Encouragement through incentives | About abstract incentives

Everyone needs an incentive to do anything.

A fat person starts having a healthy lifestyle full of vegetables and morning runs when they find out they have pre-diabetes and since they don't want to lose a leg, they change their habits. They get encouragement to change their lifestyle through the incentive of having both legs by the time they are 50.

A content creator posts on Hive because they have the engagement incentive. A kid does their homework because they want their parents to be proud and maybe slip that $10 bill to buy candy. A woman does her job perfectly because she wants that monthly bonus to buy clothes. A man finishes his work before schedule to compete for that promotion. Hell, even my dog sits and pees outside because he knows there's a treat for him when he does.

These are concrete incentives. You can see them, people actually know what they are working for and they get a real prize at the end of the ordeal.

Anything is much easier to do, rules are more easily followed, initiatives are adopted by more users, mindsets are adopted faster, actions get taken smoothly, when there are concrete, personal incentives on the line for us. As human beings, the personal incentive economy is strong and hardwired.

Whether we like it or not, performance is directly linked to incentives.

If I do this thing, what's in it for me?

Society and abstract incentives

These incentives are much more harder to grasp, and even harder to understand. Ideas and concepts that base their adoption through abstract, general incentives - contrary to personal incentives - are incredibly hard to make their home in people's mindsets.

Picking up garbage you see on the street carries a general, abstract incentive. If everyone who just ate a bagel walking down the street waits until they find a trash can to drop their garbage, there would be less trash on the streets. If anyone walking down the street decided to pick up any garbage they found and threw it on the garbage bin, there would be even less trash on the streets. Then there would be no need for public street cleaning services - paid by your taxes - and that money could be used for something else that betters society. Perhaps if people didn't drop their trash on the street, the actual streets would have less holes to fill, and cars wouldn't get damaged so often, and the people in general would be much happier, the people walking because there wouldn't be trash everywhere and the people driving because they wouldn't have to repair their car every 6 months.

But there's really no concrete incentive in not throwing trash on the street, in the end, there's a man that cleans the streets, and *what's in it for me for being a good citizen?

This reminds me of the Litmus test, and the ultimate theory that proves it: The shopping cart theory.

The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing.

To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart presents as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it, and without any incentive of doing so. No one will punish you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do.
Because it is correct.

A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it.

The shopping cart is what determines whether a person is a good or a bad member of society.

We can't help it, if there's no concrete, real, personal incentive to do something, it will be much more harder for us to actually engage on a behavior or change our mindset, just because we understand it is the best way for society as a whole.

Working together as people to achieve a societal change or achieve a community benefit is much more complicated that working towards our personal goals and fulfillment, even though the latter would benefit us all and if society improves well, every person part of that society gets lifted by that improvement.

But that incentive is harder to grasp because it is an abstract incentive with no concrete results or benefits for each individual in said society.

Incentives on Hive

I'm known on Hive for running community initiatives, or at least that's what I want to think, that people identify me as a Hiver who, through concrete incentives and aided by bigger accounts usually supported by the community, encourages Hive engagement, adoption and spread.

I'm probably the Hiver who's given away more concrete incentives or ran initiatives that gave out concrete incentives than anyone else in the Hive space, easily. I have experience with concrete incentives and how the Hive community responds to them.

When I had a blocktrades delegation I used to run monthly contests giving away hundreds of dollars every month. When I was the other half of OCD I used to run different challenges that ended up with tens of winners who got liquid HBD or Hive delegations. The HiveFest ticket giveaways powered by blocktrades? Yep, ran by me. The LeoGrowth iniatiaves with concrete incentives? Also me.

This is not a flex, it doesn't matter who creates the initiatives with concrete incentives or who runs them, I'm just stating this because I want it to be clear I have experience on this area.

The social side of Hive runs mainly on concrete incentives.

This is not wrong, but it should not be the only important motor.

The abstract incentive of growing our community, helping the newbies, joining initiatives like HPUD/LPUD by @joannestewart (and the community), MarketFriday by @dswigle, BeerChallenge by @detlev and dozens of more initiatives, spreading the hive word on Twitter without needing to get PoshTokens by @acidyo in the process, engaging on Reddit letting people know about Hive... all these actions should come out naturally from every Hiver, the need for a concrete incentive shouldn't exist, because the abstract incentive of everyone benefiting from a stronger and wider community should be enough for each and every one of us for engaging and doing our best to make Hive the community it should be, and bring the underrated token price to it's fair and just market cap and position.

But it's much more complicated for our human brains to understand that general, community, abstract results that rely on our participation to thrive, are actually better than receiving personal, individual, concrete results that benefit ourselves and only ourselves.

Abstract incentives on Leo Finance

As I mentioned, I have experience running initiatives that are powered by concrete incentives. But I had never ran an initiative that relied only in abstract, community incentives.

The Leo Finance community is one of the strongest, most engaging, committed communities of the Hive Ecosystem and if abstract incentives were to work in a Hive community, it would be on Leo Finance. Yet, we as the Leo Finance community are not ready for abstract incentives - we will be, don't worry, this is not a rant or a critique, it's mostly a raw fact that I'm pointing.

Of any community, Leo Finance will be the first one to work towards common goals, mutual benefits and overall growth without the need of concrete incentives. We will be the first community that realizes that the abstract, general incentive of growing together is much more beneficial and positive for everyone as an individual, than concrete, personal growth.

We will be ready for abstract incentives, we will be ready for community initiatives where the winner is each and every one of us. Right now, we are growing, and we need concrete incentives, that's just a fact and there's nothing wrong with that.

Growth has stages, there's nothing wrong with being in a growth stage where we need concrete, personal incentives. There will be a point where these won't be necessary, but this is not it, and as I said, there's nothing wrong in that.

The key factor is to be able to identify in which growth stage we are and attack the fronts in an adequate way to maximize results by leveraging every piece of the equation.

Bring your Fam to Leo Week

We're not making an official announcement on the @leogrowth's profile, mainly because it would lack content and it would be pretty sad to see how many people actually joined this initiative. This is why I decided to make this post and maybe try to being a mindset change on every person who reads this. Besides, I can't talk about Litmus tests or incentives game theory in an official account, it wouldn't look professional.

This initiative was a total failure, and it is mostly my fault, I should've run things differently, I should've know that we are not in the growth stage where community traction does the leg work. Lessons learned, improvements to come.

This initiative's success relied on 25% of the current community to participate in order to reach a healthy user base growth, but only a handful of people joined out of the 600 monthly users we have.

It wasn't the lack of marketing or promotion, as there were several posts talking about it from leogrowth and from the community, it wasn't the drive for the users, maybe it was the lack of incentives the reason why this initiative failed.

@aquatp2 was brought to Leo by @mcsamm let's give aquatp2 a warm welcome! And thank you mcsamm for joining this initiative!

That's it, that's what the leogrowth post would say if there was one, so obviously you understand why I decided to not make any official announcements in that account.

Thank you guys for your drive to grow Leo Finance and strengthen our community! I know I said there wouldn't be any concrete incentives for this initiative but, considering how you worked hard to onboard a #newlion to Leo, I'm sending you a gift from my personal account.

What the future holds

As I said, there's nothing wrong with a community being in a stage where growth has to be encouraged through concrete incentives, so expect many more initiatives by @leogrowth where we will work hard to make Leo Finance the community it is meant to be, and to bring the token price where it belongs.

As always, any feedback regarding @leogrowth, our initiatives or how we are running things is much appreciated. You can find the account on the Leo discord server or you can leave a comment here. Either way, I hope our community mindset get's that abstract, general incentives benefit everyone at a personal level, but also at a community level.

Posted Using LeoFinance ^Beta