As Atlassian’s experience shows, Type I behavior emerges when people have autonomy over the four T’s: their task, their time, their technique, and their team

The science shows that the secret to high performance isn’t our biological drive or our reward-and-punishment drive, but our third drive—our deep-seated desire to direct our own lives, to extend and expand our abilities, and to make a contribution.

Real achievement doesn’t happen overnight. As anyone who’s trained for a marathon, learned a new language, or run a successful division can attest, you spend a lot more time grinding through tough tasks than you do basking in applause.

Type X behavior

“Autonomous motivation involves behaving with a full sense of volition and choice,” they write, “whereas controlled motivation involves behaving with the experience of pressure and demand toward specific outcomes that comes from forces perceived to be external to the self.”

1. How much autonomy do you have over your tasks at work—your main responsibilities and what you do in a given day? 2. How much autonomy do you have over your time at work—for instance, when you arrive, when you leave, and how you allocate your hours each day? 3. How much autonomy do you have over your team at work—that is, to what extent are you able

CARVE OUT TIME FOR NONCOMMISSIONED WORK: 20 PERCENT TIME WITH TRAINING WHEELS

How much faster did the incentivized group come up with a solution? On average, it took them nearly three and a half minutes longer.7 Yes, three and a half minutes longer. (Whenever I’ve relayed these results to a group of businesspeople, the reaction is almost always a loud, pained, involuntary gasp.)

The Sawyer Effect had taken hold. Even two weeks later, those alluring prizes—so common in classrooms and cubicles—had turned play into work.