Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink

Forget everything you thought you knew about how to motivate people—at work, at school, at home. It's wrong. As Daniel H. Pink (author of To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others) explains in his paradigm-shattering book Drive, the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today's world 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 our lives. He demonstrates that while the old-fashioned carrot-and-stick approach worked successfully in the 20th century, it's precisely the wrong way to motivate people for today's challenges. In Drive, he reveals the three elements of true motivation:

*Autonomy—the desire to direct our own lives
*Mastery—the urge to get better and better at something that matters
*Purpose—the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves

Along the way, he takes us to companies that are enlisting new approaches to motivation and introduces us to the scientists and entrepreneurs who are pointing a bold way forward.



This has been lying around in my house for months.  My husband brought it in and left it out to read but hadn't gotten around to reading it yet.  With my 2019 promise to myself to read more non-fiction books, I decided to pick it up and give it a go.

I was also, motivated by my struggle to motivate my child in various activities.  She lacks drive, ambition and a competitive spirit.  While she is good at most things, she doesn't seem to want to strive to win or be the best at anything.  I have been trying to motivate her with the traditional carrot and stick approach that this book has now debunked.

It is an interesting read that did teach me something new, while I don't totally agree with all his thoughts I believe that I can use his general ideas to help me to motivate my child.  I would have given it 2 stars if I had read this 10 years ago, as I was very much motivated by the carrot and stick approach and nothing else would have helped me but I think it has a lot more place in this day and age and with the new generation of people (millenials etc) coming into the workplace.

 I only gave it 3 out of 5 stars because he labored his point a bit.  He could have got the same point across in a short essay r magazine article, so a lot of the book was repeating and laboring the same point over and over, but not in different ways.   It is a worth a read, even if you just read the summary at the end.

I have started to try and use some new ways of motivation with my child and I think it is starting to work although it is too early to tell.  Hey, I might update this review later if I have a major breakthrough.