🖍️ The Bonus That Killed the Passion

The Preschoolers Who Stopped Drawing for Fun

In 1973, Stanford researchers Mark Lepper, David Greene, and Richard Nisbett studied preschoolers who already loved drawing with felt-tip markers — no prompting needed. They split the kids into three groups: one told in advance they'd get a "Good Player Award" certificate for drawing, one who got the identical certificate as a surprise afterward, and one who got nothing at all.

The researchers called it the overjustification effect: turning a genuinely enjoyable activity into a means to a prize can quietly replace "I do this because I love it" with "I do this for the reward" — and once the reward's gone, so is a chunk of the motivation.

🖍️ Protect the Love of the Work

1. Don't turn every enjoyable task into a bonus-chasing one — some things hold up better when they stay unbadged.
2. If you manage people, praise the process and the craft, not only the deliverables tied to a paycheck.
3. Notice if a hobby-turned-side-hustle is starting to feel like a chore. That's the effect showing up in real time.
4. Reward unexpected effort after the fact rather than promising a prize beforehand, when you actually want to protect someone's real enthusiasm.