Having contact with your beneficiary (the person who is benefiting from your hard work) has a positive effect on how hard you work.

A simple study entitled “Impact and the art of motivation maintenance: The effects of contact with beneficiaries on persistence behavior” has shown that between 3 groups of workers:

1. test: had real contact with their beneficiary (phone or meeting)
2. control: only a letter from their beneficiary
3. control: no contact

The group which had contact worked harder:

1. persistance (as measured by phone time) :142% improvement
2. job performance (as measured by money raised) : 171% improvement

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If you want to increase motivation/productivity, make your people feel personally connected to the product of their work, and watch the improvements.