Intrinsic motivation

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

Our default stance is often to consider and evaluate work by its extrinsic rewards. When talking to friends or family about what we do, the kinds of questions that tend to crop up are those relating to salary, benefits, or influence and prestige.

We are, culturally, less familiar with considering the intrinsic motivators of our work; so much so that it is worth taking a moment to explore the distinction between the two.

Head of Product Maria followed a pattern typical of high-achieving individuals. For most of her career she concentrated on the extrinsic rewards of work, before even realising that there was another way of approaching things.

Intrinsic motivators can take many different forms. They are distinct from extrinsic motivators in that they are rooted in the work itself, giving us as individual a benefit that is distinct and separate from the society around us. In deciding whether a motivation is intrinsic or extrinsic, we can ask ourselves: Would this benefit still exist if I was working in vacuum, with no-one else around to admire my work, or take the money I earn from it?

VP of Product Emma focused initially on the extrinsic rewards, particularly prestige, when she first started trying to decide on what her career would be. It was a surprising turn of events that led to her taking her first technical role in an education company. Through this, she realised that what mattered to her wasn’t the extrinsic rewards she had initially sought, but the personal benefit she derived from the nature of the work she was doing.

The importance of intrinsic motivation

This isn’t to say that intrinsic motivation is necessarily, or always, more important than extrinsic motivation. Few of us would do the work we do for free. We all have bills to pay, and it’s very natural to desire, for example, the esteem of hearing friends and family praising a product you’ve worked on.

It is to say, though, that intrinsic motivators have their own particular benefits, that are difficult to replace when we do a job for its extrinsic rewards alone.

For example, Senior Engineering Manager Daniel links intrinsic motivation directly to our reserves of energy and willpower required to carry out our work in the first place.

Daniel’s point could be taken further. Doing a job we don’t enjoy - work from which we derive no intrinsic value - purely as a means to achieve its extrinsic rewards is a perfect recipe for stress, if indeed we are able to commit enough of our energy to it in the first place.

The most fundamental form of intrinsic motivation is working at an activity we actively enjoy in its own right. One reason why the word “work” is surprisingly hard to define is that, often, it is only the context which defines work from leisure. When Erling Haaland plays football, he is working; when I play football, I am playing. Both (presumably) take inherent pleasure in the act of running around after a sphere of inflated leather. Aristotle is thought to have said “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.”

In a sense, the fact that people tend to gravitate towards careers which offer us this kind of intrinsic motivation - involving activities or challenges that we find enjoyable in their own right - underlies the fact that certain professions are often stereotyped by personality. Lawyers are pedantic; nurses are empathetic; artists are eccentric. These personality traits will get an intrinsic kick from the work their professions involve.

CTO Marta observes that engineers typically share a love of solving problems, an itch that a career in technology is well-placed to scratch.

“If one wanted to crush and destroy a man entirely,” wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky, “all one would have to do would be to make him do work that was completely and utterly devoid of usefulness and meaning.”

The end value of our work is one of the most powerful intrinsic motivators, and when it aligns with our abilities and our interests, it can become a powerful source of meaning and direction in our whole lives.

This view of meaningful work providing purpose and fulfilment in our broader lives lies at the heart of the Japanese concept of Ikigai, as introduced by VP of Engineering José.

Where our abilities, our passions, and the world’s needs intersect, we are inherently close to our best work.

Personal motivation

One distinctive aspect of intrinsic motivations is that they speak to us as individuals, or at least to individual personality types. As Marta said, a natural problem-solver is likely to find joy in the work of engineering. Whether this means they will become a software engineer rather than a civil engineer, or a DevOps engineer rather than a Back End engineer, is likely to reflect deeper, more complex personality traits.

For this reason, everyone’s intrinsic motivations are different. While everyone desires money - and, on the whole, £1 in salary means the same to one person as it does to another - intrinsic motivations comprise a fingerprint of particular wants, preferences, requirements and abilities unique to every person.

It is worth reflecting on our own motivational fingerprints, assessing the relative balance of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations that comprise them, and on the nature of those intrinsic motivations. Doing so helped Chief Product Officer Sarah identify work that boosted her energy.

These motivations can and do change over time. It’s not uncommon (and makes lots of sense) for people to focus on extrinsic factors early in their career, before reflecting more closely on intrinsic motivators later in their career once they are more secure financially.

Equally, it is normal to hold multiple, conflicting motivations at the same. Maria puts this down to the fact that our personalities are multi-faceted, and our various “selves” have different desires and requirements from each other.

Implicit in Maria’s perspective is the idea that identifying, let along fulfilling, our intrinsic motivations is an ongoing, and inherently infinite, process. As much as our personalities shift between satisfying our various selves, so our work will, at any given point in our life, appeal to certain facets of our personality while, perhaps, causing challenges for another.

It is the interplay between these intrinsic motivations that infuses our work with dynamism and keeps it evolving as time goes by.

References and further reading

• Krznaric, R. 2012. How to Find Fulfilling Work

• Garcia, H. 2017 Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life