“A growing body of work in social psychology offers a possible explanation for this commercialization effect. These studies highlight the difference between intrinsic motivations (such as moral conviction or interest in the task at hand) and external ones (such as money or other tangible rewards). When people are engaged in an activity they consider intrinsically worthwhile, offering them money may weaken their motivation by depreciating or "crowding out" their intrinsic interest or commitment.”

“I did not even look at the scoreboard when my routine was done in 1976. My teammates started pointing because there was this uproar" (Nadia Comaneci). These remarks highlight an important feature of those practices that entail skilled and active engagement: one's attention is focused on standards intrinsic to the practice, rather than external goods that may be won through the practice, typically money or recognition. Can this distinction between internal and external goods inform our understanding of work?”

“...an external reward can affect one's interpretation of one's own motivation, and interpretation that comes to be self-fulfilling. A similar effect may account for the familiar fact that when someone turns his hobby into a business, he often loses pleasure in it. Likewise, an intellectual who pursues an academic career gets professionalized, and this may lead him to stop thinking. This line of reasoning suggests that the kind of appreciative attention where one remains focused on what one is doing can arise only in leisure activities. Such a conclusion would put pleasurable absorption beyond the ken of any activity that is undertaken for the sake of making money, because although money is undoubtedly good, it is not intrinsically so.”

“Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value ---- zero.”

“Engagement is the conscious inhabitation of your body and mind. Practice is happening when your open awareness is moving with, in and through your embodied activity. Intrinsic to practice is your conscious participation with your life. Engagement is the conduction of your free and open awareness through your activities, whatever they may be.”

“Simpler theories may be more convenient to work with, but they are not intrinsically more probable than complex ones.”