Amongst all my passions, this is one of the most non controversial ones…..

Blood Donation.

There the badge from Redcross Says it the Best,

On my recent visit to the blood bank they gave me this pin.

Which while giving me that warm glowy feeling made me think of all the research that has gone into incentives and motivating people. Lot of it covered in Dan Pinks’s Awesome Book : Drive, the science behind what drives us.

Among other things they did some research on incentives encouraging people to donate blood and it turns out paying people to donate at least in developed western countries is a pretty bad strategy, it can put people off and it takes away the “Donate” out of Blood Donation. In Australia and Brazil it is illegal to pay for blood donations.

One of the best incentives for blood donations is time or a day off work, which is the practice in Italy, no doubt that it goes in well with their afternoon siestas.

Here’s a graphic on who can receive and give blood from whom.

I’m a pretty rare O negative as my blood can be given to anybody without any checks and this rarity brings a lot of responsibility as This is the type of blood they keep in emergency wards across all the hospitals as it’s the only type that can be given to anybody without any risk and loss of time to test the recipient’s blood type.

If you are O -ve, remember that you have great power,

And with Great Power comes great Responsibility.