There's a J In there… Somewhere!

When I set this 100 day challenge as part of the program on the weekend, we were told to set a reward & punishment. A reward for achieving the challenge and a punishment if we don’t.

I set the challenge, but I haven’t set a reward or punishment.

Why?

Because a reward and punishment doesn’t motivate me.

With a reward, my brain goes ‘why wait for 100 days, you can do/buy xyz at any time’, the other thoughts happening is ‘in 100 days, I may not want xyz!’

With a punishment, well, I punish myself enough in day to day life that the thought of a punishment, especially something self imposed, doesn’t spur me to go forward.

Instead, I need other things to keep me going.

On the first day, I asked for help with ideas for topics and to see that people are reading. That is more likely to spur me on to keep going. It’s that dopamine hit that people are reading posts rather than simply having a number to reach for some reward that is quite arbitrary.

This is something that I used to get confused by. When others around were excited by rewards for various programs, I’d just sit there and shrug, either because the reward wasn’t something at appealed to me, or something that I thought wouldn’t be achievable to me so the reward made no difference to me. I also am used to starting something and not finishing, so various punishments are things I shrug off.

I remember my year 8 Japanese class. The teacher ‘inspired’ us to learn by threatening to hit us, and to fail us if we didn’t get 100% on tests. Instead of it helping me to learn, this is the only class where I cheated in order to get the results. So adding a punishment doesn’t inspire me to keep going.

This is true for many neurodivergent people. For me, the journey is the reward. One reason I have so many unfinished stories that haven’t been published is that so much is about the journey, not necessarily the reward of having a published book.

If reward and punishment doesn’t motivate you, think about what does, and be creative about the strategies that you put in place to motivate you.