Carrots Or Sticks? Which Is The Best Motivator?

August 17, 2010 by admin
Filed under Uncategorized

You might actually need both

Many people have the opinion that being motivated by fear of failure is a terrible thing.A little bit of fear might actually be good – it might get us engaged and focused.

The brain chemicals that we need for focus and engagement don’t get stimulated unless we need them. If we can operate on cruise control, then that is precisely what we will do. Less energy, less attention, less stress. This is actually the default mechanism that our brains are wired to pursue. We have a pressing (evolutionary) need to conserve energy, and so the more we can put on auto-pilot the better (Click Here to read how we’re wired to conserve energy).

However, we also know that this is not how we do our best work. We do our best work when we are giving conscious effort and for this to take place we need both dopamine and nor-epinephrine (the brain’s adrenaline) to be active and stimulating us to greater mental performance.

So where does fear and reward fit in?

Well, fear actually gets our attention. It stimulates the release of the ‘brain adrenaline’ that causes us to pay attention to something. When you are driving your car, literally on auto-pilot, and then you see a police car in the rear -vision mirror, you tend to pay a heck of a lot more attention to what you are doing. This is the fear chemical at work.

The other side of the coin is that when we think we are going to get a reward, dopamine kicks in. Dopamine gets us engaged and interested.Apart from getting our attention, it stimulates a desire to understand and improve.

We need both chemicals to perform at our best. To generate attention as well as engagement (to read about the 5 things that boost brain power, click here).

Think about consequences, think about rewards

So if you find yourself languishing on a task – surfing the net or doing the filing when you know you are supposed to be working on that presentation – then fear and reward in moderate measure may work. Thinking about the consequences of being under-prepared as well as the accolades you will get from a great presentation might be the two triggers that you need to stimulate both attention and engagement.

Like everything, we probably need both in moderation.Performance greatly deteriorates when our emotions run out of control, and this is evident for either fear or reward.

For more articles on performance, productivity and motivation, click here.

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