Motivations

After I finished writing my first post, and all through the next day, I kept thinking about what I wanted to do with this blog.  While I still aim to shape this blog to be some of those things I mentioned, I've found another direction I want to take.  I've recently discovered TED Talks , and I have found myself really enjoying much of what I find on there.  Typically the talks are very interesting, and I very much enjoy the fact that on most occasions they're only ~20mins. 

I've been trying to find ways to motivate myself to use my free time in a constructive way, and I may have found a way to accomplish that - as well as finding some direction with this blog.  I'm going to try to watch a TED video on a topic that I find interesting, and then write a reaction to the video here in my blog.  I'm not sure how often I will get to doing this, as I can see myself going crazy and doing them daily or procrastinating and putting it off.  Hopefully its the former.

So now, what video to use for my first post?  Well, fittingly, I found a video on Motivation by Dan Pink.  In this talk, Pink essentially suggests that using monetary rewards/incentives isn't necessarily the most ideal way to motivate people.  In situations where creative thought is needed to solve problems, monetary rewards can actually have a negative impact, retarding creativity.

When I think about my own actions and what has motivated me to do things in the past, I see a blending of two primary motivators:

• money
• internal pleasure

I think internal pleasure can be broken down into more specific descriptions, but for simplicity's sake, I'm going with internal pleasure. 

Anywho, when I think of my most creative moments, they never involve money as a motivation.  I feel like I'm taking a very unscientific approach to this, as it's tough to list my 'most creative moments', so you're just going to have to take my word for it.  I just generally find myself being relatively uncreative at work.  It should be noted though that I have yet to find a job that I truly enjoy, and this probably makes a very large difference.  And yet, if I were to find a job that I truly loved, I believe more than likely my motivations are going to be self created incentives - wanting to be the one that figures out the problem, wanting to be the most creative, wanting to be the most original, etc..

Well, it's an interesting idea.  Monetary incentives will continue to be used, and as Pink suggests, is very useful in certain situations; yet the development of other incentives is something I hope businesses will expand upon, and it's something I may try to keep in mind when attempting to motivate others into doing something.