Candy Messed Up My Motivations in Life

A fun class exercise in my childhood probably messed up the way I view motivation and rewards for the rest of my life.

When I first started writing more frequently on Medium about 6 weeks ago, I did it purely as a goal for a new hobby in life. There were only two problems; I wasn’t used to writing outside of business and I wasn’t reading other people’s work on Medium.

When I was a kid, I became an avid writer of speedy bullsh*t purely because of an interesting year-long challenge created by my grade 4 teacher. At the back of the classroom, above the short child-size clothing closets, hung a massive cartoon map of Canada.

On this map was the main road that you can take if you were to drive across Canada, the Trans Canada Highway. It’s roughly 8,300 km long (5,157 miles for my American friends) and travels through the 10 provinces in Canada (unfortunately missing out on the three northern territories that are absolutely massive).

He divvied up this map into about 25–30 cities, with each city being a reward of a small bag of candy. Every student then had their own little pin with a unique sticker that we used to keep track of progress throughout the year.

Rewards for the kids

The big reward at the other side of the map was an oh-so-coveted free lunch buffet at Pizza Hut. Back when they used to have ice cream buffets with all the candy and sprinkles you could fit in the bowl. AKA every 9 year old’s dream!

How did you actually move across the map? Read books!

The teacher had a formula for a certain amount of kilometers per page read of a book, one that I’ve long since forgotten.

The proof that you read these books? One to two page book reviews that would then be checked for content and corrected if wrong.

This was my jam (as the kids say these days…I think)

Now this system was a one-two-three whammy for me. I had the extreme benefit of being born into a household that had a computer in the early 1980’s, of which I had been using since some of my earliest memories.

I also had two older brothers; two older brothers that were both avid readers (likely because of my parents). And one of my favorite things to do growing up was trying to prove my ability to compete with them, so I was also reading books constantly.

In retrospect, I was reading way above my level (as my brothers were 4 and 7 years older than me) and probably didn’t understand nearly half of the words. I think I was 8 when I first read the Lord of the Rings, good luck asking me to describe what 25% of the words in that book meant at the time.

Lastly, I grew up in a house with the matriarch being a very healthy nurse. Hell, we weren’t even allowed to have sugar-based cereals. Probably a good thing, but as I kid I f*cking loved candy, simply because I rarely could have any.

Oh so precious sugar

I actually had a nickname growing up until high school because of this — Sugarman (or Sug for short). When we’d play sports in recess and lunch time, some of my other classmates discovered if I had a piece of candy just before playing, that my energy levels would be through the roof!

Gotta love generally low blood sugar levels eh?

So here I was in grade 9, already reading one or two books a week, with a computer at my disposal where I knew how to type like a madman (even before I later learned the ‘Almena typing method’).

This was like taking candy from a baby (and giving it to a sugar-hungry 9 year old).

It was a pretty interesting learning system and I haven’t encountered it ever again. Later in life I’ve looked back though, and I’m not sure if it was a good system to implement on young malleable minds.

Rewarding young brains

If you look into extrinsic reward systems and their potential long term effects on a young person’s mindset, you can see a lot of arguments against it (with many arguments advocating intrinsic reward systems instead).

The class competition had begun in the second week of school. Assessing my new classmates, I only had 3 real challengers. Two months later, I had none.

Because I had finished the year-long challenge in October.

Now I hope this doesn’t come across as bragging, I was only 9 and it was just the right challenge that perfectly fit my childhood skill sets and hobbies at the time.

It was also pretty enjoyable bringing home all that candy (and even before Halloween!). Much to my mother’s conflicted congratulations at the time/

‘He’s studying a lot but he’s eating the devils food, do I congratulate him or scold him?’ — My mom, probably

Habits become us

I think those two months (and the rest of the year at a once-a-month limit) had an effect on me for the rest of my life. It taught me, for right or wrong, to expect a good reward for a good effort. Its a dangerous concept, because rewards don’t always come, even from the strongest of efforts.

Now that I’m in my mid-30’s, I understand that’s okay — but I didn’t for most of my life.

I was a terrible student later, not really breaking out of my bad habits until around grade 11, and even then it was a constant struggle with a reward system that had been ingrained in me.

You see, I never did homework. Like ever.

Home-time

I valued my home-time way too much. Video games, friends, sports, etc. All the things kids love to do. And I was able to get away with it because I always aced tests and because of my reading skills. I could often learn way more from a textbook than any teacher could hope to help me while having 30+ other kids to teach.

So I read, and I read and I read. I aced tests and failed homework for incompleteness, whatever I couldn’t get done within school hours. For some reason, my teachers and parents never seemed to have caught on as to why this happened.

Or maybe they did and I was living in blissful ignorance.

Self-reflection strikes hard

It was only in grade 10 of high school when I started almost failing some of my classes due to project work when I finally smartened up (a bit).

I had always wanted to go to University.

In fact, I thought of it as an inevitable pathway with no alternatives. Almost failing a class for the first time really shook me and I slowly got my act together.

I was able to finish high school with a 78%, nothing great but it was able to get me into a school afterwards.

University time

My first semester in university, out of place and starting fresh with proper habits, I was able to attain a GPA of ~4.2 that first semester. Something that slowly eroded over the next 3 years as I discovered what it meant to actually party in University.

Again, those struggles of my own time vs school time kept creeping in. I did end up finishing on time and with okay grades, but I always felt I could’ve done way better in my schooling over the years. The exams and tests almost always proved it, I just had absolutely no work ethic.

My reading and writing habits also started morphing over the years. I had some creative writing classes in high school that were fun, but it didn’t really stick with me. I had a tough time taking criticism at that age and I think it affected me a bit too much.

Where was the reward for my awesome short story I just made? I mean I spent at least one whole hour on it?!

The love of reading

My love for reading also kept with me, but slowly started morphing into a learning habit instead. The amount of books I was reading was slowing down, but this was the dawn of the age of the internet! There was a whole new source of content to read out there, and read I did.

When all this brought me to University, I applied that same fervor for reading to the massive textbooks we had. I took a four year program of Commerce with a major in accounting and finance. Fun stuff right?

I only went into it because one of the high school guidance counselors had shown the high salary young accountants and auditors could make at that time — there was a lack of them in Canada so they were encouraging more students to go into it.

With my ingrained habit of reading textbooks and acing tests, it really helped in the uni environment — at least while I could remain motivated to do it in a timely manner.

Thanks caffeine

I think one of the more crazy (at least to myself) examples of this is the beginner taxation class I was in during my 2nd or 3rd year. Its an incredibly dry subject with extreme amounts of rules and knowledge required to be learned.

I was failing the class as I was enjoying a me-time phase a little too much that semester. This class along with many others in business, were marked with heavy weighting on the mid-term and final.

Fortunately, near the final, I was able to convince my very cool professor at the time to weight my final as almost my whole grade.

I spent 5 whole days caffeinated through the roof, read every chapter three times and did every practice question in the textbook twice.

The thing is, I hadn’t read a single chapter before that week. Oops.

I ended up getting a 79% in the class, which was pretty high for that tough class. I still remember the look on my classmate’s face the next semester when she saw me in the advanced class and found out my grade was slightly higher than hers. I told her what happened and how I received it.

I didn’t feel proud of it but I suppose it earned me a little respect from her. She later went on in life to become a very successful auditor whereas I wouldn’t touch an accounting job now with a ten foot pole of licorice. It’s just not in my nature.

Long term effects

The consumption of all these textbooks, some very dry and some a bit interesting, really didn’t leave me any time to explore my usual novel reading habits.

It completely destroyed them to be exact.

Reading became a chore that I did every morning, not for enjoyment, but to finish my classes and learn. The only times I read books for enjoyment during my four years in university was in my summers off from school, when I had to work.

Reading didn’t give me those extrinsic effects that I became so used to after grade 4. If I didn’t get a reward at the end of the day (candy or grade A’s in class) then why bother? At least I think that’s what happened.

I also notice these same lack-of-reward effects in many aspects of my life, when I actually take the time to think about it. My work life has always been full of extremely productivity periods intermixed with absolute laziness.

A daily grinder I am not.

Productivity in life

I’m sure that these very productive periods were always externally motivated. A small project here or there. A big presentation for the bosses. A new product exploration paper that needed to be made.

These interested me because they were somewhat short term and I’d get that external feedback right after. And boy do I love me some good external feedback!

I wish I didn’t, but that is my nature now. My 6 months off really helped me to realize that this is part of me now. I used to try to fight it all the time, and every time my nature would win.

It took me a lot of reading and meaningful conversations over my adult life before I finally came to the conclusion that I just have to stop fighting my internal nature — however it actually came to be.

By realizing how my mind works, I’m able to be more consistently productive than I ever have been. My mind wanders — a lot. So I’m splitting up my days between many different objectives now.

More things to choose from

If I’m in the mood for something, I’ll do it now. And because of my current non-9–5 life, I have the luxury of choosing what I want to spend my time on each day.

I’ve structured mini-rewards around my activities, some after and some during. This has helped me start forming habits and being more consistent. Instead of relying solely on the ‘right’ thing to do, I’m trying my best to work around how my brain actually operates.

So far, so good.

I’m enjoying my life way more than I did before, and I’m slowly achieving things that I never would’ve ventured into otherwise.

My new habits are far from perfect, but I’m getting there. More importantly, I feel motivated to keep on getting there.

Enjoying the journey is now more important to me than the pot of gold at the end.

‘Rant’ over.

Feel free to check out my other stuff on Medium and follow me here. Thanks for reading and have a great day/dia/dina/deň/روز/journée/день/天/jaj!