Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

They can extinguish intrinsic motivation. They can diminish performance. They can crush creativity. They can crowd out good behavior. They can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior. They can become addictive. They can foster short-term thinking.

Rewards can deliver a short-term boost - just as a jolt of caffeine can keep you cranking for a few more hours. But the effect wears off - and, worse, can reduce a person’s longer-term motivation to continue the project.

The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table.

The essential requirement: Any extrinsic reward should be unexpected and offered only after the task is complete.

In environments where extrinsic rewards are most salient, many people work only to the point that triggers the reward - and no further.

Lakhani and Wolf uncovered a range of motives, but they found that enjoyment-based intrinsic motivation, namely how creative a person feels when working on the project, is the strongest and most pervasive driver.

When money is used as an external reward for some activity, the subjects lose intrinsic interest for the activity.

Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.

Human beings have an inherent tendency to seek out novelty and challenges, to extend and exercise their capacities, to explore, and to learn. But this third drive was more fragile than the other two; it needed the right environment to survive.