Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

by Daniel H. Pink

Societies also have operating systems. The laws, social customs, and economic arrangements that we encounter each day sit atop a layer of instructions, protocols, and suppositions about how the world works. And much of our societal operating system consists of a set of assumptions about human behavior.

not. Instead, Wikipedia represents the most powerful new business model of the twenty-first century: open source.

they found “that enjoyment-based intrinsic motivation, namely how creative a person feels when working on the project, is the strongest and most pervasive driver.”2 A large majority of programmers, the researchers discovered, reported that they frequently reached the state of optimal challenge called “flow.” Likewise, three

Economics, she explained, wasn’t the study of money. It was the study of behavior. In the course of a day, each of us was constantly figuring the cost and benefits of our actions and then deciding how to act. Economists studied what people did, rather than what we said, because we did what was best for us. We were rational calculators of our economic self-interest.

ascendant field of “law and economics” held that precisely because we were such awesome self-interest calculators, laws and regulations often impeded, rather than permitted, sensible and just outcomes. I survived law school in no small

predictably so, says economist Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, a book that offers

reasons? If we’re predictably irrational—and we clearly are—why couldn’t we also be predictably transcendent?

Begin with complexity. Behavioral scientists often divide what we do on the job or learn in school into two categories: “algorithmic” and “heuristic.” An algorithmic task is one in which you follow a set of established instructions down a single pathway to one conclusion. That is, there’s an algorithm for solving it. A heuristic task is the opposite. Precisely because no algorithm exists for it, you have to experiment with possibilities and devise a novel solution. Working as a grocery

dollars. The consulting firm McKinsey & Co. estimates that in the United States, only 30 percent of job growth now comes from algorithmic work, while 70 percent comes from heuristic work.9 A key reason:

a living. Salary, contract payments, some benefits, a few perks are what I call “baseline rewards.” 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.

adults. Over and over again, they discovered that extrinsic rewards—in particular, contingent, expected, “if-then” rewards—snuffed out the third drive.

Take an industrial designer who loves his work and try to get him to do better by making his pay contingent on a hit product—and he’ll almost certainly work like a maniac in the short term, but become less interested in his job in the long term. As one leading behavioral science

economists’ conclusion: “We find that financial incentives . . . can result in a negative impact on overall performance.”6

instances, contingent incentives—that cornerstone of how businesses attempt to motivate employees—may be “a losing proposition.”

creativity. Why? Rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus. That’s helpful when there’s a clear path to a solution.

of course. Amabile and others have found that extrinsic rewards can be effective for algorithmic tasks—those that depend on following an existing formula to its logical conclusion. But for more right-brain undertakings

broad prescription. “Rather than being offered as an ‘over-the-counter’ salve for boosting performance, goal setting should be prescribed selectively, presented with a warning label, and closely monitored,” they

warning label: 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.

addictive in that once offered, a contingent reward makes an agent expect it whenever a similar task is faced, which in turn compels the principal to use rewards over and over again.” And before long, the existing

prizes)—anticipation of rewards activates the [nucleus accumbens], which may lead to an increase in the likelihood of individuals switching from risk-averse to risk-seeking behavior.”22

For routine tasks, which aren’t very interesting and don’t demand much creative thinking, rewards can provide a small motivational booster shot without the harmful side effects. In some ways, that

• Offer a rationale for why the task is necessary.A job that’s not inherently interesting can become more meaningful, and therefore more engaging, if it’s part of a larger purpose. Explain why

• Acknowledge that the task is

boring.This is an act of empathy, of course. And the acknowledgment will help people understand why this is the rare instance when “if-then” rewards are part of how your organization operates. • Allow people to complete the task their own way. Think autonomy, not control. State the outcome

The essential requirement: Any extrinsic reward should be unexpected and offered only after the task is complete.

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.

psychosexual conflicts. 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.1 “If there’s anything [fundamental]

they are made, the better. When people use rewards to motivate, that’s when they’re most demotivating.” Instead, Deci and Ryan say we should focus our efforts on creating environments for our innate psychological needs to flourish.

Francisco. In the late 1950s, he and fellow physician Ray Rosenman began noticing similarities in their patients who were prone to heart disease. It wasn’t only what these patients ate or what genes they inherited that affected their susceptibility to coronary trouble. It was also how they led their lives. These patients, Friedman noted, demonstrated: a particular complex of personality traits, including excessive competition drive, aggressiveness, impatience, and a harrying sense of time urgency. Individuals displaying this pattern seem to be engaged in a

fruitless struggle—with themselves, with others, with circumstances, with time, sometimes with life itself.2

perspective held that taking an interest in work is “as natural as play or rest,” that creativity and ingenuity were widely distributed in the population, and that under the proper conditions, people will accept, and even seek, responsibility.4

theory Y

entirely. If you believed in the “mediocrity of the masses,” as he put it, then mediocrity became the ceiling on what you could achieve. But if your starting point was

theory X

term. An intense focus on extrinsic rewards can indeed deliver fast results. The trouble is, this approach is difficult to sustain. And it doesn’t assist in mastery—which is the source of achievement over the long haul. The most successful people, the

and Ryan cite autonomy as one of three basic human needs. And of the three, it’s the most important—the sun around which SDT’s planets orbit. In the 1980s, as they

As Atlassian’s experience shows, Type I behavior emerges when people have autonomy over the four T’s: their task, their time, their technique, and their team.

different destinations. Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement. And this distinction leads to the second element of Type I behavior: mastery—the desire to get better and better at something that matters.

unpack. In flow, goals are clear. You have to reach the top of the mountain, hit the ball across the net, or mold the clay just right. Feedback is immediate. The mountaintop gets closer or farther, the ball sails in or out of bounds, the pot you’re throwing comes out smooth or uneven. Most important, in flow, the relationship between what a person had to do and what he could do was perfect. The challenge wasn’t too easy. Nor was it too difficult. It was a notch or two beyond his current abilities, which stretched the body and mind in a way that made the effort itself the most delicious reward. That

do things differently. 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.

believe shapes what people achieve. Our beliefs about ourselves and the nature of our abilities—what she calls our “self-theories”—determine how we interpret our experiences and can set the boundaries on what we accomplish. Although

mastery. In several studies, Dweck found that giving children a performance goal (say, getting a high mark on a test) was effective for relatively straightforward problems but often inhibited children’s ability to apply the concepts to new situations. For example, in one study, Dweck

“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.”9

Dweck’s insights map nicely to the behavioral distinctions underlying Motivation 2.0 and Motivation 3.0. 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. Begin with one

rough parts. But in the end, mastery often involves working and working and showing little improvement, perhaps with a few moments of flow pulling you along, then making a little progress, and then working and working on that new, slightly higher plateau again. It’s grueling, to be sure. But that’s not the problem; that’s the solution.

This is the nature of mastery: Mastery is an asymptote. You can approach it. You can home in on it. You can get really, really, really close to it. But like Cézanne, you can never touch it. Mastery is impossible to realize fully. Tiger

The mastery asymptote is a source of frustration. Why reach for something you can never fully attain? But it’s also a source of allure. Why not reach for it? The joy is in the pursuit more than the realization. In the end, mastery attracts precisely because mastery eludes.

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.”19

“In a curious way, age is simpler than youth, for it has so many fewer options.” STANLEY KUNITZ Former U.S. poet laureate

words like ‘efficiency,’ ‘advantage,’ ‘value,’ ‘superiority,’ ‘focus,’ and ‘differentiation.’ Important as these objectives are, they lack the power to rouse human hearts.” Business leaders, he says, “must find ways to infuse mundane business activities with deeper, soul-stirring ideals, such as honor, truth, love, justice, and beauty.”8 Humanize what people say and you may well humanize what they do.

self-destructive paths. If people chase profit goals, reach those goals, and still don’t feel any better about their lives, one response is to increase the size and scope of the goals—to seek more money or greater outside validation. And that can “

“One of the reasons for anxiety and depression in the high attainers is that they’re not having good relationships.