Drive

In a complex society, co-operation became essential for everyone’s security and sanity.

Motivation 1.0 ensured we survived in the wild and evolved to live in viable, self-sustaining communities

Motivation 2.0 is easily comprehensible, convenient to track, and uncomplicated to impose. --> no second-order thinking --> selfish The-Elephant-in-the-Brain

Motivation 3.0 Harry F. Harlow termed ‘intrinsic motivation’ — the need to perform creative work simply for the intellectual fulfillment one gets for doing it. This is needed for complex, non obvious work environments driven by heuristics and creativity, not simple standard routines.

Negative behaviors such as selfishness, cheating, addiction, and myopic thinking increase when the focus is only on the reward/salary. But if it set too low compared to internal and external similar jobs, there will be zero motivation at all.

rewards can turn an interesting task into unwanted work and in the process, diminish the intrinsic motivation required to do it; and eliminate performance, creativity and upstanding behavior. This is the Sawyer Effect.”

“If-then” rewards — if you do this, then you get that — force us to forfeit some of our autonomy. Also, rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus and concentrate our minds, which are useful when the task at hand is algorithmic or routine in nature, where there is a clearly-defined path to the solution; but become an absolute disaster when the task at hand is heuristic or creative in nature. ”

Autonomy, mastery and purpose

Individuals who are motivated intrinsically tend to achieve more in the long run than those who seek rewards

Type I behavior is a renewable resource. --> designing-your-life: good time journal

“results-only-work-environment. In a ROWE, there are no schedules. No one needs to show up at work at all. There’s only work to do and the results turned in at agreed timelines,”

Mastery = engagement + flow “Mastery is the desire to get better at something that matters. It results from engagement and flows”

State of flow “In an autotelic experience, the activity is its own reward and time flies by without self-consciousness. The proverbial state of ‘flow’ is achieved.”

“The relationship between what one has to do and what one could do becomes perfect. The challenge is not too easy, neither is it too difficult. Body and mind are stretched in a way that the effort itself is the most delicious reward.”

according to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “purpose provides activation energy for living."