Summary of The puzzle of motivation | Dan Pink

00:00:00 - 00:15:00

In "The puzzle of motivation | Dan Pink", Dan Pink discusses how rewards often do not work or may even hinder people's performance. He argues that intrinsic motivators, such as autonomy, mastery, and purpose, are more effective than extrinsic motivators, such as money and punishment, in creating high levels of productivity and employee satisfaction.

• 00:00:00 The candle problem is a psychological experiment in which participants are given a candle, some thumbtacks, and matches and are tasked with attaching the candle to a wall so that the wax does not drip onto a table. The experiment has been replicated over and over and has shown that contingent rewards (i.e. rewards that depend on a person's performance) often do not work or, in some cases, actually hinder people's performance.
• 00:05:00 Dan Pink discusses the mismatch between what science knows about human motivation and what business does, citing a study in which three levels of rewards (small, medium, and large) had no impact on motor skill performance but led to poorer performance when cognitive skill was required. He goes on to discusses how white-collar work has shifted to more right-brain tasks, and how rewards no longer work in these cases.
• 00:10:00 In a study of 51 studies of pay-for-performance plans, economists from the London School of Economics found that financial incentives can have a negative impact on overall performance. However, giving employees more autonomy to work on their own projects can lead to better results.
• 00:15:00 Dan Pink argues that intrinsic motivators, such as autonomy, mastery, and purpose, are more effective than extrinsic motivators, such as money and punishment, in creating high levels of productivity and employee satisfaction. Pink provides evidence from two contrasting examples, Microsoft's attempt to create an encyclopedia using extrinsic motivators and Wikipedia's approach of doing it for the fun of it, to support his argument.