intrinsic motivation by encouraging you to appreciate the process of change itself. In line with this reasoning, James Clear (Atomic Habits) argues against setting (and rewarding) big goals and argues for creating (and rewarding) processes that lead to your desired result. Clear believes that goal-setting doesn’t encourage long-term change: You only change enough to meet the goal and then stop. On the other hand, emphasizing and rewarding the process over the outcome, as Maurer suggests, has three benefits: • Big goals often take a long time to achieve, whereas improving your processes provides immediate gratification and feedback. • Goals are temporary—if you achieve yours, you might feel like there’s nothing left to do. Focusing on processes gives you ongoing challenges and reinforcement. • Goals can limit your possible paths forward. Instead of following your strengths and successes wherever they take you, you might fixate on the original goal (losing 10 pounds) and miss other opportunities (such as adopting health-enhancing habits). |
Integrate Rewards Into Your Routine
Maurer offers four suggestions for integrating small rewards into your routine:
1) Reward your efforts and your results to stay invested in the process of working toward your goal. For example, if you want to write a book, reward yourself each time you complete a writing session, as well as each time you complete a chapter. (Shortform note: Robbins (Awaken the Giant Within) adds that rewarding yourself immediately after you take action creates a pleasurable association with the action itself, motivating you to continue taking that action.)
2) Keep rewards quick and simple so that you can immediately reward yourself after each step, which will reinforce the connection between the action and the positive feedback. For example, take a five-minute break or have a small treat after you complete the action. (Shortform note: Clear (Atomic Habits) suggests an approach for implementing quick and simple rewards: Schedule your steps in between activities you already find rewarding. By doing so, you’ll effortlessly integrate the reward process into your existing routine.)
3) Ensure the rewards align with your goal. For example, if you aim to save money, rewarding your prudent spending with a lavish shopping spree would be counterproductive. On the other hand, spending an evening with a favorite book or movie would support your efforts. (Shortform note: While Maurer’s advice may seem obvious, many people engage in counterproductive behaviors, otherwise known as self-sabotage. Positive psychology research indicates that people may self-sabotage when they get close to achieving something they want due to their fear of failure.)
4) Personalize the rewards to motivate others to change. For example, if you want to reward your children for keeping their bedrooms clean, you’re more likely to encourage them to continue by thinking about what makes them feel appreciated, such as earning extra playtime. (Shortform note: One way to meaningfully personalize rewards for others is to consider their love language. Gary Chapman (The 5 Love Languages) explains that people understand and express affection and appreciation in one of five ways (words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, acts of service, and physical touch)—and they need to receive appreciation in their own “love language” to truly feel it.)
