A common misconception about incentives is that they revolve solely around money. The truth is our minds constantly seek rewards-how big or small-in every aspect of life, whether in love, career, or even survival. In some cases, the excitement of new incentives can cause us to be blinded to what it all holds. When this happens, it can leave us feeling unfulfilled and sometimes feeling regretful.
I recently have undergone a situation in which compensation has incentivized my behavior. This year I accepted a job offered by the company I have interned with. The compensation of salary, healthcare, vehicle, and a career has incentivized my behavior far more than I have realized until this week’s material. Since accepting this job, my drive and motivation at the restaurant I currently work at has gone down. I no longer want to pick up hours or help cover shift, my desire to even work my shifts has gone down (I still work my own shifts). This feeling does not come from the idea that this job is beneath me, but since I have acquired the set of tools I now hold, I get the feeling that my time is worth more in a field that I have come to love.
Another scenario in which I have seen incentives change behavior has been with my own mother. The company my mom was working for was cutting out a position entirely and it happened to be the one she was working in with 15 others. The company no longer needed the position but wanted my mother to stay. They offered her a position in which she was to manage a team, and she was going to get a slight pay raise along with the chance to travel overseas. She would end up taking the position and traveled overseas a couple of times over the next two years. When she came back from her last trip, she expressed to me how she was not motivated in her job because she felt as if she didn’t do anything in her position and yet she was being praised. She ended up changing departments and taking a pay cut. She has since been promoted, given a raise, gone back to school to get her masters in school and is challenged every day by the work she does. She may explain how tough work is, but I know she loves the challenge. For her, money is not the incentive, it is the challenges and rewards for conquering those challenges that incentives my mother.
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