5. Payoff ™ - Personal Positive Reinforcement

5. Payoff™

• One-page reward map that links specific tasks to small, pre-chosen rewards.

• You write the task, choose the reward that unlocks only after it’s done, and log each completion so effort and payoff stay connected.

• Use it to make deep work, training, and boring but important tasks feel worth it in the moment, instead of drifting back to random dopamine hits.

Evidence: Built on research showing that rewards given only when a target behavior is completed (“contingency management”) increase persistence and behavior change across many trials, and that combining clear targets with ongoing tracking strengthens these effects (e.g., Stanger et al., 2019, review of contingency management; Harkin et al., 2016, meta-analysis on progress monitoring).