Hi, everyone. This is a picture of me with my little daughter. Cute, right?
Becoming a father is not only a very heartwarming experience. Becoming a father, in Germany, also offers the great fringe benefit of taking a paid sabbatical leave, thanks to the concept called ‘parents time’. And that’s exactly what I’m currently doing, enjoying a one-year parental leave from work.
A few weeks ago, my wife came to me and said to me, “Olivier, it’s strange. You’re on a sabbatical. You don’t have to work, but in the last six months, you have worked more than before.” And she’s probably right. I have worked more than before.
This, in my opinion, raises a very interesting question. What if, instead of having to work, we were free to work? What if work was not our only income channel, so that it was a free choice to work?
I believe that the obligation to work because we have to earn money to secure a living, is one of the biggest misconceptions of our time. I’m convinced that if we were free to work, this would unlock a huge, hidden potential in our society. To explain to you why I have this strong belief, I want to present three arguments.
First, as a society we have achieved an economic state that allows us to rethink work. This shows the development of real GDP per capita over the last decades in Germany. Over the last 40 years, we have doubled GDP per capita when adjusted for inflation. We have doubled the economic output per person. That’s a huge achievement.
But how were we able to transfer this huge achievement into a better well-being of our society?
Has our well-being also doubled in the same time period? Obviously, a better economic situation has allowed us more financial freedom, and more consumption over time. This means that we work more and more to satisfy our luxury needs.
The paradox, however, is that we are completely ignoring our luxury needs in the one area of life we spend the most time at, and that’s work itself. It seems as if our well-being at work was not as important, even though we spend most of our lifetime working. Let me illustrate this with a few examples.
We work nearly as much today as we did 40 years ago. The number of burnouts caused by high levels of stress at work has risen dramatically. Or let’s have a look at some data on job satisfaction in Germany. It suggests that over the last 30 years, there has been no improvement. You could even talk about a slight decrease in job satisfaction, in a time when our economic capacities have doubled.
So, in summary. Through our hard work, we have achieved a state in which as a society we have freed ourselves from material needs. And the problem now is that we are so used that hard work was responsible in the past to improve our well-being, that we don’t question today how changing work itself could be beneficial to us.
My second argument. The developed economy of today doesn’t have to rely on the assumption anymore that we have to be forced to work, because we want to work. When I tell people about my idea of being free to work, the most common objection I hear is, “But then no one would work anymore.” Honestly, I’m shocked at how our system manages to maintain such a negative view of us humans. The way I see it, money is by far not the only reliable motivator to work. We are driven by our interests, by social recognition, social integration, finding self-fulfillment, or just simply by having fun at what we do. Take me as an example. There is no need for me to do any work this year, but still I feel the urge to enjoy my freedom by being active, participating in interesting projects, and realizing all my ideas for which I never had time.
You might think that I’m rather the exception than the rule, and that I’m an idealist to believe that these soft factors are strong enough to motivate us to work. I surely am an idealist, but the nice thing is, many observations in real life support my idealistic view. Take, for instance, all the unpaid work we can observe in our society. As an example, 30% of the workers in Germany are doing voluntary work next to their work. 30% of the people that work most of their lifetime decide to do unpaid work in their free time. They must be crazy. But believe me, it’s getting crazier than this.
‘Descape’ is a startup based here in Berlin that offers time outs from your day job with short trips in other work areas. The crazy part? These people pay for these trips. They pay to do another person’s job! And we shouldn’t forget the craziest ones, and at the same time, the luckiest ones: the lottery winners.
A study conducted in the USA surveyed 117 lottery winners, with an average winning of $3.6 million. The study found that 85% of these lottery winners continued to work after winning the lottery. Let me conclude these observations with an open question.
Let us assume that you believe me, that most of us would work, even if they didn’t have to, but there are other few lazy ones who wouldn’t work anymore. In such a case, does it make sense to hold on to a system that focuses on the few lazy ones by trying to make them work, instead of moving to another system that focuses on the majority that wants to work by giving them the freedom to be productive?
My third and final argument, for why I am convinced about the idea of being free to work, is the most important one. Forcing us to work kills our motivation. It kills our motivation to excel at work. In 1971, Edward Deci conducted an experiment to understand how human motivation works. The participants were divided in two groups, and asked to solve puzzles. One group was paid money if they solved the puzzles, the other group was not.
The experiment included a break between the puzzle-solving sessions. Guess what happened during those break times? The group that didn’t receive any money spent significantly more time playing with the puzzles during break time than the group that received money. The experiment showed that extrinsic motivators like monetary reward, the fear of punishment, or the obligation to do something reduced intrinsic motivation, a person’s internal drive to do something because of the interest, and the enjoyment of the activity itself.
I think all of us can relate to this result. When my wife tells me to take care of my little daughter, it feels like an annoying duty, even though I love spending time with her. The groundbreaking experiment of Deci has been followed by plenty of research on human motivation. A very important result this research has shown is that intrinsically motivated people — people who feel related to what they do — are more creative, more innovative, and better at problem solving. And as these are exactly the skills needed to be productive in our knowledge economy of today, a lot has been discussed on how to improve the working environment by removing extrinsic motivators.
This ongoing discussion is very important. But what bothers me is that so far, it has only focused on the organizational level. It’s only focused on what managers can do to remove extrinsic motivators within the organizations. It has completely ignored the system that surrounds these organizations. It has ignored the fact that our concept of work, established in our economic system, relies on one big, fat, extrinsic motivator. We are forced to work, because we have to earn money to secure our living.
In other words, the current concept of work is perfectly set up to kill the intrinsic motivation of the workforce. By being forced to work, we are led to believe that work is a burden. We forget that we actually want to work, and as a result, our engagement level is limited.
So how important is this negative effect on work and motivation? According to the Gallup Engagement Index — that’s a large, worldwide survey on work engagement — only 15% of the workers in Germany are engaged. Only 15% are passionate, and committed to their work. The other 85% are either not engaged, meaning that they only put as much effort in to work as necessary, or that they’re actively disengaged, meaning that in their minds they’ve already quit their job.
These numbers are alarming from an economic viewpoint, as 85% of the workers are not as productive, and not as committed to drive things forward as they could be. That’s a huge, hidden potential for innovation, for entrepreneurship, and for productivity in our economy. But these numbers are also heartbreaking from a social perspective, as 85% of the workers spend most of their lifetime with something they don’t really enjoy.
Let me summarize. First, through our hard work in the past, our economy has grown to a level that allows us to rethink work. Second, forcing us to work is not necessary, as we want to work. And third, forcing us to work kills our intrinsic motivation to excel at work. These three arguments led me to believe that being free to work would have a fundamental, positive impact on our society by allowing us to live richer lives.
But now, where does that leave us here, living in this reality, where we are forced to work? In particular, where does that leave you, all the students here in this room, soon entering the job market? Well, there is this growing movement, calling for the introduction of an unconditional basic income. That’s a sum of money that everyone receives to cover her or his basic needs. This is probably the perfect economic instrument to realize my idea. We could just wait until this movement is large enough to succeed. But the good news is, you don’t necessarily have to wait. All it requires is that you rethink your own, personal reality of work.
Free yourself from the common conception that the main purpose of work is to finance your living, that work is a burden, and that you have to be forced to work, because you want to work. Think of it as something that you choose to do, and this every day. And with this new reality in mind, don’t ask yourself the old questions. Don’t ask yourself what you want to do to earn money in life. Ask yourself the questions that aim at your intrinsic motivation. What would you do if you didn’t have to earn any money, and you were free to follow your passion?