Rewards vs. fuel

[mrissa]

I know that lots of people work really well with rewards as motivation, and I'm glad for them. Don't mean to argue with it. But if the reward for work done isn't working for you, may I suggest fuel as an alternate model?

Take yesterday afternoon, for example. There was a half-finished short story sitting around here, and there was a fistful of dark-chocolate-covered almonds left in the pantry. If I'd conceived of the almonds as a reward, I guarantee I would not have finished the story, and I would have had to depart for dinner grumpy, with the beginnings of a hypoglycemic headache. And I wouldn't have gotten to eat the almonds. Pessimal outcome. As things stand, I used the almonds for fuel and sat down at my desk basking in dark chocolate and almonds. And when I looked at the clock again, the story was done and there were ten minutes left until I was supposed to leave for dinner. And no headache. And I had enjoyed the almonds.

In this case the fuel is rather literal, but it doesn't always have to be that way. Sometimes a leaf-scuffling walk with the dog is fuel, or time making music, or a trip to the library, or a minute to sit and be quiet with your head on someone's shoulder. I don't do well with hostages towards my own good behavior. I do far better with trust expressed in my own better nature. "I know you're going to work hard on this story, so here are some chocolate-covered almonds to help you along," sort of thing. "Here's a nice cup of tea to make the revisions go smoothly." "Stretch your legs and shoulders out in the nice cool air -- you'll want them loose if you're going to really sit down and hammer out some rough draft here." Like that.

If you're taking a 4-year-old on an airplane, she might behave herself if you promise her a new puzzle and a new coloring book afterwards if she does, but your odds are better if you give her the puzzle and the coloring book to help her be good on the plane in the first place. The part of the brain that makes stories come out is not a preschooler, but some days the reactions are not as dissimilar as one might hope.

Comments

[panjianlien.livejournal.com]

Oh man, yes. I have *never* done well on the reward-later-effort-now plan.

[bradipo.livejournal.com]

I, too, do better if I treat my brain like a 4-year-old being dragged onto an airplane.

Happily, there's no rule against giving brains rewards for good work, as well as fueling them up for it. It may not help much in producing more good work, but I enjoy them.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

One of my friends decided she would take me to the Exotic Feline Rescue Center as my cookie for finishing Midnight Never Come. I went along with this plan quite happily, but even if I hadn't had a contract to fulfill, I don't think that would have been a motivating force in me finishing the book. Like you, I don't seem to be reward-driven.

Fuel-driven? Sometimes. Deadline- and quota-driven? Certainly.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And the thing about quotas -- and about deadlines -- is that they rely on you to believe, somewhere deep down, that this thing you're doing is a good thing to do.

Which I do, generally. So that works quite often.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

This is quite true.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

There are very few scales, short of the raw biochemistry of "here, eat some raw fish now and it will make your brain better able to work this evening" and the like, at which fuel works for me, because any other sort of plausible maybe-reward is going to serve as a distraction from the kinds of focus I need to do anything that's difficult or unpleasant; a reward afterwards works a lot better for me. *sigh* I am getting a lot better at not always deferring every possible gratification, but it's still not an easy thing for me.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

As I said, I don't mean to mess with the reward system for the people for whom it works.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

This is just as true of rewards as of fuels -- and notice that going out for a walk was in the list. Not every post has to cover every side of every topic.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

All right, all right. Thanks, Will.

[kythiaranos.livejournal.com]

Well said. I'm getting to the point where I only have two writing rules: Don't be boring in the final draft, and Do what works.

Where I messed up a lot as a beginner was in thinking that if method X worked for writer Y, or even if method X worked for me in any given week, that I had to stick with that way of doing things until death. But as it turned out, I need to be more flexible than that. Otherwise, the creative preschooler in me gets cranky, and one cranky preschooler in the house is enough.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah: Don't be boring. Do what works. Neither of those things is static.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

this post made me think. we're very ingrained in the "don't get your REWARD before your TASK is DONE!" culture. and i know so many people who just live and die by the task then reward system and it really doesn't work for them (well, OK, i'm thinking of one or two people). a new way of thinking about it might really help. is it OK if i copy and paste a little of this onto a text BBS?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Sure; you know about attribution and all that, so I trust you to quote wherever.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

rereading it, i come to the conclusion that trust in your own good behavior vs. holding it hostage with the promise of a treat is a very adult way to look at things. notwithstanding your 4-year-old on the plane example, which fits in in a different way. but just knowing you WILL finish the task you need to, and your job now is to optimise that, rather than "how can i bribe myself to actually finish this at all?"

my brain isn't making complete sentences right now, but you get the idear.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I do indeed. And yes, I think part of this stems from the fact that my parents were willing to assume maturity of me until/unless I proved them wrong, when I was an adolescent, rather than assuming that I was immature and needed to be patronized.

[seajules]

This is definitely truth for my brain. I've started getting a lot more accomplished since I switched to a "fuel" mindset, since the things I kept holding off as rewards were, often, things that would feed the apparatus that produces the words, and without the fuel, the apparatus didn't go.

Of course, sometimes the words themselves are both the fuel and the reward. Since other people's words are large components of my fuel sometimes, this is not surprising.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. Putting off reading a really good book until you've finished some writing goal is sometimes very counterproductive. Ditto listening to good music, etc. etc. etc.

I think that it may be useful or healthy for people to think of culinary art forms as well -- help us to be mindful of those senses and not just automatically put something into our mouths.

[seajules]

Since I produce far better when listening to music than not, that one especially would work badly as a "reward."

For most of my life, I've referred to my mental space as "brainstew," and stew is a thing into which you have to put ingredients if you expect to get anything out of it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Maybe we all need to be mindful of entropy!

[seajules]

Only if it gets me words. *G*

[ellarien]

I fueled my writing efforts earlier this year with chocolate-covered espresso beans. The deal was, I could eat them -- in moderation -- when I was sitting down to write, or after I'd written a reasonable amount, but not otherwise. It worked out pretty well, until the editing of other people's words ate my brain.

(Nearly done with that. Writing next week, maybe.)

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

I was amused by this, because when I was a kid and whined during a walk or a shopping tour, my mom used to give me a sweet or lozenge to keep me going, and she always called them "bensin" which is the Swedish word for gasolene/fuel. :-)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, this is a false cognate in English: my uncle from Stockholm was asking us this summer what the price of benzene was, and we had to stop and sort out what he meant.

[thorintatge.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the insight. I think I'm actually heading in the opposite direction--from fuel-motivation to reward-motivation, and it's working pretty well. But I hadn't thought of it in those terms until now.