Book-Summary - Drive - The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

• Author: Daniel H. Pink
• GoodReads: Drive

Drive book is trying to answer the question - “What motivates a person to do tasks especially in a company/office?”. It also explores - “Is money the prime motivator?”. Many a times we feel, for things to get done from others, let us pay more to make them do it. Based on the book, this works to only certain extent and only to certain kind of jobs. This also brings in side effects. If people think, I am doing this job for the pay only, then every time they do a work and get paid, they will not be interested to do the same work for the same pay as they have already enjoyed/achieved it. So next time, we need to pay more, then only it will motivate them to take up that work. If the money is constant and work is equated to money then people will get fixated with the money. They will slack on the actual work or try to game the system to earn more money that is in other ways they will try to work less hours so that they get same amount of money (optimisation in a bad way). Money is needed for covering the basic things and maintain the standard of living, but once that is achieved, money actually hinders the work. There is the creativity factor which gets hindered due to constrained environment. Suppose there is a problem, that needs to be solved, and x people are asked to work on it. If the condition is to give them prize money to whoever solves them first or within a fixed time, this may not result in good solutions as people are fixated on time constraint or whoever is first constraint. People will be motivated by money when the work itself is more of mechanical work which does not involve much thinking/creative work or which has a defined set of steps to complete.

For the work that involves some thinking/creative activities, then it requires following three attributes to make it more interesting -

• There should be autonomy in the work they do
• This should be challenging or involves some form of mastery
• The work should have a purpose to which people can relate to

People usually measure their work autonomy in-terms of following four aspects -

• Do they have freedom to choose what tasks to work on?
• Do they have freedom to choose at what time they can work on task?
• Do they have freedom to choose how they want to work on the task?
• Do they have freedom to choose with whom they can work with?

People want to achieve mastery and to do that, they should be aware that

• It takes consistent effort to achieve it
• They need a goal as a perfect state to which we constantly try to achieve and never reach but its okay.

The Purpose can be effective if there is a defined goal and how best that is expressed in the working. It also requires policies which can realise those goals.