So when we think about what motivates people maybe the first think about is
当我们思考人生动力是什么的时候 人们可能首先想到的是
what we think motivates people and what we don't understand motivates people.
我们所认为可以给人以动力是什么，以及我们不能理解却能激励人们又是什么
And maybe the first misunderstanding is about the pleasure principle.
可能关于人生动力的第一个误解可能是快乐的原则
So we have this idea of we have the right to pursue happiness
所以我们知道我们有追求幸福的权利
and we are trying to be happy and that’s really what we’re pursuing - happiness.
我们正在尝试着让自己开心 那正是我们正在追求的 幸福
But think about it.
但是思考一下
What gives you happiness in a way that is observable?
什么能给予你能看得见的 浅显的幸福
Maybe sitting on the beach drinking a mojito or maybe sitting on the sofa watching a sitcom.
或许是坐在沙滩上喝着鸡尾酒又或是坐在沙发上看部喜剧
But if you do almost anything that is useful, meaningful, that you take pride of.
但如果你做任何一件有用的 有意义的 并且是你为之自豪的事
It's not the same things.
你得到的快乐会更多
But imagine you have a whole life of sitting on the beach drinking mojitos.
如果想象一下你一生都坐在沙滩上喝着鸡尾酒
How happy would that life be?
生活能有多开心？
So the first I think mistake is that we pursue momentary happiness rather than longer term happiness.
所以我认为对于幸福的第一个误解是我们往往更趋向于追求短暂的快乐 而非长久的幸福
So we do the things that will make us laugh out loud today kind of.
我们做那些使我们现在能开怀大笑的事情
Not always laugh out loud but kind of like that.
并非要总是开怀大笑 但也有几分相似
And we don’t do the things that are difficult and complex and challenging
我们不去做困难复杂且富有挑战性的事情
but give us a very different sense of happiness.
即使会给我们一种别样的快乐
Think about something like running a marathon.
考虑一下像跑一场马拉松这样的事
You don't see anybody happy
你看到的每个人都不开心
Like if you came as an alien and you image peoples’ brains
如果你是一个外星人 你想象一下人们大脑在想什么
and you looked at their facial expressions as they’re running a marathon
当他们跑马拉松时看他们的面部表情
you would say somebody is punishing them.
你会说肯定是有人在惩罚他们
Like they are paying for something terrible they’ve done and this is how they're paying their debt to society.
就像是他们正在为他们做过的错误的事而接受惩罚 并认为这就是他们还债给社会的方式
But it is kind of miserable but it’s also meaningful and creat a sense of achievement in someone.
这是有点儿痛苦的 但同时也是意义非凡的 并且可以给人带来成就感
So we’re pursuing momentary pleasure rather than truly understanding the depth of what happiness is or what meaning is.
所以我们追逐瞬间的快乐却没有真正明白 快乐的深意 或者说快乐究竟是什么
And then the second thing is that we’re trying to figure out
那么我们关于幸福的第二个误解是我们总是在努力发现
how we externally motivate people and we have usually a very simple equation that says motivation equals money.
怎么利用外在条件激励人们 我们脑子里通常会有一个很简单的等式 那就是动力就等于金钱
And if you’re not working hard enough or doing something and
如果你没有非常努力地工作或做事
they’re just not paying you enough or not giving you a bonus in the right way
而他们仅仅是没有给你足够的报酬 或者没能给你满意的奖金
then we just jigger around bonuses and payment and we say
我们只在奖金和报酬上忙活 我们会说
oh, let’s change the payment this way and change the payment this way
噢 让我们这样或那样来改变一下报酬
and give is slightly big bonuses here and slightly big bonuses there
然后弹性是这儿一点奖金或那儿大量奖金
and we’ll create point systems for evaluation and all kind of things.
我们将为评估甚至所有的事情制定分数制度
The beauty of human nature is that lots of things motivate us.
人类本性之美在于很多事物激励着我们
A sense of accomplishment and achievement, our title, our connection to work
成就感 头衔 工作的关系
our connection to people at work, competing with other people.
工作的人脉 与他人的竞争
All of those things motivate us.
所有的这些都激励着我们
So we write a motivation equation.
所以我们写下一个动力等式
We would write motivation equals yes, money is important
我们会写动力相当于 对 金钱很重要
but so is achievement, sense of progress, competition, dah, dah, dah, dah.
但成就 进步感以及竞争等等也同样重要
And the question is how do we use all of them to create motivation.
问题是我们怎样运用这些因素来创造动力
And in physics people look for the perpetual motion machine.
在物理上人们寻找永动机
How do we get energy from nothing, right, and continue growing.
我们怎样不获取能量且同时持续运转
In motivation there is something like that. So imagine two businesses.
从动力上来说存在这样的事情 想象一下两种交易
In one of them the business doesn’t care about motivation.
一种不考虑积极性
In one of them they care deeply.

而另一种非常在意
In the first business people are miserable and the business is miserable and they’re not making lots of money.
在第一种生意中人们非常痛苦 这个生意也很悲惨 他们赚不了多少钱
In the second one people could be happier, management could be happier
而在第二种情况下人们会开心一点 管理者也会开心一点
and they could be much more productive and efficient.
他们会更加多产 更加高效
Everybody wins when we invest in deep motivation.
当我们投入高的积极性时每个人都能获利
One of the first experiments we did on the question of meaning.
为了研究意义的重要性问题 我们所做的第一组实验是其中之一
It wasn’t like big meaning, it was little meaning.
它并没有什么深刻的意义 甚至毫无意义
And here is what we did.
下面便是我们所做的
We got people to come to the lab and we say would you like to build a bionical and we’ll pay you three dollars for this bionical.
我们让人们进入实验室 然后问 你是否愿意搭建一个积木模型 为此我们会支付三美元
And people built their bionical.
然后人们搭建了他们的积木
We took it, we put it under the desk and
我们拿走它 放在桌子下
we say would you like to build another one for two dollars and seventy cents?
然后问他们是否愿意为两美元七十分再做一个
If they say yes we gave them the next one.
如果他们同意我们会给他们下一个
And then the next one for thirty cents less and less and less diminishing wage until they decide stop, no more.
之后每下一个的报酬会以三十美分递减 直到他们决定停止 不再继续
And we told all of those people that when they finished the task we’ll take all the bionical
我们告诉所有人当他们完成这个任务时 我们将拿走所有模型
we’ll break them into pieces and prepare them for the next participant.
我们将把它们全部拆成碎块然后准备给下一个参与者
That was what we call the meaningful condition.
这就是我们称为有意义的情况
It’s not really meaningful but it is meaningful compared to the next condition.
它并不是真正有意义 但与另一种情况比较起来它是有意义的
In the next condition which we internally called the sisyphic condition it started the same way.
在我们私称为西西弗斯情况的另一种情况中 它用相同的方式开始
We said to people would you like to build a bionical for three dollars and they started doing it.
我们问实验者们是否愿意 为三美元的报酬来搭建一个积木模型 他们开始制作
When they finished we took it from them.
当他们完成后我们将模型拿走
We kept it on the desk and then we said would you like to build another one for two seventy.
我们将之放在桌子上然后问 你是否愿意为两美元七十美分来制作另一个？
If they said yes they started building the second bionical but as they were building
如果他们同意并且开始制作第二个模型 在他们制作
the second bionical we took the pieces apart from the first bionical.
第二个模型时我们从第一个模型上取了一些材料
So we destroyed it in front of their eyes.
所以我们是在他们眼前破坏了它
And then we put it back in the box
然后我们将它放回盒子里
and then we said would you like to build a third one for thirty cents less.
询问他们是否愿意制作第三个 报酬降低三十美分
And if they said yes we gave them back the first one that they assembled and we broke.
如果他们仍然同意我们会把他们做好的第一个 即我们破坏的那个还给他们
And this way we continued back and forth.
这种方式我们继续重复第四次
And we called this the sisyphic condition
我们称这为西西弗斯情况
because if you remember Sisyphus from the mythology
因为 如你所记得的西西弗斯神话传说
he was sentenced to push a rock up the hill
他被判处将一块巨石推向山顶
and he almost got to the top and the rock would roll back and he had to do the same hill.
而每当他快要到达山顶时巨石会滚下山坡而他则必须重爬同一个山坡
And the idea was that if there were different hills
有个想法是如果能有不同的山丘
right, if you were just going over different hills maybe he would feel some progress.
是的 如果是在翻越不同的山丘 或许他能稍微感觉有所进展
But having to do the same hill over and over was the depth of demoralizing of people.
但是被迫一遍遍爬上同一个山坡是最让人丧失斗志的
And what happened?
那么发生了什么呢？
Kind of a couple of interesting things.
一些有趣的事情
The first one is that people stopped much faster in the sisyphic condition.
首先是人们在西西弗斯情况下会更快地停止
The second one is we asked people how much they enjoyed Legos in general.
其次我们问他们一般有多喜欢乐高积木
And we wanted to see whether there’s a correlation between how much they enjoyed Legos
我们想知道 在他们享受乐高积木的程度
and how much they persisted in this task.
与这个任务的持续时间之间是否存在关联
And what we saw was that in the meaningful condition there was a correlation.
我们所观测到的是在有意义情况下存在一个关联
People who loved Legos did more bionicals.
喜欢乐高积木的人会搭建更多的积木
People who didn’t like Legos internally didn’t like so much.
而不喜欢乐高积木的人则不这样
In the sisyphic condition the correlation was zero which means
在西西弗斯情况下这种关联为零 这意味着
that we have sucked away the joy of assembling Legos.
我们似乎吸走了搭拼乐高积木的快乐
Because you see the people who love Legos did not do any more than the people who didn't.
因为你可以看到喜欢乐高积木的人并没有 比那些不喜欢搭积木的人做的更多
Somehow the joy of it just went away.
不知为何它的快乐消失了
The other interesting insight from this study is we did another version of this experiment.
这个实验的另一个有趣的结果是 我们做了另一个版本的实验
in which people did not engage in building bionicals but we did this in business school.
实验中人们并不参与搭建积木 此外我们在商业学校进行这次实验
and we asked the students to predict how other people would behave in those two environments.
我们要求学生们来预测 人们在那两种环境下将如何行动
So we said okay, you have an environment with more meaning and an environment with less meaning.
所以我们说 好了 你们有一个 更有意义的环境和一个几乎没有意义的环境
How many bionicals will people build differently in those two environments?
在这两种环境中人们会搭建积木数量会有怎样的不同呢？
And we paid people for the accuracy of their predictions. What happened?
我们根据他们预测的精确度来支付报酬 发生了什么呢？
People predicted that the difference will be in the meaningful condition people would build more.
他们预测不同之处会是 在有意义情况下人们会制作更多
But they predicted it would be only one bionical more.
但是他们预测它仅仅只会多一个积木
So we understand that meaning matters but we think it matters very little.
所以我们以为意义有影响 但不那么重要
In fact, it matters a lot.
事实上 它很重要
People built almost four more bionicals.
人们大概搭建了四个更多的积木模型
So there was a big gap and people don’t understand how meaning is important.
所以这有一个巨大的差距 人们并不理解意义的重要性
And if you think about it as a manager actually as anybody if you’re trying to motivate people.
你想象一下作为一个经理 事实上作为任何人 如果你尝试去激励人们
It could be a school teacher, it could be a parent, whatever it is
可以是一个学校老师 一个家长 无论是什么身份
if you’re trying to motivate people you have to understand how big is meaning.
如果你在尝试激励人们 你必须明白意义有多重要
And if you think that meaning has a very small effect you would not invest much in it.
如果你认为意义只有一点非常小的影响 你不会在它上面耗费太多
Only if you understand how big and important it is you will invest in it.
只有你明白了它是多么重要 你才会关注它