Daniel Pink

You set out yours.

Fred sets out his.

Maria sets out hers.

And then at the end of the month, we get together, have coffee for an hour, talk about our performance, hold each other accountable.

I think that's one way for individuals to take motivation back and not rely on companies to do it.

One of the people I write about, a scholar named Edward Deasy, says that we've got to get past this notion that motivation is something somebody does to you.

It's something that you do for yourself.

Yeah, I think that most companies can actually do the FedEx day, the 24 hours, but you can also do things in a more modest version.

I mean, you could say,

For this month, one afternoon a week, you can work on whatever you want.

Who among us has not squandered one afternoon at work?

I think people could surprise you.

The other thing about this is that the dark cloud of the recession might have a silver lining on motivation for a couple of reasons.

Number one is that recessions are often inflection points for people where their life has gone a direction they didn't expect and they have to think about where it's going to go next.

What you see in recessions is

coming out of it is some amount of reinvention, some amount of entrepreneurship.

A lot of those kinds of activities are often very, very self-motivated.

The other thing from a company's perspective is in these kind of tough times, you're pretty much out of carrots.

You don't really have many bribes left.

And that might force some companies, not all, might force some companies to think a little bit more creatively, a little bit more deeply about motivation.