How to Make Even the Most Mundane Tasks More Motivating

Jaewon  Yoon; A.V.  Whillans; Ed  O'Brien

Article | Harvard Business Review (website) | July 24, 2019

How to Make Even the Most Mundane Tasks More Motivating

by Jaewon Yoon, A.V. Whillans and Ed O'Brien

Abstract

Managers constantly encourage employees to think about why they do the work they do in order to give them a sense of purpose and fight against demotivation. But our latest research—with nearly 4,000 working adults in the U.S.—suggests that this hyperfocus on purpose can backfire. Constantly hearing messages about making an impact actually risks leading employees to ruminate about their work’s lack of impact. Building on Gestalt principles in psychology, we offer a solution: thinking about how seemingly unimportant work belongs to a set of tasks contributing to a broader goal (i.e., superordinate framing) could help employees see their true value.

Keywords: Employees; Motivation and Incentives; Goals and Objectives; Perspective;

Format: Electronic

Read Now

Citation:

Yoon, Jaewon, A.V. Whillans, and Ed O'Brien. "How to Make Even the Most Mundane Tasks More Motivating." Harvard Business Review (website) (July 24, 2019).

There is a growing debate about whether high-income individuals are more or less generous when income inequality is high. We advance this ongoing conversation by analysing a large and comprehensive data set with approximately one million respondents from 140 countries. In this data set, higher-income individuals who live in countries with greater income inequality are less likely to donate money to charity and are more likely to volunteer than their lower-income counterparts. Higher-income individuals who feel financially insecure or show distrust of others are especially unlikely to donate money to charity under high income inequality. These moderators do not influence rates of volunteering. Together, these results advance the debate regarding whether and when inequality shapes prosocial behaviour.

Over the last two decades, global wealth has risen. Yet, material affluence has not translated into time affluence. Instead, most people today report feeling persistently “time poor”—like they have too many things to do and not enough time to do them. This is critical because time poverty is linked to lower well-being, physical health, and productivity. For example, in our analysis of 2.5 million Americans, subjective feelings of time poverty had a stronger negative effect on well-being than being unemployed. However, individuals, organisations, and policymakers often overlook the pernicious effects of time poverty. Billions of dollars are spent each year to alleviate material poverty, while time poverty is often ignored or exacerbated. In this Perspective, we discuss the organisational, institutional, and psychological factors that explain why time poverty is often under appreciated. We argue that scientists, policymakers, and organisational leaders need to devote more attention and resources toward understanding and reducing time poverty to promote psychological and economic well-being.

Conventional wisdom says you should ask your colleagues for feedback. However, research suggests that feedback often has no (or even a negative) impact on our performance. This is because the feedback we receive is often too vague—it fails to highlight what we can improve on or how to improve. New research suggests a better approach. Across four experiments—including a field experiment conducted in an executive education classroom—researchers found that people received more effective input when they asked for advice rather than feedback.

Faculty & Research

How to Make Even the Most Mundane Tasks More Motivating

Abstract

Citation:

About the Authors

More from these Authors