drive, the surprising truth about what motivates us, ANIMATED

Time for something different! Here is a cool animation of Dan Pink’s work, based on material from his book Drive: the Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us that I ran across on Tobias Buckell’s site. Motivation isn’t what people and economics tend to think! People aren’t simple! But here, watch for yourself:

Basically, people want autonomy, mastery, and purpose a heck of a lot more than they want rewards like incentive bonuses, that is, reward and punishment as motivation only goes so far and that isn’t very far at all. The science says that carrot and stick might work for compliance, but it doesn’t lead to high performance in any sort of work that requires actual thought and creative effort. You just don’t get the best out of people by trying to buy it.

This is not surprising to me, but I would point out that this work looks at people and work and jobs and money, not children and parenting, where I have my experience. If/then reward/punishment is a basic parenting philosophy so deeply ingrained that it’s hard to even see it, much less challenge it, but I do, I challenge it, every chance I get.

Children are humans, they want autonomy, mastery, and purpose too. Giving a human a sticker for obeying your weird requests is…well, it’s insulting really. It’s like buying Manhattan for a handful of glass beads. But, I’ve noticed that adults have no problem insulting younger humans. They do it all the time in a million ways without even thinking about it. Kind of pisses me off, actually. Like the endless jokes about teenagers. Imagine if those same jokes were being made ubiquitously about African American people or women and you can start to see the deep vein of prejudice against young people we’ve got going on here. But I digress.

(Oh, heck, here’s a little more digression: I bet the people who made that Manhattan deal, the Native Americans who took the beads, I bet they thought they were pulling quite a fast one on those stupid whities. Like selling the Brooklyn Bridge. I bet they had no idea that the white folk would or could actually take control of what clearly couldn’t be sold, the Land, the B. Bridge. This is just my theory, but I’m sticking to it till I hear something better.)

I like Mr. Pink’s work very much (even if he doesn’t bring up kids, no one is perfect). Basically, we get excited about getting really good at stuff, solving important and interesting problems, and being self-directed (whatever our age) and treating humans like dummies gets you (apparent) dummies for employees/students/etc. It’s interesting with regard to writing and creative life, and helpful in setting up that part of my life in ways that ARE truly motivating. Which makes it easier to meet goals. I want my work to matter, I want to keep getting better at it, I want to be free to do it they way I want. Paychecks are motivating in the short term but working only for the money leads to burn out and deadens the part of me that gives a shit.

Summary. Set people free to pursue the things that matter to them and you get cool amazing stuff/ideas/solutions/art you never thought of. Set up a bunch of hoops and punish/reward for compliance and you won’t get anything beyond what you had already thought up—and you get unhappy, unsatisfied people, too.

Ahem. Here ends today’s philosophical ramblings.