When you’re trying to encourage yourself to do something that’s not immediately appealing – something like chores or work that you know you have to do – it can be helpful to have a system in place that encourages you. Sometimes you won’t have much trouble motivating yourself to get this kind of work done, but other times you simply won’t have the energy. That’s when these reward systems will come in handy.

If you’re new to it, though, what makes a good reward system? How can you be sure that it’s going to help at all? Well, following some simple guidance might help you to find your motivation.

Activities You Enjoy

It’s actually a very simple concept. You find things that you enjoy – such as playing games, or even something like visiting the online pokies that you might feel is even more of an indulgence, playing anything from slots to blackjack – and you promise yourself that you’ll allow yourself a certain amount of time with that activity after you get whatever you need to do done. Of course, this can be stretched to fit the occasion. If you have multiple chores to do in an effort to clean the whole house, then you might find that half an hour of relaxing after every hour or two of cleaning is the right way to balance the scales.

That being said, sometimes these systems might hold you back as they could prevent your productivity from gaining momentum, which often makes doing more work easier the more you do. 

The Right Distribution

So, it might be about fine-tuning the balance in order to get the most out of it. For example, while the suggestion earlier was half an hour of relaxation for every hour or two of work, you might find that once you actually start working, these breaks become too frequent. Instead, you might prefer to give yourself one or two breaks to look forward to – with one even being placed at the end. This also depends on what the activity actually is. Something like quickly visiting an online casino, as mentioned previously, might be something quick that you can jump in and out of in a few minutes. If you’re going for a long walk to blow off steam, though, doing so regularly might not make sense or allow you enough time to work.

Discipline

This is what this whole process is about achieving, but paradoxically enough, it’s not something that can even get off the ground without enough discipline of your own to enforce it. It’s all well and good to have a reward system in place, but if you decide that you don’t want to follow it and just end up spending more time with the hobbies you enjoy instead, then the whole thing is pointless. The trick is about self-control, as this can not only actually encourage you to do the work or chores that you need to do in the first place, but it can help to make those moments of downtime more enjoyable when they arise.