Motivating Yourself by Paying Yourself

I have a lot of motivators in my life, one of which is money, obviously. And I’ve been trying to come up with incentive to do somethings I need to do. Eating healthier, for instance. I do a pretty damn good job at it already, but still run into moments. Exercising more is an issue sometimes too, though trees falling on your house tend to provide involuntary exercise 🙂 And working towards getting projects done around the house is another one I need more of a push on. Sometimes I even try to do too much at once and end up less productive than if I had just focused on one thing.

There are also things I want to use money for, but have a hard time convincing myself that it’s okay to spend money.

So to help both the issue of motivation and spending money, I’m going to try and combine the two, and use money as a motivation. To do this I want to start paying myself an hourly rate. Something like, $5 for every hour of exercise, $5 for every hour of productive work, $2 for any pounds lost, maybe take away $2 for every craptastically unhealthy meal. And put all of this money away to spend on something I really want. Like the women drummers weekend in California which will cost about $1100. Or saving up to buy my dad a new pre-owned car with cash. That would be a treat to myself for doing all of these things.

It’s the same concept of treating yourself for doing well at a difficult task, but on more of an organized level. And it would take a lot of discipline just to not cheat on the payments, but I can see it working for someone who is really determined.

The way I’ll figure out prices is to look at my budget and see how much I’m comfortable with parting with each paycheck (this can go up and down as needed), and then divide that up into how many hours I’d like to spend doing things like exercise and being productive, and how many meals I generally eat in a day. That way I’m not overextending my wallet if I happen to push harder one week versus the next.

And of course this might very well be a stupid idea, but I think it’s one that might work for -me-. I’m at least willing to give it a shot, because there are also some things around the house I want to spend money on 🙂