Reward the Good, Punish the Bad
To change behaviour, reward the good and punish the bad.
— From Dayo, as she experiences and learns. Welcome to The Mind Palace!
At a Glance:
- Reward the good, punish the bad.
- YouTube Extras
- Book Club
- Art Block
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Reward the good, punish the bad
To change behaviour, reward the good and punish the bad.
I think the first time I heard that was on Ali Abdaal’s Skillshare class on Productivity (most likely, it’s up to a year now). Regardless of the time frame, it worked then and still works now.
Remember when you were younger? If you were caught stealing from the pot, you were reprimanded. Whether the reprimanding was a beating or words (or perhaps a look) of disappointment, it made you not want to repeat the act. Now you’re older but the system still works. Why? Because your brain doesn’t want you to participate in something you associate a negative experience with.
Deep this: if you get an F in any course, you sure as horses will not want to flop any others because it denotes failure and a million other things academics can do to a person’s self-esteem. If you get an A, however, you’re encouraged (more like dosed with endorphins) to repeat the process no matter gruelling because you like whatever an A is attached to — praise, reputation, hidden insecurities, bragging rights, and of course, the promise of a successful life.
I had a personal experience last week. While I published two stories last week, I didn’t publish any the week before (even though I had the draft prepared a week prior), and had to live with acknowledging a strike to my own commitments.
While it seems surface level, it is worth noting that keeping commitments made by yourself to yourself builds the trust you have for yourself. So yeah, me not keeping my dates dented my own trust capital. Acknowledging that is not cute so I’m not about to repeat that.
Another instance, but on the reward end, is concerning carbonated drinks. In 2018, I made a new year resolution to stop taking drinks because, you know, they are simply unhealthy.
The mere fact that they are unhealthy might not be enough to cause a behavioural change because the brain has not registered a negative experience with the consumption of carbonated drinks. And so, I watched a questionable amount of videos on the scary sugar content of drinks and listened to older people drill on that ‘what you’re taking in now would affect you in the future’ to make the consequence real to me.
Needless to say within the four years between 2018 and 2022, the drinks I’ve taken are not up to 30. Obviously, the bragging right about this also eggs me on to not succumb to the liquid death.
Moral lesson: You are more likely to act in a certain way if you are experientially aware of the consequence(s) attached.
YouTube Extras
- Overcoming The Fear of Love — A TEDx talk on replacing negative experiences attached to things by Dr. Trillion Small.
- We Should All Be Feminists — A TEDx talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (a personal favourite in spite of the fact that I don’t identify as a feminist).
Book Club
Current read: The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna
Blurb:
‘An African city, where a dying man Elias Cole, reflects on a past obsession: Saffia, the woman he loved, and Julius, her charismatic, unpredictable husband.
Arriving in the wake of war Adrian Lockheart is a psychologist new to this foreign land, struggling with its secrets and the intensity of the heat, dust and dirt, until he finds friendship in Kai Mansaray, a young colleague at the hospital. All three lives will collide in a story about friendship, love, war, about understanding the indelible effects of the past and the nature of obsessive love.’
Accolades: Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best Book Award 2011; Finalist for both the Orange Prize for Fiction 2011, the IMPAC Award 2012 and the Warwick Prize 2011; Voted one of the “Best Books of the Year” by the Sunday Telegraph, Financial Times and Times newspapers; Nominated for the European Prize for Fiction 2013; A New York Times Editor’s Choice book. (Source)
Lmao, I didn’t start reading the book because of all these awards (saw them after starting) but they are supposed to be a good reason to start. Simply because they mean the book is worth your time. So far I’m liking it. I just think Elias Cole was and is in a sad state.
Also: Realizing that listening to audiobooks is a comparatively faster way to read books and so, should be open to them (again).
Art Block
A piece I came across on Twitter and loved:
Until next time,
Dayo
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