The Big Thing by Phyllis Korkki

Author:Phyllis Korkki
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-05-20T04:30:00+00:00

Reynolds’s experience is a case study in extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation—a subject that Tim Kasser, a psychology professor at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, has researched extensively. When you are intrinsically motivated, you engage in a particular behavior for the fun, the enjoyment, the interest, and the challenge of it, he said. When you are extrinsically motivated, your goals are to achieve wealth, status, fame, and outside rewards.

A pure example of intrinsic motivation is a child playing. You wouldn’t walk up to a three-year-old and say, “Why do you like to play?” Obviously, it’s because it’s fun.

The waters become muddier as we get older, but many creative adults work on a big project simply because they are drawn to it and challenged by it. Studies have shown that many animals, even rats, have an inherited need to explore new things that goes beyond their need for survival, Kasser said.

But it is all too easy—even if you don’t suffer from a neurosis—to look beyond the creative activity itself and consider what rewards it might bring. Research shows that “people’s extrinsic goals have been rising over the last forty years, and that’s correlated with the extent of advertising that’s in our culture,” Kasser said. Social media is another force that stokes our desire for external rewards.

That’s unfortunate because research has also shown that external rewards often undermine people’s intrinsic motivation. The desire for money, fame, and status ends up clouding your enjoyment of creating, Kasser said.

But, I objected, even when you are intrinsically motivated, there’s a certain point where a creative project becomes very difficult and it’s just not fun anymore.

“That’s about the challenge aspect of it,” Kasser said. “I don’t mean to make it sound like intrinsic motivation is always fun.” When Edmund Hillary was climbing Mount Everest, there were many moments when it was no fun at all, he said, but the main goal of that expedition was intrinsic.

Citing the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Kasser said that people experience what’s known as a state of flow when there is an optimal balance between the challenges that a task offers and the skills that a person possesses to meet those challenges—and when the possibility of some future gain is not on the mental radar.

“Extrinsic motives are potent, don’t get me wrong,” Kasser said. They’re what keep people coming to work every week. But research shows that when people become more focused on them, the quality of the product declines and they are less happy. If you start thinking, “Is this going to make me famous?” or “Is this going to sell?” it diverts your behavior away from what you personally and deeply want to express.

But deadlines are an extrinsic motivation, aren’t they? And I have absolutely needed them to get my Big Thing done. Kasser said there’s evidence that deadlines can undermine a creative effort. But if they are co-opted by the creator as a way to introduce structure into an intrinsically motivated project, rather than an outside force that controls it, they can have a positive effect.

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