#65: Three Things that got me thinking

📖 education +👨‍🍳 free cuisine + 🔥 a song

Tania Rabesandratana

Jun 14, 2022

Bonjour bonjour,

Here are Three Things that got me thinking about intrinsic motivation in the past days:

An epigraph about education
A de-starred chef
A tongue-twisting tune

¡Vamos!

1. Process and goal

From the epigraph for Tara Westover1’s memoir Educated (which I haven’t finished reading yet):

I believe finally that education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience; that the process and the goal of education are one and the same thing.
— John Dewey

This quote apparently comes Dewey’s 1897 declaration My Pedagogic Creed, in which the Vermont philosopher also says:

The child's own instincts and powers furnish the material and give the starting point for all education. Save as the efforts of the educator connect with some activity which the child is carrying on of his own initiative independent of the educator, education becomes reduced to a pressure from without.

UVU MBA Program @uvumba

Tara Westover😍👏 Author of Educated: A Memoir will be speaking Thursday, October 22 from 11:30 am-1 pm MST as part of the the 2020 Fall Presidential Lecture Series. #educated #tarawestover #newyorktimes #newyorktimesbestseller #cambridge #uvu #utahvalleyuniversity #gouvu

2. Non, merci

In September 2017, French chef Sébastien Bras asked the Michelin Guide to remove its rating for his restaurant Le Suquet, which had earned its third star from the prestigious guide in 1999.

In a statement quoted by French newspaper Le Monde, Bras said he was hoping for less “tension”, and more freedom and peace to do what he loves:

At 46 years old, I want to give a new meaning to my life: my professional life, my life in general […].

At the time, management professor Stefan Stern commented in the Guardian that Bras’s decision turned him into a “workplace role model”:

He wants to do work that he feels good about, which matters to him. He wants to satisfy customers, not hit arbitrary targets or conform to other people’s ideas of quality. His motivation comes from within. He cannot be motivated or “incentivised” by other people. It is all down to him.

According to the guide, Bras’s request was a first. Le Monde quoted a Michelin representative, who acknowledged that excellence requires “work and rigour”, and added:

We often tell chefs: don’t work for the Michelin guide, work for the patron.

The guide respected Bras’s wishes in its 2018 edition. In October that year, Bras told newspaper La Dépêche that his restaurant was seeing the same number of customers:

I do what I feel like doing without knowing if that meets the three-star standards. […] I even have some customers that have come precisely because I had no stars anymore.

Months later, Bras was surprised—but mostly unfazed—to see his restaurant back in the guide. In a statement quoted by Le Figaro, he said:

This contradictory decision leaves us doubtful, even though we don’t feel concerned anyway—neither by the stars; nor by the guide’s strategy.

Today, the online guide’s rating for Le Suquet is still two stars. The restaurant seems to have weathered the pandemic, and at the time of writing, its menus costs between €190 and €260.

Bon appétit!