One of the best hacks I’ve ever used is insisting that rewards need to be earned. For example, I once booked a hotel for the weekend and bought a new outfit – where I could only go and which I could only wear IF I had the courage to send my novel to a publisher. The task was simple, and there was a deadline. You can imagine how invincible I felt, having checked into the hotel, wearing the cool clothes, sipping a well deserved scotch on the rocks in the hotel bar.

By the time I got back home from the hotel on Sunday and checked my email, the novel had of course been rejected. But that’s not the point. The point is that I used a reward to incentivize myself to do something scary.

Determine the scary or demanding task you want done specifically, so there’s no room for interpretation or loop-holing. Set a specific deadline. Scale the reward according to the difficulty of the task.

Use the system to destroy fear and achieve great things.