Ted Talk #3 (Dan Pink)

Rewards and punishments often cause harm. When there is a clear solution rewards work well. However, when there is critical thinking involved then rewards are not as effective. When creativity is involved people’s own motivation is the best motivation.

I can see how this works. When I try to solve problems, I solve them for fun. This means I’m not thinking about all the possible solutions, I’m just playing around and under no pressure to get it right. When I’m pressured to get it right, in the fastest time, my hands start shaking, and my brain works twice as fast, but not as clearly, and it will take me longer to get it done.

ROWE has no schedules for workers, letting them decide what works best for them. If they are tired one day they can sleep in, as long as their works gets done they can do whatever they want.  Their productivity increased because people motivate themselves more than “carrots” do.

Think of it like this, when I was in 5^th grade we had a challenged to count how many books we read in 12 weeks. The goal was 12. The first 12 weeks I read 24 books. Twice the amount we were aiming for. The next 12 weeks the teacher announced that we were now required to write a small report for every book we read and would be graded for every report. In these next weeks I read 9 books. I went from reading in every spare moment to dreading reading, all because I had “motivation”.

There are many other examples in the real world; however, Dan Pink also presents scientific evidence. Studies show that one who never had motivation will perform better in a task that involved critical thinking, then someone who is “unmotivated”.

This talk has encouraged me to spend more time playing and think creatively, even though I have no motivation to do so. In his speech, Pink suggested that some of the best ideas came from simply messing around.