Claire writes: ‘In the summer, I got a 1075 day streak on Duolingo for learning Spanish.  It has been an extraordinary journey (not for everyone I know) from only being able to say ‘Hola’ to being able to understand pretty much the whole of a Spanish song which I heard at a festival on the same day.

I also (finally) finished Chip and Dan Heath’s book The Power of Moments which explains in part why this works.  It’s a great book for many other reasons, too!

If you have a goal, they suggest breaking it down into rewards rather than obligations. While an obligation is 15 minutes a day, a reward might be 15 minutes every day and then after 20 days, for example, I’ll reward myself with Spanish cheese.  After 100 days I’ll go for dinner in our local Spanish restaurant. And (for me) after 1000 days, I’ll be a digital nomad in Spain for a few weeks… and manage to just about negotiate with the plumber who came to fix the sewage leak in the shower! 

This concept reminds me of the photo I took every day through the lockdowns of 2020 having decided that the reward would be to bring the best ones together and frame them. What’s on your list of habits to form that could do with a reward system?’