It’s funny, in my working days, I spent a lot of time talking to teachers and parents about the importance of something called positive reinforcement and / or motivation. It was, I told them, a big part of getting the kids to change their behaviour. I have even written chapters in books about it. I thought I was done with all that stuff. Then yesterday, when I was writing the blog about my diary, it all came back to me and more besides.
Here we all are trying to develop a different way of behaving in these tricky times. Broadly speaking about staying in rather than going out. There’s a bit more to it than this I know but that will do as a simple description of what we’re about these days.
My point was to adults, in the old days. My point now is to you – if you’re going to change a person’s behaviour, in this case your own, there are a number of important aspects to it. Not least being clear about what type of behaviour we want. You also have to think that the ‘target’ behaviour is a sensible / important one.
There is a problem here in the virus context. When ‘expert’ advice varies so much – wear a mask, don’t wear a mask; what’s essential and what isn’t; go to hospital / your GP if you’re ill, don’t go anywhere near them; shop on line, don’t you’re taking all the slots from old people; don’t drive to exercise, drive providing the exercise is longer than the drive. And so on. This ambiguity / contradiction doesn’t make it any easier. But that’s not the point here.
An equally important part of the equation of behavioural change is having that ‘required’ behaviour reinforced when you do it. And this broadly is the point of this retirement blog. Often this means having somebody else to praise your efforts. That’s nice if you have somebody who is willing and able to carry out this task.
And there is another important caveat to having somebody praise your behaviour. It has to be somebody you like, value, respect, take your pick. Therefore having the politicians who some of us happen to think are a bunch of wankers telling us we’re all doing jolly well (shades of Mr Grace from Are You Being Served), doesn’t work. We really don’t care what they think. I have to say if their behaviour is any measure of what and how they’re thinking, I’d rather do my own thinking thank you very much. Anyway I digress, as usual.
Failing somebody you like, you’re going to need a lot of positive self-talk as we psychologists used to call it. I’m sure it’s pretty obvious what this means so I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you all over again. But I will just tell you this, if you don’t value yourself then your own feedback is not going to be motivating. But that’s another blog. Not one completely unrelated to being a retired person when valuing yourself can be a challenge, but not for today.
We used to talk (in the old days) about a continuum of reinforcement. This ranged from the cheap and cheerful, i.e. easiest to do on a regular basis. We talked about non-verbal signals like a thumbs up (hence image at start) as being easy to do, but how the heck that fits in to the theme of this blog I don’t know. Our main message was something, that for short-hand, we’ll call praise although once again I’m afraid it’s not quite as simple as that but it will do for now.
Except just to say we used to call it ‘motivational feedback’ to cover the fact that some people do not find praise reinforcing. They prefer feedback of the kind – I bet you can’t do x. Young people often respond better to this kind of challenge / competition than being praised. But again not for today’s blog.
If I remember correctly (I refuse to go back to my books to check. I’m sure I have friends who will do that for me) the next stop on the line was some form of visual feedback – a written note say, or, these days, an email, text, Instagram image, etc. etc.
Further still along the continuum there are edible treats – a glass (or two) of wine and something nice to eat. Or in my case yet another book of some kind from Amazon or a new battery for my drill. Yes, I know I’m one weird dude. The drum-set amp / speaker was a good example of a ‘reinforcer’ at the opposite end of the continuum from the cheap and easily repeatable, i.e. praise (for shorthand) type of reward. Unless you’re very rich, or completely bonkers, you cannot be frequently rewarding yourself with a drum-set or equivalent.
So here’s my ‘go-to reinforcer’ for staying in during lockdown. It relates directly to my last blog in which I wrote about having a variety of tasks to engage in throughout the day. I showed you a page from my diary and recommended you might try the same. What I didn’t mention and only afterwards thought, I should have explained that, was the ticks (or checks if you’re American) alongside each task.
I have been filling my diary both with tasks and ticks these last few weeks. They make me feel good, give purpose to my day, make me feel I’m achieving things. And, a confession, I will even write down things I have already achieved so I can put a tick at the side of it. The fact that they are already done does not detract, in my view, from my legitimate right to tick them. The image of all those ticks on a page is very motivating for me. The actual act of ticking with a flourish is positively … well you fill in the blank.
You don’t have to own a diary to do this. Any notebook, preferably one you value / like the look of, will do. Even a sheet of paper, one for each day that you can collect together as a tangible representation of how you’re doing the right thing and enjoying it to boot.
Who would have thought that I would be writing about all this stuff nearly 7 years after I retired? Not me. Yes, it’s a bit on the weird side but then these are weird times.