More Thank You

As my oldest son (10) walks downstairs, he sighs deeply and audibly.

“That was quite something!”

He is doing his usual dramatic my life is so tough thing again.

“Tell us, what is this challenging achievement of yours?”

“I put my laundry in my closet. All of it.”

“You mean you picked up your already folded laundry, took it up two flights of stairs, opened your cupboard door and stuffed it onto a shelf?”

“Yes.”

Me and my wife roll our eyes.

Kids.

Before breakfast I decide to take my daily walk. As often happens, my wife seizes the opportunity.

“Will you by any chance walk past the grocery store?”

Living in a neighborhood with a convenience store about every 100m, the answer is obvious. I know where this is going.

An hour later I return home sweaty, with a backpack and two big bags filled. The point was exercise, I suppose I got it.

“Wow, that’s quite a lot of stuff I just bought!” I say loudly, as I unpack.

“Yes dear,” my wife responds. “You are very much like one of those super heroes. I mean, the sheer amount of muscle it takes. It’s just impressive. And all the while the girl waits at home helplessly, waiting to be saved with groceries! I’m very, very lucky.”

Men.

In our household, we’re not big believers in praise as a motivational strategy. Neither professionally, nor with the kids.

Why? Because praise is an example of an extrinsic motivator. And extrinsic motivation is bad, ’mkay?

For those not bought into this idea yet, a very condense primer on intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation:

• Intrinsic motivation is the natural, inherent drive to seek out challenges and new possibilities coming from: autonomy (our ability to have control our own acts and life), mastery (our need to control outcomes and experience personal growth), and purpose (our sense of belonging and contributing to something bigger than ourselves).
• Extrinsic motivation comes from external sources, all ultimately coming down to some sort of reward or punishment: if you do this you will get that. Examples include: praise, promotions, bonuses, and ass whoopin’.

Extrinsic motivation has some properties that are not widely appreciated (see my longer article for more depth):

1. They only work to motivate people to do tasks they might not otherwise do. Let’s say that you tell me that if I write a long, lecturing article, you will give me a “like.” This will not increase my motivation to write such a post. In fact it may hurt it (see 4). However, telling me that if I clean my office, you will order take-out food tonight, that will work.
2. Extrinsically motivated work is of lower quality, as it focuses on short-term gains rather than long-term effects. My office will be cleaned very quickly and somewhat superficially, don’t expect any deep cleaning. I’m just here for the take-out.
3. Their impact is temporary: once rewards are removed, the motivation to perform the task disappears, they do not create lasting behavioral changes. No more take-out, no more cleaning. In fact, I likely will never clean my office again without being bribed.
4. Extrinsic motivation has negative impact on intrinsic motivation: rewards can diminish intrinsic motivation, leading to disinterest in the activity once rewards are no longer given. If you gave me likes to my posts before, but then all of a sudden stop giving them, this may actually have a discouraging effect. My net motivation may drop as a result of this earlier reward. There is an addiction effect.
5. Limited rewards reduce cooperation: they create competition and reduce teamwork, as people compete for the prize. If the first to clean their office will get to pick the take-out restaurant, there’s no chance I will share the broom with my competitors.
6. They emphasize a power imbalance: rewards highlight a hierarchical power structure, potentially harming relationships and effective information flow. I will try to look good towards whoever made the cleaning-my-office-for-take-out offer. I will clean my office to what I think they deem acceptable, even if I know that I just wiped most of the dust under the carpet.

I would love to live in a world where people are primarily intrinsically motivated. Therefore, I try to stay away from extrinsic motivators as much as I can.

In practice, this is hard because culturally, the idea of rewards and punishment are deeply engrained. I mean, praise is good, right? Praise all the things.

Contrarian that I am, you will rarely hear me praise people. Instead, you will hear me try to link impact to intrinsic motivators.

That sounds a lot less fun than simply praising everything that moves, doesn’t it? What can I say, I’m not a very fun person.

Instead of: “Good job, Joe!”

You will hear me say: “I’m so happy you delivered feature X, because now customers can finally do Y, which they they have been asking for for years!”

There is purpose impact, because we have happier customers now. Nice!

Note that I’m not even calling out Joe specifically (even if he may have been a major driver), because it’s very rare that any type of success can be attributed to a single, or small group of people. And any attempt to be inclusive tends to backfire.

Instead of: “Everybody, look at Joe, he so awesome!”

Joe, in a private conversation will hear: “Hey Joe, I remember that you came in as a junior engineer. It was your first job, and now you lead projects by yourself. Look how far you’ve come!”

I see mastery impact, because over the years Joe has grown a lot. Nice!

Alright, enough with the theory, and enlightened management practice.

Reality check time.

I know why I do groceries. I contribute to a bigger purpose: the feeding of my family.

My son understands he needs to be dressed, and that shelving laundry is an essential step.

I know all this and buy into it. Yet, I still find myself in need of something that acknowledges my efforts even if I understand the purpose. As does my son. And likely, as do you.

So, what’s the problem? Why do we feel the need to be called out on our “achievement”? Why does it need to be explicitly acknowledged?

My theory is that the reason is that these activities, while valuable and necessary, are also mundane. They’re not particularly interesting. In fact, they’re kind of tedious.

Of course, this is everyday life and work. There are exciting, enjoyable parts, and there’s stuff that is less so. It’s always a mix.

I don’t need any praise or acknowledgement for any of the exciting work that I do, but I do (apparently) need it for the mundane things.

If only I had read this very post earlier, I could have predicted this. I would have realized this is one of the valid use cases of extrinsic motivation:

Extrinsic motivators only motivate people to do tasks they might not otherwise do.

Bingo.

It’s very hard to intrinsically motivate myself to do shopping. It’s very hard to motivate my son to closet his laundry. They are things we wouldn’t naturally do. What helps us to do it anyway? Rewards! A pat on the back. A sarcastic remark.

Or perhaps a simple thank you!