Executive Functioning tip I never hear people talk about
tl;dr: Don't give yourself the reward after you work, give yourself the reward while you work.
Why the old strategy doesn't work
First, it probably feels illogical to you. "Why would I wait to eat the chocolate when I can just eat it right now???"
Second reason is because it triggers demand avoidance, which is common in ADHD/Autism. Making yourself wait to have the reward boxes you in and turns into a demand, and this feels uncomfortable. And then you associate this discomfort with the task you're trying to do. Not good.
It's important to note that this only works if you can multitask the reward with the main task. Eat ice cream while you write a paper. Listen to a podcast while you do the dishes. If you can't multitask with it, you may need a different strategy (like body doubling perhaps).
It also works better if the reward is special but not too special. If you like it too much you won't save it as a reward for these tasks. To help with this, find something with a limited quantity. For example, I light a particular scented candle whenever I clean the cat box, which happens to be pretty expensive, so I don't want to waste it.
So we've solved the demand avoidance problem, but there's another reason why this works, and it has to do with the role of dopamine. Dopamine is misunderstood as the "pleasure" chemical, but it's really the "reward" chemical, and it's not only released as a reward, but also in the anticipation of a reward, which is related to how much dopamine was released the last time you did that task.
So this strategy employs what I personally refer to as "dopamine training." When you give yourself something nice while doing a chore, your brain gets dopamine during the chore. It doesn't really know what part of the chore actually triggered the dopamine. If you want to make a habit out of this chore, focus on overloading the dopamine the first time. Eat a LOT of ice cream and don't worry about how many pages of your essay you wrote. You can try harder at that later.
After a few sessions of this, you may find that "mental barrier" you have around the task feels lower and easy to push past. That's the dopamine training at work. At this stage, you can sometimes skip giving yourself that reward during the chore, but don't remove it entirely. In fact, making it intermittent actually strengthens the dopamine link in your brain. You can keep the reward every time, too, if you want. Ice cream is actually good for you when used as a tool to improve your life, after all.
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