Most people believe that the best way to motivate is with rewards like money—the carrot-and-stick approach. That’s a mistake, says Daniel H. Pink (author of To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others). In this provocative and persuasive new book, he asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction—at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.
Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose—and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action in a unique book that will change how we think and transform how we live.
Taken from Goodreads
The principles I got out of Drive
- The Limitations of External Rewards: External rewards like money can sometimes diminish intrinsic motivation and interest in an activity. This principle suggests that intrinsic motivation – doing something because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable – is more sustainable and effective.
- The Importance of Autonomy: Autonomy, or the desire to direct our own lives, is crucial for motivation. Giving people more control over what they do (their task), when they do it (their time), how they do it (their technique), and who they do it with (their team) can lead to higher engagement and satisfaction.
- Mastery and Flow: There is a huge importance in mastering skills and entering a state of ‘flow’ – a state of deep focus and engagement in activities. Organizations can foster this by providing opportunities that match employees’ capabilities and encourage growth.
- Purpose: Having a sense of purpose – the feeling that what we do produces something transcendent or serves something meaningful beyond ourselves – is essential for true motivation. Individuals and organizations should align their goals with their deeper values.
- Rethinking Work and Management: The traditional management approach, which is heavily reliant on external rewards and punishments, is becoming outdated. A new approach that promotes autonomy, mastery, and purpose is needed for both personal fulfillment and organizational success.
Quotes from Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
When money is used as an external reward for some activity, the subjects lose intrinsic interest for the activity,
Our current operating system has become far less compatible with, and at times downright antagonistic to: how we organize what we do; how we think about what we do; and how we do what we do.
Behavioral scientists often divide what we do on the job or learn in school into two categories: “algorithmic” and “heuristic.”
“People use rewards expecting to gain the benefit of increasing another person’s motivation and behavior, but in so doing, they often incur the unintentional and hidden cost of undermining that person’s intrinsic motivation toward the activity.”
Goals that people set for themselves and that are devoted to attaining mastery are usually healthy. But goals imposed by others—sales targets, quarterly returns, standardized test scores, and so on—can sometimes have dangerous side effects.
Goals may cause systematic problems for organizations due to narrowed focus, unethical behavior, increased risk taking, decreased cooperation, and decreased intrinsic motivation. Use care when applying goals in your organization.
The earnings-obsessed companies typically invest less in research and development.)
CARROTS AND STICKS: The Seven Deadly Flaws They can extinguish intrinsic motivation. They can
diminish performance. They can crush creativity. They can crowd out good behavior. They can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior. They can become addictive. They can foster short-term thinking.
The essential requirement: Any extrinsic reward should be unexpected and offered only after the task is complete.
Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.
ROWEs are the brainchild of Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, two former human resources executives at the American retailer Best Buy. ROWE’s principles marry the commonsense pragmatism of Ben Franklin to the cage-rattling radicalism of Saul Alinsky. In a ROWE workplace, people don’t have schedules. They show up when they want. They don’t have to be in the office at a certain time—or any time, for that matter. They just have to get their work done. How they do it, when they do it, and where they do it is up to them.
“The ultimate freedom for creative groups is the freedom to experiment with new ideas. Some skeptics insist that innovation is expensive. In the long run, innovation is cheap. Mediocrity is expensive—and autonomy can be the antidote.”
This era doesn’t call for better management. It calls for a renaissance of self-direction.
Type I behavior emerges when people have autonomy over the four T’s: their task, their time, their technique, and their team.
“Hire good people, and leave them alone.”
“Those men and women to whom we delegate authority and responsibility, if they are good people, are going to want to do their jobs in their own way,” he wrote in 1948.7
Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.
Where Motivation 2.0 sought compliance, Motivation 3.0 seeks engagement.
Living a satisfying life requires more than simply meeting the demands of those in control.
One source of frustration in the workplace is the frequent mismatch between what people must do and what people can do. When what they must do exceeds their capabilities, the result is anxiety. When what they must do falls short of their capabilities, the result is boredom.
The second tactic that smart organizations use to increase their flow-friendliness and their employees’ opportunities for mastery is to trigger the positive side of the Sawyer Effect.
Adding these more absorbing challenges increased these cleaners’ satisfaction and boosted their own views of their skills.
what people believe shapes what people achieve.
“Figure out for yourself what you want to be really good at, know that you’ll never really satisfy yourself that you’ve made it, and accept that that’s okay.”
According to Dweck, people can hold two different views of their own intelligence.
If you believe intelligence is something you can increase, then the same encounters become opportunities for growth. In one view, intelligence is something you demonstrate; in the other, it’s something you develop.
“Being a professional,” Julius Erving once said, “is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don’t feel like doing them.”
The experiment suggests that flow, the deep sense of engagement that Motivation 3.0 calls for, isn’t a nicety. It’s a necessity. We need it to survive. It is the oxygen of the soul.
And one of Csikszentmihalyi’s more surprising findings is that people are much more likely to reach that flow state at work than in leisure.
“There is no reason to believe any longer that only irrelevant ‘play’ can be enjoyed, while the serious business of life must be borne as a burdensome cross. Once we realize that the boundaries between work and play are artificial, we can take matters in hand and begin the difficult task of making life more livable.”
Work life balance or harmony?
promote autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
On the topic of self-management, read Drucker’s 2005 Harvard Business Review article, “Managing Oneself.”
They wrote a book about their experiences, Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It, and now run their own consultancy.