A Chance to Read

Today's first task suited me in more than one way. We had to "read" something, and we had to write a blog post. I use quotation marks because every "reading" option was a video being read out to us. That was useful for me because I am a really slow reader!! As for being given time to write a blog post, well...

The given options were:

Ken Robinson - Changing Paradigms

Daniel Pink - Drive - Motivation

Jeremy Rifkin - The Empathic Civilization

Matthew Taylor - 21st Century Enlightenment

I chose to "read" Daniel Pink, primarily because I intend to start properly reading his book over the summer holidays. I bought it for my Kindle, so I have made that commitment to myself already.

I liked the idea that, provided you take money out of the equation, separate studies have identified a few common motivators:

• autonomy (give me the space and time to do things my own way)
• mastery (I want to get better at this)
• purpose (this is meaningful to me, my family, my society, my planet...)

These resonate with me. I do find that these are my primary motivators. What a pity, though: I thought I was special!! I also find that when I am under financial pressure, these are not necessarily my key motivators and drivers. Money definitely needs to be taken out of the equation... I wonder how much money individuals need to take the issue of money off the table. I wonder how governments and businesses can afford this amount of money to everyone. I wonder how they cannot!

I like that these findings are claimed to be based upon evidence. I hope only two examples are expanded upon to maintain the flow of the argument, not because the others were flawed or contrary. I wonder about some of the details of the investigations. What data was collected? How was this data collected? What were the tasks being employed to measure the impact of monetary motivation?

Now for some more reading...