Can a pack of Skittles help me motivate myself?

Using candy as a reward

In this article by Eric Baker, A TIME Magazine contributor Baker suggest 3 ways to get self-motivation is “Get positive, Get rewarded, Get Peer pressure” (Baker, 2014)

Not sure If I can just turn on positivity and I can’t just tell a bunch of people to surround me for a couple hours. That leaves rewarding myself.

The article uses the example of giving a friend $100 and letting them keep it if you don’t complete the day’s tasks but as a college student, I’d prefer not to lose a month’s worth of food money.

To keep it simple I’m just going to use a little sugar in the form of these:

Every time I do tasks I get a skittle. I’ve assigned a task as writing at least a paragraph or the completion of an assignment. An assignment can be finding one job on Glassdoor to apply for or a short less than a paragraph assignment like doing 6 homework problems.

How it went:

Pros:

I did get more done as far as writing

I would actually sit and write for longer periods of time

I got further in projects than I did without candy

Candy tastes good

Cons:

It was almost distracting to think about eating candy instead of doing work. I couldn’t get into deep thought as much.

I ate an unhealthy amount of sugar

Though I got more words on the page I’m not sure if I churned out the best quality work

Would I do this again?

Yes to get started but I wouldn’t stop working to get candy for more than an hour. It’s a good way to start working if you just need something on paper but It’s hard to get into deep thought when the next thing I’m thinking about is candy.

Baker E. (29, June 2014).How to Motivate Yourself: 3 Steps Backed By Science [Blog Post] Retrieved from http://Time.com