Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Greatness and nearsightedness are incompatible. Meaningful achievement depends on lifting one's sights and pushing toward the horizon.

The ultimate freedom for creative groups is the freedom to experiment with new ideas. 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

The monkeys solved the puzzle simply because they found it gratifying to solve puzzles. They enjoyed it. The joy of the task was its own reward.

Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.

The problem with making an extrinsic reward the only destination that matters is that some people will choose the quickest route there, even if it means taking the low road. Indeed, most of the scandals and misbehavior that have seemed endemic to modern life involve shortcuts.

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.

People can have two different mindsets, she says. Those with a “fixed mindset” believe that their talents and abilities are carved in stone. Those with a “growth mindset” believe that their talents and abilities can be developed. Fixed mindsets see every encounter as a test of their worthiness. Growth mindsets see the same encounters as opportunities to improve.

we have three innate psychological needs—competence, autonomy, and relatedness. When those needs are satisfied, we’re motivated, productive, and happy.

Newtonian physics runs into problems at the subatomic level. Down there--in the land of hadrons, quarks, and Schrödinger's cat--things gent freaky. The cool rationality of Isaac Newton gives way to the bizarre unpredictability of Lewis Carroll.

When the reward is the activity itself--deepening learning, delighting customers, doing one's best--there are no shortcuts.

children who are praised for “being smart” often believe that every encounter is a test of whether they really are. So to avoid looking dumb, they resist new challenges and choose the easiest path. By contrast, kids who understand that effort and hard work lead to mastery and growth are more willing to take on new, difficult tasks.

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.

We leave lucrative jobs to take low-paying ones that provide a clearer sense of purpose.

Living a satisfying life requires more than simply meeting the demands of those in control. Yet in our offices and our classrooms we have way too much compliance and way too little engagement. The former might get you through the day, but the latter will get you through the night.

For artists, scientists, inventors, schoolchildren, and the rest of us, intrinsic motivation—the drive do something because it is interesting, challenging, and absorbing—is essential for high levels of creativity.

Being a professional,” Julius Erving once said, “is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don’t feel like doing them.

Management isn’t about walking around and seeing if people are in their offices,” he told me. It’s about creating conditions for people to do their best work.

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.

Intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity; controlling extrinsic motivation is detrimental to creativity.

Have you ever seen a six-month-old or a three-year-old who’s not curious and self-directed? I haven’t. That’s how we are out of the box.

Rewards do not undermine people’s intrinsic motivation for dull tasks because there is little or no intrinsic motivation to be undermined.

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.

People use rewards expecting to gain the benefit of increasing another person’s motivation and behavior, but in so doing, they often incur the unintentional and hidden cost of undermining that person’s intrinsic motivation toward the activity.

Lawyers often face intense demands but have relatively little “decision latitude.” Behavioral scientists use this term to describe the choices, and perceived choices, a person has. In a sense, it’s another way of describing autonomy—and lawyers are glum and cranky because they don’t have much of it.

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.

And the first step in bulldozing these obstacles is to enumerate them. As Peters puts it, “What you decide not to do is probably more important than what you decide to do.

Motivation 1.0 presumed that humans were biological creatures, struggling to obtain our basic needs for food, security and sex. Motivation 2.0 presumed that humans also responded to rewards and punishments. That worked fine for routine tasks but incompatible with how we organize what we do, how we think about what we do, and how we do what we do. We need an upgrade. Motivation 3.0, the upgrade we now need, presumes that humans also have a drive to learn, to create, and to better the world.

That’s why Linux and Wikipedia and Firefox work.