Saturday, May 01, 2021

Books #12: Daniel Pink's Drive

I read this book a while back and has forgotten the bulk of it. It's good that we are in the internet era. So many people wrote good summaries and made it easier to simply recall the main messages and even come out with new ones that are relevant to me now.

Autonomy and mastery: Daniel believes that people has the innate drive to achieve autonomy and mastery. Rewards and nagging rarely get us anyway. For those of us with parental experience, gosh, how true! Goals that we set for others seldom work if there is no buy in. 

Goals people set for themselves, when we get there, we enter a state of flow. This is very blissful and this is the state that helps musicians create music. This is the state Michael Jordan is constantly in when he is on the basketball court. We all have experienced flow. We should strive to achieve flow in our work and life. 

In office work, positive feedback, useful information and meaningful information can be more powerful that monetary reward. Positive feedback can be given and reminded. Useful information from bosses will be able to help subordinates complete their tasks. Meaningful information will propel innate drives!

Lastly, two quotable quotes from Drive:

“At the end of each day, ask yourself whether you were better today than you were yesterday.” 

“One of the best ways to know whether you’ve mastered something is to try to teach it.”

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