Should you reward yourself for sticking to a habit?

The classic advice goes like this: go to the gym ten times, buy yourself the trainers. Write every day for a month, have the weekend away. It sounds sensible. Often it works for about a fortnight, and then the trainers are bought and the gym is quiet again.

Rewards can help a habit. It depends a lot on which kind.

Immediate beats delayed

Researchers Kaitlin Woolley and Ayelet Fishbach looked at what keeps people going with long-term goals. As Chicago Booth Review reports, in one of their studies gym-goers who enjoyed their workout spent more time on the cardio machines, and enjoyment predicted persistence better than the long-term reasons people gave for exercising. Their suggestion: keep the long-term goal as your reason for starting, but add rewards to the activity itself, such as music while you exercise.

That fits ordinary experience. A reward three weeks away is abstract. A reward right now, inside the thing you're doing, changes how today's session feels.

Rewards built into the habit

The most effective rewards are often not rewards at all, just ways of making the activity nicer:

• Running: a favourite route, a podcast saved only for runs, a coffee at the end of the loop.
• Swimming: the outdoor pool on sunny days, a friend in the next lane, a pastry afterwards.
• Language practice: a series you only watch in Italian, a weekly conversation over aperitivo.
• Cooking at home: good music, a glass of something, the radio, a new knife you enjoy using.
• Tidying or admin: a candle, a playlist, a timer, a phone call to a friend.

These pair the habit with something pleasant until the habit itself starts to feel pleasant.

When rewards distract

Rewards can backfire in a few predictable ways.

• They undo the point. If the habit is about spending less time on your phone, rewarding a good week with a night of scrolling until one o'clock works against it.
• They make the activity feel like work. If you only ever do something "to get the treat", the activity can start to feel like a job you're paid for rather than something you like. We talk about this in intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation.
• They become a bargain. "I ran, so I deserve the whole cake" turns the habit into a transaction. Food is a pleasure on its own terms; it doesn't need to be earned.
• They're too far away. A big reward after three months tends to be forgotten long before you get there.

Choosing good rewards

A few rules of thumb for picking rewards that help:

• Small and soon. Something you get today or this week, not next season.
• Related to the habit. New running socks after a month of runs, a good cookbook after a month of home dinners.
• Shareable. A celebratory dinner with the friend who joined you, a day trip with the family who kept quiet while you practised the guitar.
• Never a punishment in disguise. No rewards that come with conditions you then feel bad about.

Celebrations, not payments

Think of bigger rewards as marking a moment rather than buying behaviour. Finishing a first 10K, cooking your way through a book, a year of Spanish lessons: those deserve a proper celebration. We have ideas for marking the smaller ones in celebrating small wins.