Time Capsule #110
On motivation, courage, and great books.
What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?
—Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)
✏️ The Great Books Book Club
‘Classic’ – a book which people praise and don’t read.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
The quality and quantity of my leisure reading has substantially declined in the last 8 months. Whilst this is forgivable given the circumstances, it is a problem that needs rectifying. Before my slump, I had a goal of reading through the great books — I think a good way to keep myself on track and accountable is to create a sort-of reading program. A book club would be a great way to do that, with the added benefit of enriching dialogue with friends and strangers.
From Sophocles to Aristotle to Laozi to Descartes to Dostoevsky, there are certain books that have not only encapsulated the world we live in but fundamentally changed it. Modern self-help books, so popular today, are often predicated on principles that have been laid out 1000s of years prior by the wise, bald men of the past. With so many books and so little time, I believe, in general, that focusing your reading on these foundational texts is the most effective use of one’s reading time.
I would like to begin a great books book club beginning sometime this summer, where we can work through a selection of texts together and discuss their contents and our opinions on them. With so much to go through, I think choosing small excerpts from a wide range of choices is the best way. Here is my proposed Month #1 Syllabus:
Week 1: The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Dostoevsky
Week 2: The Book of Genesis
Week 3: Nicomachean Ethics Book II by Aristotle
Week 4: Meditations on First Philosophy by René Descartes
Sapientia ianua vitae.
💡 Food for Thought
Always return back to the heart.
🧬 Paper of the Week — The influence of intrinsic motivation and synergistic extrinsic motivators on creativity and innovation
Citation: Fischer, C., Malycha, C. P., & Schafmann, E. (2019). The influence of intrinsic motivation and synergistic extrinsic motivators on creativity and innovation. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 137.
Despite the vast amount of research focusing on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, the effects of extrinsic motivators on creativity and innovation have been scarcely investigated. Extrinsic factors can be seen as synergistic extrinsic motivators when they have a positive effect on the outcome. The present study investigates synergistic extrinsic motivators that organizations can use to foster creativity and innovation of their intrinsically motivated knowledge workers. The analysis is based on Amabile and Pratt’s dynamic componential model of creativity and innovation in organizations combined with elements from Ryan and Deci’s self-determination theory. The quantitative data stemmed from 90 knowledge workers of an international consulting company who participated in an online self-assessment. In exploratory factor analyses, extrinsic motivation items consolidated two factors “relational rewards” and “transactional rewards”, while creativity and innovation items resulted in a one-factor solution, called “creativity/innovation performance”. The results of hierarchical regression analyses confirmed the widely found positive effects of intrinsic motivation on creative and innovative performance. Moreover, the results supported the hypothesis that the extrinsic motivator, relational rewards, moderated the relationship between intrinsic motivation and creativity/innovation performance significantly and positively. The findings showed the higher the perceived probability of receiving relational rewards and the higher the intrinsic motivation, the greater the positive effect on creative/innovative outcomes. At the same time, the results did not confirm the hypothesis, that the moderator transactional rewards had a statistically significant effect on the relationship between intrinsic motivation and creative/innovative performance. Finally, the empirical evidence provided practical implications on how to stimulate the creativity/innovation performance of knowledge workers within organizations.
But your job is to work upon yourself: for this you are chosen; the rest is in the hands of God. He who humbles himself shall be exalted.
—St Theophan the Recluse (1815-1894)
See you soon!
AT