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Why Getting Paid Stole Your Drive and How to Get Into the Flow Again (Career Growth Accelerator)

Summary

The episode explores the common experience of developers losing their initial passion for coding once it becomes a paid job. Host Jonathan Cottrell shares his personal journey of starting with boundless intrinsic motivation—staying up late coding, learning from failures, and entering flow states—and how that shifted when coding became a career with extrinsic motivators like paychecks and performance reviews.

Cottrell introduces the psychological concept of the over-justification effect, first studied by Edward Deasy in the 1970s, which explains how receiving external rewards for an activity can weaken or replace the internal motivation that originally drove it. This effect helps explain why many developers feel stuck in their careers, doing only what their job requires without the drive to grow or take on new challenges.

The discussion then connects to flow state theory by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, outlining the conditions needed to achieve flow: clear goals, immediate feedback, a balance between challenge and skill, loss of self-consciousness, no concern for failure, lack of distraction, and timelessness. Most importantly, the activity must become “autotelic”—worth doing for its own sake. Cottrell argues that intrinsic motivation is key to entering flow state and that the over-justification effect directly opposes this by making activities dependent on external rewards.

For developers feeling stalled in their careers, Cottrell suggests that finding new sources of intrinsic motivation—even if ancillary to their main work—is crucial for reigniting growth. While difficult, cultivating an “autotelic personality” that finds reward in the activity itself can lead back to flow states, higher quality work, and renewed career progression, breaking the cycle of doing only what’s required by extrinsic motivators.

Recommendations

Books

  • Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience — Mentioned as the book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi that covers flow state research in detail. The host recommends it for listeners who want to learn more about the subject.

People

  • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi — Referenced as the researcher who conducted extensive studies on flow state. The host notes that searching ‘flow state’ will bring up his work first.
  • Edward Deasy — Identified as the researcher who first studied the over-justification effect in the 1970s as part of self-determination theory.

Tools

  • SERP API — Sponsored tool presented as a live web search API for applications, particularly useful for LLM-based apps that need up-to-date information. Offers a free tier and is used by companies like NVIDIA, Adobe, and Shopify.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Personal story of intrinsic motivation in early career — Jonathan shares his experience of learning to code as a hobby, driven by pure interest and intrinsic reward. He describes staying up late, failing, testing, and learning—all motivated internally rather than by external payment. This sets up the core theme of how intrinsic motivation feels different and more powerful than extrinsic motivation.
  • 00:03:00 — Introduction to flow state and its researcher — The host mentions how senior engineers often recall entering flow states where time disappears. He references Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as the primary researcher on flow state and promises to discuss the conditions for achieving flow after a sponsor break.
  • 00:04:03 — Explaining the over-justification effect — Cottrell introduces the over-justification effect, studied by Edward Deasy, which shows that when people receive extrinsic rewards for tasks they previously did for intrinsic reasons, their internal motivation weakens and can be completely replaced. This explains the shift many feel when coding moves from passion to paycheck.
  • 00:06:04 — Why motivation type matters for career growth — The host argues that understanding intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation is crucial for listeners of the Career Growth Accelerator series who want to move past sticking points. He asks listeners to reflect on their greatest period of career growth, suggesting it likely involved intrinsic drive.
  • 00:10:03 — Detailed breakdown of flow state conditions — Cottrell lists the key conditions for achieving flow state: clear goals, constant feedback, balance between challenge and skill, action/awareness merging, loss of self-consciousness, no concern for failure, lack of distraction, timelessness, and the activity becoming autotelic (rewarding in itself). He explains how intrinsic motivation naturally leads to increasing challenges to maintain flow.
  • 00:15:36 — Connecting over-justification to career stagnation — The host explains how being a ‘victim’ of the over-justification effect—where extrinsic motivation fully replaces intrinsic drive—leads to doing only what the job requires without seeking growth. This creates a chicken-and-egg problem where you can’t get promoted because you’re not changing, and you have no reason to change because your extrinsic motivation has stalled.
  • 00:18:35 — Strategies for rediscovering intrinsic motivation — Cottrell suggests finding new intrinsically motivating activities, even if ancillary to main work, as a pathway back to flow state and career growth. He acknowledges it’s hard to reverse the over-justification effect but emphasizes that cultivating an autotelic personality—finding internal reward in activities—is key to enjoying work and producing high-quality output.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2026-02-11T10:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:22:22

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] I would order pizza and sit on my couch watching tutorials and coding and failing and coding

[00:00:23] and failing, testing, reloading, and learning from my mistakes for hours on end at the beginning of my

[00:00:33] career. Because at the time, it wasn’t even a career. It was just a hobby, something I was

[00:00:39] interested in doing. And that intrinsic motivation far outweighed anything that anybody could pay me,

[00:00:51] at the time at least.

[00:00:54] Of course, maybe there was some distant belief that I could get paid for this one day,

[00:00:59] but the value was obvious to me. It wasn’t something that somebody had to explain to me.

[00:01:08] It wasn’t something that somebody had to coach into me. Learning and producing and building

[00:01:14] and being creative and exploring, all of these things just kind of came naturally

[00:01:19] because I had some kind of

[00:01:23] reward that wasn’t coming from outside. It was coming from inside. And this concept of intrinsic

[00:01:33] motivation is so different. It feels so different from extrinsic motivation. And I want to talk to

[00:01:43] you more about this because it could be a potential unlock for you in your career if you’ve stalled

[00:01:52] out. My name is Jonathan Cottrell and my goal on the show is to help driven developers like you

[00:01:56] find clarity, perspective, and purpose. And purpose in particular in this episode

[00:02:03] in your careers. And driven developers like you, you were probably driven in the beginning like I

[00:02:14] was. You had intrinsic motivation that, you know, felt like boundless energy.

[00:02:22] That it was exciting. It was, you know, and not everybody necessarily started out this way. There

[00:02:30] may be some folks who immediately your goal was to set yourself up for a career. And, you know,

[00:02:37] maybe there was some kind of mix between interest originally and then eventually some kind of

[00:02:42] motivation. You know, maybe in school, for example, you had some kind of extrinsic motivation by way

[00:02:52] of being a teacher. But most people that I’ve talked to, especially senior engineers, at some point,

[00:03:00] you know, they have stories of how they would stay up, you know, hours into the night. Time would

[00:03:06] disappear. And they would enter into, they would enter into flow state. And flow state is something

[00:03:17] that’s been pretty well studied by

[00:03:22] Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I’m trying to get the name pronunciation correct. And if you just Google

[00:03:30] flow state, he’s going to be the first person to show up because he is the one who did all of the

[00:03:34] research on this. And there’s this list of essentially flow state, you know, how to set

[00:03:42] yourself up for flow state. We’re going to talk about that list after we talk about today’s

[00:03:49] sponsor. But this idea that we’re going to talk about today, we’re going to talk about today’s

[00:03:52] He had intrinsic motivation that went away. I want to talk about why that happens. What exactly is

[00:04:00] going on there? There’s another effect that I’m going to talk to you about called the

[00:04:03] over-justification effect. And we’re going to kind of put these two things together.

[00:04:09] First, over-justification effect. The idea of over-justification effect, this was studied by

[00:04:17] a man named Edward Deasy in the 1970s. He was the first one to do that. And he said,

[00:04:22] study this. He came up with this concept called the self-determination theory.

[00:04:29] And the over-justification effect essentially says that once we receive an extrinsic motivator

[00:04:37] for doing some kind of work, some kind of task, that the intrinsic motivation that may have

[00:04:45] previously been our reason for doing that thing becomes weaker. And sometimes is eventually

[00:04:51] completely lost. And so we’re going to talk about that. And I’m going to talk about this

[00:04:52] completely replaced by the extrinsic motivator. So at some point in our careers, we shift from

[00:05:01] creating these things, you know, writing code, learning how to write tests, learning about test

[00:05:08] driven development. That was, you know, one very late Friday for me is seeing my first red green,

[00:05:14] you know, cycle and, you know, writing test driven code for the first time. I remember that vividly.

[00:05:22] At some point, we move from doing that with no one watching to doing that as a job,

[00:05:31] to fulfill a JIRA ticket, to get a, you know, a performance review, and eventually to get a

[00:05:38] paycheck. And so now we have an extrinsic motivator. And the question really becomes,

[00:05:44] what is the balance between those things? And how much of that extrinsic motivation,

[00:05:52] uh, is necessary to kind of replace and totally supplant our intrinsic motivation.

[00:05:59] We’re going to talk about how these things relate. Why is this even important for your career?

[00:06:04] You know, as long as you’re getting paid, why does it matter that it’s an extrinsic motivator?

[00:06:09] All of these things actually do matter because your goal, if you’re listening to this, uh,

[00:06:15] career growth accelerator series, your goal is ostensibly to move past,

[00:06:21] uh, a, a sticking point, right. To move past wherever you are today, uh, and grow again in

[00:06:29] your career. And I want you to think, um, you know, right here, before we go to our sponsor

[00:06:34] break, I want you to think about what your greatest period of career growth was. When did

[00:06:41] you grow the most? We’re going to talk more about all of that right after we talk about today’s

[00:06:46] sponsor, SERP API.

[00:06:51] SERP API is the live web search API for your application. Regardless of what you’re building,

[00:07:04] you can get real time search results fast directly in your app. So, uh, for example,

[00:07:10] let’s say you’re building an LLM, uh, based application and you’ve integrated with open

[00:07:16] API or whatever, and, uh, you’re running some kind of, uh, completion, right.

[00:07:21] A simple call to an LLM. Well, if you were using an LLM in the browser, the LLM actually has to use

[00:07:28] a live web search to go and get up to date information. That’s because LLMs are locked

[00:07:33] to a particular date. Once they’ve been trained, uh, they’re locked to a particular date. As far

[00:07:39] as the API is concerned, they can’t really do live search very well. Uh, SERP API bridges that

[00:07:45] gap for you. You can get live search results as JSON. You can get the pieces of JSON that you

[00:07:51] want. So you, so you, so it’s highly performant. You’re not doing a bunch of over the wire data

[00:07:55] that you don’t even need. Uh, it’s, it supports so many features, uh, and so many different search

[00:08:01] engines as well. Uh, uh, not just, you know, one or two of the big ones, but also some of the less,

[00:08:07] uh, less well-known, uh, API SERP API, uh, will support those as well. Um, SERP API is, uh, is

[00:08:16] going to give you back JSON without you having to deal with the CAPTCHAs, uh, or, you know, or the

[00:08:21] scraping.

[00:08:21] All this headaches that you don’t, you don’t actually want to think about when you’re building

[00:08:24] your app. Uh, they’re fast. They’ve been doing this for long enough that companies like NVIDIA,

[00:08:30] Adobe, Shopify, all rely on SERP API. And there’s a free tier for you to get started

[00:08:36] and actually build your full integration, uh, before you ever commit to anything. So go and

[00:08:41] check it out. SERPAPI.com. That’s S-E-R-P-A-P-I.com. Thanks again to SERP API for sponsoring today’s

[00:08:48] episode of Developer Team.

[00:08:51] So today we’re talking about this concept called the over-justification effect.

[00:09:06] And what this is really pointed at is the idea that our motivation, our fuel, our interest,

[00:09:14] our reason for doing something can change over time, even if the actual thing we’re doing,

[00:09:21] the actual output, the activity itself doesn’t necessarily change very much. Right. But there’s

[00:09:27] something important about this shift. Um, when you were doing something originally with intrinsic

[00:09:36] motivation, it’s very likely that the boundaries that you had on that activity were fluid.

[00:09:46] So as your skill in that activity grows,

[00:09:51] your, that, that, what you actually do, your activity may change to adapt to the skill.

[00:09:58] And part of the reason for this is because of flow state. And I mentioned in the first half of the

[00:10:03] episode that we would talk a little bit about the flow state, uh, kind of the, the ideal situation

[00:10:08] or ideal setup for flow state. Uh, you know, in order to encourage flow state, you want to have

[00:10:15] a handful of things in place. Um, and, and this is a list that I found, uh, publish about flow state.

[00:10:21] Uh, one is, uh, clear goals exist, right? So, you know, exactly, uh, you know, what you’re trying

[00:10:26] to accomplish. Um, two, you’re, you’re getting constant feedback. This means, you know, you do

[00:10:32] something and immediately, ideally the system itself is giving you immediate feedback. Um,

[00:10:38] there’s a balance between your challenge and skill. And this is the important thing

[00:10:41] related to what we were just talking about. As your skill grows, you will take on naturally

[00:10:47] take on more and more challenging things, right?

[00:10:51] Because, uh, otherwise you’re not experiencing flow state and you’re actually optimizing for

[00:10:58] flow state. When you have higher intrinsic motivation, we’ll talk about why that is in

[00:11:02] just a minute, but because your, your skills are growing, you’re naturally going to continue

[00:11:08] ramping up your own challenge without anybody telling you, you have to, without anybody

[00:11:14] coercing you, uh, you know, this isn’t coming in feedback. It’s not coming as review. You are

[00:11:19] naturally regulating the flow state. And so you’re actually optimizing for flow state when you have

[00:11:21] the challenge that you’re taking on based on your skill, right? Uh, that’s, that’s what happens when

[00:11:27] you’re seeking flow state is you’re going to go for something that’s a little bit harder because

[00:11:31] your skill has grown just by nature. Okay. Um, action and awareness are merging, right? So this

[00:11:39] means that, you know, as you are doing this thing, you are kind of, uh, you know, you’re,

[00:11:44] you’re less thinking about what you’re doing and kind of, uh, just becoming aware that you are

[00:11:50] doing it. Uh, you’re less thinking about what you’re doing and kind of, uh, just becoming aware

[00:11:51] there’s a little bit of a loss of self-consciousness. Uh, you know, you’re not really

[00:11:57] thinking about what you look like or, uh, you know, uh, uh, how other people are perceiving

[00:12:03] you in that moment. You’re really kind of diving into the task, right? And by the way, uh, I’m,

[00:12:10] I’m not an expert on flow state, but if you want to learn more, uh, chicks, chicks at me, hi,

[00:12:16] uh, has published a book, uh, about this subject. So, um, go,

[00:12:21] go pick up that book. If you want to learn more, uh, there’s, uh, no concern for failure,

[00:12:26] uh, when you’re in flow state. Again, if you think about the intrinsic motivation,

[00:12:30] uh, you know, what is the worst thing that could happen? Well, you fail and you get,

[00:12:34] get up and try again. If you have extrinsic motivation, uh, if, if the reason you’re doing

[00:12:40] this is coming from outside of you and you are only rewarded with that extrinsic motivation,

[00:12:45] if you succeed, then it’s unlikely, uh, that you’re going to have this particular aspect in

[00:12:51] place.

[00:12:51] For, for flow state, which is no concern for failure, right? If you, uh, uh, you know,

[00:12:56] if no concern for failure would have to mean that you’re still going to get the incentive,

[00:13:00] uh, that, that X extrinsic motivation incentive, um, regardless of your success or failure.

[00:13:07] And a lot of times, uh, you know, that’s, that’s not going to happen. If you have extrinsic

[00:13:11] motivation, um, you may lose your job, right? If, if you’re failing consistently, um, lack

[00:13:18] of distraction, this one’s pretty straightforward. You know, you’re,

[00:13:21] you’re setting yourself up in an environment for, for flow state, uh, a feeling of timelessness.

[00:13:26] We already kind of talked about this at the beginning, you know, hours will pass and it

[00:13:29] feels like I haven’t really even paid attention to the clock. Um, not really, you know, uh,

[00:13:36] recognizing that that time is passing. And then the final, and perhaps the most important aspect

[00:13:41] here is that the activity becomes autotelic. All right. This is a new word, uh, for me,

[00:13:48] I hadn’t really encountered this word, uh, before I started.

[00:13:51] I started doing the study for this episode. Autotelic means it is worth doing to you based

[00:13:58] on the, uh, the rewards you get for doing it just by doing it, right? It’s worth doing

[00:14:05] for the sake of doing, it’s worth doing because you enjoy it is the kind of simple read for

[00:14:12] that, right? If the activity becomes autotelic, then you are rewarded by continuing to do

[00:14:21] this.

[00:14:21] The activity of, uh, of writing code and seeing that code, uh, you know, actually develop,

[00:14:30] like build something with code for the first time. And you get some kind of, uh, you know,

[00:14:37] intrinsic reward from that, that is autotelic. And so the autotelic personality is something that,

[00:14:44] uh, Chick sent me high talks about, and it is at direct odds with this,

[00:14:51] over justification effect, right? So hopefully you can see the autotelic intrinsic motivation

[00:14:57] that accompanies flow state, which would naturally have you, have you taking on more

[00:15:05] and more challenging things. That’s directly at odds with, uh, the over justification effect

[00:15:13] and extrinsic motivation, which would not by, by default would not have you take on,

[00:15:19] uh, uh, more and more challenging things, right? Especially if that extrinsic motivation can’t keep

[00:15:27] up. So again, we’re talking about career growth acceleration, right? The whole, uh, concept here

[00:15:36] is that you may be stuck. Well, if, if you’re stuck, uh, why is it that you’re stuck? One

[00:15:41] possible theory for why you’re stuck is because you’re doing the same things over and over.

[00:15:48] And in order to do something, you’re going to have to do the same thing over and over.

[00:15:49] If you are a victim of this over justification effect, right? If you have really fully shifted

[00:15:57] into extrinsic motivation, being the only thing that motivates you, uh, which by the way is very

[00:16:06] common, then you haven’t found a reason recently to do something more than what your job absolutely

[00:16:14] requires you to do. This is where a lot of people end up being, you know, they’re not

[00:16:19] becoming, uh, you know, essentially, um, totally unmotivated to change what they do in their,

[00:16:28] in their work. Totally unmotivated to grow, totally unmotivated to, you know, uh, extend beyond

[00:16:35] what the basic kind of requirements of the job are. And there’s plenty of justification for this.

[00:16:44] Um, you know, most people would say, well, of course I’m not going to do more than what I’m

[00:16:49] paid for.

[00:16:49] But a good question, um, still, still should be asked, which is why? Not because you should do

[00:17:00] more in order to prove that you can get to that next level, right? I’m not, uh, suggesting that

[00:17:07] that’s the case, but rather that you’re going to grow only when you change. And if you don’t have

[00:17:15] a reason to change because your extrinsic motivation has stalled out,

[00:17:19] then there’s kind of a chicken and egg scenario here where, uh, you’re, you’re not going to be

[00:17:25] able to get a promotion, for example, because you’re still doing the same things that you’ve

[00:17:30] always done, right? So in order to get promoted or in order to, uh, move past a roadblock,

[00:17:38] something has to change and you need a reason to change it. Finding intrinsic motivation,

[00:17:45] finding something that you want to do, finding something that gives you,

[00:17:49] a reward without a paycheck or without some kind of other extrinsic, uh, uh, you know,

[00:17:57] somebody else telling you to do it. Um, somebody else giving you the direction, the direction,

[00:18:04] right? Giving you some kind of support, uh, through feedback can increase that intrinsic

[00:18:13] motivation, by the way. So if you can find an intrinsic motivator,

[00:18:19] uh, it’s very unlikely that this is going to be kind of competing for the things that have

[00:18:26] already moved on to extrinsic motivation. This is, uh, you know, part of this research

[00:18:30] essentially showed that it’s very hard to reverse that, right? It’s hard to go back.

[00:18:35] Once you’ve moved on to extrinsic motivation, being paid for something, for example,

[00:18:40] uh, it’s hard to move back to, you know, finding love again in the work. I don’t even recommend

[00:18:46] necessarily, uh, you know, needing to be passionate about it. I don’t even recommend

[00:18:49] being passionate about your work in order to do good work. Um, but I do think that your most

[00:18:56] likely shot at growing is to find something that is intrinsically motivating. Find something that

[00:19:03] you do, uh, have enough internal reward that you will go and do it, right? Without somebody having

[00:19:11] to tell you how to do it or why to do it. So finding, and here’s, here’s another kind of,

[00:19:17] um, you know,

[00:19:19] a good reason to do this is because this is one of the only pathways to getting into flow state

[00:19:26] again, right? Um, and you’re much more likely to enjoy your work. You’re much more likely,

[00:19:32] uh, you know, to, to do high quality work, especially if your work requires, uh, you know,

[00:19:38] new and creative insight, for example, you’re more likely to do higher quality work.

[00:19:43] If you can find yourself in flow state, this is really hard to do. Uh, you know,

[00:19:49] of course we’ve said on the show many times recently, if you’re here to find easy pathways,

[00:19:54] this is not the right place to be. Uh, I’m not going to give you easy pathways.

[00:19:58] This is difficult to do finding things that you genuinely enjoy enough to go and do them

[00:20:03] without having to be paid for them. That’s hard to do, but it is, uh, you know, once you build

[00:20:08] this habit, you don’t even have to necessarily do this as a part of your job. By the way,

[00:20:13] the autotelic personality is the differentiator for people who find them,

[00:20:19] is to get into flow state. So you’re looking for intrinsic motivation, even if it’s ancillary

[00:20:25] to the work you’re doing, you’re finding the intrinsic motivation and that changes the way

[00:20:31] you approach your work. And you can find flow state, uh, through that process. Thank you so

[00:20:36] much for listening to this episode. Hopefully this is helpful to you. If you’ve kind of found

[00:20:40] yourself stuck and wondering, why do I not love this work anymore? What has happened?

[00:20:44] Well, it’s actually very normal. It’s very normal to, to stop loving something because you’ve lost

[00:20:49] your intrinsic motivation for it because it was replaced by extrinsic motivation. That is the

[00:20:54] overjustification effect. Go and Google it. It’s really interesting, uh, to, to dive into, um, you

[00:21:00] know, what some of these, uh, these studies have said and found. And you can probably, uh, start

[00:21:07] to gain more insight into what kinds of things would give you more intrinsic motivation and lead

[00:21:14] you back to more common, uh, or more commonly having the opportunity.

[00:21:19] to get into flow state thanks so much for listening thank you again to today’s sponsor

[00:21:23] serp api you can get started for free at serp api.com serp api is the real-time web search api

[00:21:31] for whatever app you’re building right now go and check it out serp api.com thank you so much

[00:21:37] for listening if you haven’t yet uh subscribed to this podcast uh subscribe to the the youtube

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[00:22:14] and until next time

[00:22:15] enjoy your tea

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