The Upside of Irrationality

effect of meaning on labor, as well as the effect of eliminating meaning from labor, are more powerful than we usually expect.

The Division and Meaning of Labor I found the consistency between the results of the two experiments, and the substantial impact of such small differences in meaning, rather startling. I was also taken aback by the almost complete lack of enjoyment that the participants in the Sisyphean condition derived from building Legos. As I reflected on the situations facing David, Devra, and others, my thoughts eventually lighted on my administrative assistant.

On paper, Jay had a simple enough job description: he was managing my research accounts, paying participants, ordering research supplies, and arranging my travel schedule. But the information technology that Jay had to use made his job a sort of Sisyphean task. The SAP accounting software he used daily required him to fill in numerous fields on the appropriate electronic forms, sending these e-forms to other people, who filled in a few more fields, who in turn sent the e-forms to someone else, who approved the expenses and subsequently passed them to yet another person, who actually settled the accounts. Not only was poor Jay doing only a small part of a relatively meaningless task, but he never had the satisfaction of seeing this work completed.

Why did the nice people at MIT and SAP design the system this way? Why did they break tasks into so many components, put each person in charge of only small parts, and never show them the overall progress or completion of their tasks? I suspect it all has to do with the ideas of efficiency brought to us by Adam Smith. As Smith argued in 1776 in The Wealth of Nations, division of labor is an incredibly effective way to 77