Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

About Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Drive is a popular science book on motivation, especially in the context of the workplace.

In an episode of the podcast “On the Way to New Work,” Christoph Magnussen names Drive as one of the most influential books for his development.

I have often experienced to impressive effect how motivation can grab me, sweep me along, and spur me to peak performance.

At the same time, a lack of motivation has repeatedly put obstacles in my path.

Reason enough to dive into the topic and follow the reading recommendation.

About Dan H. Pink

The author Dan H. Pink is not a psychologist but actually holds a law degree. Before scoring multiple bestsellers with his nonfiction books mainly on work and business, he worked as a journalist and as a speechwriter for Al Gore.

It is not exactly the biography I would have expected for the author of a book like this.

At the same time, Drive presents itself as a collection of scientific findings that Dan H. Pink has gathered around the topic of personal motivation and how organizations handle it.

The book includes detailed references and points to many well-regarded studies on the subject.

That Dan Pink is a seasoned writer shows up positively above all in how clear and readable the book is.

What did I learn?

All the way through, the book nudged me to relate what I read to my own experience and work. So in places I supplement the book’s insights with the thoughts it triggered for me.

Motivation basics

Motivational systems are the drives within us that prompt us to act.

Dan Pink writes about three core motivational systems:

• Basic needs (self-preservation: hunger, thirst, …)
• Extrinsic motivation (I do something as a means to an end)
• Intrinsic motivation (the activity is an end in itself)

Basic needs

Basic needs exhibit sharply diminishing marginal utility once they are satisfied: If someone offers me a glass of water in the desert, that is a powerful drive. I would be willing to pay a lot for it.

For a second glass, my willingness to pay would already be a bit lower. Once I have had enough to drink and my supplies are replenished, additional water has little value to me.

Extrinsic motivation

The act itself matters less to me. What matters are the consequences of the act. That is, what does (or does not) happen if I do it.

Extrinsic motivation can kick in when my action brings about a consequence. But I am also extrinsically motivated if my action is meant to prevent a certain consequence.

For a long time it was assumed that extrinsic motivation was the only relevant motivational system besides basic needs.

According to the author, the carrot-and-stick principle remains deeply rooted in our working world to this day.

Intrinsic motivation

When we do things mainly because the work is its own reward, we speak of intrinsic motivation. Dan Pink also uses the term autotelic (from Greek ‘auto’ = self and ’telos’ = goal) and references Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the happiness researcher and author of the well-known book “Flow”.

Particularities of the motivational systems

Framing plays a key role

The same activities can motivate us either extrinsically or intrinsically, depending on framing. Dan Pink calls this the Sawyer effect, after the famous scene from Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, in which Tom is punished by being made to paint a fence. He presents it to passing kids as a difficult task not everyone can do, piques their curiosity, and they end up willing to pay for a chance to try it themselves.

The author also gives the reverse example: if you pay someone for an activity, you risk that this person will no longer be willing to do the same activity for free. In the worst case, it becomes less attractive, or another motivator gets crowded out.

Establishing a reward for an activity can cast the act of doing it in a negative light.

A simple example is paying a child for doing housework. You damage the motivation to do it as part of the social fabric of ‘family,’ where everyone contributes to the necessary chores.

Another example is a study on blood donation, which people typically do for altruistic reasons. If donors are offered a small cash payment (e.g., $20), participation rates drop. Apparently, this small payment as an extrinsic motivator exerts less pull than the prior altruistic motive - but effectively crowds it out.

Interactions between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation

Dan Pink references additional studies suggesting that extrinsic motivators (e.g., money) can negatively impact intrinsic motivation.

Outside the book, I also found critical voices and studies challenging this effect, so the evidence here is not entirely clear.

The effect is demonstrated primarily in the studies cited in the book where a cash payment as an extrinsic motivator reduces intrinsic motivation for an interesting task, such as solving a puzzle.

The book therefore recommends avoiding ‘if-then’ rewards as much as possible, and when needed and feasible, favoring ’now-that’ rewards where you want to preserve intrinsic motivation. A key condition is to prevent an expectation of a ’now-that’ reward from creeping in and thereby implicitly turning it into an ‘if-then’ reward.

The effect also seems markedly weaker for non-monetary rewards, so the author especially recommends leaning on those.

Differences in how the systems work

This matters because activities we perform out of intrinsic motivation lead to different outcomes on multiple levels.

The author cites studies in which intrinsically motivated people find better and faster solutions than extrinsically motivated people for creative tasks.

These include tasks that cannot be executed by applying a known algorithm but require finding a new solution (e.g., a puzzle).

Conversely, classic external rewards and punishments (carrot and stick) work well for exactly these algorithmic tasks. Proper framing helps here: explain why the task is needed; acknowledge that it is boring; grant autonomy in how the task is done. That preserves a sense of purpose and room to shape the work, which benefits task completion and the actor’s self-efficacy.

Effectiveness also differs at a higher level: if we are driven mainly by extrinsic motivation to perform an activity, we have little incentive to go above and beyond. We jump only as high as we have to.

If an extrinsic motivator disappears or is reduced, this directly impacts our personal development in that area. Studies on the effect of external rewards on positive health behaviors (quitting smoking, exercising, etc.) show that they produce very good results at first, but motivation quickly fades as soon as the external rewards are removed. It seems the positive effects of the healthy behavior are overshadowed by the external rewards and then do not register as rewards or goals in their own right. At a minimum, they may not have shown a visible benefit at the outset, and the extrinsic motivators - with all the long-term motivational consequences - also ended up motivating people for whom well-being and health were not strong enough drivers on their own.

If an activity motivates us intrinsically, we enjoy the parts beyond mere box-checking as well. We invest much more and over the long term in the practice of the activity, which is a key prerequisite for building true expertise and mastery in a field.

Mastery & Mindset

Dan Pink then delves into mastery in some detail.

He defines mastery as an asymptotic state of comprehensive knowledge or skill. You can always get better in a field or discipline, but never fully master it. The steps you can take tend to get smaller on average.

The challenge is that mastery is a pursuit whose finish line you never cross.

Two factors therefore matter especially if you want to get really good at something:

• Intrinsic motivation
• Mindset

Intrinsic motivation ensures there is a durable force keeping us engaged with a topic, getting better, and sticking with it.

Mindset is the necessary condition for staying with it even when motivation - for whatever reason - does not carry us.

Dan Pink points to ‘grit’: the ability to push through resistance of all kinds and pursue your goals.

Grit is also a prerequisite for pursuing and achieving long-term goals. A focus on short-term goals risks incurring long-term costs.

If games motivate me more in the short term than practice, I fall behind exactly where practice matters. If I let short-term motivation alone guide me, in the worst case I eventually lose the joy of the game itself.

Another highly noteworthy insight is that people who view their abilities, talents, and intelligence as immutable cannot improve them, in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The belief that IQ is inherited, or that your math talent is simply there or not, becomes a guiding hand in your development. Such people tend to focus on what supposedly comes easily to them and to be put off quickly by hurdles.

In fact, studies show that believing your intellect is malleable has a positive effect on your development. The brain remains plastic into old age. Whether your own belief keeps you from learning and developing skills therefore plays - on average - a bigger role than talent.

It is also interesting that believing in potential gains in ability and intellect can legitimize the effort required.

This ties back to grit. Someone who is exhausted after a hard workout or has sore muscles and links the pain to a positive training effect has a completely different experience than someone whom the pain keeps from training.

If learning feels demanding, that can either keep me from it or motivate me, because the high effort promises a high payoff.

For me to perceive the effort as a benefit, however, I first have to be convinced that my abilities can grow.

Implications for personal success

In Drive, Dan Pink argues that people are led primarily either by extrinsic or by intrinsic motivators.

He draws a comparison between people whose goal is success and the mastery of their discipline is the means to that end, and those whose goal is the activity itself. That may be a sport, but also, for example, the practice of law.

Borrowing from the Type A and B personality theory, he calls the two categories Type I (mainly intrinsically motivated) and Type X (mainly extrinsically motivated).

This categorization is a model under which he collects specific traits and phenomena. He cites many studies as a basis, but the modeling is his own and not a scientific theory.

Among other things, the book quotes a study in which university graduates were asked about their life goals. Years later, the researchers spoke to the former students again.

Those whom Dan Pink categorizes as Type X (whose goals were mainly extrinsic (money, success, status, etc.)) had, on average, achieved their goals, but were no more satisfied with their success than at the start of the study.

Conversely, other studies showed that mainly intrinsically motivated people were at least as successful, if not more successful - even on the success metrics favored by extrinsically motivated people.

Dan Pink describes Type X personality as something learned, reinforced by our social environment, schools, and education systems. Small children, by contrast, are primarily intrinsically motivated.

He then infers that a switch back to a Type I personality is likewise learnable and possible.

The usefulness of the useless

An interesting side note is a study in which Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi had people do only immediately functional and absolutely necessary things. He suppressed all optional activities, for example those that serve only our well-being or recovery, that we do not have to do but might enjoy, or whose purpose is not immediately obvious.

In the experiment, this quickly led to drastic health effects, comparable to symptoms of an anxiety disorder. After only two days, they decided not to continue the experiment.

The little detours, the seemingly unnecessary everyday doings, therefore serve an important purpose. In Drive, Dan Pink attributes this benefit to the experience of flow, the complete immersion in a task. He sketches a clear overlap between the autotelic experience of a task and its ability to put us into a flow state.

Conversely, of course, not everything we feel an impulse to do is good for us. Reaching for the phone and doomscrolling may exert a pull. Still, the resulting costs to our health need to be factored in. You could argue that the rapid, short-cycle stimulus chain that tempts us into phone scrolling is the opposite of deep immersion in a flow experience.

In any case, we should be aware that reducing life to only the immediately necessary work can have negative effects on our mental health.

Goldilocks tasks as motivation starters

Drive introduces the term ‘Goldilocks task’: an activity whose difficulty lies just beyond our current competence, whose goal (i.e., when the task is successful) is clearly defined and visible, and for which we receive immediate feedback on our performance and success.

If we think about how to make activities for our employees and teams as motivating as possible, Goldilocks tasks are, according to Drive, an important tool.

They make tasks attractive to start and help quickly develop intrinsic motivation for them.

Final thoughts

For me, Drive conveys many interesting and important insights. At the same time, it feels slow and overly drawn out. The same core concepts are hammered home through dozens of studies and from many different angles. On one hand, that gives me room to engage deeply with the topic and make connections to my own experience. But it also makes the book feel a bit long-winded, and I often wished the author would move on more quickly.

The author also tends to build up his sources and detail their qualities at length before presenting their results. To me, this sometimes reads like a reverse ad hominem: arguing for the credibility or significance of the studies via the personal attributes of their authors.

At the same time, the studies are well cited, the references are thorough, and it is usually clear quickly what are the author’s own thoughts and what are the studies’ factual claims.

Toward the end, the book includes a tightly summarized toolkit that also presents tips for designing intrinsically motivated teams or compensation models that foster intrinsic motivation.

I won’t go into that here, since the book itself serves as a quick, digestible reference, and I write the Library articles for my own processing of the topics and to capture the key takeaways in the text for myself.

The book brought me much closer to the subject, even if for many methods already considered established industry practice (at least in IT) - e.g., 20% time, team autonomy, results-only work environments, etc.

• it provides the scientific grounding or at least a logical rationale, rather than proposing models that would be considered groundbreaking from today’s perspective.

The most interesting insights for me were around mindset, the effectiveness and interaction of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, and the grit and mastery theme.