Choices about how we spend our time, how we live our lives, and most important, how we treat ourselves and others. “The quality of our life on planet earth depends on the choices we make every day. Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything A real reward - something that will actually create a habit - is a much narrower target to hit than most people think. But your coworker might not like the way coffee smells. And her immediate feeling builds her habit of visiting the coffee shop. When she enters a coffee shop and inhales, she feels good. What causes one person to feel good may not work for everyone. The neurochemical reaction that you are trying to hack is not only time dependent, it’s also highly individualized. The squats and the good feelings you get from the movie are too far apart for dopamine to build a bridge between the two. Doing three squats in the morning and rewarding yourself with a movie that evening won’t work. Incentives are way too far in the future to give you that all-important shot of dopamine that encodes the new habit. Incentives like a sales bonus or a monthly massage can motivate you, but they don’t rewire your brain. That means you’ve got to cue up those good feelings fast to form a habit. Dopamine is released and processed by the brain very quickly. Scientists learned decades ago that rewards need to happen either during the behavior or milli-seconds afterward. The definition of a reward in behavior science is an experience directly tied to a behavior that makes that behavior more likely to happen again. But I would also say that your massage wasn’t a reward. I would say, “Good for you!” because we all could benefit from more massages. “Let’s say that you have committed to running every day for two weeks, and at the end of those two weeks, you “reward” yourself with a massage.

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