Granny's Rule
Children must eat their carrots before they get dessert. The business version: force yourself to do the unpleasant and necessary tasks first, then reward yourself by proceeding to pleasant tasks.
Why It Works
Granny's Rule exploits incentive superpower in your own favor. By sequencing reward after duty, you harness the same mechanism that drives all habit formation. Skinner showed that prompt rewards work best, so the reward should follow the unpleasant task immediately.
Practical Application
Consultant psychologists teach executives to use Granny's Rule daily. The emphasis on daily is deliberate — prompt, consistent reward reinforcement is more effective than intermittent use.
This connects directly to habit-stacking: "After [unpleasant task], I will [pleasant task]" is both a habit stack and Granny's Rule simultaneously.
Connection to Other Concepts
- temptation-bundling — the Atomic Habits version: pair a need-to-do with a want-to-do
- habit-stacking — same sequential structure
- decisive-moments — Granny's Rule is most powerful at the fork-in-the-road moments