New Techniques of Motivation

The TED talk by Daniel Pink showed that the traditional ways that businesses motivate people are now irrelevant to how hard people actually work. Scientific studies have shown that people who work for rewards or incentives often do work harder in the short term, but eventually lose interest in their work. These studies also show that people who work for the pure joy of just working and helping people work harder long term and produce better work. The way that Daniel Pink spoke was in a way of presenting a case to a jury in a court. He presented his "evidence" through many different studies and experiments done in many different places and times around the world. His final statement to the "jury" was that motivation should not be incentive-based, but instead should be based on what people enjoy doing and what they create by themselves. Pink supported his argument by using different slides showing images of a problem that people have to solve, and showing different quotes from professors on their different studies of motivation. This video matters to me personally because it shows that maybe future careers will be different for me, that I might have a job in which the way they motivate people is different to that of modern day businesses. This is extremely important to education because the incentive to get good grades is changing. No longer is the excuse that you need good grades in order to be successful valid. That type of motivation has been proven to be ineffective and even harmful to students. Students need to be able to learn about topics and issues that they want to learn about, to a certain extent, so that they feel satisfied in their learning, and this type of motivation will improve the overall grades of students. This matters as a worldwide issue because companies and businesses need to reevaluate the way that they motivate their employees to work hard and to improve the overall welfare of the company. Instead of offering their employees bonuses and extra vacation time, they need to allow them to come up with some of their own original ideas and to have some fun, just like the company Google does. This type of motivation will help improve the overall success of the company and also increase the happiness and output of the employees.