Why We Are Wrong About Motivation?.

Microsoft launched an encyclopedia in 1993, with lucrative incentives for writers and contributors, they hardly managed to publish 62,000 articles under the Encarta Trademark in various languages, including German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Proteaguse and Japanese. Despite all the incentives and resources, they finally decided to close it in 2009.

Here is another interesting story of a Wikipedia, where all the writers and contributors are sharing their content free of cost and because they want to do it for their personal interest and passion.

Till November 2020, Wikipedia has 55 million articles in 304 languages with 1.7 billion unique visitors per month. Now questions is why Microsoft encyclopedia didn't get success like Wikipedia?.

The answer is a very simple because of intrinsic motivation, which means humans are naturally driven for a few things which give them meaning, purpose and satisfaction.

So all the contributors of the Wikipedia share their content because of their creativity and personal passion.

While in the case of the Microsoft project it was merely for financial aims. There is a very famous study done by Dan Arely, a famous modern-day economist, he stated that "Some as long as the task involved only mechanical skill, the bonus worked as they would be expected: the higher the pay, the better the performance." But once the task called for even rudimentary cognitive skill", a larger, the reward, led to the poor performance.

Further, he explained that in eight of the nine tasks we examined across the three experiments, the higher the incentives led to worse performance. He said we found out those financial incentives can result in a negative on overall performance.

Why we do what we do, is comprehensively explained in a book Drive by Daniel H.pink .

According to him, we humans do everything because of three reason, like we want ,autonomy, mastery and purposes.

You will find these three reasons behind every great achievements of the world, either it is political, scientific or any other, you can count it.

Let's break down these three factors behind humans motivations in details.

1#: Autonomy.

We all humans have the urge to direct our own's lives. We want freedom and likes to enjoy our personal and professional lives.

85% peoples hate their jobs because they don't find autonomy , meaning and freedom in their work.

You can ask yourself and you will find very easily that.

What is your freedom?.

What kind of work gives you meaning and purpose?.

Wat you want to pursue according to your own calling?.

What motivate and inspire you?.

When someone pursues these urges and callings, usually they find great results at the end in all aspects- personal and professional.

Atlassian, an Australian software company, allows their employees once in a year to do the what they want to do for the next 24 hours, after this new approach , the results were phenomenal because engagement was increased.

Employees' creativity was found more than ever, and they enjoyed a lot of satisfaction and fulfillment in their jobs.

Google also has the same routine by the name of 20 %, which means their employees can spend their 20% of their time on the activities they enjoy by their own's choice, and so as a result of such 20% activity, google employee's performance were prominently increased.

They created Gmail, Google, and Orkut during these 20% of the time, which clearly shows the advantages of the human's freedom.

When we allow fellow human beings to flourish and respect their freedom either at home, shool or at work places, we can achieve great performances like happiness, satisfaction and creativity.

2#:Mastery.

Bestselling author Gorge Leonard shows how the process of mastery can help us attain a higher level of excellence and a deeper sense of satisfaction and fulfillment in our daily lives.

We humans are naturally curious and life long learner and want continuous improvement which we can observe easily in kids who always stay curious, and they have hunger to try new things.

But when such kids become an adult persons and face too much rejection from the family, friends and teachers than ,they lose their natural curiosity and become accustomed to compliance and conformity.

Mastery and leadership in any area flourishes only, when we provide an environment of freedom, love and respect for fellow human beings.

Tom Peters, in his best-seller book, In Search of Excellence. He stated that,

"Teh most of the managers and CEOs of the fortunes companies come from the families in which their Self-esteem and identity is highly respected"

So we need to nurture mastery in any area we want, by following our natural talent, also adopting the life long learning approach.

3#:Purpose.

Author of Sapiens Youval Noah Harari said, "humans simply rule the world because of their strong ability of cooperation , mutual understanding and communication for the common purpose higher than their individual self. Although they are much weaker in strength than other species like horses, monkeys and elephants etc, so they want to help each other and want to serve the humanity."

Tony Robbin said "the growing is living but serving others and giving is ten times living".

So make sure that your actions must be connected with some higher purposes, rather than only limited towards your personal means.

Adam Grant in his book, Give and Take explains that there are three types of peoples, "the Giver, Matcher, and Taker ,at the end they are Giver- who serve, and help others beyond their personal means , enjoy huge success and happiness in their lives and careers".

So we must encourage the purpose based life at home and at work places , which will help us not only to nurture the human potential to the maximum level, but also at the same time it will help us to solve the problems of the society with greater collaboration and cooperation.

So in the concluding remarks I must say it is the dire need of the era to cultivate the human creativity and natural self because, the artificial intelligence is posing a huge threat to the human's mechanical skills, because machines cannot beat, the human passion, creativity and innovations.

So automation, mastery and purpose can be stepping stones for the development, human's happiness and prosperity.