The Contents of Greg Ingersoll's Brain

I just watched an interesting TED talk: Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation. I think everyone who works in a creative role (which is probably more of you than you think) should check this out.

The gist of it is that a) carrots and sticks don’t improve motivation for tasks that involve thinking; and b) management should instead focus on Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose.

I basically have two jobs: I’m an engineer, and I’m a researcher.

As an engineer, I have a fair amount of autonomy. This is tempered somewhat by the schedules of our clients and the need to be in the office to use the available equipment (oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, expensive software, etc.). Mastery is also encouraged, and although most projects include features that show up again and again (e.g. LCDs, Ethernet connectivity), there is always something new and challenging.

Purpose is the tricky one. An obvious purpose is to make money and get more customers through satisfied customers, but that doesn’t really fit this context. Some medical and industrial products fit the mold of serving something greater than oneself, but most consumer products don’t.

On the university side, I have essentially infinite Autonomy. I am not employed by the university, and I am not funded by a university grant. I can basically do whatever I want whenever I want within the relatively broad confines of completing degree requirements in a reasonable amount of time (whatever that means). The Mastery component is obvious; there’s a reason they call the degree I already have a Master’s degree, and the Ph.D. goes beyond.

The Purpose part is tricky again though. Most of my research to-date has been theoretical in nature. While it’s important to have a strong theoretical base in order to make predictions for experimental work, sometimes the engineer in my head bursts in on the scientist to ask what the point is. There is a point, but that’s a different topic for a different time.

Not always finding purpose might explain my lack of motivation lately.

So check out the video. Also check out Garr Reynolds’ post that led me to the video in the first place.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 at 12:29 and is filed under Business, Electrical Engineering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.