On Motivation

autonomous motivation
controlled motivation: carrot and stick
autonomy supportive
Steven Levitt's daughter goes potty.

Don't ask how you can motivate other people. How can you create within which other people can motivate themselves. The answer is autonomy support.


Incentives (extrinsic motivation) make people too focused on the job and hence harm creativity.

As long as the task involved only mechanical skill, bonuses worked as they would be expected: the higher the pay, the better the performance. But once the task called for "even rudimentary cognitive skill," a larger reward "led to poorer performance." In eight of the nine tasks we examined across the three experiments, higher incentives led to worse performance. (Ariely, Gneezy, Lowenstein, Mazar)

Financial incentives can result in a negative impact on overall performance. Irlenbusch LSE

autonomy, mastery, purpose
autonomy, competence, connectedness
To solve the problem, we cannot do more of the wrong things. Carrot and stick don't work.

"Go for the next 24 hours do anything you want."
"20 percent time" Google
ROWE, people don't have schedules.

The success of wikipedia...intrinsic motivation
Unix vs. Windows