Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
by Pink, Daniel H.
Published: December 29, 2009
Read: March 15, 2020
Review
I imagined this book wouldn't be very surprising. I understood the basic idea that intrinsic(internal) motivation is a better motivator than extrinsic(external) motivation. But, this book went far beyond that citing research and really teasing out the nuisance of when intrinsic works and when it doesn't. The modern workforce of creative, collaborative tasks makes intrinsic increasingly important. A book of valuable insight making you better able to motivate yourself and others.
Notes
Intro: Used to be prevailing wisdomt that there were two drives;: biological urges like sex, food. Other is external promises of biological stuff like promising pay raise. Instrinic motivation so puzzle solving is rewards itself. Monkeys liked solving puzzles and adding a good reward actually make them do it less. Harlow.
Paid people per puzzle when given free time fiddled with puzzle more. But when the payment was taken away, they spent less than the first day when they weren't paid. 8 minute free time average of 4 minutes when never paid. Went to 3 minutes on that third day unpaid, 5 minutes on that second day of paid.
Part 1 a new operating system
Wikipedia where people write for free and give it away for free. Encyclopedia writers actually lost. Motivation 1.0 is just trying to survive. Pure biological drive was replaced with cooperative os as we grew social/civilization. Motivation 2.0 responding to reward and punishment. Rewarding something gets you more of it and punishing gets you less Scientific management easy, reward what you want and punish what you don't. Motivation 2.1. higher drives after Maslow talked, but easy understanding of motivation 2.0 persists.
Motivation 2.0 organize what we do, think about what we do and do what we do.
Organize what we do:
Open source most powerful new business model. Firefox, Linux unpaid how. Not just software, research, media, Wikipedia. 680 open source surveyed, biggest motivator is enjoyment of instrinic feeling of creativity. Give gift to programmer community and solve problems. L3c first in Vermont, makes money but purpose is to do good. Mozilla a for benefit. Old companies motivation 2.0 profit maxizing, nee companies purpose maximizing. Daniel Economin assumped people will barter for profit mazimizing. Ultimutam game, it's dumb we aren't purely rational. (Is this even true, could be rational). Rewards can actually be detrimental. Inconceivable peoples primarily from external incentives
Think about what we do
Old Taylor said work is simple not interesting tasks, so to get someone to do it need incentives and monitoring. But jobs now becoming more challenging and interesting. Algorithm tasks or heurstic. Most old jobs were algorithmic, routine work automated or outsourced. Heurstic work growing. Instrinic motivation creates creativity, so necessary for heurstic work. People more likely to report having optimal experiences in job than leisure. Extrinsic motivation can be detrimental.
What we do
Hard to monitor now too. 33.7 m in us telecommute one day a month 14.7m telecommute everyday. Flatten organizations need more self motivation and self direction.
Chapter 2 Reasons carrots and sticks don't work
Behavioral quantum mechanics. Salary, benefits need to not feel unfair, beyond that carrots and sticks can have the opposite effect. Tom Saywer, paints his fence and convinces lots of boys it's actually a great privelage and gets them to do it for him. Work is what you have to do, play is what you don't have to do. Money can turn play into work. Saywer effect.
Preschool with drawing. Researchers gave an unexpected, no reward, and expected reward of a ribbon with their name. Two weeks later the expected reward group still drew less, while the other two groups didn't care. Contingent expected rewards only have the this effect, loss of autonomy saps motivation. Confirmed many times. Tangible rewards tend to have negative effect on instrinic motivation, long term damage.
Do extrinsic reward boost output? Need to pay meaningful amount. Went to India, larger rewards lead to worse performance. 5months pay people did worseee. Candle motivation using a match box creativity. Those motivated by cash performed 3 minutes worse. Rewards narrow our focus. Commissioned art work were rated as less creative, but equally technical. Art students asked about their extrinsic motivations, 10 years later those with less reported did better in their career. Least motivated by extrinsic rewards ARE MORE LIKELY TO GET THEM. paying for blood donation made it less likely, crowds out altruism. Giving people immediate option to donate the money seemed to negate effective. Giving people day off to donate increased donations.
Goals work. Goals imposed by others like quotas can be harmful, narrowed focus and neglects other things like ethics and cooperation. When reward is journey, there are no shortcuts. Day care penalty when picking up late, parents picking up late doubled. Went from moral care of teachers to fine.
Extrinsic rewards can be thought of illegal drugs that you need greater amounts of. Same mental paths with Dopamine on expectation of reward. fPrincipal agent, principal reward signals action requires reward and undesirable.
Goals create focus on goals. Companies that spend most time offering guidance on quarterly earnings have significantly lower long term growth through less r&d. If and then rewards backfire to get mastery because people hit the numbers and nothing more. Paying people to do something healthy creates great improvement but disappears without reward. Greatness requires lifting ones sights and heading towards the horizon.
7 deadly flaws of Carrot and Stick :
Extinguish intrinsic motivation
Finish performance
Crush creativity
Crowd out good behavior
Encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior
Become addictive
Foster short term thinking
Carrot and Stick When to Use
Base line rewards of salary and benefits must be fair or motivation can be impossible. Candle problem when you emptied the box of tasks, reward success made people schools it faster. Rewards great if routine task, a prescribed set of rules to specified end. Little instrinic motivation to undermine. Rudimentary cognitive skill rewards create reduced performance, but mechanical skill made rewards better.
Best for this work is to turn work into play with variety, more like game, use it to master other skills. When it's not possible, rewards can work. Boring/routine work need story of why, acknowledge why it's boring and so why your using if then rewards, and let people figure out how to do it, autonomy.
Best way to avoid flaws is to emphasize deeper motivation of purpose, autonomy, and mastery. Even people who do right brain work want to be paid though. When artists saw commission as enabling artist to do something interesting or exciting, useful info or feedback didn't lose creativity. Best way to make poster design is to already have a motivated org with above average pay, people must have autonomy, people must have ample opportunity to seek mastery, and daily duties to have grander purpose. Best is to state why this has urgency and signifance and get out of the way.
Any exetrnic reward should be unexpected and offered only after task is complete. Instead of if then, do now then rewards. Repeated now that, can become expected. Intangibke rewards like praise great. Give people useful feedback especially about effort. Provide praise, feedback, and useful info
Type I and type x
Dc and Ryan got self determination theory. SDT 3 innate psychological needs: competence, autonomy, and relatedness. When we have those we are satisfied, happy, and motivate, productive. When we don't, they plummet. Less sailent rewards better. Better to create environment where needs flourish.
Postivie psychology away from malady and towards wellbeing. Heart disease people had same personality, people often had high competive drive, hurried and hostile to life and others Type a behavior. type b still have drive, but less stressed about it. In 1950s, people had idea that everyone hated work, theory x. A better way would be that work is as central to people as play, theory y.
Type I: motivation 3, instrinic desires. Iherent satisification of activities
Type x: extrnisic desires.
Excenstic doesn't lead to mastery. Most successful people aren't directly pursue conventual notions of success, want to control their lives, make something that endures, and learn about their world. Type I is renewable, x is like coal and finite but used to be cheap and effective.
Sdt researchers Instrinic motivation people have higher self esteem and better relationships. Type x are sader.
Autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Modern science says this is core to humans.
Part 2: the 3 elements
Row, result oriented workplace. Not about being at office. Productivity rose and stress declined. 2 people quit. Software. Still goals not tied to money. Less likely to leave for more money.
Default is curious and self directed. Need to awaken it.
Autonomy is most important. Linked to wellbeing globally. Promotes higher productivity, less burnout, sought, greater persistence , and comprehension. Grester satisification and performance with bosses that gave meaningful feedback, gave ample choice.
Empowerment isn't autonomy. Or flex time. Just control. Management is problem not solution. Atlassian one day off to do something not part of regular job. FedEx days.
Autonomy over 4 aspects: what, when, hoe😛, and with who.
Task, time, tools, team
Task:
20% time. 3m pioneer. Hire good people and leave them alone. Post it 20% time. Google 20% time. Half of new offerings from this. Gmail, news. Cost 1 million but lowers attritition and motivates.
Time
Pessimist do better at law. And zerosum. In law school, little autonomy. Time of 6 minute increments makes them focus on input. Little place in motivation 3.0. begin from assumption people want to do good work.
Best buy tried and productivity increased by 30% and people don't know if they work fewer hours. Call center is basically routine, turnover can be 100% annually.
Technique
Zaapos will train for a week, pay them 2k to leave if they decide it's not for them. Not about time however they want to best help.
JetBlue let's customer support work from home.
Team
Teammates can vote to hire people. Any manager must gather people willing to work for them. Testing group from Google. Most employees came very under 20% because didn't want to disappoint team.
Autonomy doesn't mean no accountability. Assume people want to be accountable. And control is a pathway to that.
Mastery
Mastery is wanting to get better at something that matters.
Engament, Gallup says American employment disengagement costs more than gdp of Portugal. In some third world countries, engagement numbers at a few percent. Autotelic experiences during play. Flow, time passes quickly, goals are clear, feedback immediate. Challenge notch or two beyond current ability.
Experience sampling method, message people 8 times a day about what they were doing and some questions.
Managers focus on flow with managers meeting people often to give feedback. Desire for intellectual challenge was best indicator of productivity.
When challenge too hard, anxiety. When too easy, boredom. Even in entry jobs, finding new tasks like helping the other nurses can increase satisification.
Mastery has 3 laws. It's a mindset. What people believe, sets what we accomplishment. Dwick research. Growth mindset basically but called incremental theory or entity.
Best predictor of success for cadets was noncognitbe or physical grit, perseverance and passion for long term goals. Mastery requires effort over long term. Those who did as swimmers best spent so most time doing mundane tasks in preparation of races.
"Being a professional is doing the things you love to do on the days you don't want to do it" Julius Serving
Mastery is impossible to realize fully. Asymptote. Tiger woods knows he will always need to be better.
For hours, don't do anything that is play or noninstrumental. At end of first day, they complained of headaches, lost thoughts. 2 day caused such a more isorder they stopped doing it. More likely to achieve flow in work than in play. Childlike play, what happens you become ashamed that what you are doing is childish. Child left alone seek out flow.
Chapter 6 Purpose
60 year olds usually has more than 20 years. They look back at last 20, and they wonder when they are gonna do something that matters. Boomers 100 will turn 60 every hour until 2024. Purpose engine being unleashed. In motivation 2.0, purpose is nice to have but just am ornament if it doesn't get in way of what you actually want to do.
We see this purpose changing goals, word, and policies.
Goals
Neiehter boomers nor gen y rank money as top goals. Tom's it's a for profit business with giving at core. At Harvard, MBA oath to care for society and world.
Do workers describe their company as we or they.
Policies
Ethical standard haven't lowered ethical violations. Now just have boxes to check. Prosocial spending giving employees sums to donate. People who had purpose goals were happier after saying they were obtaining it. People who wanted money or Fame and said they were obtaining them were no happier them during college and actually higher depression and anxiety. Science knows people are designed to be active and engaged and richest experiences are doing something that matter well for cause larger than ourselves.
Type I toolkit
Give flow test, 40 times a week write down what you are doing, how you feel, and whether your in flow
A great man is one sentence, ask the big question
Need small question, are you better today than yesterday
Why not take 5 years from retirement and do it during work life, take year off
Give yourself a performance review, every month. Be honest
Get unstuck by going oblique, questions and comments(brain bombs)
Deliberate practice, challenge yourself, repeat, seek constant critical feedback, focus ruthlessly on where you need help, prepare for process to be exhausting
What gets you up? What keeps you up at night? If you have meaning, then make sure you keep it that way. Else, do something.
Type I for orgs 9
Try 20% time with training wheels. One afternoon a week for 6 months.
Encourage peer to peer now that rewards, anyone can do $50 bonus to someone
Conduct autonomy audit, 4 question 0-10: autonomy over tasks, time when you arrive leave and allocate, autonomy over team, technique how you approach task.
3 ways to letting go: involve people into goals people more engaged, use non controlling language like should to think about it, hold office hours
Play whose purpose is it anyway, what is companies purpose?
Use righteous pronoun test, we or they
Design for instrinic motivation
Goldilocks for groups, start diverse and no competition zone, task shifting
Offsite into fedex day, must deliver something
Zen of compensation, take issue of money off the table. Ensure internal and external fairness. Most people don’t care about paying someone with a harder job. Pay more than average, attracts better talent and reduce turnover. Good base pay better than good bonus structure, only works for half the companies
9 ideas for parents and educators
So many if then rewards, like pizza for reading
3 questions for he: autonomy over how and when, mastery challenging. It rite, can they see purpose and connection to class
FedEx day
DIY report card, give students top learning goals and at end of quarter let them review it and then give them their real report card
Give allowance and chores, but don’t combine
Praise effort and strategy not intelligence, specific, in private not awards and when they deserve it
Help kids see big picture, know why they are learning
Turn students into teachers
Big picture gives kids self directed learning out in community and graded same ways as adults. Attitude, performance, and presentation on job.
Pscs. Class time and independent study with advisors.
Dumbing us down book.
Make people teach other students and learn what people’s passions are and call on them.
Finite and infinite games(book) finite game has a winner and an end. Infinite games much more fulfilling game. Finite games within boundaries, infinite play with boundaries
Talent is overrated(book). Deliberate practice, highly repetive mentally demanding.
Flow(book). Best moments when mind and book are wstrectched to limit to do something difficult and worthwhile.
Mindset, new psychology of success(book). Fixed vs growth. See challenges as opportunity to grow
Then we came to the end(book). Promotion that is fake still has effect on broken org.
How to do good work, missions, best practices, your own ethics.
Outliers (book). It isn’t money, it’s fulfilling.
Would you work as a toll booth operator for more than you make now.
Amateurs (book). 1984, rewards are non monetary but they win gold.
War of art(book). Quick jolt on path to mastery. Free is only free to extent of self mastery, others find masters.
Maverick: success behind worlds most unusual workplace(book). Choose hours, fire executives, 7 day weekend, everyone votes on decisions.
5th discipline (book) people with high level of personal mastery can consistently achieve what matters most deeply to them. Committed to lifelong learning.
6 business thinkers. Autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
McGregor. Management theories based on assumption of human beahvior. X people avoid effort and work for money and security and need to be controlled. Y if people are committed to goal they will seek responsibility.
Peter Druggers. Self management next frontier, with rise of individual ppl ongestivitu and decrease of job security. Knowledge worker. Managing oneself in Harvard review (article)
Collins. Expending energy to motivate people is waste of time. Get right people on bus and they will be self-motivated. So about not stiffling motivation. Lead with questions not answers, autopsy without nkame, build easy red flag methods
Why work sucks and how to fix it. Row. People will stop doing things that is a water of everyone's time.
4 tips for staying fit
Set your own goals.
Better to not have specific date of goal. Don't bribe with if then, go with occasional now then.