Drive
From Daniel H. Pink, the author of the groundbreaking bestseller A Whole New Mind, comes his next big idea book: a paradigm-changing examination of what truly motivates us and how to harness that knowledge to find greater satisfaction in our lives and our work.We've been conditioned to think that the best way to motivate ourselves and others is through external rewards like money—the carrot-and-the-stick approach. That's a mistake, Daniel H. Pink says in his transformative new book. The key to high performance and satisfaction is intrinsic, internal motivation: the desire to follow your own interests and understand the benefits in them for you. And Pink has discovered thirty years of scientific data that confirm these ideas and show an exciting way forward.As he did in his groundbreaking bestseller A Whole New Mind, Pink lays out the hard science for these surprising insights, describes how people and corporations can embrace such ideas (some of them are already doing it), offers details about how we can master them, and provides concrete examples on how intrinsic motivation works on the job, at home, and in ourselves.This is a book of big ideas that explains how each of us can find the surest pathway to high performance, creativity, and even health and well-being.
Stats for nerds
47recommend
92mentions
83people
2010–2026years
58% recommend41% neutral1% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- At a certain point cash isn’t an incentive. Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose become much bigger rewards. Check out Drive by Daniel Pink.
- I suspect students and employees, would be more inclined to do their assignments if those assigning the work had read, understood, and then implemented, some of the ideas proposed in Drive by Daniel H. Pink, and No Rules Rules by Reed Hastings & Erin Meyer. :-)
- First off, there's this weird thing about management - "you're good at your job, let's give you a completely different job to do."
It sounds like your company is more worried about someone's work product than the person, which is a shitty thing to manage. You shouldn't have to "check on others to ensure they're working as they should." You shouldn't have to "..sit with someone for a couple hours to explains how I'd like things done, or having to fix something they've done wrong." That's a sign that you either micromanage, or you don't have good employees, or both. Daniel Pink's Drive is a good starting point - give people Autonomy, Purpose and a desire for Mastery, they will give you good work. It's not the be-all and end-all, but it's a good place to start.
I didn't like management, until my company offered a management course. Now I actually enjoy it. To me it's about making people the best versions of themselves. It's about learning to listen to people, and see the situation for what it really is rather than the words coming out of people's mouths. For the company, it's so you get the best work out of them, but "getting the best work out of them" doesn't have to be your focus as a manager.
There's a lot more I can say here, but for now I'd suggest reading this article which was on HN yesterday: https://longform.asmartbear.com/docs/fulfillment/ - and ask yourself if this is really what you want to be doing, regardless of any financial incentives to do so.
- Counterpoint: open source software, of which there are many great works without anyone being forced or pressured into making it. There are many more ways of getting motivation than applying "some pressure". Indeed, people are inherently curious and motivated, but it can easily be suppressed by environmental factors. In particular "stick and carrot"-type reward systems.
For a (much more) elaborate expansion on this, see the book Drive by Daniel H. Pink.
- I might be tempted to add Daniel Pink's Drive though perhaps that might be for a little down the track rather than for starting-out...
- I used to give all new managers at Cloudflare Daniel Pink’s book “Drive.” Summary of a bunch of interesting research on what really motivates people.
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