The science behind what motivates us to get up for work every day

http://blog.bufferapp.com/the-science-of-what-motivates-us-to-get-up-for-work-every-day

by mikesun • 14 years ago

87 41 14 years ago

blog.bufferapp.com

ashray• 14 years ago

Pretty interesting post. A lot of this was covered in a book I read a few months ago, one of the best 'motivational' books that I ever came across (because it's scientific)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/59-Seconds-Think-little-change/dp/02...

PakG1• 14 years ago

Off topic, but I bought that book, and I think it gets a little too much credit for being scientific. A lot of stuff in there is not tested theory, but rather conjecture. Conjecture can be scientific in spirit, yes, but conjecture is many times not tested and scientific in practice. I felt it had too much untested conjecture, and so doesn't deserve the hype.

d2vid• 14 years ago

I agree, I got the book because it was recommended by someone here on HN, and I found it full of reference to studies that I think most interested readers would already be familiar with. Then it would take those study results and extrapolate, leaving me thinking "wait a second, that wasn't proved at all."

OrdojanAndrius• 14 years ago

Haven't read the article yet, but is it somehow related to this video? http://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc

DenisM• 14 years ago

Yes. It even includes a screenshot from the video.

biroran• 14 years ago

Was just about to put that link. On a personal note, I find it very true. However, I find that while not influencing happiness on the long run, salary does determine the acceptability of a position (good people tend not to gravitate to lower-than-average paying jobs). Once you're "hooked", it becomes more about A-M-P then salary and bonuses (not that those hurt :) ).

nine_k3• 14 years ago

Autonomy, mastery, purpose — all good for motivation beyond a certain threshold. But money is still what makes you "get up for work" every day. Otherwise it's a hobby.

alexro• 14 years ago

Yes and no. If your autonomy, mastery, purpose is low you are just a wage slave.

espyb2• 14 years ago

True to a certain degree, but you could also say that money provides greater autonomy. However there are also people who work because they choose to, rather than because they have to, and I doubt they all consider it a hobby. Some people may not need the money, but they need work to give them purpose, which falls in line with the article. It's a good article, though a bit too simplistic, as I feel that motivation is more individualistic and diverse than what's set forth. But I think the purpose was to set forth the authors premise in a straight-forward, scientific manner, so the simplistic nature of the article is likely unavoidable.

nine_k3• 14 years ago

I can remember some CEOs who works for a symbolic $1/year (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary). They certainly do it because they like what they do, not because they have unpaid bills.

I still posit that most people who "go to work" consider monetary or other material reward their work provides very important. Many of them would trade their current place of employment to another comparable place that would pay, say, 30% more. This probably does not matter when you earn $100k+, but most people don't.

What is true from my experience is that paying more does not increase motivation when autonomy, mastery, and purpose are addressed poorly. It just feels like a more fair compensation for the pain of working in such an environment.

vsloo• 14 years ago

There are social pressures around the term "work". Many simply get out of bed for work because it's expected of them. Mastery and purpose seem more fitting during the age of samurais. A materialistic society is almost incapable of distinguishing the difference between money and other types of motivation.

mattgreenrocks2• 14 years ago

I hear this often, but usually from people who have given up trying to find those things in their work. They believe it is simply safer not to wish for things to be better because they may be disappointed.

You can't rely on them being there (as a professional, your job is to be there whether you like it or not), but I've experienced them, and I know others have as well.

mkeener• 14 years ago

Was it just me that found this curious?

“Negative emotions like fear and sadness can lead to brain activity and thought patterns that are detrimental to creative, productive work: (a) avoidance of risk; (b) difficulty remembering and planning; and (c) rational decision-making.”

'a' and 'b' I'll grant, but rational decision-making is detrimental to productivity and creativity? Fear incites rationality? This seems out of place to me.

minikites• 14 years ago

Rational decision-making can lead you to talk yourself out of great, gutsy ideas:

In the article about Steve Jobs at Corning re: Gorilla Glass:

> This turned Jobs around, and he said he wanted as much gorilla glass as Corning could make within six months. “We don’t have the capacity,” Weeks replied. “None of our plants make the glass now.”

> “Don’t be afraid,” Jobs replied. This stunned Weeks, who was good-humored and confident but not used to Jobs’s reality distortion field. He tried to explain that a false sense of confidence would not overcome engineering challenges, but that was a premise that Jobs had repeatedly shown he didn’t accept. He stared at Weeks unblinking. “Yes, you can do it,” he said. “Get your mind around it. You can do it.”

JoeAltmaier• 14 years ago

Weeks was being a Negative Nelly. What he said was a non-sequitur. Not making it now does not necessarily lead to not having any in 6 months. Jobs was gently pointing that out. I suppose he could have said "Then get the capacity! I don't want to hear excuses!" but that probably wouldn't have worked out so well.

robotresearcher• 14 years ago

People assess likely outcomes more accurately when sad. While happy, people consistently overestimate their abilities and the chances of getting lucky.

jfoutz• 14 years ago

Biologically, fear, not panic, makes you vigilant. One way to think about it, in good times you can afford to waste resources trying all sorts of random stuff. In bad times, every last scrap counts.

There's a book i've been enjoying [Thinking Fast and Slow](http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/...) that addresses this in great detail.

pythonbiters• 14 years ago

i call this basic psychology

dgreensp• 14 years ago

Great article. Note that if you achieve everything in this article with respect to your work, you may actually become the person the author sets up a contrast with at the beginning:

So, here is the thing right at the start: I’ve always been uncomfortable with the traditional ideal of the professional — cool, collected, and capable, checking off tasks left and right, all numbers and results and making it happen, please, with not a hair out of place. An effective employee, no fuss, no muss, a manager’s dream.

Real heartfelt drive and professionalism, like real grief or real love, is subtle and not theatrical. Sometimes it looks like a lack of emotion because being unhappy with your work stirs up a lot more drama by comparison.

dschiptsov• 14 years ago

This oversimplified, naive generalization-based psychology.)

Money is a weak motivator? Wrong! Small money, median income, same as everyone salary - yes, this a weak motivator. I would rather do something to improve my life, rather than wasting my precious time in a cubicle.

But let's talk about a lottery, or a mere $250k per year, and, you see, your motivation indicator is getting hard.

The ideas of independence and mastery (as a shortest way to the prior) is little bit closer, but, most of individual has their own individual motivations.

Some dreams of a status-showing gadgets or a car, some dream to impress a girl next door, or show that silly neighbors who worth what. Some like to go to most expensive restaurants and being served like a top tier, only to go back in a subway. There are as many individual motivators as people around.

But one of the "observations" is correct - yes, small money is indeed a weak motivator.)

jeremyjh2• 14 years ago

I rather think status-seeking lies behind almost everything.

mattgreenrocks2• 14 years ago

Would you mind elaborating? I've thought this too; but it tends to come out when I'm down.

randomdata• 14 years ago

I'm inclined to believe that $250,000 could provide temporary motivation, but over the long haul I feel the effects would start to wear off returning you to the same state you feel with an income of virtually any level (incomes which do not fulfill basic needs perhaps excluded).

kafkaesque• 14 years ago

Isn't this line of reasoning

You need thinkers, problem solvers, people who can be creative and using money to motivate them will not get you that

a double-edged sword?

I understand this can be used as a reason for your employer to provide a (better) lifestyle approach (work-life balance), but it can also mean an employer doesn't have to pay you as much because no matter how much money they throw at you, it still won't motivate you to work optimally or strive to be the best creatively.

The reason why this jumped out at me is because I was in a similar situation. I applied to a huge company I wanted to work for, gave them my salary expectation from the get-go, and many wasted days and hours later, they offered me the job but with a salary that was a lot less than I had asked for. I asked if they needed further proof and mentioned that I had excelled at the tests they had given me and surpassed their job requirements (I had all the nice-to-haves and the required skills). They just said they were sorry I wouldn't be taking the position, because obviously I wouldn't at that salary. I think I would have been absolutely stellar at this position, but I wouldn't even be able to survive on that wage.

I consulted with a few personal friends who are managers or pretty high in their respective corporation's ladder, and they said I should feel insulted and that they were astonished.

So, while

Group B, on the other hand, having never been offered money in exchange for working on the puzzles, worked on the puzzles longer and longer in each consecutive session and maintained a higher level of sustained interest than Group A.

I question how this applies to the real world, where people usually are being paid to work, and move to another job usually for better working/living conditions and pay. Does this only apply to job-seekers who have no current job prospects? I think most people who take pay-cuts definitely think "It really has to be worth my while" to get paid less; variables such as neighbourhood, commute, etc., are taken into account.

And lastly, this

The way our brains are built make it necessary that emotions “cloud” our judgment. Without all that cloudy emotion, we wouldn’t be able to reason, have motivation, and make decisions.

sounds very Nietzschean--chaotic, unorganised, 'organic'/'natural'. This may be the philosopher inside of me talking, but this goes against a lot of my own philosophy. It is true that there needs to be a strong enough flow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)) to motivate us to do what we like, but I don't think this occupies a large percent of the motivation pie, if you will. I think a balance is needed and there is an initial gut sensation of excitement that needs to be recognised, but in the end, this excitement will wear off and one really needs to concentrate and ground oneself in reality. According to my interpretation of Nietzsche, these "clouded" judgments I think are very attractive to artists, and I think it manifests itself as a sense of childishness and naivete in, for example, (liberal) arts students. I was an arts student, before anyone jumps on me for this. Sorry to bring this into the equation, but this type of idealism is not suited for our times and, as arts students as witness/examples, they do not help the working world, when they put into practice this Nietzschean concept of passion; it seems too extreme.

I'm an emotional being, yes, but I need to balance it with rational judgment, not clouded judgment. The less I do this, the more I recognise this as a "high risk".

anonymous• 14 years ago

About the money issue, it's not so bleak. As you pointed out - you have an expectation about your salary and won't work for less. On the other hand, you also have an expectation on how much you'll work. So you're basically telling people "I will do X work for Y money" with X and Y being respectively the minimum and maximum values you'll take. The question isn't for the company to pay you more money so you'll work more, they have to pay you more money so you'll work for them at all and that is what drives programmer prices up (or down).

lhnz• 14 years ago

I really agree with this whole Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose idea, but I also think that it misses something very important: the emotional connection to the people you work with and the company itself.

We are social creatures. A company which ensures that its employees form strong bonds will have good retention.

The other thing which is important is internal competition.

I don't have any references for these things at hand so take what I say with a pinch of salt. However, I'm fairly sure there is psychology which supports this.

magic5227• 14 years ago

I'm pretty sure it's not science that gets people to work, just money. It got people to work in Ancient Rome, and still does today.

mbesto• 14 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candle_problem

hnriot• 14 years ago

Most of the workers in Ancient Rome were slaves, motivated with whips.

enraged_camel• 14 years ago

Actually, the part about money not being a motivator is only partially true. Dan Pink goes into more detail about it in his book: the motivating effect of "more money" disappears if and only if the individual believes they are getting paid fairly. But if a person believes they are underpaid then it can seriously demotivate them.

cjlars• 14 years ago

The underlying study to this whole, "money doesn't motivate us," idea often gets misinterpreted. What did the study actually say?

They took a group and had them perform two tasks. One was a problem solving task that required an abstract / creative solution. The other was a mechanical task that basically required the group to assemble widgets. The control group was offered no money and the test group was offered a payout. The results are well known, in the mechanical task, money was an effective motivator. People will put more effort forth for cash. In the creative task, money negatively impacted performace. i.e. Pressure chokes creativity.

The common interpretation misses an important confounding factor: Stress. The cash prize for success (up to a month's salary in some of the tests performed overseas), is stressful, and it's just as likely that stress, not money, caused the poor performance in the creativity task.

If you give an employee a good wage and strong job security, are they likely to feel more stressed, or less?

If we accept that stress kills creativity, then everything fits together nicely. Mastery, purpose and autonomy make for a comfortable work environment. So does job security. So does a fair (market) wage. I think the insight here isn't so much that you should (or can) pay people less, but that crafting a good work environment as defined in the article isn't expensive, or even necessarily hard, and can produce large gains.

TinyBig• 14 years ago

This article seems a bit odd because it almost seems to dismiss money out of hand. There must be some threshold level required to get people thinking about the 3 "real reasons" the author specifies.

alxndresp• 14 years ago

I remember reading a study somewhere that people are motivated and become happier with more money until around $79k/year. I can't seem to find that article now...

chmod775• 14 years ago

They should have added "in 1st world countries". I bet at least half of the world population is going to work because they need to eat.

Needing to find motivation for work is really just a first world problem a minor part of the population is facing

captobvious• 14 years ago

Why not just pay everyone at the company the same salary, and adjust it each year to be 10% over the average salary.

That would

1. take the issue of money off the table 2. free up lots of resources spent on navigating politics, negotiating, competing with colleagues 3. probably make the workplace less hostile

4. bring out all that potential of creativity and cognitive power

It still wouldn't be a below average salary, so it wouldn't turn away the good people.

Seriously, I can't see one single reason why it wouldn't work, if people care strongly for purpose, autonomy and mastery.

I know it's (for some reason) a huge tabu to mention this, and there's always the immediate "but that's evil socialism!" comeback.

But seriously, I think it would actually make sense.

I know they did this at NeXT, and that it was abandon after a while, don't know the details of why though..

dydreamer12• 14 years ago

This is the video that image was taken from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

sbierwagen• 14 years ago

Unsurprising that a management blog would conclude that paying workers less would make them happier.

The science behind what motivates us to get up for work every day

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