Drive - The surprising truth about what motivates us (Daniel H. Pink)

The central theme of this book is that for any task beyond the most mundane, giving an external reward actually reduces levels of motivation.  The key is to unlock our internal reward mechanisms, our innate desire to master tasks.



 Locn. 88-90 “The performance of the task,” he said, “provided intrinsic reward.” The monkeys solved the puzzles simply because they found it gratifying to solve puzzles. They enjoyed it. The joy of the task was its own reward.
 Locn. 157-60 “When money is used as an external reward for some activity, the subjects lose intrinsic interest for the activity,” he wrote. Rewards can deliver a short-term boost—just as a jolt of caffeine can keep you cranking for a few more hours. But the effect wears off—and, worse, can reduce a person’s longer-term motivation to continue the project.
 Locn. 307-10 beneath the site is probably Apache, free open-source Web server software created and maintained by a far-flung global group of volunteers. Apache’s share of the corporate Web server market: 52 percent. In other words, companies that typically rely on external rewards to manage their employees run some of their most important systems with products created by nonemployees who don’t seem to need such rewards.
 Locn. 384-85 In short, we are irrational—and predictably so, says economist Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, a book that offers an entertaining and engaging overview of behavioral economics. 
Locn. 428-30 external rewards and punishments—both carrots and sticks—can work nicely for algorithmic tasks. But they can be devastating for heuristic ones. Those sorts of challenges—solving novel problems or creating something the world didn’t know it was missing—depend heavily on Harlow’s third drive. Amabile calls it the intrinsic motivation principle of creativity,
 Locn. 455-57 Nobody “manages” the Wikipedians. Nobody sits around trying to figure out how to “motivate” them. That’s why Wikipedia works. Routine, not-so-interesting jobs require direction; non-routine, more interesting work depends on self-direction.
 Locn. 457-58 “If you need me to motivate you, I probably don’t want to hire you.”
 Locn. 510-12 If someone’s baseline rewards aren’t adequate or equitable, her focus will be on the unfairness of her situation and the anxiety of her circumstance. You’ll get neither the predictability of extrinsic motivation nor the weirdness of intrinsic motivation. You’ll get very little motivation at all.
 Locn. 557-59 Only contingent rewards—if you do this, then you’ll get that—had the negative effect. Why? “If-then” rewards require people to forfeit some of their autonomy. Like the gentlemen driving carriages for money instead of fun, they’re no longer fully controlling their lives. And that can spring a hole in the bottom of their motivational bucket, draining an activity of its enjoyment.
 Locn. 630-33 How much faster did the incentivized group come up with a solution? On average, it took them nearly three and a half minutes longer. Yes, three and a half minutes longer. (Whenever I’ve relayed these results to a group of businesspeople, the reaction is almost always a loud, pained, involuntary gasp.) 
Locn. 714-17 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.
 Locn. 736-38 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.
 Locn. 823-24 “The very presence of goals may lead employees to focus myopically on short-term gains and to lose sight of the potential devastating long-term effects on the organization.”
 Locn. 840-41 Greatness and nearsightedness are incompatible. Meaningful achievement depends on lifting one’s sights and pushing toward the horizon.
 Locn. 934-35 “as long as the task involved only mechanical skill, bonuses worked as they would be expected: the higher the pay, the better the performance.”
 Locn. 995-96 The essential requirement: Any extrinsic reward should be unexpected and offered only after the task is complete.
 Locn. 1011-13 First, consider nontangible rewards. Praise and positive feedback are much less corrosive than cash and trophies. In fact, in Deci’s original experiments, and in his subsequent analysis of other studies, he found that “positive feedback can have an enhancing effect on intrinsic motivation.”
 Locn. 1022-24 In brief, for creative, right- brain, heuristic tasks, you’re on shaky ground offering “if- then” rewards. You’re better off using “now that” rewards. And you’re best off if your “now that” rewards provide praise, feedback, and useful information.
 Locn. 1062-65 SDT, by contrast, begins with a notion of universal human needs. It argues that we have three innate psychological needs—competence, autonomy, and relatedness. When those needs are satisfied, we’re motivated, productive, and happy. When they’re thwarted, our motivation, productivity, and happiness plummet.
 Locn. 1187-88 Ultimately, Type I behavior depends on three nutrients: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Type I behavior is self-directed. It is devoted to becoming better and better at something that matters. And it connects that quest for excellence to a larger purpose.
 Locn. 1250-52 in a ROWE environment, employees are far less likely to jump to another job for a $10,000 or even $20,000 increase in salary. The freedom they have to do great work is more valuable, and harder to match, than a pay raise—and employees’ spouses, partners, and families are among ROWE’s staunchest advocates.
 Locn. 1288-90 Some skeptics insist that innovation is expensive. In the long run, innovation is cheap. Mediocrity is expensive—and autonomy can be the antidote.” TOM KELLEY General Manager, IDEO
Locn. 1304-6 researchers at Cornell University studied 320 small businesses, half of which granted workers autonomy, the other half relying on top-down direction. The businesses that offered autonomy grew at four times the rate of the control-oriented firms and had one-third the turnover.
 Locn. 1341-43 one of these essential features is autonomy—in particular, autonomy over four aspects of work: what people do, when they do it, how they do it, and whom they do it with.
 Locn. 1713-15 As Fast Company magazine has noted, a number of companies, including Microsoft, Patagonia, and Toyota, have realized that creating flow-friendly environments that help people move toward mastery can increase productivity and satisfaction at work.
 Locn. 1736-38 Chen calls his game flOw. And it’s been a huge hit. People have played the free online version of the game more than three million times. (You can find it at http://interactive.usc.edu/projects/cloud/flowing/index.htm).
Locn. 1792-93 “With a learning goal, students don’t have to feel that they’re already good at something in order to hang in and keep trying. After all, their goal is to learn, not to prove they’re smart.”
 Locn. 1807-9 Type X behavior often holds an entity theory of intelligence, prefers performance goals to learning goals, and disdains effort as a sign of weakness. Type I behavior has an incremental theory of intelligence, prizes learning goals over performance goals, and welcomes effort as a way to improve at something that matters.
 Locn. 1819-22 The best predictor of success, the researchers found, was the prospective cadets’ ratings on a noncognitive, nonphysical trait known as “grit”—defined as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals.”10 The experience of these army officers-in-training confirms the second law of mastery: Mastery is a pain.
 Locn. 1825-28 “Many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the results of intense practice for a minimum of 10 years.”11 Mastery—of sports, music, business—requires effort (difficult, painful, excruciating, all-consuming effort) over a long time (not a week or a month, but a decade).
 Locn. 1840-42 As Carol Dweck says, “Effort is one of the things that gives meaning to life. Effort means you care about something, that something is important to you and you are willing to work for it. It would be an impoverished existence if you were not willing to value things and commit yourself to working toward them.” 
Locn. 1973-74 In other words, in America alone, one hundred boomers turn sixty every thirteen minutes. 
Locn. 2004 “In a curious way, age is simpler than youth, for it has so many fewer options.”
 Locn. 2080-83 “The value of a life can be measured by one’s ability to affect the destiny of one less advantaged. Since death is an absolute certainty for everyone, the important variable is the quality of life one leads between the times of birth and death.” BILL STRICKLAND Founder of the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, and MacArthur “genius award” winner
 Locn. 2090-92 how people spend their money may be at least as important as how much money they earn. In particular, spending money on other people (buying flowers for your spouse rather than an MP3 player for yourself) or on a cause (donating to a religious institution rather than going for an expensive haircut) can actually increase our subjective well-being.
 Locn. 2248-49 Here’s something you can do to keep yourself motivated. At the end of each day, ask yourself whether you were better today than you were yesterday.
 Locn. 2341-50 Ask everyone in your department or on your team to respond to these four questions with a numerical ranking (using a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 meaning “almost none” and 10 meaning “a huge amount”): How much autonomy do you have over your tasks at work— your main responsibilities and what you do in a given day? How much autonomy do you have over your time at work— for instance, when you arrive, when you leave, and how you allocate your hours each day? How much autonomy do you have over your team at work— that is, to what extent are you able to choose the people with whom you typically collaborate? How much autonomy do you have over your technique at work—how you actually perform the main responsibilities of your job? Make sure all responses are anonymous. Then tabulate the results. What’s the employee average?
 Locn. 2372-74 Hand everyone a blank three-by-five-inch card. Then ask each person to write down his or her one-sentence answer to the following question: “What is our company’s (or organization’s) purpose?” Collect the cards and read them aloud. What do they tell you? Are the answers similar, everyone aligned along a common purpose? Or are they all over the place
Locn. 2410-12 Set aside an entire day where employees can work on anything they choose, however they want, with whomever they’d like. Make sure they have the tools and resources they need. And impose just one rule: People must deliver something—a new idea, a prototype of a product, a better internal process—the following day.
 Locn. 2520-21 Praise effort and strategy, not intelligence.
 Locn. 2524 Make praise specific.
 Locn. 2526 Praise in private.
 Locn. 2527 Offer praise only when there’s a good reason for it.
 Locn. 2536 Think of it as the fourth R: reading, writing, arithmetic … and relevance.
 Locn. 2712-13 The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization BY PETER M. SENGE
 Locn. 2753-54 JIM COLLINS Who: One of the most authoritative voices in business today and the author of Built to Last (with Jerry Porras), Good to Great, and, most recently, How the Mighty Fall.
 Locn. 2764-65 www.jimcollins.com, contains more information about his work, as well as excellent diagnostic tools, guides, and videos.
 Locn. 2823-26 This new approach has three essential elements: (1) Autonomy—the desire to direct our own lives; (2) Mastery—the urge to get better and better at something that matters; and (3) Purpose—the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.
 Locn. 2897-99 Results-only work environment (ROWE): The brainchild of two American consultants, a ROWE is a workplace in which employees don’t have schedules. They don’t have to be in the office at a certain time or any time. They just have to get their work done.