The Secret of Effective Motivation

My summary:

* There are 2 types of motivation- intrinsic (curiosity) and extrinsic (desire for recognition)

* It's often assumed that intrinsic + extrinsic is better than just intrinsic.

* But it seems to be that introducing extrinsic motivations can actually weaken intrinsic ones.

My takeaway: make sure you focus on the intrinsic and avoid letting extrinsic things override your intrinsic ones.

This is consistent with Dan Pink's talk (and book) about Drive, and how financial/monetary incentives change the way people approach things altogether. Not really a secret anymore, is it? But this hasn't yet fully seeped into conventional wisdom, I think.