One of the most common mistakes we make in trying to motivate ourselves is to reward ourselves before we have earned that reward. Buying that new treadmill isn’t going to encourage you to run, it is going to make you feel guilty about not using it.
\nIn this video, I talk about why it is a much better idea to work at something new first, and reward yourself later, rather than the other way around.<\/p>\n
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Full transcription below:<\/strong><\/p>\n John<\/b>:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hey, John Sonmez from simpleprogrammer.com and let me see if this story connects with you.\u00a0 Have you ever set out to do something?\u00a0 Let\u2019s say you\u2019re going to learn to play guitar and the very first thing you do is you go out and you buy a brand new guitar so that\u2019s going to motivate you to play guitar.\u00a0 Or maybe you\u2019re going to start running so you go and you buy this brand new expensive treadmill and of course you\u2019re going to definitely start running now because you\u2019ve got this treadmill that you spent a lot of money on or you bought this expensive gym membership or a personal trainer so now you\u2019re really going to get in shape.\u00a0 Maybe you\u2019ve bought all this expensive health food or maybe you\u2019ve bought this brand new computer so now you\u2019re going to finally write your book.\u00a0 Does that ever work out for you?<\/p>\n If you\u2019re like most people that doesn\u2019t work out for you.\u00a0 In fact, doing that actually sets you up for failure.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what I\u2019m talking about.\u00a0 What we tend to want to do is we want to tend to reward ourselves before we actually do the thing that\u2019s worthy of the reward.\u00a0 For example, a lot of people that want to play guitar go out and buy an expensive guitar as a present for themselves to encourage them to learn to play guitar.\u00a0 what ends up happening is those people end up being more likely to not learn how to play guitar.\u00a0 Same thing happens when you buy that treadmill. \u00a0You think in your mind that by buying this expensive treadmill it\u2019s going to encourage you to actually work out and start running or start walking and what ends up happening is you end up feeling guilty about not using this thing that you spent so much money on.\u00a0 That guilt makes you feel bad about yourself which makes you not actually do the activity.<\/p>\n What ends up happening is you set yourself up for failure.\u00a0 This is something that I\u2019ve discovered multiple times in my life because I\u2019ve made this mistake several different times but then I started to figure out that there\u2019s a better way to do this same thing.\u00a0 If you want to motivate yourself in order to accomplish something, to do something new.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say that it\u2019s maybe learning a new programming language or running or even playing guitar something like that.\u00a0 It\u2019s better, it\u2019s so much better if what you do instead of buying that present at first for you to encourage you or guilt you into doing that activity is that you set it as a goal that you\u2019re going to earn.<\/p>\n I was just talking with a friend of mine, Derick Bailey about podcasting and this subject came up.\u00a0 He was talking about how when you start a podcast maybe you start with some crappy equipment, just with a microphone and your speaker or just a cheap microphone.\u00a0 Then later you reward yourself with a better microphone or better audio equipment.\u00a0 You can do the same thing with guitar or running.<\/p>\n The idea behind this is that what\u2019s going to happen is that you\u2019re going to become motivated by wanting to achieve the goal so that you can get the reward.\u00a0 If you give yourself the reward ahead of time you\u2019re no longer motivated.<\/p>\n Another good example of this would be running shoes.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say you want to start running.\u00a0 A lot of people will go to the running store, buy some expensive running shoes and then they won\u2019t actually use them.\u00a0 Another approach that you can take instead if you wanted to use this principle is that you could say, \u201cHey, look, if I run my 3 days a week that I\u2019m promising myself and I can keep that up for 3 months worth of time then I can go to the store and reward myself by buying $150 running shoes\u201d or whatever it is.\u00a0 You can do the same thing with a lot of different areas in your life and you\u2019ll find that you\u2019ll be a lot more successful doing things that way.<\/p>\n It seems really counterintuitive but I can tell you from many times of doing this the opposite way of buying expensive equipment that I never use that that method doesn\u2019t work.\u00a0 It\u2019s much better to reward yourself for doing a good job, for pursuing some new activity that you want to do other than giving yourself the reward ahead of time.<\/p>\n Well, hopefully this video has been helpful to you.\u00a0 if you\u2019re trying to learn something new, if you\u2019re trying to do something new remember that the best way to do it is to set yourself up some kind of schedule, some kind of reward that you\u2019re going to get.\u00a0 Don\u2019t do what everyone else does which is wrong which is reward yourself first because you\u2019ll just end up feeling guilty and you\u2019ll have a lot less chance of success.<\/p>\n Hey, don\u2019t forget to check my website out at simpleprogrammer.com and if you liked this video, if you like to see more types of videos like this subscribe to my channel.\u00a0 Take care and have a great week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the most common mistakes we make in trying to motivate ourselves is to reward ourselves before we have earned that reward. Buying that new treadmill isn’t going to encourage you to run, it is going to make you feel guilty about not using it. In this video, I talk about why it is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11062,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[162229169],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-youtube"],"yoast_head":"\n