Refusing to believe in incentives is refusing to believe in human nature. Mothers understand incentives better than most psychologists. Early on, they make an agreement with their child. You can have the ice cream once you've eaten the carrots. This isn't because they are tyrannical. They just know that if they let their kid have the ice cream before the carrots, the carrots won't be eaten. I know this all sounds very elementary. Yet, why do so many of us go about our days eating the ice cream before the carrots? We open up social media before we've gone for our run. We answer email before we've done any work of depth. We turn on the radio before we've formed so much as a single, original thought. We shower ourselves in incentives before we've allowed ourselves the chance to earn them and we wonder why we don't get anything done.