Is it possible? Can there be too many good consequences? Yes. Especially when it comes to a task that disgusts you: the more they promise as a reward, the more difficult it will be to complete this task. Why is this happening and what to do about it?
Can there be too much motivation? It would seem that the more motivated a person is, the better results he achieves. On the Internet, we stumble upon trainings that teach us to motivate ourselves stronger and faster. Bookstore shelves are littered with popular literature about it.
But for some reason, an unused subscription to a fitness club looks at us with mute reproach, although the project to create a dream figure was scheduled by day, and inspiring pictures were hung on the walls of the house. At work, subordinates do not fulfill the plan, despite huge bonuses. The child never learned to clean his room, although you didn’t promise him anything.
In fact, the dependence «motivation — result» is not so simple. As early as the beginning of the XNUMXth century, American psychologists R. Yerkes and D. Dodson experimentally derived the law of optimum motivation.
At first, its increase helps to improve the result, motivation reaches the optimum. The optimum is the level at which we achieve the best results. But after the optimum, the result begins to decline as motivation grows. This is due to the fact that the tension caused by motivation becomes the driving force of our activity. But too much tension mismatches and slows down this activity.
Surely many felt the effect of this law on themselves. One of the most visible areas is education. When the teacher says at the exam: “Answer one more question and get an A”, everything that we studied for several nights in a row, or even a whole semester, is immediately forgotten. Some recall that at school, as luck would have it, the subject that was most important for parents was not given.
Sometimes the message “I didn’t really want to” can work better than the motto “do or die”
My friend, a recruiter in a recruitment agency, complained that she could not close a simple vacancy for which she was promised an additional bonus. Obviously, regular motivation was enough for her, and the additional bonus worked in the opposite direction, reducing her performance.
Rigid diets, during which you want chocolate even more than usual, are also an example of too high motivation.
Optimum motivation is not a universal thing. Each person will have his own for each new task. But there is a general trend: for simple tasks, high motivation is needed, and for complex ones, low motivation. For example, if you promise your son to buy a dog/bicycle/tablet for an «A» in math, which he hates and doesn’t understand well, then you greatly reduce the likelihood of getting an A, or even a B. But if the same promise applies to English, for which there is a little lack of perseverance for a five, then you will increase the likelihood of an excellent mark.
With unloved mathematics, a conversation from the series “of course, I will be delighted with your good grades in mathematics, but even if they are not, I will not be very upset, you will always be the best for me, regardless of grades.” Sometimes the message “I didn’t really want to” can work better than the motto “do or die.”
So that the information does not remain a theoretical burden, I propose an effective exercise.
Think about and write down in which life projects you would like to achieve the greatest results. For each project, write answers to these questions.
1. Is this project difficult for you?
2. If the project is easy, are you motivated enough for it?
3. If not, what motivates you more? Reduced project time, intermediate control, additional bonuses based on results?
4. If the project seems difficult to you, are you over-motivated? Can you bring it down to the optimum? For example, giving yourself more time, moving away from an all-or-nothing strategy in favor of intermediate results, or using a “not really wanting” tactic?
5. If the project is of medium complexity, where are you in relation to the optimum motivation? Is it not enough or too much? What can you do to get closer to the optimum?
When doing the exercise, keep in mind that in most cases we motivate ourselves unnecessarily.
We “hang” on difficult tasks, we are blocked by too strong motivation
If you have people in your environment whose motivation you can influence (usually close people and subordinates), you can do the same exercise with projects in which they are involved. This way you can better understand whether you really have unmotivated employees for whom it is worth reconsidering the bonus system, or if you should loosen your grip and just give them more time to complete tasks.
If your spouse is nervous before an interview for their dream job, think about the best way to say it. «Come on, show them all»? Or would it be more correct to say that the light has not converged on this company and such a cool specialist will find a good job anyway?
The study of Yerkes and Dodson is more than a hundred years old, but it has not lost its relevance. Throughout the XNUMXth century, scientists conducted experiments on animals and humans, changing tasks and offering different motivations. Both achievement motivation (money for solving problems) and avoidance motivation were used, when subjects were shocked and nails were thrown at them. The Yerkes-Dodson law has been proven time and time again.
People intuitively felt it always. The proof can be both ancient philosophical and religious movements aimed at getting rid of excessive passions, and today’s Internet memes «Everything will come true, you just have to get sick.»