Reward Effects

• The common “reward” or “carrot” effect of “if you do task A, which you don’t want to do, you may do B, which you do want to do.”
• Sometimes, even with that reward dangling, I don’t feel like starting Task A.
• In that case, keeping it dangling doesn’t mean that you’ll be “more motivated to do Task A over time”.
• Rather, the stress of “not being able to do B” builds up.
• The situation needs to change in some way.
  • Try a different location.
  • Do task C, which is neither A nor B.

Strategies for doing Task C. Think about it specifically, if you study for an exam, you can play games, but the wind of cleaning up the bookshelf. A and C should be as close to the task as possible

• I hear they have a lot in common in their conduct.
• Or that doing C makes A easier. For example, before “solving a new problem in the problem book,” “check if you can solve the problem you did yesterday.” Relatively easy since I saw the problem once. The goal is to see if you can solve it, so you don’t have to try if you can’t. This makes it significantly less psychologically costly than solving a new problem. But as an action, it’s pretty close, as I’m at my desk solving problems.

TaskManagement

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