Motivation Killed by Rewards

Drive by Daniel Payne

I just finished reading Drive, by Daniel Pink, (conveniently downloaded from my library) and I learned some surprising things about motivation.

The most startling concept was that incentives can actually hurt motivation. At first I didn’t believe this, but as the book went into details I started to see when I lost motivation at different points in my career and life.

Incentives aren’t always bad. The book points out that an incentive offered for a boring, repetitious task will help, but an incentive for a creative task usually hurts.

A creative task, even if it is difficult, is fun.  Think about it - how many people play sudoku? What about the basic puzzle? Think back to when you were a kid - were you involved in a math team, the debate team, or anything that required lots of thought?  While a majority of the population didn’t go so far as to debate or solve complex math problems in their free time - many people have played mind games or contributed to an organization. Ever help with a beach clean up or paint a school?

When something is challenging we enjoy it. It isn’t work until someone says it is work. When I was a kid I wrote newsletter and put together scrap books for a club I was involved in. Now, as a marketer, my job is to do similar things, but now - it is work.

I enjoy writing. I like sharing my thoughts (even if they are bad). Blogging would seem like the perfect activity for me - but someone turned it into work for me. Besides that fact that I organized and wrote for a company blog, I also dabbled in putting my thoughts on the web in my free time. At first I enjoyed it, then my husband, who makes money with travel websites, thought I should put ads on my websites.

At first I thought making a little money from something I enjoyed was a great idea. When the ads first went up, I wrote more. I promoted my website. I worked to make my site more popular so I could get more money from advertising. Then my enthusiasm faded. I had a ‘real’ job. I went to work 5 days a week, sat a computer and worked to promote the company website. Did I really want to spend my free time working? It wasn’t as if I needed the money - sure it helped b/c I was making very little at work, but it wasn’t as if I couldn’t pay my rent.

The financial incentive to do something I enjoyed doing turned my pastime into work. I can’t believe I hadn’t realized this before!

Now, you might be thinking, that this makes sense for your free time, but you still need to give your employees a goal and a prize to make them work a little harder. That isn’t true. Even at the office people enjoy a challenge and will work to achieve the challenge without an extra reward. — They still need their base pay, its just the extra reward that kills the motivation.

I’m not going to really elaborate on this concept - because the book explains it a lot better than I could. It is just a little food for thought.