Learning a language

from the other two groups. Without the promise of another reward, they were less motivated.

Since this classic experiment, the results have been replicated many times.

Promising a reward for activities and achievements — such as that represented by the accumulation of stars on a chart — seems to cause a drop-off in intrinsic motivation. Suddenly, certain activities aren’t worth doing for their own sake.

There’s another mechanism at work too, one which perhaps more accurately explains why the star chart system suddenly wasn’t working for me.

Writing in Psychology Today, Eileen Kennedy-moore, PHD suggests: “Promising a huge reward, far away in time, for perfect behaviour is a setup for failure.

“Setting criteria that kids can’t meet is also demoralising. I’ve seen more than a few ‘behaviour mod charts’ filled with frowny faces. Rather than reward systems, these end up being proof of the child’s ‘badness’, which is never helpful.”

I didn’t have any frowny faces on my star chart but the big, ugly crosses I used to score through the squares that hadn’t earned a star that day amounted to the same thing.

Seeing them added to my sense of Protestant work ethic-based guilt and my feeling that I was a worthless slacker.

Perhaps you’ve felt something similar when you haven’t managed to clock up 10,000 steps in the park during your Government-sanctioned exercise hour.

Anne Thorndike, assistant professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, which is affiliated with Harvard, has been researching the effects of activity trackers, such as Fitbit, on motivation.

The research isn’t yet complete but it looks as though the effect Kennedy-moore noticed with the children she studied seems to be holding true for Thorndike’s subjects. Thorndike told verywellfit.com: “If you’ve set yourself a goal, and the wristband is telling you every time you look at it that you haven’t reached that benchmark, you may eventually just take the thing off.”

So, what’s the solution? Having no goals, or moderating the goals we do have to reflect that in this period of isolation, sometimes getting out of bed, showering and getting dressed is a big achievement?

I’ve made myself a new chart. There’s still a column for work because of course there are still bills to pay, and there’s still a column for walking, because I never need to be persuaded to take a stroll in the park.

But the three other columns have been squished into one titled: 30 minutes of whatever I want to do.

The funny thing is, now that I don’t approach lockdown like a period of Olympic triathlon training, that ‘30 minutes of whatever I want to do’ is actually 30 minutes of yoga.