Sometimes, despite our best efforts, creating a habit is difficult. However, this may be because your feedback loop is not strong enough. Rewards are the backbone of your feedback loop; without the right ones, creating a new habit can be nearly impossible. Here’s how to max out your rewards to create new habits.
What’s a Feedback Loop?
Put in simplest terms a ‘feedback loop’ is a system in which the output affects the next round of input. You’ve heard the phrase, “You get out what you put in,” often in terms of effort. It can also mean momentum. In the case of habit formation, your feedback loop strengthens your desire to recreate the outcome. Using my favorite example of wake up, I’m tired, I have coffee, I’m not tired anymore. The feedback loop is created when the lack of tiredness causes me to take the action of having coffee again when I feel the cue of I’m tired. Habits can be and in fact, should be, self-reinforcing. However, since that isn’t always the case, you have to max out your rewards to create new habits.
Back when I talked about how habits happen, I pointed out there are several different psychological processes involved in how we learn. Feedback loops use both Classical/Associational learning and Operant/Reward-based learning. With these two types of conditioning in mind, we can max out our rewards.
What do You Mean ‘max out’ rewards?
By having both the Operant and Classical models of learning available to you, it tells you two things: a reward should be closely associated with the habit and should be as close to immediate as possible. Remember: the brain prefers now over later and something which gives either pleasure or relief from pain.
Here’s where you have to be careful. Food is highly pleasurable. It is easy to associate pleasurable eating with a habit. However, in some cases, such as weight loss, tying eating to your new habit is disastrous.
Each person is individual, so I’m not going to recommend any particular rewards. I have tried, and sometimes even succeeded, in keeping eating from being a reward for me. My current favorite reward is getting to mark something as done on my to do list. I get a special marker and everything to mark it off. Make it an occasion.
Plumb your brain and figure out what rewards will work best for you. Remember: now over later and pleasure or relief from pain. This will help you max out your rewards to create new habits.
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