Motivation vs Reward [NOT 10/8/22]

10/8/22 brightersideoflife 11

Hi, friends!

How do you get yourself to do tasks you don’t want to? Do you go traight at it and get it done so that it’s over? Are you a reward person, where you tell yourself once it’s done you can ____?

I vacillate between the two perspectives. I have a task this week that I emotionally just am not ready for but it has to be done and I will probably reward myself with ice cream or tacos or something.

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11 Comments

  1. It’s like how I do any distasteful task. I usually do it first and get it over with.

    In the younger dumber past I’d leave the tasks I don’t like till the end like liver or mushrooms, but I always ended the meal with the taste of liver or mushrooms in my mouth so I learned it is best to deal with the awful stuff first.

    At work… well.

    In the past I’ve just shut up and followed orders like a good soldier while muttering under my breath how stupid this particular task is.

    Mentally I won’t own it.  I’ll do the tasks asked of me, but I refuse to have anything to do with it or actively participate.  I won’t take any credit for it (even if it turns out well… but that hasn’t happened often.)  I usually deferred to the initiators.

    As I’ve mentioned once before, only one time in my career where I ended up not only being the Cassandra (warning words coming back to haunt the higher ups) but I was also their Ozymandias (look upon my works and despair!) I didn’t win any friends, but I was so pissed over this decision for three years that during my presentation, I failed to hide my joy at blowing up their project with my more sensible/easier to use solution which I had proposed 3 years before instead of the clusterfuck that ended up costing the company 100 million.

    My boss told me I enjoyed doing this too much.  Well, yeah.

  2. I make a to do list every night for the following day. And after coffee and walking Fanny I get right on it. It’s not good for me to have too much time on my hands. I find various ways to sabotage myself.

  4. I just get it over with. Doesn’t matter if it’s getting up in the morning (a task I regularly dread) or doing certain chores, or taking a shower (if I could survive in the wilderness I would). I just do it. I don’t reward myself either because I’ll just turn it into some way to make it bad for me in the long run.

  6. Yeah, I’m also a “get it over with” kind of guy.  I eat my vegetables first.  I wash my pots and pans as I’m cooking and before I sit down to eat.  Not because I’m in any way good about things, but because I get wracked with anxiety if I know there’s something hanging over my head.

  7. I procrastinate until I have no choice to get it done or face death or worst, the wrath of the boss lady.  I really need to work on that….ah, maybe tomorrow.

    • seconding @loveshaq here

      im at my most productive about…oh…lets say 12 hours before the missus comes home

      can i do a weeks worth of chores in 12 hours?

      yes i can

      would it have been easier just keeping on top of that shit….

      yes it would have

      am i ever going to learn that lesson?

      probably not

      • Samsies!

        I come from a long line of procrastinators. Drives my mother crazy. Me, my Dad and my brother though, woo boy. Why do today what you can put off til tomorrow?

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