【英文版 08】Intrinsic Motivation

Inaddition to domain-relevant skills and creativity-relevant skills, you're goingto need strong internal motivation to get through the tougher moments. Renownedauthor Daniel Pink took up the question of human motivation in his 2012 bookDrive. This book explores decades ofbehavioral science research, and it debunks the myth that humans are simplymotivated by reward and punishment. The bookDrivespent 159 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list,demonstrating that people have great interest in unlocking the secrets of theirown motivation.

大家好，欢迎来到今天的创意思维课。在之前的课程中，我们讨论了两个创造力的组成成分，它们分别是创造力相关才能和某一个领域的专业技能，但是除此之外，创造力还受另一个因素影响，那就是“内在动机”。你往往需要拥有强大的内在动机来帮助你度过创新过程中的那些很艰难时刻。在2012年，著名作家丹尼尔·平克（Daniel Pink）发表了一本叫做《驱动力》（Drive）的书，他在书中讨论了激励人类行动的动机有哪些。这本书通过探索过去几十年的行为科学研究，打破了我们的一个误解，那就是，曾经我们总是认为，人类只会因为受到奖励或惩罚的刺激而选择采取某些行动，但是事实并不是这样的。《驱动力》这本书在《纽约时报》最佳畅销书榜上停留了长达159周，这充分说明了人们对于解开自身动机之谜充满了兴趣。

Inher diary study, Amabile found that people tend to be more intrinsicallymotivated when they're passionate or finding their work interesting, personallychallenging, or satisfying in some way. The opposite of intrinsic motivation isextrinsic motivation. And that comes from things like money and reputation.Innovation companies like IDEO value intrinsic motivation more than extrinsicmotivation. And that's because it's believed to be the stronger motivator ofthe two, and it's also believed to drive things like competence, autonomy, andextra hard work.

并且，阿马比尔通过日记研究发现，当人们对某件事充满热情的时候，或者当他们觉得某件事很有趣、很有挑战性或者让人心生满足的时候，他们往往会拥有更强的内在动机。与内在动机相对的是外在动机，人们的外在动机通常来源于对金钱或名誉的追求。像IDEO这样的创新公司通常会更加看重内在的动机而不是外在动机，因为他们相信，拥有内在动机的人往往具有更强的自驱力，并且他们认为这样的人往往能力更强、更有自主性，并且还会更努力地工作。

Asyou listen to this, you may already have an idea of what intrinsicallymotivates you or you maybe, like most of us who haven't quite figured out whatthat is yet, it can help to hear stories of how successful people have figuredout their passion. There are many stories about artists who are driven by theirpassion or authors who were writing based on their passion, but these storiesare also easy to find for designers and great entrepreneurs. The story behindthe social media platform Pinterest provides a great example.

当你听到这里时，或许你已经很清楚自己的内在动机是什么了，但是，你也可能和大多数人一样，还不太清楚到底什么才是自己的内在动机。接下来，我会给你们分享一些成功人士的例子，看看他们是如何找到自己热爱的事业的，这些故事或许能给你们带来一些启发。你们也许听说过许多艺术家因为热爱而不断创作的故事，你们也可能听过热爱写作的作家的故事，其实在设计师和大企业家中，我们也能够找到很多充满热情的人。接下来我会给大家分享一个很好的例子，那就是Pinterest社交媒体平台创始人的故事。

Pinterestco-founder Ben Silbermann discovered his passion at an early age. When he was achild, he loved collecting things like stamps. He loved organizing andcategorizing all of his collections. As a kid, he also looked up to famousentrepreneurs like Steve Jobs. Early in his career, he moved to Silicon Valleyto be close to the people who inspired him. He got a job in customer support atGoogle. Silbermann's childhood passion for collecting stayed with him, and asan adult, he found himself envisioning a product that would allow people toshare collections of the things that were important to them. He eventually quithis job at Google and teamed up with his classmate from Yale, Paul Sciarra.

Pinterest的联合创始人之一本·希伯尔曼(Ben Silbermann)从小就知道自己热爱什么。在他小时候，他就非常喜欢收集各种东西，比如邮票之类的，他还喜欢将自己收藏起来的东西进行分类。除此之外，那时候的他还十分佩服像史蒂夫·乔布斯（Steve Jobs）一样的著名企业家。在他的事业刚刚起步的时候，他就搬到了硅谷，因为那里住着许多为他带去灵感的人，希伯尔曼希望能够离他们更近一些。之后，他在谷歌的用户支持部门获得了一份工作。长大后的希伯尔曼依然喜欢收藏各种东西，他将这份热爱逐渐转化成了一个创意，他开始不断产生想法，他想要创立一个分享平台，在那里，大家可以分享对自己很重要的收藏。最终，他辞去了自己在谷歌的工作，并且与他在耶鲁的同学保罗·夏拉（Paul Sciarra）组成了一个创业团队。

Thetwo built a shopping app for the iPhone called Touch. This product allowedcustomers to save their favorite items. It alerted them when clothes went onsale, and it would point them toward nearby stores. One feature really stoodout for users: being able to save items for later. Silbermann connected withthat idea because of his love of collecting, so he was intrinsically motivatedto build an app around that feature.

他们两人曾经为iPhone设计过一款叫做Touch的购物app。这个程序能够让用户将自己喜欢的东西收藏在列表里，如果这个列表中收藏的衣服开始打折了的话，用户就会立刻收到手机提醒，除此之外，这个app还能告诉用户附近的商店在哪里，并且帮他们找到自己喜欢的产品。对于用户来说，这个app有一个十分特别的功能，那就是能够帮他们将自己喜欢的东西收藏起来，方便之后查看。这个功能的发明正是来自于希伯尔曼对于收藏的热爱，因为他的内在动机，促使他设计出了这样一款app。

Hesaid in an interview at South by Southwest that he and his two co-foundersbuilt Pinterest for themselves. Pinterest has been extraordinarily successful,but you can be sure that it's had its share of challenges between its foundingin 2009 and its IPO in 2019. This team has used their deep internal motivationto continue building and nurturing this product for over a decade. BenSilbermann identified what he was passionate about, and he was able toeventually make that passion into a product and a career.

在一次采访中，希伯尔曼说道，一开始，Pinterest其实只是他和另外两个创始人为了方便自己的生活才设计的。在后来，虽然Pinterest获得了巨大的成功，但是从这家公司2009年创立到2019年IPO上市，这十年之中，他们一定也遇到了许多挑战。但是，凭借自己强大的内在动机，他们坚持了下去，并花费十年设计出了这一款产品。在这个故事中，本·希伯尔曼找到了自己的热爱，并且最终将这一份热爱打造成了一个产品和一项属于自己的事业。

Ifyou're still trying to figure out where you are most intrinsically motivated, Irecommend that you start paying attention to a few things. What do you tend tobe doing when you feel the most engaged? What project have you loved the mostthat you've been involved with, and why? What types of articles and books doyou find yourself gravitating toward? And what kind of things did you gravitatetoward as a child, much like Ben Silbermann gravitated toward collectingthings?

我知道，你们当中有许多人还不太清楚自己最热爱的事情到底是什么，因此，为了帮助你们发现自己的内在动机，你们可以思考一下我在接下来提出的这几个问题：

首先，你在做什么事情的时候会最为投入？

第二，在你曾经参与过的各个项目中，哪个项目是你最喜欢的，你为什么最喜欢它？除此之外，你可以想一想，哪种类型的文章和书籍对你是最有吸引力的？

最后，你还可以参考本·希伯尔曼从小就热爱收集的故事，想一想在你小的时候，什么样的事情对你来说最有吸引力？

Ifyou are trying to think about your own intrinsic motivation, you should payspecial attention to what you're doing when you enter the state of flow. A flowstate is when you are so absorbed in an activity that you forget abouteverything else. Time flies by, noises fade into the background, you don't seemto get tired or hungry. Does any of this sound familiar? What are you doingwhen you experience that?

除了思考我刚才提出的这几个问题之外，如果你想要找到自己的内在动机，另一个方法就是观察自己会在什么时候进入一种所谓的“心流状态”（state of flow）。心流状态指的是，当你完全沉浸在一件事情中时，你会忘记周围的一切，时间突然变得很快，周围的噪音逐渐变为背景，而你似乎完全感觉不到疲劳或者饥饿。我这样描述了之后，这种状态是不是会让你有点似曾相识的感觉？如果你觉得这种状态很耳熟的话，你可以回忆一下，你在做什么事情的时候有过这样的经历和感受呢？

Theterm flow was made famous by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. His researchshowed that we perform best when we do something that we find enjoyable andworthwhile. Flow is a mental state, and there are tricks that can help youenter it. You'll need to find your own ritual to help you get into thiscreative groove, but here are some tricks that have worked well for me in thepast.

心流（flow）这个概念最早是由著名心理学家米哈里·契克森米哈（Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi）提出的。他的研究调查发现，当我们在做一些让自己心情愉悦并且很有价值的工作时，我们最大的潜力就会被激发出来。心流其实是一种特殊的心理状态，你可以通过一些特定的技巧来帮助自己进入这个状态。一般来说，如果你想要进入到这个充满创造力的状态中，你需要找到一种属于你自己的仪式，我也会和大家分享一些技巧，这些技巧在之前都曾成功帮助我进入过心流状态。

Thefirst couple of tricks are around making your environment really comfortable. Ilike to design my workspace for comfort. We can get comfort from having areally great chair or lots of natural lighting or having a space thatefficiently supports our work activities or even looks great to others. Anotherway of thinking about comfort has to do with your sound environment. You mayexperiment with calming background noises. In 2012, there was a study thatshowed that while noisy environments may constrict information processing, someambient noise is good for creativity because it somehow induces abstractthinking. It's too early to make any definitive conclusions about that type ofresearch, but in the meantime, you might try it yourself. There have been websitessuch as Coffitivity, which recreates the hum of a coffee shop in your workspaceat home or at the office.

要想进入心流状态，首先，我们需要打造一个非常舒适的工作环境。我个人很喜欢为自己设计一个舒适的工作区。比如，我们可以放一把坐着特别舒服的椅子，或者让自己的工作空间拥有充足的自然光，在这个空间里我们的效率往往能够得到提高。另一个重点是工作环境中声音的舒适度，你可以尝试减小工作环境中的噪音。在2012年，一项研究表明，尽管大多数时候，环境中的噪音可能会影响我们的大脑处理信息，但是某一些环境噪音反而可能有助于提升我们的创造力，因为它或许能在一定程度上引发我们的抽象思考。尽管到现在还没有什么研究结论能完全证明这一观点，但是你完全可以自己进行尝试，找到最适合自己声音环境。有一个叫做Coffitivity的网站，它能够播放类似在咖啡馆中我们听到的声音，这样，当你在自己家里或者办公室工作的时候，就会像是正在咖啡馆中工作了。

Thesecond kind of tip has to do with using constraints in useful ways. Accordingto research from Columbia University, forcing yourself to, say, combine unusualtypes of content or use only specific tools or specific materials that causeyou to think in different and more varied ways can be helpful. But not allconstraints are helpful. Studies also show that reward and evaluation-basedconstraints may actually inhibit creative work.

我要给大家分享的第二种的技巧，是去给自己创造一些有用的约束条件。根据哥伦比亚大学（Columbia University）的一项调查，他们发现，有的时候，当我们强迫自己去做一些事情，反而能够让我们从更多不同的角度进行思考，这对于我们的创新或许是有帮助的，比如说要求自己将不常见类型的内容组合在一起，或者限制自己只使用某种特定的工具或者材料。当然，并不是所有的约束都是有利的，这项研究还发现，通过奖励或者评估的方式实现的约束反而不利于激发我们的创造力。

Thethird type of tip is based on Amabile's research once again, and that's to setyourself up for regular experiences of success. As we saw in her book, that wehaven't actually talked about very much yet, but it's calledThe Progress Principle. You want tostructure your project to produce small, regular creative wins. Amabilerecommends setting clear and reasonable goals that allow you to feel likeyou're making progress along the way. She also suggests leaving enough time,but not too much, for the project.

接下来，我给大家分享一下进入心流状态的第三种技巧。根据阿马比尔的研究，如果我们想要提高自己的创造力，我们应该经常让自己获得成就感。阿马比尔在她的书中提到了这个技巧，尽管我还没有带大家深入了解这个部分，但是我们今天所要讲的，就是其中一个叫做“进步定律”（TheProgress Principle）的原理。根据这个原理，我们需要按照特定方式规划自己的项目，让自己能够在项目进行的过程中不断享受到一些阶段性的胜利。阿马比尔建议，我们应该在创新过程中为自己设立清楚且合理的小目标，从而让我们感觉到自己在不断进步。此外，她还建议我们为自己的创新项目预留足够多的时间。

Andthis last one is another one that has to do with making your environmentcomfortable, and that's to keep the things that you need for yourproject—tools, funds, materials, anything that you need frequently—easilyaccessible. The more steps that you have to take to get your materials, theless likely you are to experiment with them.

接下来，我会分享最后一个技巧，这个技巧也能帮助你拥有一个更舒适的工作环境，那就是将你在工作过程中所需要的东西，比如工具、资金、材料以及所有你经常会用的东西，都放在自己容易拿到的地方。因为如果拿到你需要的材料非常麻烦，那么你很可能就不想用它了。

Anothertip is to do whatever you can to make a habit of doing a little exploring everyday. The best way to become an innovator is not so much to read or to writeabout it, but to spend time doing it, even if that's just a few minutes a day.You'll build your credibility by demonstrating to yourself and to others thatyou are a consistent, serious, and a worthy and easy choice to invest in whenthe time is right.

除此之外，你还也需要尽量让自己养成习惯，每天都进行一点小的探索和实践。因为，成为一位优秀创新者的最好方式，并不是掌握理论知识或者写下来就可以了，而是需要花时间真正地去实践，就算每天的实践只有几分钟也没关系。因为通过这样的方式，你可以激励自己，同时也能够向其他人证明，你是一个有毅力、并且能够严肃认真对待工作的人，因此，当正确的时机出现时，他们会很容易就下定决心对你进行投资，因为他们知道，对你进行投资将会是一个很有价值的决定。

Inthis unit, we've learned how we're all creative, that creativity is less aboutan "aha!" moment, and more about making novel connections betweenmany experiences. We've learned that your brain needs some mental downtime tomake novel connections across those experiences. And we've learned that you'regoing to need several things to be continuously creative. The ability to think aboutproblems in new ways, domain-relevant skills to implement your ideas, andintrinsic motivation to keep going when things get difficult. In the next unitwill start learning how to use the popular methodology called design thinkingto find new opportunities and to test the market risk for your ideas.

好了，这个单元的学习已经到达尾声了，下面我们来一同回顾一下我们学到的知识吧。通过这个单元的学习，相信大家现在都了解了，我们每一个人其实都有成为创造者的潜力，而创造力也并不仅仅是说我们突然地想到什么好点子，更多时候，创造力其实是关于我们如何将各种经验以全新的方式联系起来，从而打造出一个成功的创意。在这个单元中我们还学到了，在收获了许多体验之后，我们的大脑需要一些时间去放空，这样才能更好地将不同的经历以全新的方式结合起来。并且，我还带大家学习了不断获得创造力的方法，第一个方法，就是不断从新角度思考问题，其次，就是我们需要利用自己的在一个领域中的相关技能来实践你的创意，最后，你还需要找到自己的内在动机，也就是我们自己真正感兴趣、有热情的事情，有了内在动力，我们才更容易走过创新过程中的艰难时刻。

在接下来的一个单元里，我会开始带大家学习如何使用最常见的创新方法论，也就是设计思维（design thinking），设计思维会帮助你们发现新的创意机会，并且检测创意的市场风险。今天我就讲到这里，谢谢你们的收听，我们下期再见。