Re: What makes us feel good at work

Interesting notion on what gives our work meaning.

Interesting notion on what gives our work meaning.

Dan Arielys research on what motivates people to take on inherently unpleasant tasks was based of his observation of mountaineers. Why did they find so much fulfillment in fighting off frostbite, fatigue and threat of death to get to the top of a mountain?

Not only that, they where willing to do it all over again after they recovered as well!

To explain it, he shared these points:

• When we don’t get to show our work, we become disappointed.

• We are more likely to strive and to continue working on a project the longer we are involved.

• When our projects get trashed, we become depressed, why? Because all the work we put into them to just amount to nothing takes the meaning out of it and thus decreases motivation.

He used the example of a parent selling their kids. Arielys explained that if they really wanted to sell their children they would be worth a lot of money because of the amount of work and memories involved with raising a child. Thats why in many cases children are priceless to their parents.

When we put more time and effort into a pursuit the value of the end product goes up

In another example he shared the Ikea effect, and how we put value into the furniture we assemble ourselves than the furniture we do not assemble.

To illustrate this, a study Ariely was involved in made it difficult to make an origami figure for one group and then made it easier for another group by giving them step-by-step instructions.

When asked how much they would buy their figurines for the group with the higher difficulty appraised it for a higher value.

So how do we feel good when we work?

We must challenge ourselves and be involved in the process of making things happen, when we just focus one one part of the proverbial assembly line, we fail to see the bigger picture and thus lose meaning in our work.

We don’t need to be our own boss to find meaningful work, we just need to go beyond what our job title limits us to.

About the Dan Arielys

Dan Ariely is a professor of psychology and behavioral economics (a focus on the ever pragmatic behavioral psychology) at Duke University.

His behavioral work on “why” of irrational behavior in humans leads to him consulting executives of companies on how to bring the best out of their employees. (There actually is a great anecdote in this talk about one of his clients)

What I would ask

If I could eat lunch with this guy and pick his brain, I would be curious to hear more about other experiments he had pertaining to why people buy certain products and if he knew any cool backstories of how companies switched their direction on a product that resulted in increased revenue.

I would actually like to learn more behind irrational actions of humans. Seems like there is big money in irrationality.

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