Drive

The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

By: Daniel H. Pink

Narrated by: Daniel H. Pink

Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

The New York Times best seller that gives listeners a paradigm-shattering new way to think about motivation from the author of When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.

Most people believe that the best way to motivate is with rewards like money - the carrot-and-stick approach. That's a mistake, says Daniel H. Pink (author of To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others). In this provocative and persuasive new book, he asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction - at work, at school, and at home - is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world. Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does - and how that affects every aspect of life. He examines the three elements of true motivation - autonomy, mastery, and purpose - and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action in a unique book that will change how we think and transform how we live.

©2009 Daniel H. Pink (P)2009 Penguin

Critic reviews

"Pink makes a convincing case that organizations ignore intrinsic motivation at their peril." (Scientific American)

"Persuasive...Harnessing the power of intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic remuneration can be thoroughly satisfying and infinitely more rewarding." (Miami Herald)

"These lessons are worth repeating, and if more companies feel emboldened to follow Mr. Pink's advice, then so much the better." (Wall Street Journal)

Why the snobbery?

Overall I enjoyed the book. I’ve long thought stick and carrots approach was outdated and unfulfilling, so I enjoyed learning about a new way to think about motivation beyond behaviorism.

But why the snobbery about GenX? The author consistently ignored GenX and only mentioned Boomers like himself and GenZ/Millennials. I’ve seen many Boomers do the same thing, is it because they perceive GenX as potential competitors to their death grip on all the levers of power and prefer to pretend we don’t exist?

Who knows? By the way, the biggest impediment to Motivation 3.0 are the Boomers who still run most of the corporate world. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, ok Boomer?

Could have been a blogpost

One of those books that are written around a single good idea. Could be presented in a 10x shorter form in my opinion.

I am so energized

Drive distills years of research and insights about human motivation into an easy and exciting read with clear applicability. After reading, I'm excited to introduce these ideas and work and trying to get my wife to read the book (you should too!).

Fantastic

This was an excellent book which helped me understand how I can greatly improve my personal and professional life. I read "Flow" many years ago and this is the perfect compliment to that book. "Drive" is narriated by the author who does an excellent job of delivering a clear and understandable message of what makes people succeed (or fail). I highly recommend "Drive".

Not what I expected

Although informative in parts, it seems as though this book beat a dead horse. Over explaining the principle and or idea as a “filler” so to speak?

Thoroughly enjoyed this fresh perspective

I thoroughly enjoyed this fresh perspective on perfomance motivation! tghe narrator was engaging and easy to follow and the content was well-organized and fascinating. it was packed with real-life example, studies, and results, and offered much in the way of realistic ways to apply these principles to our own lives.

Motivating

I was driving around running away from all my problems, however while listening I decided to turn around and actually get things done. Thank you Daniel. I hope to follow the flo model and find out what truly motivates me. I am motivated by everything. It’s a high when I can sit down and spew crap loads of awesome creative work... so I drive in search for places that will motivate me.. but that has hindered my ability to actually get things done. To the point that if I don’t find a place or if I don’t do x y z then I can’t do the most important most simplest tasks... again thank you.

Fascinating!!

Really enjoyed listening to this book! So much great information pertaining to drive and what truly motivates us. Will be using this information in my business as well as my own personal life. Great read!

Interesting but long

The concepts presented in this book are good. A lot of antecdotes that keeps it interesting, but it is dry at times. However, the information presented was enlightening; dispelling myths of what motivates the American workforce, and how implementing those myths can be counter-productive. This is a fresh look at what really motivates humans and is worth listening too.

Worthwhile

Where does Drive rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Second among two

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

This isn't that kind of book

What does Daniel H. Pink bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Meaningful pauses

Any additional comments?

This was a super fast audio book. I think it was something like 5 hours? Not much compared to the Steve Jobs book that I just audio-read for around 32 hours.

I loved the content. Intrinsic motivation is a fascinating topic for anyone but I think especially for creative types. When the idea of compensation and/or reward systems come into play with a task that was previously only "fun" suddenly the whole paradigm cracks. People can sometimes work for the reward only and lose intrinsic motivation. I had never before considered this idea and found it really interesting. Pink's bottom line is that to foster intrinsic motivation a work environment needs to consider autonomy, mastery and purpose on both the individual level as well as organizational level. He goes into great depth on each of these points and offers myriad ways to self-evaluate and perhaps tweak your own way of doing your job. "The distinction between work and play is purely man made." I love that.

The topic becomes very work-book-y which doesn't make it the best audio-book. I'd love to have a hard copy to peruse so I could sit around for an hour with a coffee and consider some of the exercises. Not so easy when the content is buried in a 30-minute track.

Lastly I didn't give this book five stars because I thought the portion of the book dedicated to WHY the traditional system of carrot-and-stick reward-and-punishmnet fails was a bit thin. Loved the comparison to behaviorist theory of animal and human behavior as well as the historical models of management and definitely all the studies about how rewards and punishments can completely backfire but I felt like all of this was prelude towards some larger conclusion that Pink perhaps didn't feel comfortable making. He perhaps correctly inferred that the current system gained popularity because for the majority of human history most peoples' work has been mindless and uncreative and therefore reward was the only way to propel workers forward. And I agree with most of his conclusions but they feel like the biproduct of some greater conclusion about human behavior and creativity that I think he never makes. Perhaps this is why a big chunk of the end of the book is dedicated towards recommendations of other books on very similar topics.

Still, very worthwhile.