Quotes About Engagement

In the middle, we relax our standards, perhaps because others relax their assessments of us. At midpoints, for reasons that are elusive but enlightening, we cut corners—as one last experiment shows. Touré-Tillery and Fishbach also engaged other participants

do and what people can do. When what they must do exceeds their capabilities, the result is anxiety. When what they must do falls short of their capabilities, the result is boredom. (Indeed, Csikszentmihalyi titled his first book on autotelic experiences Beyond Boredom and Anxiety.) But when the match is just right, the results can be glorious. This is the essence of flow.

In our offices and our classrooms we have way too much compliance and way too little engagement. The former might get you through the day, but only the latter will get you through the night.

You must understand video games. Seriously.

Try to pick a profession in which you enjoy even the most mundane, tedious parts. Then you will always be happy.

not looking at the student or the patient as a pawn on a chessboard but as a full participant in the game.

Positive affect—language revealing that tweeters felt active, engaged, and hopeful—generally rose in the morning, plummeted in the afternoon, and climbed back up again in the early evening.

One who is interested in developing and enhancing intrinsic motivation in children, employees, students, etc., should not concentrate on external-control systems such as monetary rewards

The opposite of autonomy is control. And since they sit at different poles of the behavioral compass, they point us toward different destinations. Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement. And this distinction leads to the second element of Type I behavior: mastery—the desire to get better and better at something that matters.

Forty-eight hours without flow plunged people into a state eerily similar to a serious psychiatric disorder. The experiment suggests that flow, the deep sense of engagement that Motivation 3.0 calls for, isn't a nicety. It's a necessity. We need it to survive. It is the oxygen of the soul.

People use rewards expecting to gain the benefit of increasing another person's motivation and behavior, but in so doing, they often incur the unintentional and hidden cost of undermining that person's intrinsic motivation toward the activity."4

The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table. But once we've cleared the table, carrots and sticks can achieve precisely the opposite of their intended aims.

By offering a reward, a principal signals to the agent that the task is undesirable.

The better strategy is to get compensation right—and then get it out of sight. Effective organizations compensate people in amounts and in ways that allow individuals to mostly forget about compensation and instead focus on the work itself.

Physicians sell patients on a remedy. Lawyers sell juries on a verdict. Teachers sell students on the value of paying attention in class. Entrepreneurs woo funders, writers sweet-talk producers, coaches cajole players. Whatever our profession, we deliver presentations to fellow employees and make pitches to new clients. We try to convince the boss to loosen up a few dollars from the budget or the human resources department to add more vacation days.

When money is used as an external reward for some activity, the subjects lose intrinsic interest for the activity

Ferlazzo makes a distinction between "irritation" and "agitation." Irritation, he says, is "challenging people to do something that we want them to do." By contrast, "agitation is challenging them to do something that they want to do.

There are three types of beings—those who create culture, those who buy culture, and those who don't give a shit about culture. Move between the first two.

Two days. Forty-eight hours without flow plunged people into a state eerily similar to a serious psychiatric disorder. The experiment suggests that flow, the deep sense of engagement that Motivation 3.0 calls for, isn't a nicety. It's a necessity. We need it to survive. It is the oxygen of the soul.

injecting the personal into the professional can boost performance and increase quality of care.

But all of you are likely spending more time than you realize selling in a broader sense—pitching colleagues, persuading funders, cajoling kids. Like it or not, we're all in sales now.

Ample research has shown that people working in self-organized teams are more satisfied than those working in inherited teams.

When money is used as an external reward for some activity, the subjects lose intrinsic interest for the activity," he wrote.5 Rewards can deliver a short-term boost—just as a jolt of caffeine can keep you cranking for a few more hours. But the effect wears off—and, worse, can reduce a person's longer-term motivation to continue the project.

It's about leading with my ears instead of my mouth," Ferlazzo says. "It means trying to elicit from people what their goals are for themselves and having the flexibility to frame what we do in that context.