Maybe in the beginning. I've gotten the impression that OP is already beyond this stage where positive reinforcement was necessary and did the first steps, stru

Maybe in the beginning. I've gotten the impression that OP is already beyond this stage where positive reinforcement was necessary and did the first steps, struggling with the subsequent ones. If you studied (natural) reinforcement learning, negative reward seems to be working as well, even in case if all you get are negative rewards (which some researchers/philosophers actually consider as accurate description of life). Even historically, religions used it profoundly, e.g. by default you end up in hell and you have to do much better (up to the point of becoming a hero) to escape - easy coasting won't do it. It's quite fascinating to think this tells us what motivation approaches work on humans as they persisted through evolutionary selection to this day and how one can use them to improve one's condition.