Category
Incentives & Motivation
Browse 13 free mental model guides in Incentives & Motivation.
3 guides
Behavioral Risks & Metrics
Crowding Out & Overjustification
The surprising finding that adding an external reward, like money, for an activity can decrease a person's intrinsic motivation to do it.
Read guideGoodhart's Law & Metric Gaming
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure because people start optimizing for the metric instead of the real goal.
Read guideIncentive Audit & Risk Checklist
A structured framework for examining how rewards, metrics, and motivations may drive unintended consequences before they cause harm.
Read guide3 guides
Goals, Recognition & Gamification
Gamification for Motivation
Gamification applies game design elements to non-game contexts to boost engagement and motivation.
Read guideGoal-Setting Theory
Specific, challenging goals consistently outperform vague or easy goals—when you're genuinely committed to achieving them.
Read guideNon-Monetary Rewards
The psychological power of recognition, praise, and intrinsic motivators that often outperform financial incentives in driving behavior and performance.
Read guide4 guides
Motivation Theories & Intrinsic
Equity Theory
Equity Theory explains how people judge fairness by comparing their contributions and rewards to others.
Read guideExpectancy Theory
Motivation depends on believing effort leads to performance, performance leads to rewards, and those rewards matter to you.
Read guideIntrinsic vs Extrinsic Motivation
Understand the difference between internal drives (joy, curiosity) and external ones (rewards, pressure) to better harness your motivation.
Read guideSelf-Determination Theory (A-C-R)
A theory of motivation explaining that well-being and engagement depend on fulfilling three core needs: Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness.
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Social & Peer Incentives
2 guides
Time & Loss Framing
Temporal Discounting in Incentives
People value immediate rewards far more than delayed ones, shaping how incentives must be designed to motivate long-term behavior.
Read guideLoss Aversion in Design
Framing choices to emphasize what people might lose rather than what they might gain, leveraging the psychological finding that losses motivate more strongly than equivalent gains.
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