Are you motivated by the carrot or the stick? reward or punishment? These are the traditional motivators of most traditional business models. Reward the person who is most productive; punish those that fall short.
Extrinsic Motivators
Extrinsic incentives (like reward and punishment) work really well for activities that need narrow focus on a goal that you can see. Bake twenty cakes following this exact recipe and get a reward. I do the same thing twenty times to get paid the reward.
However, extrinsic incentives stifle creativity. If you are trying to motivate creative problem solving and creative inventions, many large corporations are realizing that intrinsic motivators are more important.
Intrinsic Motivators
- Autonomy – the urge to direct our own lives
- Mastery – the desire to get better and better at something that matters
- Purpose – the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves
At corporations like Google, engineers can spend 20% of their time working on anything they want. More than half of the innovative new products each year come from this 20% time. (Autonomy.)
How do projects like Wikipedia succeed if writers don’t get paid? It turns out that intrinsic motivators are pretty powerful. People write for Wikipedia because they like doing it.
We need the right balance of motivators in our life. Much of the time it depends on the project.
Five years ago, I decided to use my free time (autonomy) to learn storytelling as a performance art. It was fun! No one made me do it. Yet, it was challenging. I had talent, but I wanted to get better (mastery). In a world of disconnection, storytelling connects us and heals communities. I wanted to share this with others (purpose). Five years later, I teach a class called “Storytelling as Healing” at a local university. Why? Because I like doing it and someone felt I had achieved some level of mastery. Looking back, I am still amazed. If I had gone to a traditional academic program with grades (given as rewards or punishments), I could never have relaxed and been so creative as a storytelling performer. It would have become “work.” I knew that I had to keep this fun and playful; only then would I continue to be motivated to achieve mastery because I am doing something that I love (intrinsic motivation).
Watch The Puzzle of Motivation by Daniel Pink
Check out the book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, by Daniel H. Pink
