What Makes Us Feel Good About Our Work

In his TED Talk, Duke professor Dan Ariely discusses what makes us feel good about our work. He emphasizes the importance of challenge and results. He illuminates this point by talking about how in the 1940’s, cake mixes were not selling well. Consumers felt like the cake mixes were too easy and thus the finished product didn’t feel like “their cake.” The manufacturers decided to take the milk and eggs out of the powder and all of a sudden, the cake mixes began to sell much better. People enjoyed the additional ‘challenge’ of adding the eggs and milk themselves and thus felt much more like the end result was indeed “their cake.” Our work thus needs to be challenging enough so that the results we achieve we can feel proud of. Of course, if the challenge is too great for our skills, a number of other problems arise. Thus finding that sweet spot where challenge meets our skill level is critical. Psychologist and professor, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls this “Flow.” He has written a whole book on the subject called, “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.”