Читать книгу Money Mammoth - Ted Klontz - Страница 44

Human beings are lazy. We are designed for the conservation of resources. Consider the example of muscle building. Building muscle is an easy concept that requires two ingredients: muscle overload and being hyper caloric. Essentially, you take whatever muscle you want to grow, and you give it more than it can handle. Then you eat more calories than you need. Then your body makes the muscles bigger. Repeat this process and you can become a muscle-bound freak. But muscles take energy to maintain, so the moment you stop loading the muscle with weight, your body takes that energy back to use elsewhere and the muscle atrophies. Essentially, if the resources aren't needed to get the job done, then the body self-corrects in favor of atrophy.

Psychologically, humans are wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Inevitably, work becomes difficult or boring and becomes a source of pain, while non-work activities can hold the promise of pleasure. So unless we are properly motivated and reinforced for our work efforts, just like a muscle that is no longer needed to carry a heavy load, our motivation to work at tasks that can be painful will naturally atrophy in favor of activities that require less effort and provide more immediate pleasure.

Money acts as a powerful reinforcer to help us push through the inevitable discomfort we experience at work. It keeps us getting up and doing our job even on those days when we would rather be golfing or fishing. The promise of pay increases may further reinforce keeping us focused and engaged.

What happens when we get a cookie whether we eat our vegetables or not? Or what happens if you get a cookie for NOT eating your vegetables? What happens when we get money for nothing; when we get paid for not going into work? What happens when we get money whether we put ourselves in challenging, uncomfortable, or painful situations or not? If you would get paid the same amount whether you slept in on Monday and then spent the day doing your favorite activity or dragged yourself out of bed early and worked an eight-hour day at your job, which would you choose?

How many days in a row would you maintain your work ethic if you realized it made no difference because you were going to get paid either way? If you accept the arguments that humans are lazy and money is a powerful reinforcer, we would argue that working when work is unnecessary to support oneself is more difficult to explain than someone who decides not to work because they are getting paid regardless.