How could an incentive motivate someone to DO better when the task isn’t about doing?… a cognitive task, like being creative, is a BEING task… it’s on or off, it’s not mechanical and therefore can’t be practiced.

People claim you can teach creativity… well show me the college class. Sure, you can make generalizations, get more sleep, be healthier, but creativity is basically just daydreaming with intention.

The research just verifies for me that BEING tasks are motivated by being-related rewards (existential) … certainty, ego, personal satisfaction, and DOING tasks (conventional) can be motivated by conventional rewards… if I get three tasks done on my break instead of two then I can go play basketball.

Thanks for introducing me to Pink’s work. I thumbed through one of his books yesterday, and I plan to buy one of them today.

‘Beating Wikipedia’ sounds a bit futile to me. ‘Doing something radically different – and valuable’ – now that would be interesting…

It’s interesting that the new crop of online “encyclopedias” that are coming out are using paid incentives to beat Wikipedia. I wonder if any of them will work.

@ Nathan – When we rule the world…

@ Gagan –

royalties, profit-sharing and commissions provide material motivation – aligned perfectly with the three keys described by Dan Pink.

Interesting point. I’m not sure it’s 100% aligned with Pink’s keys, but maybe not far off – autonomy yes, mastery maybe, purpose – yes, depending on the nature of the commission.

I’ve seen some other research about the effect of commissions on artists’ work – after analysing some commissioned v non-commissioned work, an expert panel judged the non-commissioned work to be the best. But with the exception of those commissions that enabled the artist to “do something interesting or exciting”, which were judged the best of all. They concluded that in these cases there was an optimum balance between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations.

@ Mary – The Kohn book does look good, thanks for the recommendation.

Unfortunately, the people who believe in controlling, punishing and strict “behavioral” paradigms and approaches greatly outnumber the people who believe in constructivist, inquiry, creative and motivational learning.

Fortunately it’s the other way round among Lateral Action readers.

@ Marelisa – Thanks, that’s a good acid test! Looking back I think I applied it once or twice without thinking of it like that.

@ Kruse – Robert Twigger writes a very funny account of corporate life, where he says all the work has to be done in the evenings and early morning, because “working hours are for power displays”.