One of the things that my husband and I frequently ask young writers when we start talking with them is whether they work better with carrots or sticks.

It’s a basic question of motivation, and though it applies to all of your life and everything you do, figuring out what works for you for your writing is a good place to start.

What do I mean by carrots or sticks?

Carrots means that you work with rewards. I work best with carrots. I celebrate when I finish something, particularly a big project.

Sticks mean you work better with accountability and possibly something negative will happen to you if you don’t get your work accomplished.

A carrot can be something as small as a little happy dance in your chair when you achieve your wordcount for the day. Or maybe a high-five with your partner.

A stick may mean that you need an accountability partner, someone who you must report to on your progress regularly. You will feel bad if you don’t have anything to report, so that motivates you to do more. I believe that challenges fall into this category: you’re going to feel bad if you miss a day of your challenge, so that forces you to the chair to do the work.

There are some people who feel as though they don’t work with either carrots or sticks, who get stuff done anyway. Their sense of accomplishing something is enough of a reward. I feel that way too about some things.

For example, I don’t usually celebrate when I finish a novel. Quite frankly, I celebrated every day while I wrote the novel, no matter how big or small my word count was for that day. By the time I’ve finished, I’ve already moved ahead to the next project and am looking forward to finishing that.

Still other writers feel as though any deadlines they create for themselves are artificial, and that even having an accountability partner isn’t enough. They will have to find additional strategies to motivate them. I’m going to mention again that finding joy in the work is something that brings me back to the keyboard more often than anything else.

And if you don’t enjoy the writing, then why are you doing it?

I do run into difficulty when it comes to doing things I don’t really want to do. Like taxes. I keep adjusting my process, trying to find something that will work for me, that will keep me doing all the paperwork regularly.

For example, I recently did my year end corporate taxes. They’re always such a pain. Takes about a week of dedicated work. It’s fiddly and frustrating.

I found myself procrastinating hard at the start of said week dedicated to doing taxes. I was even looking at Amazon for things, shopping for something I didn’t really need, rather than do the work.

That isn’t like me. I tend to just do the tasks I need to.

I finally figured out that I was resenting the taxes because I hadn’t created a reward for doing them. I had to recognize that just accomplishing them wasn’t going to be enough.

So I made reservations for a really nice dinner at a steakhouse for me and my sweetie. One might think that was a stick, not a carrot, except that I was going to get to go to whether I finished the taxes or not.

Just having that prize, that treat ahead of me, made me much more amenable to finishing the taxes. (Which I did in record time!)

Now, I need to be better about reconciling all five of the bank accounts that I have for the corporation. I’ve finally figured out that part of my problem was timing, so I’ve changed when I do the process. In addition to the quarterly reminder to do the reconciliation, I now also have a reminder, three days prior, to get myself a treat for when I finish reconciling. That way, I’ll have something to look forward to, which hopefully will motivate me more.

In this sort of situation, if you work better with sticks, maybe you set a challenge for yourself to get the bank reconciliation done as quickly as you can. Part of the issue is that you can’t do the work until the bank statements show up for the month. Maybe you make it a point to do the work the day after the statements are available, challenging yourself to be faster every time.

So what do you work better with? Carrots or sticks? What are some of your tips and tricks for motivating yourself?