Fallen Out With Writing? — This Is Why

By any measure, selling millions of copies of your book is a success.

Yet, according to math professor Jordan Ellenberg, “A Brief History Of Time” by Stephen W. Hawking, which sold 25 million copies, is one of the least-read books ever.

Ellenberg used Amazon’s “Highlights” feature to see how far into the book readers read.

He noted the page numbers of a book’s five top highlights, took the average, and divided it by the number of pages in the entire book. The higher the number, the more of the book people are likely to have read.

He called it the Hawking Index.

I have had a copy of A Brief History of Time since 1988. And no, I’ve never read it. I got stuck after a few pages, put it back on the shelf, and vowed to read it when the time was right. That time has never come.

In most workplaces, superior performance is worth rewarding because it encourages better performance across the board. But how do you measure superior performance in writing?

If you write in unique colours you might enjoy greater financial rewards than the writer who paints walls beige.

That would seem fair, wouldn’t it?

We can all agree Shakespeare can write, but would we rather read Hamlet or Harry Potter?

In the workplace, it makes sense not to rely on objective performance measures. Such measures are often easy to manipulate.

A salesman who gets a monthly bonus for reaching his sales target would keep back new business for the next month if he had already reached his target for that month.

When aspects of performance can be measured, let’s say quantity, there is a risk that working faster and producing more will lead to poorer quality work.

Most companies are aware of this and adopt more informal ways of rewarding their best staff.

Rather than identifying specific objective measures of performance, they give themselves the discretion to reward good work without being too precise about what the good work entails.

They’ll recognise it when they see it.

This gives them the flexibility to mete out rewards (or punishments) as and when or how they like. This will please those who are rewarded, but it will discourage those who don’t.

It turns out that there is a way around this problem. Turn work life into a tournament. Economists call it Tournament Theory. Tournament theory explains why subjective rewards, like the Medium Boost bonus, can make you miserable.

Tournament Theory

In a tournament, participants are paid for relative performance — how they do in comparison to other people. In a boxing match, for example, the winner takes the biggest slice of the purse.

Paying for relative performance has its merits. Pick a punnet of strawberries and you earn a set amount. Pick 10 punnets and earn 10 times as much.

But they paid Muhammed Ali for beating up the other guy — a relative measure of performance.

Ali’s bonuses didn’t come from participating, he only received those if he beat his rivals. A knockout is an emphatic way of determining who gets the bonus.

Workplace tournaments are one reason work can be a frustrating experience. Once your bosses start handing out bonuses or promotions, the participants adapt their behaviour — they play the game.

Incentives in the workplace make it perfectly rational for workers to stab one another in the back. Cooperation takes a back seat. Imagine asking a fellow engineer to borrow his tools if you are both going for the same promotion. Studies show he’d refuse.

There are two ways to win the game. You can either work your socks off or you can be the devious bastard who makes sure your colleague is seen in a bad light.

What do you think Muhammad Ali was doing when he disparaged his opponents in the pre-fight press conference? Ali wasn’t just the greatest boxer who ever lived, he was the greatest at rattling his opponents.

Some might match the speed of his fists in the ring, but nobody came close to matching the speed of his stinging tongue.

Getting paid for writing is empowering.

If you are a writer here, you are effectively in a tournament playing to win a writing tournament.

There is a great deal of luck involved.

First off, you need to get noticed. With so many articles being published daily, it is like looking for a penny down the back of a settee in a furniture store.

In articles, identifying quality writing is a subjective process. It’s based on personal perspectives. What exactly will they recognise when they see it?

If there is too much luck involved, it’s like playing the lottery. And there is zero effort that goes into playing the lottery.

Workplace tournaments can encourage workers to sabotage one another or gamify the system. Gamification means people work less hard to produce quality work, instead, they look for ways to abuse the system for their benefit.

Favouritism can also skew the decision process.

Workplace tournaments are one of the reasons why work can be such a miserable place. It can be especially frustrating when your work goes unnoticed.

Tournament theory makes a perverse kind of sense. The higher the rewards the greater the motivation to work longer and harder. Winning a writing competition is no different.

Malky McEwan