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Are you energized by your job or just spinning your wheels? There's a way to tell.
Think of a time when you felt especially energized by your work. If you're like most people, you'll recall doing something you regarded as significant and being completely engaged in the project. You're likely to remember feeling a sense of ownership of the work and using your best thinking and creativity. You may also remember taking pride in your efforts and the excitement of seeing them pay off.
Then again, you probably can remember other times or other jobs when you had a sort of energy crisis-when your work felt meaningless and you had to drag yourself in every day to do it. Did you feel you were in a rut? Did you have to force yourself to go through the motions in order to get paid?
What we're talking about here is high and low intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation has to do with the psychological rewards you get from your work. When you are intrinsically motivated, you genuinely care about the work, you look for better ways to do it, and you are energized and fulfilled by doing it well. Intrinsic motivation is quite different from extrinsic motivation, which is about the economic rewards you get from others-pay raises, bonuses and benefits.
While extrinsics are important, they are never enough to keep you at your best. With extrinsic motivation, you tend to focus on the rewards rather than the work itself; you work only well enough to get the rewards.
Intrinsic motivation is crucial in today's work environment. Research shows that it is a key factor in performance and innovation. At a personal level, intrinsic motivation makes your work fulfilling. It's a major reason for deciding to stay on a job. It helps keep your stress level down.
I've been researching and consulting on this topic for 16 years, and I find that people generally understand that intrinsic motivation is important. However, I've also learned that it's hard for many people to think creatively about intrinsic motivation-or to fully understand it. Most of us are holding onto some old half truths about work and motivation. Specifically, we tend to think that:
Work is about performing activities. Motivation...