The Forces Influencing Your Work: Explained By Dan Ariely, Behavioral Economist!

(ted.com)

Let me start by asking you “What drives you to work?”

Money?

Well! Money is not the only thing at stake here. Then what more?

Your interest at work?

to an extent- yes; Right?

There is more to it.

To substantiate, I would refer to survey of Mr. Steven Reiss, a Yale-educated PhD who conducted extensive studies of what motivates people and argues that we are individuals to a much greater extent than many experts will admit. “Individuals differ enormously in what makes them happy–for some, competition, winning, and wealth are the greatest sources of happiness, but for others feeling competent and socializing may be more satisfying.” Read more here. (Source: Inc.)

In my quest to arrive at bottom line to what really makes people work, I came across this very interesting TED talk by behavioral economist- Dan Ariely. “When we think about how people work, the naïve intuition we have is that people are like rats in a maze,” says Dan. Dan is a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University and the author of the bestsellers including ‘Predictably Irrational’, ‘The Upside of Irrationality’ and others.

In his TED talk, Dan talks about two of his experiments that reveal our unexpected and nuanced attitudes toward meaning in our work.

“When we think about labor, we usually think about motivation and payment as the same thing, but the reality is that we should probably add all kinds of things to it: meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.,” Dan adds.

Here is link to his TED talk. Do watch him explaining the forces that influence we humans to work.