Understand Your Brain, Get More Done by Tuckman Ari

Author:Tuckman, Ari [Tuckman, Ari]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-05-05T22:02:19+00:00

S E C T I O N I I M a k e Yo u r L i f e B e t t e r

My Pledge

I want a better life, so I commit to:

■ Taking chances and trying something new.

■ Doing my best to use these strategies diligently, even when I don’t feel like it.

■ Being open to learning from these experiences.

■ Being flexible when a strategy isn’t working.

■ Only abandoning a strategy when I can replace it with another strategy that may work better.

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See the Rewards

We’re more likely to start and maintain behaviors that are being rewarded, so let’s talk about those all-

important rewards. They come in a number of different shapes and sizes, so let’s not miss any—the more

rewards, the better.

Automatic Rewards

Some rewards are directly tied to our behavior. For example:

■ Inherent feelings of satisfaction/pride. Even if no one else notices, we notice and feel good about

having done something well.

■ Natural consequences. These are rewards that come from the world around us, like when someone

offers a compliment. Or getting a good seat at the movies by showing up early.

It may be helpful to make a point of looking for and noticing these rewards. The hectic pace of life makes

it easy to miss them—which then makes it easier to drop off from those good habits, even when they’re

working. Since you’re more likely to find what you’re actively looking for, let’s identify what these rewards

would be.

If I used these strategies diligently, I would feel:

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P r o s p e c t i v e M e m o r y : R e m e m b e r i n g t o R e m e m b e r

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If I used these strategies diligently, I would expect these natural consequences:

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Reward Yourself

Sometimes the inherent rewards and natural consequences aren’t enough to push us over the edge to do

something. This is when self-administered rewards come in handy. For example, “I will let myself do some actual

woodworking after I clean up my shop.” or “I can check the sports scores after I finish these work emails.”

Sometimes the reward is a good thing, whereas at other times the reward is just less bad than the first

task. For example, “I will read this magazine article after I finish that technical report.” Starting with the less

desirable task creates an incentive to get to the more desirable task.

Think about some rewards that you can put in place for using your strategies. The reward needs to be good

enough that it is actually motivating (but not so good that you’ll skip the work and just take the reward).

If I use these strategies consistently, I will earn these rewards:

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S E C T I O N I I M a k e Yo u r L i f e B e t t e r

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Fine-tune Your Approach

Learn from Setbacks

You may find that it’s much harder than you thought to apply your targeted strategies and make progress

on the struggles that you first decided to focus on. This is normal and often expectable.

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