A friend asked me to critique a 6-minute video he made.
I'm doing it for free, and I've written 3,000 words so far. I'm having a blast.
But if someone offered me $10,000 to do this, it would feel like pulling teeth.
In psychology, this is called the Overjustification Effect.
When you start earning an external reward for doing something, it can actually kill the intrinsic motivation you had for it.
This is why so many creative people turn their passion into a job and then end up hating it.
But this result isn't always guaranteed!
I've been doing creative work full-time for over 11 years.
- Writing
- Podcasting
- Public speaking
- Making videos
- Recording music (I've made $1,000+ from music, so this counts)
- Programming
- UI design
- Building and launching products
- Coaching people
- Critiquing other people's work
I've done all of these, both for fun and for money.
Here's what I've observed.
For each of these, the effect that money has on my intrinsic motivation is very different.
When it comes to coaching people, the difference is massive.
I LOVE coaching people for free. I HATE doing it for money.
When I do it for free, it's because I like the person. They're usually a friend. And I genuinely want to help them succeed.
I mean, I've written 3,000 freaking words in response to my friend's casual ask for critique on a 6-minute video.
I don't have to go this hard. It's just fun. I want to do it.
But I've often met people who learn I'm a YouTuber with 3 million subscribers and ask, "Do you offer consulting?".
No fewer than 3 people asked me this question at a recent event I attended.
Each time, I recoiled internally. I'd rather do just about anything else than get paid to critique other people's work.
Each time, I said, "I don't want to do that for money, but send me a video and I'll happily take a look."
Let's create a term for this.
For now I'll call it the Soul-Crush Score.
On a 0-100 scale, how much does introducing money crush your soul for a given activity?
For me, the Soul-Crush Score for consulting is 100.
But for building and launching products, the Soul-Crush Score is wayyyyyyy lower.
Sure, I'd love to make all of
@FlylighterHQ's features totally free. Same with my Notion templates.
But charging for them doesn't destroy my motivation to keep building them.
I still find myself tinkering, and I get excited about launching new versions for my customer base.
There is still a tiny bit of Soul-Crush Score here. I genuinely don't believe it can be zero for anything you can get paid to do.
Introducing money simply shifts the incentives.
But for building products, it's really low. Maybe a 5.
In a future post, I'll share some of the psychological reasons for why I think these differences exist.
For now, I'll summarize:
Based on my 11+ years of experience, I find that there is a very large range for how the Overjustification Effect will affect different kinds of work.
I think this is highly specific to the individual. Some people clearly love coaching and consulting, even when they're being paid for it. I don't.
So if you want to find work you truly love, your job is to try things until you find work that has the lowest Soul-Crush Score possible.
Once you find it, try to stick to it.
And remember the Soul-Crush Scores of other work, because as you go through your career, opportunities to do that kind of work for an absolute buttload of money will likely come up.