Why We Work

Why do we work? Many people give more nobel reasons for themselves, yet expect most other people are doing it just for the money. However, this can have negative impacts on the workplace. The most productive and loyal workers are those that do it for more than money. A hospital custodian that views helping the patients as part of his purpose is much better than one just slogging through to get paid.

Unfortunately, many employers put too much focus on the monetary. This can actually reduce the higher purpose. Experiments, such as the Israeli day care late pick up charge show that a monetary incentive can reduce the intrinsic feelings and turn it into an exchange of goods. Similarly, when asking for volunteers for a service project, people are often willing to serve. If money is offered, it becomes a "job" and fewer people are willing to do the work. The legal profession has become obsessed with billable hours and revenue, driving more lawyers to the money focus vs. others.

Giving workers more autonomy can help them work for a purpose beyond money. Alas, this also takes away some of the control. An example is teachers - the salaries are low, so many are in for purpose of helping children. In order to "improve" performance, very regimented lesson plans are put in place, requiring teachers to teach everyone the same way regardless of abilities. The high stakes also lead to cheating and other problems. 

It is a challenge to get the appropriate incentives in place for workers. Each worker has different reasons for working. The biggest takeaway is that we in general tend to be too pessimistic about the reasons for others. There is room to improve.

The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less

When the general population was asked, most said they wanted to choose their own cancer treatment. When the same question was posed to people with cancer, they prefered to have their treatment chosen by others. We want choice, yet we really don't. The feeling of being in control of one's life is important for happiness. Yet too much choice leads to misery.

Today, we have the ability to make choices in many areas that were previously pre-determined. Many "choices" had been of the "take it or leave it" variety. You could choose to follow the local norms and practices or not. Today, there are many more options. Rather than just enter into a heterosexual relationship, you could choose among many of the LGBTQIA+ acronyms, or even go further to areas that are not yet mainstream. There are various identities available based on race, ethnicity, disability and many other areas. Instead of a local religion to follow, there are a multitude of ones to pick from. There is an option to choose and an expectation that the religion will match your desires. 

The many choices that we have leads to more challenges and less happiness. This is especially true with those that are "maximizers" rather than "satisficers". Maximizers want to always make the best choice. With the large number of different options, this is much more difficult.  There are many opportunities for the choice to be "wrong". It is much easier to look for potential ways other choices could have been better (or your choice is worse). There is also the human tendency to loss aversion which ties together with the endowment effect. Once you make a decision, you are likely to stay with it, even if you would not have chosen it with what you know now. You are also hurt more with "bad" decisions. Even the ability to reverse a decision leads to decreased happiness. Now there is another "decision" that needs to be made to potentially reverse it or keep it. You are less likely to be happy with something that you could have changed because now there are many options for it to be better.

Standards, rules, routines and presumptions help increase happiness with decisions. These limit the choices that are needed and thus make decisions easier. They help with "second order decisions" about when to make decisions. With the abundance of material prosperity, security becomes more important than overall wealth. (Money in a low-interest bank is secure, even though it won't lead to more wealth creation. However, it also won't provide as much second guessing.) Framing decisions in different ways can add to or decrease happiness. The "hedonic treadmill" can also lead us to continually seeking greater happiness. What once provided happiness no longer does. With an infinite number of choices, this is now more and more difficult.