Creativity Now, 2nd Edition

Create a loyalty card

THE PRINCIPLE

Working step by step towards a reward keeps you motivated

Yes, ideally the work should be its own reward. But we’ve all experienced that blah feeling in the middle of a project when it has become hard work, things aren’t falling into place in the way we’d hoped and the finish line is still a long way off.

One common recommendation for keeping yourself motivated is to reward yourself for reaching milestones along the way. The problem with this is that for little steps, the rewards tend to be so small that often we don’t bother; and for big steps the reward is so far off that it’s not very motivating.

A way around this is to adapt an idea commonly used by coffee shops and restaurants: the loyalty card. That’s ...