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Why do we really work?
C290 minsNew. New: checked automatically for level, grammar, facts and originality; a teacher's review is still to come. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.workpsychologymotivationsociety
Video: The way we think about work is broken – Barry Schwartz (TED)
About this lesson
A proficiency-level lesson built on Barry Schwartz's TED talk about why we work. Students learn idiomatic language for talking about motivation and job satisfaction, test their assumptions about his argument, predict how he explains the design of modern work, correct claims about Adam Smith, and decide for themselves whether pay is a good enough reason to work.
- Learn eight phrases for talking about work, motivation and satisfaction.
- Decide whether statements about the talk are true, then watch and correct them.
- Predict how Schwartz links ideas about human nature to the factory system.
- Correct claims about what he says Adam Smith understood.
- Debate whether pay is a fair reason to work, and redesign real jobs.
Target vocabulary
drag yourself out of bedin it for the moneythe overwhelming majoritysoul-destroyinga means to an endmake it worth someone's whilederive satisfaction from somethinggo through the motions
Lesson activities
Let's get started with a warm-up
1
What gets you up?
Discuss the questions.
- What gets you out of bed on a weekday morning: work, study, other people, or something else entirely?
- Think of the best job you have ever had or heard about. What made it good?
- If you had enough money never to need a job again, would you keep working? Why/Why not?
- Rank these for yourself: good pay, interesting tasks, security, being useful to others. Would your answer have been the same ten years ago?
- Can a job that looks repetitive from the outside still be satisfying for the person doing it? Give an example.
- Do you think people in your country are more or less satisfied with their jobs than a generation ago? Why?
Let's learn some vocabulary!
2
Why we do what we do
Read the sentences and match the phrases in bold with the correct meanings below.
a)On winter mornings I have to drag myself out of bed: the alarm goes off three times.
b)Nobody trains as a nursery teacher because they're in it for the money; the salary is modest at best.
c)In the survey, the overwhelming majority of staff, over 90 per cent, wanted flexible hours.
d)Checking the same form all day was so soul-destroying that he left within a month.
e)For Lena, the office job was only ever a means to an end: it paid for her evening art classes.
f)The agency offered him triple pay to work over the holiday, which certainly made it worth his while.
g)She derives satisfaction from seeing her students' confidence grow, even on the hardest days.
h)By Friday afternoon the team were just going through the motions until the weekend.
MEANINGS:
- get a sense of fulfilment or pleasure from something
- almost all of the people or things in a group
- do something without real effort or interest, only because you have to
- make yourself get up although you really do not want to
- offer someone enough reward to make the effort worthwhile
- doing something only for the pay it brings (often disapproving)
- so dull or repetitive that it makes you deeply unhappy
- something you do only to achieve something else, not for its own sake
3
You and your work
Complete the gaps with the phrases from ex. 2. Then, choose four questions to ask your partner.
You may need to change the form of the verb or the pronoun.
a)Is there anything that makes you jump out of bed in the morning, or do you usually have to ?
b)Can you think of a job where hardly anyone is ? Why do people do it, then?
c)Do you think of people would carry on working if they no longer needed the money?
d)What makes a job : the task itself, the lack of control, or the people around you?
e)Have you ever done a job that was just ? What was the end?
f)What would an employer have to offer to to work every weekend?
g)Think of something you do every week. Do you , or do you do it out of habit?
h)When do you catch yourself at work or in your studies, and what would change that?
Now, we'll put it into practice!
4
A day at work
Look at the four photos. Then, discuss the questions, using the phrases in the box.
A
B
C
Ddrag yourself out of bedin it for the moneythe overwhelming majoritysoul-destroyinga means to an endmake it worth someone's whilederive satisfaction from somethinggo through the motions
- What do you imagine a typical hour of work is like for each person?
- Which of these jobs do you think offers the most satisfaction, and where does it come from?
- Which job would you find hardest to stay motivated in, and what would make it worth your while?
- If you could change one thing about the way each job is organised, what would it be?
5
Compare your answers
Look at the questions in ex. 3 again and discuss the points below with a different partner.
- Whose answer surprised you most, and why?
- Did you agree on what makes a job soul-destroying? What did you disagree about?
- Which of the eight phrases best describes your attitude to work or study at the moment?
6
Why do we work?
Watch 00:12–02:15
Read the statements about the speaker's argument and decide if they are true or false. Then, watch the first part of a video [https://youtu.be/3B_1itqCKHo] (from 00:12 to 02:15) and check your answers. Correct the false ones.
a)Schwartz assumes that the people in the audience work mainly to make a living.
b)Schwartz admits that the people in the audience would not work if they were not paid.
c)In Schwartz's view, saying that someone is in it for the money is simply a neutral description.
d)Schwartz claims that the overwhelming majority of people on the planet do work that is challenging and meaningful.
e)Schwartz argues that, as capitalism developed, the way goods and services were produced removed the non-material satisfactions of work.
f)Schwartz says that, for people working in factories, call centres and warehouses, pay is the only reason to do the job.
7
The technology of ideas
Watch 02:29–05:22
Read the notes. Schwartz's answer to the question is technology, but not the kind you might expect. Complete the notes with what you think Schwartz is going to say. Then, watch the second part of the video (from 02:29 to 05:22) and check your answers.
a)The technology Schwartz means is not the technology of things but the technology of .
b)Ideas from the social sciences have an enormous influence on how we think, what we and how we act.
c)If you see your poverty as God's will, you pray; if you put it down to your own inadequacy, you ; if you blame oppression, you rise up in revolt.
d)Bad technology of things , but false ideas about people ____________ as long as people believe them.
e)According to Schwartz, Adam Smith was convinced that people were lazy by nature and would only work if you .
f)Once the factory system was in place, people had no other way to work, so the false idea about human nature ended up .
8
What Adam Smith understood
Watch 05:23–06:29
Read the statements. All of them except one contain a mistake. Then, watch the third part of the video (from 05:23 to 06:29) and correct the mistakes.
a)Schwartz agrees with employers who complain that you just can't get good help any more.
b)Schwartz says that Adam Smith, who gave us mass production, never saw what repetitive factory work did to people.
c)Schwartz points out that Smith's description of production-line workers is about what they were like by nature.
d)Schwartz concludes that the shape of a workplace creates people who fit its demands and denies them the chance to derive satisfaction from their work.
Let's talk!
9
React to the talk
- Schwartz assumes that people like the audience at the talk don't work for the money. How true is that of the people you know?
- Schwartz suggests that calling someone in it for the money is a criticism. Is it fair to judge people who choose a job mainly for the pay?
- Some people say they prefer routine work because it is predictable or leaves their mind free for other things. Does that weaken Schwartz's argument? Why/Why not?
- Is pay a perfectly reasonable motive for working, or should every job offer something more?
- Do you agree that the overwhelming majority of jobs are designed with little thought for satisfaction? What evidence would you want to see?
- Schwartz argues that a false idea about people can end up making itself true. Can you think of another example, at school, at work or in sport?
- Will automation remove the most soul-destroying tasks, or simply create new ones?
- At the end of the talk, Schwartz says that we design human nature by designing the places where people live and work. If you ran an organisation, what would you change first?
10
Redesign the job
Read the situations and choose two workplaces. Then, discuss the points below, using the phrases in the box.
A call centre where staff must follow a script word for word and every call is timed.
A warehouse where a handheld scanner tells pickers which shelf to go to next and records how fast they are.
A hospital ward where nurses spend more time on paperwork than with patients.
A software company where junior developers fix the same kind of bug every day.
A coffee chain where every drink must be made in exactly the same steps, in the same time.
A school where teachers must follow a fixed script for every lesson.
drag yourself out of bedin it for the moneythe overwhelming majoritysoul-destroyinga means to an endmake it worth someone's whilederive satisfaction from somethinggo through the motions
- What might make this job feel like a means to an end for the people doing it?
- What, apart from pay, could make it worth people's while to stay?
- How could the work be redesigned so that people derive more satisfaction from it?
- Would your changes cost money or reduce efficiency? Would they still be worth it?
11
Sum it up
Summarise what you took from the lesson using some of the points below and the phrases in the box.
drag yourself out of bedin it for the moneythe overwhelming majoritysoul-destroyinga means to an endmake it worth someone's whilederive satisfaction from somethinggo through the motions
- Schwartz's answer to the question of why we work
- how, in Schwartz's view, a false idea about human nature shaped the factory system
- one point in the talk you disagree with or would qualify
- what you personally derive satisfaction from in your work or studies
Spotted a mistake in this lesson?· tell us the exercise and item
Glossary
The 8 words and phrases this lesson teaches, in one set.
Talking about work and motivation
- drag yourself out of bed
- make yourself get up although you really do not want to
- in it for the money
- doing something only for the pay it brings (often disapproving)
- the overwhelming majority
- almost all of the people or things in a group
- soul-destroying
- so dull or repetitive that it makes you deeply unhappy
- a means to an end
- something you do only to achieve something else, not for its own sake
- make it worth someone's while
- offer someone enough reward to make the effort worthwhile
- derive satisfaction from something
- get a sense of fulfilment or pleasure from something
- go through the motions
- do something without real effort or interest, only because you have to
Also in the video
Other words and phrases you'll hear, to help you follow the video. The lesson doesn't practise them.
- soul-deadening
- so dull that it kills any sense of meaning or enjoyment
- mode of production
- the way a society organises the making of goods and services
- fulfilment warehouse
- a large warehouse where online orders are picked, packed and sent out
- incentivise
- encourage someone to do something by offering a reward
- division of labour
- splitting work into small separate tasks, each done by a different person