Today I came across this really great video on Daily Blog Tips, turning traditional motivational thinking on its head. The video is adapted from speaker Dan Pink, who says that scientific studies prove that money is not the biggest motivator for success. In fact, large monetary rewards can actually hinder performance when it comes to complex cognitive tasks (ie, things that require brain power and not physical power).

The largest motivators for people are actually:

• Autonomy: The desire to be self-directed
• Mastery: The desire to get better at something
• Purpose: The desire to contribute to something meaningful

How do these findings play out in the real world? Well, it means that if you’re working a job that makes you feel like a cog in a machine, no amount of money is going to make it more fulfilling. And according to Dan Pink, it can also lead to greedy and unethical business practices. It’s not that money doesn’t matter at all, but if you take money off the table, and replace it with purposeful work, people are in large part much more motivated.

This is why I think entrepreneurs fair so well when it comes to our personal happiness. If money is not the most important thing, nor our largest motivating factor, we can create work that allows us to be self-directed and gives us a sense of purpose. We are far more productive and innovative than many of our corporately employed counterparts because we have the freedom to be.

And it’s also why some of the most innovative companies are switching from the traditional cash incentive model to one that gives employees the freedom to pursue their pet projects. Google offers engineers 20% free time so they can spend their time on their own projects. The result? It’s the most popular website on the internet, their stock is doing extremely well, and they have some of the best free internet products ever invented.

So if you’re scared to become an entrepreneur because you’ll loose some of the security and comfort of your job, also think about how very fulfilling you’re new work could be. And as we see in Google’s case and thousands of other thriving business, success derived from passion, and not from the desire for money can ironically lead to huge financial gains.