Drive by Daniel Pink

Link to Amazon:http://amzn.to/hHUDft
Drive is one of the few books that you might come back and read again. Daniel Pink writes in a very fluent and easy way about a very interesting subject. What drives and motivates people?

How, when and why do you feel motivated for a specific task. If you are in a managing role this is a must read for you. Strangely or not!,if you are a parent or thinking of becoming a parent, definitely a must read for you as well.
The book is a interesting mix of scientific research, common sense and angles that is uniquely put together. Daniel Pink does a great job at making a complex subject very accessible.
The author introduces two types if personality. Certainly not new, but in the context of what drives people, it is an interesting view. See below for the two types.

All in all, a very enjoyable reading. Make sure to follow Daniel Pink at Twitter @DanielPink. Perhaps the TED talk he gave is the bests start if you have never heard of him.

Some of the the things  that I took to my “remember” list are:

  • Mastery, Autonomy & Purpose; the book is worth reading just to get a better understanding of this. These three words has been with me since I read the book while ago.  In many different aspects of my everyday life as sales manager and parent it has helped me to remain in a resourceful state.
  • Typ I: Intrinsic, powered by our innate need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.
  • Typ X: Concerns itself less with the inherent satisfaction of an activity and more with the external rewards to which that activity leads.
  • Functional fixedness, you look at the box and see only one function – as a container for the things. But by thinking afresh, you eventually see that the box can have another function.
  • If-then rewards versus now-that rewards! As a parent, this is a revolutionary insight. Again not a new concept, but yet so powerful!
  • Mastery is a mindset, this is absolute true. Specially if you work within a competitive environment or a job where your performance is tracked and measured. Vince Lombardi once said;
    Winning is not a sometime thing. You don’t win once-in-a-while. You don’t do things right once-in-a-while. You do them right all the time.
    Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing. There is no room for second place. There is only one place, and that is first place.
  • Give yourself a performance review. A new way of thinking about ones performance. This forces you to think of your performance as an outsider. Makes it impossible to “blame” someone else.
  • 5 steps to mastery
    1. Remember that deliberate practice has one objective: to improve performance.
    2. Repeat, repeat repeat
    3. Seek constant, critical feedback
    4. Focus ruthlessly on where you need help
    5. Prepare for the process to be mentally and physically exhausting Excesise
  • Write the answer to,
    What gets you up in the morning?
    What keeps you up at night?
    If both answers give you a sense of meaning and direction, Congratulations.
    If not!
    What are you going to do about it?
  • Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.
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