I have read an amazing book called Drive: The surprising Truth about What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink. Daniel is an internationally bestselling author of six books. His books are in five different languages and he have sold more than a million copies in the United States alone. He has even traveled around the world and did shows discussing his books. Drive: The surprising Truth about What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink is published by Riverhead Books New York in the year 2009 and has a total of two hundred and seventy pages. “Drive” caught my attention and made me interested in reading this novel because it is a New York Times Bestseller and not every one really understands the logic behind motivation. Also, I believe it is very interesting that scientist have proven that businesses and scientist have a different meaning when it comes to motivation and what drives someone to do something.
Daniel Pink book Drive have three main points that makes up the subject of the book. One point is what most people know about motivation is not correct but totally wrong. Specifically, businesses and corporations are not up to date to the new understanding of what motivates us. Not only businesses and corporations but governments and nonprofit organizations still all operate from assumptions about human potential and individual performance that are outdated, unexamined, and rooted more in folklore than in science. Secondly, there are two types of task that society follow. One being Algorithmic which means you have a set routine. You would pretty much do the same thing over and over in a certain way. The other type of task that society follows is heuristic meaning there are no set instructions on what you do so therefore you have to come up with something new every time. Lastly, Daniel Pink talks about the carrot and stick approach to motivation and how it is flawed. Carrot and stick refers to a combination of reward and punishment to induce a desired behavior. In Daniels point of view he believes the carrots and stick metaphor has seven deadly flaws: they can extinguish intrinsic motivation, diminish performance, crush creativity, crowd out good behavior, encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior, become addictive, and they can foster short term thinking. Daniel Pink have several ideas and arguments in this book Drive that makes you really change a lot on what you use to believe.
Daniel Pink began this book by talking about Operating systems. Society as a whole in this century and back in the very first century has always been running by an operation system. The very first system was survival in which Daniel referred to as motivation 1.0 was a system that was based on biological urges. This operation system that was used for survival worked for some time until society began to grow and become more compounded. Population was increasing meaning it was getting crowded and people needed to cooperate in order to survive and get things done. In order to restrain people from stealing and being harmful to one another society slowly replaced motivation 1.0 to motivation 2.0 which is rewards and punishment. This operating system belief is that a person job is not fun or enjoyable if there are not external rewards involved and that person who is working is not threatened with punishment if the job is performed wrong. Daniel argument with this idea is that society is in need of an upgrade. To upgrade this operating system and get rid of the seven deadly flaw of carrots and sticks Daniel believe that people in the business world should offer a rational for why the task being performed is necessary, acknowledge that the task is boring and not interesting to you, and allow people to complete tasks in their own unique way so that they will enjoy it. Daniel then went on to defining three elements what he refers to as motivation 3.0: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
Autonomy is a trait that gives people personal achievement and independence. Allows them not to be bossed around and have the right to complete task how they please. An example of autonomy would be Google. Engineers are able to work on anything they like and how they want. Different individuals have different desires, so the best strategy would be as a manager would be to let your employees perform task in the way the individuals would like. This leads to mastery the desire to get better and better at something that matters. Daniel states that there are three laws of mastery: mastery is a pain, mastery is an asymptote, and mastery is a mindset. Lastly, purpose is why are we here on this universe, what are we here to do. Motivation 2.0 according to Daniel Pink relegates purpose to “the status of ornament- a nice accessory.”.
In this book there were a few main ideas that stood out to me. Starting with what Harry Harlow and Edward Deci found out while doing the puzzling puzzles experiment. These two and other researchers found out that extrinsic rewards can be effective for algorithmic tasks. Those that depend on following the same steps over and over to come up with a logical conclusion. Goals that people set for themselves leads to attaining mastery are healthy. Goals made by others sometimes have bad outcomes. Society as a whole have three innate psychological needs competence, autonomy, and relatedness. Competence is the ability to do something successfully or efficiently. Autonomy is basically having freedom to have the right to do as you please. Relatedness being connected. The new approach to motivation has three essential elements: autonomy the desire to direct your own lives. Mastery the urge to get better and better at something that matters and purpose the yeaning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. The most interesting to me was the toolkit that Pink gave in chapter seven. Pink provided advice to the people who agree with the third drive of motivation. He gave a few strategies that would help myself and others to examine the way they live their lives and identify ways to achieve flow. He also gave ways to lead you to mastery.
Drive: The surprising Truth about What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink I believe is a book that all business people should read to keep them going in the workplace and motivated to do things how they want as long as they are completing the tasks they are required to do. What I learned from this book is that times have changed but most business have remained the same since forever. One thing that I was really unaware of is that there have been three different types of motivation in society. Which Daniel refers to as motivation 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 with 3.0 being the most current of motivation. I did not really see any weaknesses in this book however one of the strengths of this book is that Daniel Pink gave real life examples and proof to backup all of his ideas and arguments. His backup made you believe everything that he was saying and personally changed my way of thinking when it comes to motivation and drive. With that being said students, entrepreneurs, employers, etc. should take some time and read this book.
