How to Reward Yourself: Benefits, Examples, and When to Do It

When we set out to do something, we usually have a goal in mind. You might work out to get in shape, read to understand yourself better, or build a business to create more freedom. But the reward often comes much later than the effort, which can make it difficult to keep going. Rewarding yourself can change that.

In this article, we’ll look at why rewarding yourself can help, what makes a good reward, when to use one, and different ways to reward yourself along the way.

Key points

Rewards can make long-term progress feel more immediate and give you something positive to connect with your effort.
A good reward should feel meaningful to you, fit the effort, and not work against what you’re trying to build.
Rewards can support habit formation by making repeated behaviors more satisfying and easier to return to.
You don’t need to reward everything you do, and necessary recovery shouldn’t become something you have to earn.

What does it mean to reward yourself?

Rewarding yourself means giving yourself something enjoyable or meaningful after following through on a behavior, putting in effort, or reaching a milestone. It’s a way to acknowledge something you’ve done that moves you closer to a goal or the person you want to become.

A reward can take many forms. It might be a protein shake after a workout, something enjoyable after finishing a difficult task, or simply taking a moment to acknowledge and celebrate a small win. What matters most is that the reward actually feels rewarding to you.

Why rewarding yourself can help you reach your goals

Rewarding yourself can support your progress in several ways. The exact benefit depends on the behavior, the reward, and what you’re trying to achieve, but understanding why rewards can help makes it easier to use them deliberately rather than randomly treating yourself.

It makes long term progress feel more immediate

Long-term progress is slow. You rarely feel it as it happens, and the results often come much later than the effort you put in.

A deliberate reward gives you something positive sooner. Instead of waiting weeks or months for the larger outcome, you create a smaller reward that is directly connected to the work you’re doing now, to get some positive feelings associated with the effort.

It creates small wins

Every time you do something that moves you closer to a goal or the person you want to become, you create a small win. Rewarding yourself gives you a reason to stop and acknowledge that progress instead of immediately moving on to the next thing.

Over time, recognising these wins can help you build self-trust by giving you repeated evidence that you’re following through on the things that matter to you.

It can make difficult behaviors more enjoyable

Many of the behaviors that help us reach our goals aren’t especially enjoyable in the moment. They require effort, discomfort, or choosing them over something that feels easier or more immediately rewarding.

Pairing the behavior with something enjoyable, or giving yourself a reward immediately afterwards, can make the overall experience more pleasant. The difficult part may still be difficult, but there is now something positive connected to doing it. That way, the behavior becomes more enjoyable, and you’ll remember it that way.

It can make consistency easier

Consistency becomes easier when there is something that makes you want to return to the behavior.

Sometimes the behavior itself feels rewarding. Other times, the benefits are still too far away to feel meaningful in the moment. A small reward can help bridge that gap by giving you something more immediate to look forward to after following through.

Rewards won’t create consistency on their own, but they can make repeated effort easier while the larger benefits of what you’re doing are still developing.

What makes a good reward?

A good reward can look very different from person to person. What works depends on what you enjoy, what you’re rewarding, and the situation you’re in. But in general, a useful reward should meet five conditions.

It actually feels rewarding to you

The most important thing is that the reward actually feels rewarding to you. There’s no reason to force yourself to enjoy something because it seems like the kind of reward you should want.

Choose something you genuinely look forward to. If it doesn’t feel rewarding to you, it probably won’t be very useful as a reward.

It fits the effort

The reward should roughly fit the effort or milestone. Smaller behaviors usually call for smaller rewards, while larger achievements can justify something more meaningful.

If every small action comes with a large reward, the system can quickly become expensive, impractical, or difficult to maintain. On the other hand, if the reward feels insignificant compared with the effort, it may not mean much to you. The goal is to choose something that feels proportionate and sustainable.

It doesn’t undermine what you’re trying to build

A reward shouldn’t work directly against the thing you’re trying to accomplish. For example, if you’re trying to improve your finances, repeatedly rewarding progress with unnecessary impulse purchases every time you’ve followed your daily budget may cancel out some of the progress you just made.

That doesn’t mean every reward has to support the goal directly. It simply shouldn’t consistently work against it.

A reward should support your progress, not quietly undo the thing you just worked for

It happens close enough to feel connected

A reward is more useful when it still feels connected to the effort that earned it. There isn’t one exact amount of time that works for everything, but smaller and more frequent behaviors usually benefit from rewards that happen relatively soon afterwards. If too much time passes, the connection between the effort and the reward can become less clear.

Larger milestones are different. A bigger achievement may naturally have a larger reward that happens less often, or with a larger delay.

It doesn’t become something you need before acting

Finally, the reward should support the behavior rather than become a condition for doing it. There’ll be times when the reward isn’t available, doesn’t make sense, or simply isn’t necessary. You still want to be able to follow through despite that.

Rewards can make difficult behaviors easier and more enjoyable, but the long-term goal is to build something that doesn’t fall apart whenever there isn’t a special reward waiting for you. If that’s the case, the reward is either wrong or wrongly timed.

When should you reward yourself?

There isn’t one perfect time to reward yourself. The best timing depends on the behavior, the type of reward, and what you want the reward to help with. But when the reward happens can affect how closely it feels connected to the effort.

Here are three useful times to reward yourself, along with one important distinction about recovery.

During the behavior

Sometimes, you can make a difficult or unpleasant behavior easier by pairing it with something enjoyable while you do it.

Listening to music while you exercise, drinking coffee while you write, or having a small snack while studying can make the experience more pleasant. This can be especially useful when the behavior is difficult to start or stay engaged with.

However, it’s important that the reward doesn’t become a distraction. It should be something that fits in naturally with disturbing and makes the experience easier to return to or stay engaged with.

Immediately after

For repeated behaviors, rewarding yourself immediately afterwards can help the reward feel clearly connected to the effort you just made.

You might finish a workout with a protein shake, take a planned break after studying, make a coffee after completing a difficult task, or mark the behavior as complete in your habit tracker.

The reward doesn’t need to be large. What matters is that it gives you something positive to associate with following through – and that way, make the behavior seem more rewarding.

After reaching a milestone

Long-term goals often require a lot of effort before the larger result becomes visible. Smaller milestones can give you something meaningful to aim for along the way.

You might reward yourself after staying consistent for a certain period, completing part of a larger project, reaching a training milestone, or making another measurable improvement that matters to you.

Larger milestones can justify larger rewards, while smaller milestones usually benefit from something simpler and easier to repeat.

Long-term goals become easier to carry when you give yourself something worth looking forward to along the way

Don’t make recovery something you have to earn

Recovery is important for your performance, productivity, and ability to stay consistent over time. But unlike a reward, proper recovery shouldn’t depend on whether you have done enough to deserve it.

If you genuinely need rest, give yourself the space to recover even if you missed a workout, didn’t finish the task, or only managed the smallest version of what you planned.

There will be times when you need to push through discomfort. But constantly treating necessary recovery as something you must earn can make sustainable progress much harder. Rest can feel rewarding, but sometimes it is simply what you need.

Infographic showing three simple rules for rewarding yourself: choose a good reward, use it at the right time, and use rewards wisely.

Can rewards help you build habits?

Rewards can help you build habits because they can reinforce the behaviors you want to repeat.

When you perform a behavior and something positive follows, that outcome gives you a reason to choose the behavior again. If the reward happens soon after the behavior, the connection between the two is easier to recognise. The next time you encounter the same situation, repeating the behavior can become a little more appealing.

This matters because habits are built through repetition. As you repeatedly perform the same behavior in a similar context, the cue and the behavior gradually become more closely connected. Eventually, seeing the cue can begin to prompt the behavior with less conscious thought and negotiation – a habit.

Ways to reward yourself

There are many ways to reward yourself, and the right choice depends on what you enjoy, what you’re rewarding, and how significant the effort or milestone was.

The ideas below can give you a starting point. As you choose, keep the five conditions from earlier in mind: the reward should feel enjoyable, fit the effort, support what you’re building, happen close enough to feel connected, and not become something you depend on before acting.

Small and free rewards

Small or free rewards work especially well for recurring behaviors, where you want something enjoyable without making the reward difficult or expensive to repeat.

Make your favorite coffee or tea
Watch an episode of a show
Play a game
Listen to your favorite music
Take a long shower
Read something purely for enjoyment
Take a guilt-free break
Look back at the progress you’ve already made
Spend time with a friend

Reward to pair with the behavior

Sometimes, you can pair a difficult behavior with something you enjoy. This can make it easier to get started, stay engaged, and make the overall experience more pleasant.

Listen to music
Listen to a podcast
Have a small snack
Drink something you enjoy
Work somewhere you enjoy being
Do the activity with someone else

The reward shouldn’t distract you from the behavior itself or make it harder to do well. It should just add something enjoyable to the experience.

Rewards that help you recharge

Some rewards give you a chance to slow down and enjoy some time away from your usual responsibilities.

Take an evening off
Sleep in when your schedule allows it
Let your thoughts flow freely in a journal
Go for a relaxing walk
Spend time on a hobby
Have a slow morning
Meditate or deliberately disconnect for a while

Remember that necessary recovery isn’t something you have to earn. These work as rewards when they’re something enjoyable you choose to give yourself, not when you’re withholding rest until you’ve done enough.

Bigger milestone rewards

Larger milestones can justify something more significant. The reward should still fit your situation, but it can be something you wouldn’t necessarily give yourself after an ordinary day of following through.

Buy something you’ve wanted for a while
Go to the cinema
Visit a restaurant
Upgrade something related to your goal
Book an experience
Take a day away from work
Celebrate the milestone with someone
Go on a small trip

The best reward is one you can enjoy without making tomorrow harder

How to choose the right reward

The right reward depends on you, the behavior, and the progress you’re rewarding. If you’re unsure whether a reward makes sense, ask yourself:

Do I actually look forward to this?
Does it fit the size of the achievement?
Does it support, or at least not undermine, what I’m trying to build?
Can I use it without making the system difficult to sustain?

If the answer is yes to all four, it’s probably a reward that fits what you’re trying to do.

Final thoughts

You don’t need a reward for everything you do. But when the larger payoff is still far away, a well-chosen reward can make the effort feel more meaningful and give you something positive to look forward to along the way.

The reward doesn’t have to be big. It just needs to matter to you, fit the effort, and not work against what you’re trying to build.

Used this way, rewarding yourself is a way to acknowledge the work you’re already doing and make long-term growth a little more enjoyable along the way.