Drive proposes that motivation can be strongly tied to creativity. Daniel Pink argues that our traditional understanding of motivation is flawed, and provides a more complex view. Whether at work, family, or self-motivation is the issue, allowing your creativity and personal preferences to come into play can increase your success.
Daniel Pink argues that current motivational methods, those used primarily in schools and in business, are ineffective at best and counterproductive more often. These methods come from mostly 19th century understandings of motivation, based on a carrot and stick approach to motivation.
Science has progressed far from this perspective, but society is lagging behind. Mr. Pink makes a case for updating our playbook to improve our ability to do any tasks we put ourselves to.
The first part of the book discusses the carrot and stick analogy and how we typically use it. He shows its shortcomings with plenty of examples that we are well familiar with. He divides tasks into two categories, then shows how traditional motivational techniques affect people in each. Then describes how an updated technique can improve the outcomes.
The book continues to develop the new motivational techniques into different circumstances, discusses how to motivate people in a work environment, motivate children, and self motivation.
The book ends with plenty of suggestions for further reading, websites, suggested schools, exercises, step-by-step improvement suggestions, and more.
Although much of the information was not new to me, I found it stimulating, thought provoking, and encouraging me to study more. I do recommend this book to anyone interested in motivation.