Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations

Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations by Dan Ariely          Audio Book: 2 hours, 30 minutes     Hardback Book:  128 pages            

I think anyone reading this book will get a kick out of learning that what we often think of as motivations are not necessarily so.     He has done a life’s worth of work on the subject of what actually motivates people to do things.    What motivates one to work harder?    To do more?    How can we motivate our kids to do better or to behave better?    In business, how can we motivate the vast number of potential clients to go our way?    Life is a series of motivational acts that we don’t even realize at the time.    And how we are manipulated to do another’s will or bend another person to our way of thinking is often ingenious in its simplicity and our lack of recognition to just what is going on though we benefit from it or help benefit others.    This book could be a Motivational psychology class 101.    Its amusing and will make you nod and say, “Yeah, now I get it.”    It will give the reader a new perspective on how people schooled in working motivational mojo can turn a person or a crowd their way like they were plying playdough.    Motivation is based not always on the benefit someone thinks they might receive be it monetary or status oriented.   Motivation is based on trust.    If the motivator can convince his subject that he truly has their best interest at heart, that he truly values them as a person or values their opinion as a person who is both grounded and intelligent (whether their esteem lets them feel so or not) then the motivator has his audience in the palm of his hand.    We all need that safety net of security.    We all need to believe we will not fall that the one motivating us is solid enough to believe in.     Once you can convey that to your subject be it a client, a student, a child, your spouse, a stranger, someone of a completely different mind set can be molded to the motivator’s position if you are willing to find common ground and learn the key to what is at that person’s heart and deliver sincerely an idea that may be new or different, you can bring people around to your way, but, the key is finding what their motivator is.    Many, many studies are cited here with sometimes surprising results, sometimes not so surprising, but, this book will make you see things in a deeper way not just the superficial blow it off kind of perception.    Things are not always cut and dried nor as direct as would appear on the surface.    There are lots of things that come into play:   feeling appreciated can be more of a motivator with some people than being financially compensated.   Feeling what you do matters means more than acquired stuff.     Making a difference in the world beats creature comforts of a life where more is received without ever giving back or working for what you have making the things you reap more dear as opposed to someone else just handing over what you want.     The psyche is such an intrinsically fascinating thing to study.    If you like psychology you will like this book.     Not everything is how it appears and no two people will see the same thing in the same way.     Everyone assigns value in their own way.

No comments:

Post a Comment