Monday, January 23, 2012

Happiness vs. Doing what you love

Motivation!  Wow, there are some crazy theories out there.  And the theories vary almost as much as they possibly can.  On the one hand, you have B.F. Skinner, who believed that people were motivated solely by external means.  In his world, everything people did was a response to a stimulus and people were just machines.

But before that, and after that, too, was the idea that people were motivated by more than just external factors. The article here basically pointed out this possibility by discussing an interesting experiment involving children and their desire to draw.  They told some of the children that if they drew during their free time, they would get a reward.  Those kids were less likely to draw later because they couldn't decide whether their motivation for drawing was internal (I want to draw) or external (I want to draw to get a reward). 

That phenomenon is exactly what I was afraid of years ago when I considered starting a career in juggling performance.  I didn't want to lose my own enjoyment of juggling by creating a situation where juggling was just a job.  I instead chose to keep my work life separate from the hobbies I loved.  I have to be careful that, when I look for my next job, I don't accidentally ruin something I like (innovation and design?) in the pursuit of a job that I would enjoy. 

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