The real reason we are motivated to work

"Rewards, both intrinsic and extrinsic, can scramble our narratives and justifications for working, and so the stories we tell ourselves can become weird fictions that keep us going, not that this is a bad thing. It’s just that we tend to believe we have access to the motivations behind our actions, and we tend to believe we know the source of our emotions and drives, but the truth is that we often do not have access to this information despite how easy it seems to come up with rational explanations as if we did.

"This presents a problem for employers who want to build better workplaces and employees who want to enjoy their 11 to 15 years of life working in those workplaces. If people don’t know what drives them, and employers don’t know how to incentivize people to be more engaged, and overall we have a terrible grasp of how to be fulfilled and happy in our work, yet everyone kind of thinks they know what they are doing even though they don’t, then what should we be doing instead? Well, the good news is that this whole system of rewards, incentives, motivations, and related phenomena has been studied for long enough that psychology and neuroscience have some practical, actionable advice for workplaces and individuals when it comes to harnessing our motivations and drives."

At this link: http://boingboing.net/2014/11/25/the-real-reason-you-are-motiva.html is a discussion of why we work and why we tell ourselves we work along with a fascinating interview with Daniel Pink at this link: http://youarenotsosmart.com/2014/11/24/yanss-037-drive-motivation-and-crowd-control-with-daniel-pink/

Happy holidays to all!

Jim