Dan Pink on the Incentives Experiment ( TED blog 3)

In the Incentives challenge that Dan Pink talks about the higher the reward the better the performance for skills that were mechanical. But, if the challenge required cognitive skills the performance was worse. How is this possible? How can solving a challenge that requires mechanical skills (which is harder and uses more brain power) have a greater performance than solving a challenge that requires simple thinking? This makes no sense! Another thing, Pink talks about this company in Australia called Atlassian. They gave their workers the opportunity to work on whatever project they wanted for 24 hours there was no reward but they got to do something thing that they were passionate about. This opportunity led to new software and new computer hacks that might never have existed because the workers would never have gotten the chance to share their ideas. This makes sense but why would the brain preform worse on something that requires very little thinking. Let me know if I misunderstood Pink.  When Pink talked about this idea that he could have prevent to his teacher about all of these sophisticated people doing all of this work for free and then giving away the product of their work for free they were talking about Wikipedia. Pink talks about this same subject in his book Drive. This idea leads to the world’s most view encyclopedia. All of these people did this work knowing that there was no reward for them but they were all making something huge for the world. This makes sense people doing work for a bigger cause than themselves. Now why can’t we all think like this? Why does the work we do have to have a reward? Why do we get so lazy when that reward is put in front of and we don’t take advantage of that because the task requires not thinking? What does this tell the world? The people in this generation don’t care about supporting the cause to make the world a better place. All this generation cares about is making their own life successful. Why do we think like this? Do you think this is why we have wars, because people don’t care about supporting each other to make the world a better place. Please comment on thin I would love to hear what you all think about this. And I need some help understanding why this is the way it is. Thanks!