Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us Book

I can think of a few alternate titles for this book.

"The Art of Beating a Dead Horse: Your Guide to Regurgitating the Same Point in Every Chapter"

"How to Filter Years of Other People's Research into Broad Talking Points"

"You Too Can Write a Book With At Least 25% Filler Material"

"The Fair and Balanced Guide to Selling Your Point By Avoiding Contradictory Evidence"

I jest, yet I do think the main topic of this book is important and true. I will save you the pain of reading it by stating it here: people with non-routine jobs are more effectively motivated by intrinsic rewards rather than extrinsic rewards. People work better when they can have autonomy over their work and pursue mastery of their skills. Appealing to an employee's desire for intrinsic satisfaction makes for a better long term outcome for both company and employee.

The problem with Pink's book is that he says almost the exact same thing in every chapter. Instead of a progression of ideas, we instead get a boring rehash of the main point, with slightly altered words. Most of this is done by recounting specific studies that prove his main point about intrinsic motivation. However, rarely does he ever mention when intrinsic motivation doesn't work, except when he mentions "routine, non-creative jobs". I'd say that a lot of jobs out there are rather routine and non-creative, and I think it's a mistake to assume that intrinsic motivation has no application for these jobs at all. Additionally, I'm skeptical of anyone that doesn't at least mention studies that seem to contradict their main idea, which Pink never does. He builds his case by selecting slices of numerous studies, then interpreting the results to fit his narrative.

Pink also talks at length about Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow. I have never read "Flow", yet I hope the concept is better explained in his book, because in Pink's book it makes no sense. "Flow" is supposed to describe the mindset of a person when they are deeply involved in something (i.e. a star baseball player swinging at a pitch, an author writing a book, etc.), and Pink tries to say that our whole day should be filled with "flow" moments. Sounds okay, but sometimes I think it's good to have non "flow" moments. At any rate, this whole concept is under-explained and over-utilized in this book.

The best part of this book was the concept of intrinsic motivation and how it should be applied in business. Also, it is important to note that extrinsic motivators like "if-then" rewards (e.g., 'if' we meet the sales quota, 'then' you'll receive $300) can actually be detrimental to motivation.

I wish Pink would have examined the concept of intrinsic motivation in different aspects of life rather than just business. I believe, if explored more thoroughly, it could be very revealing of many different aspects of human behavior. In fact, it would be more helpful to see which motivators are best suited to specific behavioral areas.

All in all, this was a poorly written book with a very interesting idea at its core.