Intrinsic Motivation: The Key to Creative and Passionate Work

📚 I've been reading Daniel Pink's book, "𝗗𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲".

I’m really enjoying it and recommend it for anyone in a serving or leading capacity.

The concepts are foundational to understanding our own sources of intrinsic motivation, and can provide insight into how to stoke the fires of purpose and drive in others.

Some of what I've learned so far:

Motivation 2.0

Traditional motivation theory assumes that if you reward an activity, you will get more of it. Punish activity, you get less of it.

But modern motivation science has proven this isn't true.

Turns out, rewards can turn something interesting into a drudge, and then everything suffers.

Transforming Play into Work

Scientists studied children who loved to draw when given autonomy to choose an activity during free time.

They put these children into 3 groups:

• Group A were told they would get a reward for drawing (and would give them one after each completed drawing);

• Group B weren't told that they would get a reward for drawing but after they finished drawing something, they were rewarded;

• Group C weren't told they would be rewarded, and didn't get anything when they were done, either.

Then the scientists observed and measured their desire to color and draw in their free time. Groups B and C continued to love coloring and drawing as before—but Group A saw a SIGNIFICANT drop-off.

The IF/THEN Problem

The types of contingent reward offered to Group A had posed a problem—essentially, the scientists had successfully turned their play into work.

This isn’t saying that people won’t work (and excel) for money, incentives and bonus structures. And of course there is a baseline compensation need that MUST be met for anyone.

🚀 However, I think we all either know or ARE those people who can become driven and passionate about a project just because it tickles brains and hearts in just the right way…anything that comes on top of the reward of the task itself is simply icing on the cake.

Can We Work at Something We Enjoy?

So how do we ensure that we aren't just working for money or praise? How do we ensure that we are creating/working because we love what we’re doing and want to do more of it?

How do we ensure that we, too, don’t kill that spark by mis-incentivizing it?

In future posts, I'll cover some of the intrinsic motivators that can be found in any individual and discuss ways to leverage those to help shore up and stoke the fires of creativity and passion.