“Goldilocks tasks

The highest,most satisfying experiences in people’s lives were when they werein flow.

e’reborntobeplayers,notpawns. We'remeanttobeautonomousindividuals,notindivid-ualautomatons.

It presumesthat people want to be accountable—and that making sure they havecontrol over their task, their time, their technique, and their team isthe most effective pathway to that destination.

thephoneusuallyringsinacolorlesscavernknownasacallcenter.

Hourly employees in the program work a set number ofhours to comply with federal labor regulations, but they getto choose when. Those employees report better relationshipswith family and friends, more company loyalty, and more focusand energy. Productivity has increased by 35%, and voluntaryturnover is 320 basis points lower than in teams that havenot made the change.

As a result, their focus inevitably veers fromthe output of their work (solving a client’s problem) to its zmput (pilingup as many hours as possible). If the rewards come from time, thentime is what firms will get.

ustaboutallthegoodideashereatGooglehavebubbled up from 20 percent time.”

staff could spend up to 15 percent of their time on projects of theirchoosing. The initiative felt so counter to the mores of Motivation2.0, so seemingly illicit, that inside the company, it was known asthe “bootlegging policy.” And yet it worked. These walled gardensof autonomy soon became fertile fields for a harvest of innovations—including Post-it notes.

whenpeoplehaveautonomyoverthe fourT’s:theirtask, their time, their technique, and their team.

Over the years, this odd little exercise hasproduced an array of software fixes that might otherwise never haveemerged.

The businesses that offered autonomy grew atfour times the rate of the control-oriented firms and had one-thirdthe turnover.‘

utonomy, as they see it, is different from independence. It’s notthe rugged, go-it-alone, rely-on-nobody individualism of the Ameri-can cowboy. It means acting with choice—which means we can beboth autonomous and happily interdependent with others.

we're passive and inert, that’s not because it’s our nature.It’s because something flipped our default setting.

Ismanagement,asit’scurrentlyconstituted,outof syncwithhumannatureitself?

But in his view, the team was accom-plishing more under this new arrangement. One reason: They werefocused on the work itself rather than on whether someone wouldcall them a slacker for leaving at three P.M. to watch a daughter’s soc-cer game.

Type I behavior promotes greater physical and mentalwell-being. According toa raft of studies from SDT researchers, peo-ple oriented toward autonomy and intrinsic motivation have higherself-esteem, better interpersonal relationships, and greater generalwell-being than those who are extrinsically motivated.

obodyexhibitspurelyTypeXorTypeIbehavioreverywakingminuteofevery livingday withoutexception.

Thisperspectiveheldthattakingan interest inworkis“asnaturalasplayorrest,”thatcreativityand ingenuitywerewidelydistributedinthepopulation, andthatundertheproper conditions,peoplewillaccept,andevenseek, responsibility.*

Type A behavior stood in contrast to—natch—Type B behavior.Unlike their horn-honking, foot-tapping counterparts, who sufferedfrom “hurry sickness,” people displaying Type B behavior were rarelyharried by life or made hostile by its demands. In their research,Friedman and Rosenman found that Type B people were just as intel-ligent, and frequently just as ambitious, as Type A’s.

a particular complex of personality traits, including excessivecompetition drive, aggressiveness, impatience, and a harry-ing sense of time urgency. Individuals displaying this patternseem to be engaged in a chronic, ceaseless, and often fruitlessstruggle—with themselves, with others, with circumstances,with time, sometimes with life itself

wehavethreeinnate psy-chologicalneeds—competence,autonomy,andrelatedness.Whenthoseneedsaresatisfied,we’remotivated,productive,andhappy.Whenthey’rethwarted,ourmotivation,productivity,and happi-nessplummet.!

a contingency—will inevitably focus people’s attention on obtain-ing the reward rather than on attacking the problem. But introduc-ing the subject of rewards after the job is done is less risky.In other words, where “if-then” rewards are a mistake, shift to “now that”rewards

For routine tasks, which aren’t very interesting and don’t demandmuch creative thinking, rewards can provide a small motivationalbooster shot without the harmful side effects.

But he altered things just a bit. Instead of giving participantsa box full of tacks, he emptied the tacks onto the desk as shown below.The candle problem presented differently.Can you guess what happened?This time, the participants vying for the reward solved the prob-lem faster than their counterparts.

Motivation 2.0would never have flourished so long or accomplished so much.While an operating system centered around rewards and punish-ments has outlived its usefulness and badly needs an upgrade, thatdoesn’t mean we should scrap its every piece.

Theysuccessfullyachievetheirshort-termgoals,butthreatenthehealthofthecompanytwoorthreeyearshence.

Addicts want thequick fix regardless of the eventual harm. Cheaters want the quickwin—tregardless of the lasting consequences.

.”Getpeo-plefiredupwiththeprospectof rewards,andinsteadofmakingbetter decisions,asMotivation2.0hopes, theycanactuallymakeworseones.

rewardsandshinytrophiescanprovideadeliciousjoltof pleasureatfirst,butthe feelingsoondissipates—andtokeepitalive,therecipient requireseverlargerandmorefrequentdoses.

“After the introduction of the finewe observed a steady increase in the number of parents coming late,”the economists wrote. “The rate finally settled, at a level that washigher, and a/most twice as large as the initial one.”

“Goalsmaycausesystematicproblemsfororganizations duetonarrowedfocus,unethicalbehavior,increasedrisktaking, decreasedcoop-eration,anddecreasedintrinsicmotivation.Usecarewhenapplyinggoalsinyour organization.”

unleashes the dangerous Ford Pinto.

Sears imposes asales quota on its auto repair staff—and workers respond by over-charging customers and completing unnecessary repairs

if governments were to pay people to helptheir neighbors during these crises, donations might decline.

Ofthefirstgroup,52percentofthewomendecidedtogo aheadand donateblood.Theywerealtruisticcitizensapparently, willingtodoagooddeedfortheirfellowSwedesevenintheabsenceofcompensation.Andthesecondgroup? Motivation2.0wouldsuggestthatthisgroupmightbeabitmore motivatedtodonate.They'dshownup,whichindicatedintrinsicmotivation.Gettingafew kronorontopmightgivethatimpulseaboost.But—asyoumighthaveguessedby now—that’snotwhat happened.Inthisgroup, only 30percentofthewomendecidedtogiveblood. Instead of increasingthenum-ber ofblood donors,offeringtopay peopledecreasedthenumber bynearlyhalf.Meanwhile, the third group—which had the option of donatingthe fee directly to charity—responded much the same as he firstgroup. Fifty-three percent became blood donors.*

“Thoseartistswhopursuedtheirpainting andsculpturemorefortheplea-sureofthe activityitselfthanforextrinsicrewardshaveproducedartthathasbeensociallyrecognizedassuperior,”thestudysaid.“Itisthosewhoareleastmotivatedtopursueextrinsicrewardswhoeventuallyreceivethem.”

“Thecommissioned works were rated as significantly less creative thanthe non-commissioned works, yet they were not rated as differentin technical quality.

Rewards,bytheirvery nature,narrowourfocus.That’shelpfulwhenthere’saclearpathtoasolution.

But by thinking afresh, you eventually see that the box canhave another function—as a platform for the candle.

“In eight of the nine tasks we examined acrossthe three experiments, higher incentives led to worse performance.”

almost certainly work like a maniac in the short term, but becomeless interested in his job in the long term.

Children previously in the“unexpected-award” and “no-award” groups drew just as much, andwith the same relish, as they had before the experiment. But childrenin the first group—the ones who'd expected and then received anawatd—showed much less interest and spent much less time draw-ing.”

rewards can perform a weird sort of behavioralalchemy: They can transform an interesting task into a drudge. Theycan turn play into work.

Slapping paint on a fence isn’t a grim chore, he says. It’s a fantasticprivilege—a source of, ahem, intrinsic motivation.