Motivation Archives

Daniel H. Pink on How to Increase Intrinsic Motivation

What is intrinsic motivation? What are the three elements of intrinsically motivated behavior? As the name suggests, intrinsic motivation is an internal drive to perform a behavior or engage in an activity. According to Daniel H. Pink, the author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, there are three components of intrinsic motivation: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. In the book, he gives a number of tips on how to increase intrinsic motivation. We’ve grouped them into three categories: 1) personal motivation, 2) motivation in the workplace, and 3) motivation with your children.

How to Recover From Failure: Build Failure Resilience

How did the penguins in Our Iceberg Is Melting recover from failure? What advice do John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber suggest for overcoming setbacks during change? In their fable about leadership and change, John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber discuss how to handle setbacks during the change process in an organization. They talk about the importance of having failure resilience and of empowering employees to boost their morale. Continue reading for advice on how to overcome setbacks during change.

Intrinsic Motivation: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose

What are the three components of intrinsic motivation? How does each element contribute to intrinsically driven behavior? Intrinsic motivation is made up of three components: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Autonomy is having a choice in what you do, and being self-driven. Mastery is wanting to get more skilled and be recognized for competency. Purpose is understanding why you’re doing the work, it is often centered around helping other people. Below, we’ll look at each component entails in practice, and how it contributes to intrinsic motivation.

Here Is Why You Should Celebrate Milestones

Do you create and celebrate milestones on the way toward a goal? How can celebrating small milestones help you speed up your progress? When you want to reach a distant goal or make a big change, setting and celebrating milestones along the way is critical to reaching the goal and making the change stick. These tactics work because they build emotional momentum and minimize the effort required to make change. Keep reading to learn about the impact of celebrating milestones.

Does the Carrot and Stick Motivation Model Still Work?

What is the carrot and stick motivation? Is the reward-and-punishment approach to motivation still effective? Carrot and stick motivation is an old-school motivational approach that involves offering rewards for desirable behavior, and inflicting punishment for undesirable behavior. According to Daniel H. Pink, the author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, the carrot and stick approach is still generally effective but carrots (extrinsic rewards) aren’t the main driver of performance. Rather, they act as a “baseline reward” or a “hygiene factor.” In this article, we’ll take a look at the psychology behind the carrot and stick motivation approach

How to Use the Haddon Matrix to Change Behavior

What is the Haddon Matrix? How does it make change easier? The Haddon Matrix is a thought process that prompts you to think about pre-incident, incident, and post-incident. You can use it to change behavior by considering how to prevent bad behaviors from occurring, reduce harm when the bad behavior does occur, and respond in a way that minimizes the negative effects of the bad behavior. Read more to learn about using the Haddon Matrix model to change behavior.

Visualize Your Goals: Change Starts in the Mind

How does visualizing goals make them more attainable? How can short-term guidelines also help you get there? Goals are hard to reach when they are ambiguous. It helps to make objectives clear and measurable. A great way to do this is to visualize goals, basically painting a picture of your destination. This technique, along with short-term guidelines, puts real change within grasp. Keep reading to learn about visualizing goals.

Daniel Pink: How Purpose Drives Behavior

What is purpose in the context of motivation? How does having purpose motivate behavior? According to Daniel Pink, purpose is the third pillar of his Motivation 3.0 framework. In the context of motivation, purpose is a deep, underlying reason why you perform a behavior or engage in an activity. A particularly common and especially motivating purpose is helping other people. In this article, we’ll consider the role of purpose in motivating behavior.

To Overcome Resistance to Change, Appeal to Identity

Are you the kind of person who puts a lot of effort into making sure things stay as they are? Do you resist change? When you need to overcome resistance to change, it can help to appeal to identity—what kind of person someone is, what they value, and how they make decisions. You need to either align your proposed change with someone’s identity or align their identity with your proposed change. Keep reading to learn how to cultivate identity to overcome resistance to change.

Daniel Pink: The Psychology of Intrinsic Motivation

What is intrinsic motivation? How does the intrinsic drive compare to extrinsic rewards when it comes to performance? Intrinsic motivation is a desire to do something for internal satisfaction, not for external rewards. External rewards (e.g. financial compensation) enhance performance in the short term, while intrinsic motivation is more enduring—it doesn’t decay as external rewards do. In this article, we’ll look at the psychology of intrinsic motivation, and the role of intrinsic rewards in performance enhancement.