Time has passed by so fast. It's my 2nd year in engineering school. Honestly, engineering wasn't my choice of the year. But then, community taught me that engineering is better than social science and I trusted them. Don't ask me why I did. It's like that one decision in life. Remember your myspace profile picture? Yeah, that kind of decision.
Throughout 2012-2013, I've been reading some books. Since I can't brain non-fictions because 90% of them can't even explain what was going on and I can't stand my curiosity spamming - "WHY DID IT HAPPEN? WHY WOULD SHE TRUST HIM JUST BECAUSE HE'S HANDSOME? WHY WOULD ANYONE WRITE THIS OMG ASDFGHJKL". Anyway, I've been reading some motivational and business books.
One night, I had this session when I have a conversation with myself. It's like commenting and criticizing yourself from others' point of view. So I criticized myself with these- "You sacrificed a thing to do something for that thing" and "You only study for money". Then I stumbled. How can I be so mean and so right at myself, at the same time?
After a moment of self regret later, a thought popped up. I did the do-for-things principle for 19 years now and not a single thing was achieved even though I've tried my best. There must be some fine details that I've been missing. Against my better judgement, I went through quickly, the books that I've read. The old ones and the new ones. There's a catch. The old books encourage the normal do-for-things principle and the newer ones encourage the do-because-you-wanted-to principle. Some of the new books even stated that the "I give you a bonus and you work harder" effect is getting less and less. Only then I realized that money isn't the best incentive anymore.
An experiment called 'The candle problem"(Google it up please I beg you) is famously used amongst other behavioral science experiments. The candle problem requires a creative thinking skill to solve. The result of the experiment shows that when a reward is offered, the time taken for someone to solve the problem is longer than to those who wasn't offered any reward. The results are the same for all of the experiments done. This proves that the do-for-things principle isn't necessarily legit.
How to increase productivity then?
Google's founders, Larry Page and Surgey Brin were aware with this change a put their economical status at stake. They created a worker-friendly workspace instead of giving bonuses, hoping for an increase in productivity. The result was phenomenal. The productivity was dramatically increased through workers'-workplace understanding.
Early 2011, Facebook Headquarters was moved to Menlo Park, California. Since then, the working experience of the workers went 180 degrees. Workers work at their own time. Working from home is also possible as long as they get the work done beautifully and in time. The rules were all bent but not broken, giving their workers more space, the work is very social, no cubical. As expected, the productivity went sky-high.
Mid 90's, Microsoft started an encyclopedia named Encarta. Microsoft paid a set of professional workers to write thousands of articles and post them on budget and on time. A few years later, a new version of encyclopedia, Wikipedia started. The Wikipedia was created for fun. No one gets paid and no one paid. I don't need to tell you who are holding the bigger name of encyclopedia now.
Their key is to use the 'flaws' of freedom as an advantage. The freedom was mannerly controlled. Now here comes the best part. Using this approach, the mental health of workers increases. This triggers a whole new chain of positive effects- mental health increases, workers are happy, they help each other, you learn a lot, healthy competition, a chance work workers to shine thus, increases productivity.
The point is, the secret to high performance isn't reward. You don't do things because you were told to do it, you don't do things just because you got paid, you do things because it matters.
