Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

“Despite its greater sophistication and higher aspirations, Motivation 2.0 still wasn’t exactly ennobling. It suggested that, in the end, human beings aren’t much different from livestock—that the way to get us moving in the right direction is by dangling a crunchier carrot or wielding a sharper stick. But what this operating system lacked in enlightenment, it made up for in effectiveness. It worked well—extremely well. Until it didn’t.”

While Pink acknowledges that Motivation 2.0, the societal operating system based on the theory that people are mainly driven by external rewards and punishments, has its uses and was even beneficial in advancing society for a time, it was always still a dehumanizing system. It assumed people function like machines or simple animals, failing to account for their innate curiosity and drive toward self-improvement. This weakness in the system is now proving to be its downfall, in Pink’s view.

“But in the first ten years of this century—a period of truly staggering underachievement in business, technology, and social progress—we’ve discovered that this sturdy, old operating system doesn’t work nearly as well. It crashes—often and unpredictably. It forces people to devise workarounds to bypass its flaws. Most of all, it is proving incompatible with many aspects of contemporary business. And if we examine those incompatibility problems closely, we’ll realize that modest updates—a patch here or there—will not solve the problem. What we need is a full-scale upgrade.”

Pink expands on his metaphor comparing societal systems to computer operating systems. Trying to run a business or a school using a “Motivation 2.0” system now is like trying to run Windows 95 on a modern computer. It’s simply outdated, and no amount of patches can make that ancient software run newer programs. Likewise, while many have recognized the dehumanizing tendencies of Motivation 2.0, so far the only solutions offered have been mere “patches,” such as offering nicer rewards to employees, while still trying to keep the same outdated old system running. Pink argues that this is unsustainable, and the only possible solution going forward is to upgrade to an entirely new operating system based on intrinsic motivation instead of rewards and punishment.

“What’s more, if people do things for lunk-headed, backward-looking reasons, why wouldn’t we also do things for significance-seeking, self-actualizing reasons? If we’re predictably irrational—and we clearly are—why couldn’t we also be predictably transcendent?”

Traditional economics has long been based on assumptions that humans pursue their own self-interests in rational ways. Pink points out that this is simply not true, and even most economists now agree. People frequently act on emotion rather than reason, even when it harms them. Pink argues that if we’re willing to recognize that humans can behave in irrational ways that are against their own self-interest, we should also recognize that humans can act against their own self-interest for altruistic reasons. In other words, we should let go of the idea that people will only do good work when there is a reward involved for them.

“[Motivation 2.0] doesn’t mesh with the way many new business models are organizing what we do—because we’re intrinsically motivated purpose maximizers, not only extrinsically motivated profit maximizers. It doesn’t comport with the way that twenty-first-century economics thinks about what we do—because economists are finally realizing that we’re full-fledged human beings, not single-minded economic robots. And perhaps most important, it’s hard to reconcile with much of what we actually do at work—because for growing numbers of people, work is often creative, interesting, and self-directed rather than unrelentingly routine, boring, and other-directed. Taken together, these compatibility problems warn us that something’s gone awry in our motivational operating system.”

Throughout Drive, Pink argues that today’s economic reality is vastly different from the economic realities that gave rise to Motivation 2.0. In today’s world, jobs increasingly need workers who are creative innovators rather than mindless robots. Because of this, the old rules that used to apply in a Motivation 2.0 system cannot contend with the new demands and situations. This is why Pink calls for the entire operating system to be upgraded.

“Rewards can perform a weird sort of behavioral alchemy: They can transform an interesting task into a drudge. They can turn play into work. And by diminishing intrinsic motivation, they can send performance, creativity, and even upstanding behavior toppling like dominoes. Let’s call this the Sawyer Effect.”

Pink alludes to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. In the book, Tom Sawyer is tasked with the dull chore of whitewashing his Aunt Polly’s fence. He manages to talk the other boys in the neighborhood into doing the work for him by convincing them that the task is fun and invigorating. Pink uses this reference to point out how our motivation to work can be completely transformed by the way we view it: as work, or as play. When viewed as play, work is something we are intrinsically motivated to do because we see it as an enjoyable challenge. However, offering external rewards for an activity signals to us that it is an undesirable chore, thus killing intrinsic motivation.

“Rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus. That’s helpful when there’s a clear path to a solution. They help us stare ahead and race faster. But ‘if-then’ motivators are terrible for challenges like the candle problem. As this experiment shows, the rewards narrowed people’s focus and blinkered the wide view that might have allowed them to see new uses for old objects.”

Here, Pink expands on the metaphor of carrots and sticks to distinguish between situations in which rewards can be helpful and those in which they are harmful. In algorithmic work, which only requires a worker to follow instructions efficiently, a “carrot” can be a useful enticement. But in heuristic work, which requires more creative thinking, focusing so much on the “carrot” can make people unaware of other possibilities, like blinkers on a horse. In the case of the candle problem, this leaves workers less able to think of outside-the-box solutions.

“Adding a monetary incentive didn’t lead to more of the desired behavior. It led to less. The reason: It tainted an altruistic act and ‘crowded out’ the intrinsic desire to do something good.”

This refers to an experiment in which people were offered monetary rewards for donating blood. Though conventional wisdom would predict that monetary rewards would result in more donations, the opposite, in fact, happened. Before money was introduced to the equation, people were motivated by altruism. The offer of money overrides the altruism, and it turns out that money is a less powerful motivator than the desire to give back to the community in a selfless way.

“When the reward is the activity itself—deepening learning, delighting customers, doing one’s best—there are no shortcuts. The only route to the destination is the high road. In some sense, it’s impossible to act unethically because the person who’s disadvantaged isn’t a competitor but yourself.”

One of the biggest downsides to a motivation system driven by rewards and punishments is that it encourages people to take shortcuts, cut corners, and behave unethically. When all that matters is a sales quota, a quarterly return or a grade on a test, people are incentivized to push unnecessary sales, put out unfinished or even dangerous products, and cheat. However, Pink points out that in a system based on intrinsic motivation, when the activity is its own reward, this sort of undesirable behavior is all but eliminated because the incentives are no longer there.

“Parents had an intrinsic desire to be scrupulous about punctuality. But the threat of a fine[…] edged aside that third drive. The fine shifted the parents’ decision from a partly moral obligation (be fair to my kids’ teachers) to a pure transaction (I can buy extra time). There wasn’t room for both. The punishment didn’t promote good behavior; it crowded it out.”

Just as rewards can “crowd out” altruistic motivations, as seen in the example of the blood donors, punishments can as well. Pink describes the case of the Israeli childcare facility in which imposing a fee on parents for being late to pick up their children counterintuitively resulted in more parents showing up late. Before money was introduced to the situation, the parents would try to arrive on time out of consideration for the teachers who had to stay. But just as in the case of the blood donations, when money became a factor in the equation, it overrode the altruistic impulse.

“By offering a reward, a principal signals to the agent that the task is undesirable. (If the task were desirable, the agent wouldn’t need a prod.) But that initial signal, and the reward that goes with it, forces the principal onto a path that’s difficult to leave. Offer too small a reward and the agent won’t comply. But offer a reward that’s enticing enough to get the agent to act the first time, and the principal is ‘doomed to give it again in the second.’ There’s no going back. Pay your son to take out the trash—and you’ve pretty much guaranteed the kid will never do it again for free. What’s more, once the initial money buzz tapers off, you’ll likely have to increase the payment to continue compliance.”

Pink compares the system of rewards and punishment to addictive substances. He points out that once you start offering rewards for a task, it’s extremely difficult to stop offering rewards, just like it’s extremely difficult to stop using addictive substances. As with an addiction, you have to continuously increase the “dosage” of rewards to achieve the same results. This is yet another of the many inherent downsides to a system based only on external rewards.

“In environments where extrinsic rewards are most salient, many people work only to the point that triggers the reward—and no further […]. However, when contingent rewards aren’t involved, or when incentives are used with the proper deftness, performance improves and understanding deepens. Greatness and nearsightedness are incompatible. Meaningful achievement depends on lifting one’s sights and pushing toward the horizon.”

Yet another problem Pink points out with the problem of external rewards is that they do not encourage mastery, one of the three elements of intrinsic motivation. When someone seeks mastery, they must inevitably keep their sights set on long-term goals; in fact, as Pink says in Chapter 5, mastery is something that can never be truly achieved, just as one can never reach the horizon. Rewards, in contrast, only inspire people to work hard up until the point when they receive the reward. Because of this, external rewards are an ineffective way to motivate people to improve their overall performance or knowledge.

“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.”

Here Pink is summarizing Edward Deci and Richard Ryan’s “Self-Determination Theory,” or SDT. The innate human needs that Deci and Ryan identify in their theory map closely onto the three elements that Pink discusses in Part 2 of the book: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. This point is significant to Pink’s entire goal with this book, which is not only to help businesses become more productive and efficient, but also to help people in general learn how to live happier and more satisfying lives.

“So we have a choice. We can cling to a view of human motivation that is grounded more in old habits than in modern science. Or we can listen to the research, drag our business and personal practices into the twenty-first century, and craft a new operating system to help ourselves, our companies, and our world work a little better.”

This is the dichotomy Pink establishes throughout the entirety of Drive: the contrast between the old, rewards-based system of Motivation 2.0 and the new, intrinsically driven system of Motivation 3.0. He demonstrates over and over that scientists and researchers have already determined that the second option is much more optimal both for business as well as human happiness. The only remaining question is whether businesses will be smart enough to change their practices accordingly. Throughout the book, Pink highlights various businesses that have begun to transition to a Motivation 3.0-based system. These businesses, he suggests, are the ones that will thrive most in the future, while businesses that refuse to adapt will be left behind.

“When we enter the world, are we wired to be passive and inert? Or are we wired to be active and engaged? I’m convinced it’s the latter—that our basic nature is to be curious and self-directed. And I say that not because I’m a dewy-eyed idealist, but because I’ve been around young children and because my wife and I have three kids of our own. 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. If, at age fourteen or forty-three, we’re passive and inert, that’s not because it’s our nature. It’s because something flipped our default setting.”

Taking the example of children’s natural drive to explore and experiment, Pink argues that the default state of humanity is not to be lazy and unproductive, as many managers assume, but to be curious and ambitious. If many adults have become disengaged and uninspired, it’s because the system we have created makes them that way, not because they are that way naturally. This is another reason he argues that it’s so important for people to rethink how we motivate people and how we view human nature on a fundamental level.

“Autonomy, as they see it, is different from independence. It’s not the rugged, go-it-alone, rely-on-nobody individualism of the American cowboy. It means acting with choice—which means we can be both autonomous and happily interdependent with others.”

Pink makes an important distinction between “autonomy” and “individualism.” Autonomy, the freedom to make your own choices about what you do, when you do it, how you do it, and who you do it with, is an essential ingredient in fostering Type I Behavior, which is driven by intrinsic motivation. However, this does not mean that a person is not allowed to rely on other people or be part of a caring community. On the contrary, interdependence and involvement in a community are closely related to having a strong sense of purpose, which is another essential ingredient in Type I Behavior.

“A sense of autonomy has a powerful effect on individual performance and attitude. According to a cluster of recent behavioral science studies, autonomous motivation promotes greater conceptual understanding, better grades, enhanced persistence at school and in sporting activities, higher productivity, less burnout, and greater levels of psychological well-being.”

A key element of intrinsic motivation is autonomy, something current management practices tend to stifle. Traditionally, managers have felt the need to exert a high level of control over their employees, keeping them to a strict schedule and constantly monitoring their behavior at work. This mindset has crept into other organizations as well, such as schools. But exerting so much control over people, Pink argues, is ultimately detrimental because all human beings inherently desire autonomy over their lives and choices. The only way to truly foster intrinsic motivation and promote better results for everyone is to let go of control and give people the autonomy they desire.

“We’re born to be players, not pawns. We’re meant to be autonomous individuals, not individual automatons.”

In this quote, Pink employs a literary device called a chiasmus, where the second half of the sentence is an inversion of the first half. He contrasts the image of “autonomous individuals,” unique human beings with control over their work and lives, with the image of “individual automatons,” soulless robots without any intrinsic desires of their own. He also uses alliteration and metaphor in the contrast of “players” and “pawns,” deploying this figurative language to memorably convey his point about the innate human need for autonomy.

“‘The course of human history has always moved in the direction of greater freedom. And there’s a reason for that—because it’s in our nature to push for it… Somebody stands in front of a tank in China. Women, who’ve been denied autonomy, keep advocating for rights. This is the course of history. This is why ultimately human nature, if it ever realizes itself, will do so by becoming more autonomous.”

This quote somewhat recalls Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous quote, “The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” In this quote, Pink quotes Richard Ryan’s observations about the trends of history. Moving toward greater and greater autonomy, Ryan believes, is the collective destiny of humanity, the direction we have been moving all along and will continue moving. This claim connects with Pink’s overall argument that giving greater autonomy to workers is not only helpful in increasing worker productivity and company loyalty, but is also generally good for the collective soul of humanity.

“Think for a moment about the great artists of the last hundred years and how they worked—people like Pablo Picasso, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Jackson Pollock. Unlike for the rest of us, Motivation 2.0 was never their operating system. Nobody told them: You must paint this picture. You must begin painting precisely at eight-thirty A.M. You must paint with the people we select to work with you. And you must paint this way. The very idea is ludicrous. But you know what? It’s ludicrous for you, too. Whether you’re fixing sinks, ringing up groceries, selling cars, or writing a lesson plan, you and I need autonomy just as deeply as a great painter.”

Pink points out that we tend to put great artists into a different mental category from ourselves. We think it would be ridiculous if someone like Pablo Picasso were as strictly controlled and monitored as many of us are in our everyday lives, but it never occurs to us that we deserve the same level of freedom over our work that they had. We may not all be great painters, but we all need and deserve autonomy in our lives.

“Motivation 2.0 assumed that if people had freedom, they would shirk—and that autonomy was a way to bypass accountability. Motivation 3.0 begins with a different assumption. It presumes that people want to be accountable—and that making sure they have control over their task, their time, their technique, and their team is the most effective pathway to that destination.”

Pink uses alliteration to help the reader remember the four areas over which workers desire autonomy: task (what are they doing), time (when are they doing it), technique (how are they doing it), and team (who are they doing it with). Managers have traditionally been reluctant to grant autonomy in these areas because their management strategies assume that workers are naturally lazy and unproductive. Pink argues for a different approach: Assume the best of the workers and build your management strategy from there.

“More 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 balance produced a degree of focus and satisfaction that easily surpassed other, more quotidian, experiences. In flow, people lived so deeply in the moment, and felt so utterly in control, that their sense of time, place, and even self melted away. They were autonomous, of course. But more than that, they were engaged. They were, as the poet W.H. Auden wrote, ‘forgetting themselves in a function.’”

Here, Pink describes the mental state of “flow,” first identified by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Notably, flow is typically born out of what Pink calls “Goldilocks tasks,” which are not too hard but not too difficult. Flow is a key aspect of the process of mastery, one of the three essential elements to Type I Behavior, and as Csikszentmihalyi established with other experiments, it is essential to the mental well-being of humans. For this reason, Pink urges people to find ways to incorporate opportunities for flow in both work and education.

“A little kid’s life bursts with autotelic experiences. Children careen from one flow moment to another, animated by a sense of joy, equipped with a mindset of possibility, and working with a dedication of a West Point cadet. They use their brains and their bodies to probe and draw feedback from the environment in an endless pursuit of mastery.

Then—at some point in their lives—they don’t. What happens?

‘You start to get ashamed that what you’re doing is childish,’ Csikszentmihalyi explained.

What a mistake. Perhaps you and I—and all the other adults in charge of things—are the ones who are immature.”

In a conversation with Csikszentmihalyi, Pink wonders why we adults often lose the curiosity and self-direction that come naturally to children. Csikszentmihalyi observes that somewhere along the process of growing up, we’re falsely taught that such childlike behavior is immature. Pink brings this chapter full circle here, reminding us of the story at the beginning of the chapter of 10-year-old Csikszentmihalyi concluding that grown-ups have no idea how to live. This connects to Pink’s overall argument throughout Drive that we should not simply accept the system that we’ve been handed, but we should try to build a new system that aligns with our default human natures—our childlike selves.

“Failing to understand this conundrum—that satisfaction depends not merely on having goals, but on having the right goals—can lead sensible people down 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 ‘drive them down a rode of further unhappiness thinking it’s the road to happiness,’ Ryan said.”

Even though Pink argues throughout Drive that monetary rewards can be ineffective and even harmful as motivators, he emphasizes that people still need to be compensated fairly. Everyone needs money, no matter how intrinsically motivated they are, and the best strategy is to pay people well enough that they no longer have to worry about money. Past that point, however, he argues that money ceases to be a positive motivator, and instead becomes a detriment to motivation. In this quote, he describes an experiment where several college graduates were tracked down two years later to see how they were faring in life. The graduates who had claimed to be mostly motivated by money and fame were found to be more anxious and less satisfied with their lives, even though many had achieved their goals. Pink points out that the danger here is that such people will end up chasing after more money, thinking it will make them happy, when the real answer is that the only way to achieve true satisfaction in life is to have a strong sense of purpose in your work.