Nice book. It dives into the science behind what truly motivates us and why traditional motivators like money and rewards aren't always effective. Instead, Pink suggests that autonomy, mastery, and purpose are the key elements that really get people going. He backs up his argument with some really interesting examples and research studies. ( )

http://pro-libertate.net/20100407/120-read-drive-surprising-truth-about-what-mot... ( )

This provides a different view on motivation than what we have previously believed. ( )

This is a highly readable and engaging book that investigates just what exactly is it that motivates people. The answers Daniel H. Pink gives us are autonomy, mastery, and purpose, all explained with a lot of clarity and backed by data from various studies as well as real-life examples from companies like Atlassian and Google. His focus is mainly on the business sphere, particularly about how businesses should rethink motivating their employees with external rewards and shift their practices to encouraging intrinsic motivation. However, there are plenty of applications for his ideas that go beyond business, and definitely a lot of food for thought for anyone interested in improving the way they do things.

The only thing is, reading this in 2017, nearly a decade after this book was first published, none of this information seems new or original. I've already read a lot of this in blog posts on various self-development and productivity websites, written by authors who I'm sure have read this book. While this was a really engaging read (or in my case, listen-- I did the audiobook), you can probably save yourself the time and just google a blog post on motivation and get the same info in a much more concise way. The book itself actually comes with a cocktail party summary of its content-- a few lines that sum up the key points succinctly.

One thing I did really appreciate about the book was that it comes with a huge list of books on related topics that you can check out, with a convenient summary of each one and how it relates to the topic of motivation. ( )

In a short book, Daniel Pink gets at the heart of what motivates people. Traditional views on motivation -- the carrots and the sticks of the world -- are only motivational at a shallow level. They motivate people to do enough to get the carrot or avoid the stick, but once that external force is gone, that motivation goes away.

Instead of these extrinsic motivators, Pink focuses on what gives people intrinsic motivation, the type of motivation that drives people even when there are no external pressures.

The keys to intrinsic motivation, based on many lines of study about people and motivation, are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Autonomy is the idea that people want some control over what they do, how they do it, and who they do it with. Mastery gets to the heart of flow -- being in that space where you are just challenged enough to grow. Purpose is the idea that what you're working toward serves some purpose larger than the task at hand.

The main reason that this is not competing with The Righteous Mind for my "must-read" book of the year is because Pink's ideas have spread so widely that the book is not really surprising in any way. If you follow these sorts of things at all, it's more of a deepening of things you've already heard than new insights. But still, worth the read. ( )