Credit card companies make spending money fun by giving you perks. For example, with every dollar you spend, you earn a point that you can redeem for a prize—such as cash, hotels, or airfare. Sometimes, these credit cards offer prizes for you to sign up—such as a free iPad, or enough points for you to exchange for three nights at a hotel.

These companies aren’t controlling what you do—they incentivize and train you. For example, if you spend with their partners, they will give you two points per dollar. Once you achieve certain goals that they set, they may reward you by offering you more perks and giving you a more exclusive title, bestowing you with more status. You might go from a Gold member to a Platinum or Titanium or other rarer metal.

Pretty soon, you might find yourself ensnared by the system—you’re mindlessly chasing points, pushing to achieve the goals they set. 

The ideal solution here isn’t to completely opt out; it’s to make your own set of rules to counterbalance the credit card’s rules. For example, you may decide that you were going to spend the money anyway—so you’re not going to worry about point multipliers or the status that you have with the credit card company. 

You may even decide that if the goal was just to get some perks for spending the money you were going to spend anyway, the points don’t mean much to you.

You can apply this far beyond credit cards, towards almost any system. You’ll get the most out of life when you decide for yourself what a system’s incentives mean to you, and how you can guard against them to optimize for the values and the life you want.