Your reward isn't good enough

When you finish something big, a project, a goal, a milestone, the usual move is to reward yourself with something sweet. A car, clothes, a vacation. Makes sense. But what if there are other rewards you can give yourself that are better than material things?

I have never been a fan of rewarding myself. I just buy things I need or want because it's just a normal thing to do. I have people saying rewarding themselves has helped them enjoy their work better, but for some reason (which I might need a doctor to check if something is wrong with me, haha), I do not get the same magic result as others, so I changed the way I reward myself.

As I said, I didn't stop rewarding myself, I only changed the way I do it, and it's working really well for me. Instead of rewarding myself with things, I reward myself with more work.

A lot of people will drop out of the letter after that line. Like what, you reward yourself with more work? Who does that? Well, apparently I do, and I think I have discovered a way to work without feeling like working. This doesn't mean I don't buy myself things, I just don't program my brain to do more work and be happy because I bought a new PS5.

Before we jump into it, I just want you to know that I am writing this letter in my kitchen, with a black coffee with honey, and it has been fun here so far. Haha.

Work Feels Like Work

Yes, I just have to tell you this straight. I love work, yes, BUT not all work. As you can see, that was a very big but. I like writing, I can write this newsletter all day without feeling like I'm working or bored, I love coding, I love designing, and just building things. When doing these things, I hardly get tired, I need to force myself to stop.

That being said, I also hate doing certain work, like posting on social, engaging with content, having meetings with clients, and marketing my product. These things I had to drag my feet every single time to do, and I do them because I need to do them, if I want people to pay for those things I like building.

Being a strategist, I find the second type of work I mentioned boring and repetitive. I know people who like doing such work, they can do it as long as they want without finding it boring.

Before you can turn your work into a reward, such work should be worth the reward itself. So what work is worth rewarding yourself with, then something you like doing? Everyone has a certain work or project that will make them skip breakfast. Start noticing work that you want to spend more time doing and the ones you can't wait to end.

This is what most people hate about a 9-to-5 job. Most times, it's not because of your boss's sense of fashion, it's because of the type of work or projects assigned to you. You are not given the luxury of picking your project yourself. That is why most people can't wait to get home to reward themselves with TV, scrolling, eating junk food, and drinking alcohol. Some people subconsciously believe they should reward themselves with good or bad things depending on how enjoyable their work is.

I do something different. I reward myself with the enjoyable work after doing the ones I don't enjoy, or when I get to a milestone. There is nothing more enjoyable than having access to the work I love doing.

When I was young, if my mom wanted to give me and my siblings drugs (yes, I mean medically prescribed drugs), she would come with sweets, candies. The rule was, take the drug, swallow it, and get a candy.

Can you smell what I am cooking, remember I said I am writing this in my kitchen. What I am smelling right now is yam catfish pepper soup. I gave myself the time to write this newsletter in the kitchen today, but I have to cook something, I have not given myself the time to prepare for a very long time. This is how I use rewards to get work done in real time.

In Practice: Writepat

I love the process of building Writepat.com. I love it so well that I can do it all year nonstop, but there is an issue: without marketing the app (remember that thing I don't like doing, yes, it's called marketing), I might starve for the whole year, and we don't want that. I hope you agree with me on that one.

After building and launching Writepat, all I wanted to do was add more updates, fixes, and features. But I know that won't end and that is not the most important thing to do, so I made a decision that if I get two paid users in the app, I will be allowed to build those wonderful updates in Writepat.

I don't like sending people this message: "Hi John, my name is Owol, even though you can see that in my handle. I noticed you have a newsletter. I built an app called Writepat, which helps you ease the process of writing your newsletter and converting it into a social post, with an auto-post feature. Here is the link to try it out. Thanks."

I sent out 5 daily, Monday to Friday, for the past 4 weeks. Even though I do not like doing such a task, I did it anyway because I know my reward is more enjoyable. I will tell you this for a fact: I will rather work on Writepat than go for a vacation. That is how enjoyable building it is to me. As good as that sounds, I have to grow my social media and also do marketing, if I don't want to be the only one using my product.

By the time you will be reading this tomorrow, Saturday, I will be working on the rollout for Writepat, which will be my best yet.

Work Feels Like a Reward

A few days ago, I rewarded myself with a better graphics card for my PC. I gave myself a specific milestone: when I get there, the reward will be a graphics card. That pushed me to reach that milestone, and by doing that, I now have a more first-rate computer to work with.

You can reward yourself with whatever you like. But what I want my brain to know is that doing better means it has the opportunity to do more enjoyable work. Which is all I want to do.

Find something that makes you enjoy working more. It might be anything for you. This is what works for me.

You can reply to the newsletter if this resonates with you. I read every reply and also replied to some.

Food is ready, now let me go enjoy my pepper soup.

- Owol

P.S. The reward waiting on the other side of the work you hate is the work you love, what's yours?

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