Make the dull task fun: temptation bundling and turning discipline into a game

The Short Version

Three people who think hard about follow-through, Wharton professor Katy Milkman, Mel Robbins and Rob Dyrdek, each treat enjoyment as something you can build into work you would rather avoid, not something you either feel or don't [1][2][3]. Milkman's research tool is temptation bundling: allow yourself a pleasure, like a gripping audiobook, only while doing the chore, and the chore starts to pull you in instead of pushing you away [1]. Robbins makes "fun and easy" the fifth of her six steps for any goal, using reminders, playlists, partners and the removal of decisions to take the effort out of the daily reps [2]. Dyrdek scores every day of his life and tracks his habits as numbers, and says turning those stats into a game made him more disciplined [3]. None of them pretends the work stops being hard; their shared point is that people last longer when the path itself has something in it they look forward to, because willpower and good intentions alone keep losing to the pull of the present moment [1][2][3].

Table of contents

What They Said

Katy Milkman: make the path fun, because fun is what keeps you going

Milkman, a Wharton professor and co-director of the Behavior Change for Good Initiative with Angela Duckworth, frames the problem of change as a set of specific barriers: status quo bias, sunk costs, impulsivity, procrastination, forgetting, and not believing you can change [1]. Impulsivity, in her account, means overweighting instant gratification, and it is the barrier that fun is designed to beat [1].

Her case for fun rests on research by Ayelet Fishbach and Kaitlin Woolley. Most people pursue a goal by choosing the most efficient route, Milkman explains, but those who choose the most enjoyable route persist longer [1]. When people were encouraged to pick fun ways to exercise or study math, with music, markers or snacks, they achieved more [1]. Her summary of the finding is direct: "People achieve more because they persist longer when they find ways to make it fun to do what's good for them." [1] We underestimate this, she says, because of the same impulsivity that causes the problem: we overvalue how the present moment feels [1]. In the conversation the idea is put in everyday terms, that "We'll probably quit more frequently when it gets harder and harder if there's no daily joy or fun." and the reply comes back: "Absolutely. And I think it's so underappreciated." [1]

Temptation bundling, from a tired grad student to randomized trials

Milkman calls temptation bundling "the very first bit of me search I did" [1]. In graduate school she was taking computer science and business classes and came home too exhausted to study or to exercise [1]. Her fix was to tie a pleasure to the chore she was avoiding. She loved page-turning audiobooks, Harry Potter and James Patterson's Alex Cross novels, and she made a rule: "So I would only let myself listen to those books at the gym." [1]

The effect surprised her. She found herself coming home from a long day of classes craving a trip to the gym, wondering what would happen to Alex Cross next [1]. Once there, "Time would fly while I was there because the workout isn't painful. It's fun." [1] She even overdid it: "Sometimes I worked out too long because I wanted to hear what happens next." [1] She came home "refreshed" and "rejuvenated", ready to dive into her class work, and her grades improved a lot [1]. Her explanation is that everything got better because she had figured out that "by linking a chore with a temptation, I could make it fun." [1]

She ties the tactic straight back to the Fishbach and Woolley finding: "And we already talked about the importance of making it fun for persistence. This is just a tactic for doing it." [1] And she has since tested it beyond her own life, with a characteristic joke about her research habits: "A lot of my research is like, oh, look, I'm not weird. It works for other people too." [1] The tests were large: "So we ran large randomized controlled trials and show that teaching people to temptation bundle, giving them temptations to hook with a chore improves outcomes in terms of exercise." [1]

Milkman then widens the idea. Her examples include saving a favourite podcast for cooking or household chores, only gossiping with a friend on morning walks, or a snack you allow yourself only when you sit down to study [1]. The question she wants listeners to ask is: "What is the thing that you sometimes don't do put off because it's not instantly gratifying?" [1] Then find something you love and link it to that thing [1].

The other tools that make progress feel rewarding

Milkman's wider toolkit adds game-like elements around the work. Tracking helps because visibility lets you reward yourself: in one study, people who could see their water use in real time in the shower cut back, and she loves it when her Fitbit buzzes at 10,000 steps [1]. Seeing progress, "Especially if we're tracking and we can sort of give ourselves that pat on the back", reinforces what you are achieving and boosts confidence [1].

Streaks are part of this too. Milkman points to language apps that make your streak prominent, and the conversation notes "there's some new work that's starting to be done on the power of streaks and visible streaks" [1]. The pull of a streak is easy to recognise: "I don't want to lose what I've achieved and accomplished, and that's very motivating." [1]

She also uses structure that makes big goals feel manageable. Following the work of the late Albert Bandura, she recommends breaking goals into bite-sized parts: volunteers committed to 200 hours a year did much better when reminded to volunteer four hours a week, and in a study led by Hal Hershfield with the savings app Acorns, inviting people to save $5 a day instead of $150 a month produced something like five times more sign-ups [1]. And she uses commitment devices, where you put money on the line, as the opposite lever to fun: a penalty instead of a pleasure. Smokers who could deposit money they would forfeit if they failed a nicotine test had a 30% higher quit rate [1]. Of the sunk-cost pull behind such devices she says, "It's sort of a mistake that we do it, but it works." [1]

Leaving room to fail

Milkman pairs fun with flexibility. In a study at Google with about 2,500 employees, people rewarded for going to the gym at the same time every day went slightly more at that time but tended not to go at all if they missed it, while those encouraged to mix it up went more overall: "They've built a no matter what habit." [1] Her colleague Marissa Sharif studied what Milkman calls emergency reserves, or mulligans: an ambitious goal, like exercising every day, with a limited number of passes, which beat both the plain tough goal and an easier goal [1]. Milkman likens the pass to "the get out of jail free card that you save for the real emergency" in Monopoly, and it guards against the what-the-hell effect, where one slip leads people to abandon the goal entirely [1]. Her three truths from the episode begin with finding a way to make the path to achievement fun, and end with "rigidity is the enemy of habit and success" [1].

Mel Robbins: accept the grind, then make the reps fun and easy

Robbins comes at the question from the other side. In a solo episode laying out the six steps she says she uses for every goal, from drinking more water to paying off $800,000 of debt, she openly calls goal achievement boring, tedious and "a giant pain in the ass honestly", and treats that as the point rather than a problem [2]. Her steps are: decide what you want, write it down, find the formula, do the reps, make it fun and easy, and don't quit [2].

The reps come first

Step four, doing the reps, is in her words the boring, unglamorous core of achieving anything [2]. She credits the phrase to her friend Jeff Walker: success comes from tedious daily actions, like lifting a light weight over and over to build a bicep [2]. "There are no big leaps. They're small gains." [2] People who look like overnight sensations, she says, were "doing the reps in the dark for a decade while nobody was paying attention." [2] If losing weight or getting out of debt were fun, everyone would do it [2].

Her tools for getting the reps done are not about enjoyment. She recommends an implementation intention written under the goal (I will do the rep at a certain time in a certain place), her 5 Second Rule (count 5-4-3-2-1 and move), and a line she takes from the psychiatrist Dr. K for naming your resistance out loud: "I know I don't want to do this, but I'm doing it anyway." [2] Naming the resistance lowers it, she says, so you don't have to rely on willpower [2]. She cites an exercise study in which 91% of the group that wrote down when and where they would exercise did it, about double the other groups [2]. Even in her own family the reps have a playful language: in the family group chat one of the kids will say something like "yep, putting in the reps today", which she explains is "code for doing the hard work and it's kind of cool." [2]

Step five: take the effort out

Only after the reps are under way does she add fun. "I'd say about a week into consistently doing this," she says, "now you get to step above this and say, how can I make this fun and easy?" [2]

Her favourite method is visual reminders: "So how can you take any of the decision making or any of the effort out by having visual reminders?" [2] She sets alarms on her phone that tell her to go for her walk in ten minutes and puts a sticky note where she works, "because now I don't have to remember it." [2] She lays out her workout clothes in the morning so they're waiting for her "like a giant middle finger." [2]

She also plans ahead to remove decisions. She plans the week's exercise classes on Sunday night, because walking into a gym without a plan used to end with her wandering: "I guess I'll just walk on the treadmill for a little bit." [2] Now, "And so I've made it fun and easy by planning ahead and removing decisions." [2] Her water goal works the same way. She fills her Mason jar the night before and leaves it in front of the coffee maker, so that when she rolls out of bed, "I army crawl to the coffee maker" and drinks water before she makes coffee [2]. "But because the Mason jar is out there, I've made it easy to do the thing." [2]

Then come the purely enjoyable additions: "What are some other ways you can make it fun? You can make playlists." [2] She lists a workout buddy, an online community or a class as other options [2]. She credits James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, with the idea that "you will rise or fall to the level of your systems." [2]

When it still feels hard

Robbins gives two reasons someone might still struggle to keep up the reps. Either they haven't accepted that it's supposed to be hard, which they can fix by telling themselves the difficulty means it's working, or their environment and systems need to make the right action more obvious and easier [2]. Her sixth step, not quitting, is about returning after you slip: "It's the day that you return. That defines success because it means you didn't quit." [2] Looking back on more than a decade of chipping away at her goals, she does not describe it as fun: "It was grueling," she says [2].

Rob Dyrdek: score your life and the discipline follows

Dyrdek, the pro skateboarder turned MTV star of Rob & Big, Fantasy Factory and Ridiculousness, describes a life run as an engineered system [3]. The part of it that bears on this question is his daily scoring.

The two lines that move together

Dyrdek tracks every minute of his life and scores each day from zero to ten on how he feels about his life, his work and his health [3]. Alongside that he tracks quantitative habits: did he get up at five, brain-train, meditate, work out, eat clean and not drink [3]. He says the two lines move almost one for one: when discipline goes up, quality of life goes up [3]. Gamifying the stats, he explains, made him more disciplined, and that discipline compounds into energy, self-belief and success [3].

The game has targets. For 2021 he set goals to average 20 points above baseline on quality of life and 80 percent on his health habits, and he says he is currently at about 21 and 95 [3]. It did not come quickly: he started tracking in 2015 but couldn't complete a full year of it until 2020 [3]. Of his daily manifestation habit, which he tracks at around 96 to 97 percent of days, he says the same thing applies: "It's a muscle." [3]

Lewis Howes, the host and a longtime friend, sums up the method from the outside: "you track every data point of your day right over every month or over every year you analyze it you obsess over it", a model "which for some might seem extreme", and one "which takes extreme discipline and consistency" [3].

What the scores reveal: stuck stress

For Dyrdek the scoring is not only a motivator; it is a diagnostic. He describes "stuck stress", things you can't release, like people in your life or worry over money, as a drain on your capacity [3]. Asking yourself every day how you feel about your life, work and health produces a number and a reason, and "when the number is low and you and the reason why is someone you work with" two or three times, "it's so clear to you that okay i need to remove that" [3]. Seeing the pattern, he says, made those things easy to eliminate, where before it was hard to tell what was actually causing the stress [3].

Energy, mastery and joy in the process

Once he had cleared that stress, his rule became simple: "i no longer want to do things that take energy from me" [3]. For any task that drains him, he gives himself three options: "learn it well really well so that that it can be it can take less effort so it now begins to give you energy", or "you either need to automate it or you need to hire someone outsource it" [3]. His household runs on an 80-page operating document he calls the Rhythm of Existence, and he describes the next stage after automating as optimizing: "greatness is found an optimization after you've automated" [3]. He applied that to shooting Ridiculousness, going from two episodes between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. to six between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. [3].

Echoing Gary Vaynerchuk, he says to "fall in love with making the process fun and enjoyable." [3] The last of his three truths is to find joy in the process, getting better at it until it takes less energy and becomes a joyous journey [3]. Yet he is frank that discipline also needs walls. He calls diet the battle between his "upper self and lower self" and builds discipline systems to "protect me from me"; a five-day vacation once sent him into a dogfight to regain momentum [3].

Where They Agree, and Where They Don't

Where they agree

All three treat the experience of doing the work as something you can design. Milkman pairs the chore with a temptation [1]; Robbins asks how each rep can be made fun and easy [2]; Dyrdek turns his habits into scored stats and wants to only do things that give him energy [3]. In each case the design comes from the person doing the work, not from waiting to feel like it.

They also agree that this is about persistence over time, not a single burst. Milkman's argument is that people persist longer when the route is enjoyable [1]. Robbins introduces fun only once the reps are a week in, and her last step is not quitting [2]. Dyrdek's tracking took five years to become a full year of data and he calls the habit a muscle [3].

Visible progress runs through all three. Milkman's Fitbit buzz, the real-time shower display and app streaks [1], Robbins' written goal kept in sight every day and her alarms and sticky notes [2], and Dyrdek's daily scores and dashboards of how he spends his time [3] all make progress something you can see and respond to.

Finally, they share a suspicion of relying on willpower. Milkman's whole toolkit starts from the idea that we are wired to overvalue the present [1]. Robbins wants reminders and planning to take the decisions out, and names resistance so she doesn't have to rely on willpower [2]. Dyrdek builds systems to "protect me from me" [3].

Where they differ

The clearest difference is in how much fun they expect. Milkman's evidence says the enjoyable route outlasts the efficient one, and her own temptation bundle made the gym something she craved [1]. Robbins is more cautious. She calls the work boring and grueling, offers accepting that it's supposed to be hard alongside making it easier as the fix when the reps slip, and her step five is weighted toward ease: reminders, laid-out clothes, a jar by the coffee maker [2]. Fun for her is an add-on to reps you are already doing, not the engine. Each view follows from where they start. Milkman studies the impulsivity that makes people choose the present over the future, so she tries to make the present rewarding [1]. Robbins starts from the experience of people who quit because they expected it to feel good, so she warns them it won't, then lightens the load where she can [2].

Dyrdek's game is also a different kind of fun. Milkman's temptation is a pleasure unrelated to the task, like Harry Potter at the gym [1]. Dyrdek's reward comes from the numbers themselves and from mastering a task until it costs less energy [3]. His approach is also far heavier: an 80-page household manual, a chief of staff and two assistants, hour-by-hour Monday reviews [3]. Howes himself says it may seem extreme to some [3].

There is a possible tension between Dyrdek's highly structured routine and Milkman's finding that rigidity is the enemy of habit [1][3]. The sources don't address it directly. What they do show is that Dyrdek's health-habit target was 80 percent, not 100 [3], and Milkman's emergency reserves likewise build a limited number of misses into a tough goal [1].

Why It Works

The sources give several mechanisms.

Fun answers impulsivity. Milkman's core explanation is that we overweight instant gratification and overvalue how the present moment feels [1]. A task with no reward until months later loses to whatever feels good now. Linking an immediate pleasure to the task, or choosing the enjoyable way to do it, means the present moment now favours the task. That is why the people in Fishbach and Woolley's research who chose fun ways to exercise or study math achieved more: they kept going longer [1]. Milkman's own experience shows the reversal: the gym went from a chore to something she craved because it was the only place she could find out what happened to Alex Cross [1].

Visible progress gives a reward of its own. Milkman says tracking works because visibility lets you reward yourself, and streaks build psychological momentum because you don't want to lose what you've achieved [1]. Dyrdek reports that his discipline and his quality of life move almost one for one, and that gamifying the stats compounded into energy, self-belief and success [3]. He also says "Progress creates belief", and that breaking goals into believable milestones lets you fail with clarity rather than confusion [3]. Milkman's research on bite-sized goals, from four hours of volunteering a week to $5 a day of savings, points the same way: smaller, more frequent units feel achievable [1].

Taking the effort out lowers the barrier. Robbins' reminders and planning work by removing decisions and the need to remember [2]. Her written goal, she says, works through what researchers call external storage and encoding: seeing it every day tells the hippocampus the goal matters, so your brain filters the world for opportunities to advance it, you remember to act, and on low days it helps you push yourself [2]. Dyrdek's version is mastery and automation: learn a task so well that it takes less effort and begins to give energy, or hand it off [3].

Fun is not the only lever. Milkman's commitment devices work by penalty rather than pleasure, by changing the cost-benefit calculation [1]. Robbins' implementation intentions, which she says roughly doubled follow-through in one exercise study, work through a concrete plan of when and where [2], and Milkman cites Peter Gollwitzer's research showing the same for if-then plans [1]. The sources treat fun as one tool among several, aimed at a specific barrier.

Where It Applies, and Where It Doesn't

It fits tasks you avoid because they aren't instantly rewarding. Milkman's own question defines the target: the thing you put off "because it's not instantly gratifying" [1]. Exercise is the case with the strongest evidence in these sources, from her randomized trials [1]. Her other suggestions, chores, cooking and studying, follow the same logic [1].

Match the tool to the barrier. Milkman's top-level advice is to diagnose your specific barrier and pick the tool that fits rather than grabbing tactics off the shelf [1]. If the problem is forgetting, a reminder or an if-then plan may do more than a temptation [1][2]. If the problem is that you never decided on a measurable goal, Robbins would send you back to step one: "if you can't measure it, it's not a goal. It's just a wish, a want or a dream." [2] If the problem is low belief, Milkman points to the people you surround yourself with [1].

Fun doesn't replace accepting difficulty. Robbins is clear that a goal worth having will feel hard, and that one fix for struggling is telling yourself the difficulty means it's working [2]. Dyrdek, for all his talk of joy in the process, still builds systems to protect himself from himself [3]. Making work enjoyable helps; it does not make discipline unnecessary.

Rigid games can backfire. Milkman's Google study shows that a habit tied to one perfect time broke as soon as that time was missed, and the what-the-hell effect shows how one slip can end a goal [1]. A game with no allowance for bad days invites that. Her emergency reserves keep a hard target but allow a few limited misses [1].

Heavy tracking takes time and suits some people more than others. Dyrdek needed five years before he completed a full year of data [3]. Howes notes that for some his method might seem extreme [3]. Robbins' approach, by contrast, needs only a sticky note, an alarm and a jar of water [2]. These sources do not say which scale works better for whom.

Health goals deserve a professional's input. Several of these examples involve exercise, diet and weight. If you are making significant changes there, check them with a doctor or qualified professional.

What To Do With It

1. Name the task you keep putting off and why. Ask Milkman's question: is this something you avoid because it isn't instantly gratifying? If so, fun is the right tool; if you simply forget it, start with a reminder or an if-then plan instead [1][2].
2. Build a temptation bundle. Pick something you love, a gripping audiobook, a favourite podcast, a call with a friend, and allow it only while doing the chore, as Milkman did with Harry Potter and Alex Cross at the gym [1].
3. Choose the enjoyable route over the efficient one. If there are several ways to exercise or study, pick the one you'll enjoy, with music, markers, snacks or a class, since the research Milkman cites found people persist longer that way [1][2].
4. Do the reps first, then make them easier. Following Robbins, once you've done a week of consistent reps, ask "how can I make this fun and easy?" and add playlists, a buddy or a community [2].
5. Take the decisions out. Set phone alarms, put up sticky notes, lay out your workout clothes, plan the week's sessions on Sunday night, and put the first step where you can't miss it, like Robbins' Mason jar in front of the coffee maker [2].
6. Score yourself and watch the streak. Track your habits and, if it suits you, rate each day from zero to ten on your life, work and health, as Dyrdek does; use visible streaks and progress markers to give yourself that pat on the back [1][3].
7. Use the scores to find what drains you. When a low score keeps coming with the same reason, take it as Dyrdek does: a sign to remove it, or to master, automate or outsource the task until it stops costing you energy [3].
8. Set a tough target with limited passes. Aim high, but allow a small number of emergency reserves, and keep them for real emergencies so one slip doesn't trigger the what-the-hell effect [1]. Dyrdek's health-habit target, for comparison, was 80 percent [3].
9. Have backup plans. Don't make the game depend on one perfect time; keep a first-best, second-best and third-best plan so you build a "no matter what habit" [1].
10. Come back after you slip. When the fun runs out and you miss days, remember Robbins' rule: "It's the day that you return. That defines success because it means you didn't quit." [2]

Sources

1. Dr. Katy Milkman on Why We Get Stuck and the Science of Lasting Change · The School of Greatness
2. How to Achieve Any Goal You Have in 6 Simple Steps · The Mel Robbins Podcast
3. Rob Dyrdek on Designing a Life That Runs Without You: Manifestation, Automation and the Machine Method · The School of Greatness