Minting Tanvi Bucks

Follow Sahiti’s excellent rant to me about how incentives work, I have implemented an economy for myself. #

The Store

• 500 Tanvi Bucks gets me an excellent massage from a friend.
• 200 Tanvi Bucks gets me permission to use 2 hours in the morning to work on something I’m excited about (as opposed to doing work I get paid for)
• Essentially, I want to use Tanvi Bucks as tangible proof that yes, I do indeed deserve it.

The Bank

I earn 50 Tanvi Bucks every time I #

1. Sleep, allowing myself 8 hours (if it was likely that I was otherwise going to be up late)
2. Work less than 8 hours a day (this is a problem, I’m generally at my desk for 9 to 12 and my body HATES it)
3. Do some other unpleasant tasks - yesterday I earned 50 Tanvi Bucks for responding to ten people I’ve been putting off in the last week (there was some unnecessary shame involved that kept me from doing so immediately)

Smaller, more consistent ways to earn #

• 50 Tanvi Bucks for a blog post
• 20 Tanvi Bucks for a poetry submission to GloPoWriMo
• 100 Tanvi Bucks for an SICP exercise

I have some other big number Tanvi Bucks I’m set to earn when I finish larger projects. Admin-type tasks, and Important but not Urgent tasks are a good category to make Tanvi Bucks from! #

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Given a number, humans are wired to make it go up. I find that I often have the desire to do things, but I’m doing so much that by the end of the day intrinsic motivation alone is not enough to push me. Thus tasks that will generate Tanvi Bucks are by nature prioritised - and I will only assign Tanvi Bucks to tasks that will result in net gains for me but are mildly unpleasant. #

Giving myself rewards just doesn’t work

In the past, I’ve tried other external motivators and they have failed in annoying ways. #

1. What kind of reward should I get for what kind of task? There is really nothing that consistently makes me happy that I don’t already have access to (I don’t enjoy sweets, or chocolate).
2. It’s a lot of cognitive effort to come up with a reward that feels satisfying enough to be a driver.
3. Good rewards should improve the baseline when availed, but not hurt the baseline in its absence. Most times, when I don’t get a reward, it feels like a punishment, which was horrible! And that made me much less likely to reach for the rewards mechanism in the first place.
4. I have agency. If I didn’t do a thing I should have, and as a result I didn’t get a thing I wanted, I got mad! And hurt. And generally felt like a petulant eleven year old. Withholding rewards as punishment is a horrible way to parent (and reminded me too much of the bad sides of my parent), so I would soothe myself by simply accessing the reward. This further weakened the idea of the reward being a thing to aspire to - because I knew I could just get it anyway.

Using currency as a middle layer obfuscates most of these problems. Using the currency to weigh in when I’m indecisive kills two bird with one stone. I hope the way I’ve structured my current economy sidesteps most (or all?) of these problems. #

If you want to, you can keep track of my economy here: t.me/tanvibucks #