Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Ready to be Rich posted a fascinating video today from YouTube called Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. If you strive to be a high achiever in your working world you’ll definitely find yourself nodding to it’s sentiments.

The video points out that money is not the biggest factor in motivating individuals to work harder and references a number of studies that have proven that fact.

Instead it suggests that productivity can be raised by paying people just enough that they stop focusing on money and begin focusing on their actual work. Once money is out of employees’ minds companies should focus on the real factors of motivation, including autonomy (the desire to be self-directed), mastery (the desire to get better at something) and purpose (the transcendent purpose to do something greater).

I would love to forward this on to the management at my corporation. I particularly liked the part about providing employees with a 24 hour period of time each quarter to work on projects of their own choosing. That one day can result in software fixes and a whole array of new ideas for a company that would otherwise never emerge. I suggested that years ago, but of course it was never implemented.

2 thoughts on “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”

  1. I have to admit that it,s money that motivates me to work a 38 hr week, if I enjoyed the work of course I would consider working longer hours and upping my output, but as things stand being in the low paid menial worker class I can,t wait to quickly leave at the end of my shift

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  2. That's mind boggling… I always thought the bigger the reward the harder people will work, if the want it. I can see people not working at the rewards if the establishment the work at is not treating them right.

    Thanks for the great information!

    Matt

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