add rewards to all my goals that aren't rewards in themselves

Rewards just don’t seem to add any motivation for me to do my goals. I think that to me, they essentially are all rewards in themselves – or else they’re simply “to do’s” and I take them off my goals list.

I thought of these while I was running today.

1. There’s a fancy dress store I run by on my jogging route, and there’s a dress in the window that I just adore. I’ve decided that as a reward for finishing a 5k race, I will allow myself to go into the shop, look around, and find out the price of that dress.
2. Assuming the price is not through the roof, and that the dress would fit me or could be altered to fit, I could use it as a reward for another one of my goals. Not sure which one.
3. Another reward could be wearing the dress out to fancy dinner and the theatre with DH.
4. As a reward for learning to drive stick-shift, I could rent an expensive manual transmission car (I dunno, like a Ferrari or something) and go somewhere…maybe tied in with my “go out to fancy dinner” reward. Or maybe to the beach/along the coast if I pick a convertible. I’m not a huge fan of expensive cars, but it would be a novel experience.

Mostly because there’s very little I don’t have that I want enough that it would motivate me to do something.

Well, just writing about this topic gets me thinking. Another potential reward:

• Getting a kitten (but have to be careful about this one – I already own a fairly combative cat in a small one-bedroom apartment.)

I do believe I am finished!

To think of that many rewards. I’m not usually big on “rewarding” myself, since I am generally not too demanding and am frugal enough overall that when I want to splurge on something, I splurge. When I want to do something, I do it. I don’t see it as a reward, I see it as my right.

For me, a good reward would be someone else doing something for me. It will be difficult to come up with that many things I can see as a reward coming from myself. This will be a very interesting exercise, I think.

• Buy myself a 43Things T-shirt
• Take a vacation day from work for no specific purpose
• Visit my family in Seattle over a short weekend (I’d usually wait until I have a 4-day weekend and/or some vacation time saved up)
• Take a short trip to some nearby city/state that I’ve never visited before. Alone, if DH doesn’t want to go. Which he might not. Not a big traveler, he.

Now that I think about it, travel seems to be a good idea here since I want to do it, but don’t often feel like I have the justification.

I think I got them all. Good enough!

Now to do some damn work and earn my present!

N’est pas?

Ooo! Bad and probably incorrect French!