Introduction

Pink's Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us is easily in my top 10 favourite books at the moment.

The reason is, that it aligns so much with the whole essence of B-Mega.

Finding your purpose, aligning your values with those of the world, achieving the flow state, and doing so consistently to pursue mastery.

Following this book, I ordered Robert Greene’s Mastery, which is a book I really look forward to delving into.

Having finished Drive only last week, today I will be dissecting it to pick out what has stood out to me, for you.

Main Lessons of Part One

1 We have a third ‘drive.’

Prior to the 1940’s, it was believed we only had two primary drives:

1. The biological drive for survival (including the pursuit of food, water, shelter, etc.)

2. Seeking rewards and avoidance of punishment (the ‘carrot and stick’ approach)

In 1949 however, two monkeys were presented with a puzzle during an experiment.

The puzzles were placed in the monkeys’ cages for two weeks.

To their own devices, the monkeys began playing with the puzzles with what seemed like focus, determination, and even enjoyment.

Towards the end of the two weeks, the monkeys had become quite proficient in solving the puzzles.

This was strange, as no one taught the monkeys how to solve the puzzle, and no one rewarded them with food, affection, or even praise.

This pointed towards a third drive: “The performance of a task, provided intrinsic reward” said Harry F. Harlow.

The monkeys enjoyed completing the task, and the completion itself was the reward.

2 The third drive’s effectiveness is diminished by rewards.

During that same experiment, food was introduced as a reward to make the monkeys perform better.

Except they didn’t perform better, but rather made more mistakes and solved the puzzle less often.

Back then, this was quite a shocking finding and went against the ‘physics’ of what people thought to be true.

During a separate study, this time involving the primates’ lesser hairy cousins known as humans, participants were presented with a different puzzle.

During this study, the participants were split into two groups, and only the second would be rewarded.

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On each day, the experimenters held three one-hour sessions.

In between each round that the students played the puzzle, the experimenter left the room to see what the participants would do when alone.

This was because, placed at their table were the puzzle, drawings of three puzzle configurations, and a couple of copies of magazines (including Playboy - it was 1969)

Long story short, Group B maintained a relatively steady interest in the puzzle and spent about half of their free time playing with the puzzles.

Group A on the other hand, while spending their free time on Day 1 very similarly, played with it significantly more on Day 2.

It’s no surprise, suppose they’d have been keen to get a head start for the third day ahead.

On that third day, however, they were informed that there wouldn’t be enough money to reward them any longer.

Can you guess what happened?

They had now spent significantly less time playing with the puzzle in their free time.

Knowing there was no longer a reward, they became much less interested in the puzzle than when they initially encountered—and clearly enjoyed—the puzzles.

Deci, the experimenter, wrote, “When money is used as an external reward for some activity, the subjects lose intrinsic interest in the activity.”

3 The ‘carrot and stick’ approach doesn’t work as well as people think.

The ‘carrot and stick’ approach is based on reward and punishment, which Pink refers to as Motivation 2.0 in the book.

Take Pink’s example of two encyclopedias, one funded by a large and profitable company, and the other created by thousands of people writing articles for fun.

The first one was from Microsoft, called MSN Encarta.

They paid professional writers and editors to create articles on thousands of topics.

Highly paid managers directed the project to make sure it was completed on budget and on time.

Then, Microsoft intended to sell the encyclopedia and make a big profit.

And the second? Well, those hobbyists didn’t have qualifications, weren’t paid a dime, and contributed hours of their time—for free.

That second encyclopedia itself was online, and at no charge for any users.

Microsoft’s MSN Encarta was called off and put to a halt in 2009.

And the second? Well, you might have heard of it.

It’s still around, and it’s called Wikipedia.

Who would have thought?

Microsoft had many carrots to give out, but that was no match for the wordsmithing enthusiasts’ own desire to write and edit articles.

Here are another few key things to note on this topic:

→ “Enjoyment-based intrinsic motivation, namely how creative a person feels when working on the project, is the strongest and most pervasive driver.”

→ The difference between algorithmic and heuristic: An algorithmic task is one with established instructions, whereas a heuristic one is the opposite.

→ Routine work can be outsourced or automated; artistic, empathetic, non-routine generally cannot.

→ “Intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity; controlling extrinsic motivation is detrimental to creativity.”

→ Adding certain kinds of extrinsic rewards on top of inherently interesting tasks can often dampen motivation and diminish performance.

→ We’re intrinsically motivated purpose maximisers, not extrinsically motivated profit maximisers.

4 Rewards often turn play into work.

Take the wealthy gentlemen in England, says Pink, who drive four-horse passenger coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer.

This is of course a large privilege because it costs them a substantial amount of money.

If, however, they were offered wages for the service, it would turn into work and they would resign.

This, in the book, is named the “Sawyer Effect,” and there are two key things involving it to remember:

→ Work consists of what a person is obliged to do.

→ Play consists of what a person is not obliged to do.

To further illustrate this effect, have a look at one of the studies described in the book:

Three researchers watched a classroom of preschoolers for several days to identify the children who chose to spend their ‘free time’ drawing.

To test the effect of rewarding an activity these children clearly enjoyed, they split the children up into three groups.

Group one was promised a certificate, decorated with blue ribbons and the child’s name if they chose to draw. They were the ‘expected-award’ group.

Group two wasn’t told of an award, but was simply presented one at the end if they did choose to draw. This was the ‘unexpected-award’ group'.

Group three were only asked if they wanted to draw, but were neither promised an award nor received one at the end. This was the ‘no-award’ group.

Two weeks later, when paper and markers were laid out during ‘free time’ again, the researchers observed the results.

Children in the ‘unexpected-award’ and the ‘no-award’ groups drew just as much as before, and with as much delightment.

Group one, however, the ‘expected-award’ group, showed much less interest and spent less time drawing.

The Sawyer Effect had taken its toll.

Within the space of just a couple weeks, ever common awards in classrooms and cubicles had turned play into work.

Here an an additional couple of important highlights related to this section:

→ ‘“When institutions—families, schools, businesses, and athletic teams, for example—focus on the short-term and opt for controlling people’s behaviour,” they do considerable long-term damage.’

→ “People use rewards expecting to gain the benefit of increasing another person’s motivation and behaviour, but in so doing, they often incur the unintentional and hidden cost of undermining that person’s intrinsic motivation towards the activity.”

4 The ‘carrot and stick’ approach doesn’t just not work great, it can even be detrimental.

As it appears, introducing reward and punishment can not only just not work terribly great, but actually even have harmful effects.

Here’s how:

→ Creativity

Two groups were presented with the ‘candle problem,’ shown above.

The goal is to attach the candle to the wall so that the wax doesn’t drip on the table.

Pink explained that most people approach this by attempting to tack the candle to the wall, but it doesn’t work.

Others, attempt to adhere the candle to the wall by melting the side of the candle with a match, but that doesn’t work either.

The key, Pink explains, is to overcome “functional fixedness,” by realising the box can have a different function than merely a container for the tacks.

The solution, then, isn’t algorithmic (following a set path) but rather heuristic (breaking from the path to discover an innovative approach).

A psychologist intended to time people in both of the two groups to see what effect offering rewards to one of the groups would have on ‘speedy performance’ while solving a conceptual challenge.

The first group was told they were being timed merely to establish averages for how long it typically took to solve this kind of puzzle.

The second group, however, was offered incentives.

They would be awarded a cash prize if their time was among the fastest 25 percent, and still more cash if their time was the fastest of all.

This was certainly a very nice motivator.

Well then, how much faster did the second (incentivised) group strike up a solution to the puzzle?

Well, on average, it took them three and a half minutes longer.

Why?

Pink says this is because ‘rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus.’

Narrowed focus is in fact helpful when there’s a clear path to a solution, just now when creativity and outside-the-box wide view thinking is required.

Here’s the solution, in case you were wondering:

This phenomenon can also be observed by looking at an artist’s work.

Twenty-three professional artists were summoned to randomly select twenty of their works, ten commissioned and ten non-commissioned.

Unaware of this study, a panel of ‘accomplished artists and curators’ were handed the pieces to be expertly rated on creativity and technical skill.

The results?

“The commissioned works were rated as significantly less creative than non-commissioned works, yet they were not rated as different in technical quality.”

One of these artists was interviewed, her words labelling the Sawyer Effect in motion as she explains feeling more constrained doing commissioned works:

‘Not always, but a lot of the time, when you are doing a piece from someone else it becomes more “work” than joy. When I work for myself there is the pure joy of creating and I can work through the night and not even know about it. On a commissioned piece you have to check yourself—be careful to do what the client wants.’

Take a look at a few different examples where the ‘carrot and stick’ approach had detrimental effects:

→ High Performance

During several games, eighty-seven participants were offered different-sized rewards for reaching performance targets.

One-third of them could earn a small reward, another third a medium one, and the other third a very large one.

What happened? Do you think the size of the reward determined the quality of the performance?

As events unfolded, the group offered the medium-sized bonus performed no better than those offered the small one.

And the group with the very large reward?

“In eight of the nine tasks we examined across the three experiments, higher incentives led to worse performance.”

Doesn’t this go against how the average workplace operates?

That is exactly what Pink argues in the book, that employees, students, and everyone else, should be incentivised not merely in the short-term with rewards, but rather by giving them a desire to do the work, task, etc.

→ Behaviour

Rewards and punishments also affect both good and bad behaviour, as Pink points out.

When offered cash for donating blood, the number of donors willing to complete the gesture decreased by nearly half.

By offering a reward for the kind act, donors no longer felt like good citizens completing an altruistic deed and contributing to society, but rather like they would be doing something merely for cash.

An equal and reverse effect can also be observed regarding bad behaviour.

Goals, for example, are something you should be very careful with, as Pink indicates.

“Goals that people set for themselves and are devoted to attaining mastery are usually healthy, But goals imposed by others—sales targets, quarterly returns, standardised test scores, and so on—can sometimes have dangerous side effects. Like all extrinsic motivators, goals narrow our focus.”

Now, as you know, a narrowed focus can be a great thing for certain tasks.

However, you have to be very careful with what you’re narrowing the focus on.

“The problem with making an extrinsic reward the only destination that matters is that some people will choose the quickest route there, even if it means taking the low road.”

In today’s world, we don’t lack examples of these instances;

• Executives who manipulate their quarterly earnings to secure a performance bonus

• Students who cheat on exams or plagiarise to improve their grades

• Scientists who manipulate research findings or data to secure funding or support certain agendas

• Athletes who inject themselves with steroids to post better numbers and trigger lucrative performance bonuses

“Contrast that approach with behaviour sparked by intrinsic motivation.

When the reward is the activity itself—deepening learning, delighting customers, doing one’s best—there are no shortcuts.

The only route to the destination is the high road.

In some sense, it’s impossible to act unethically because the person who’s disadvantaged isn’t a competitor but yourself.”

Following this statement, Pink showcases another interesting fact regarding controlling human behaviour with a ‘carrot and stick.’

He says “If carrots-as-goals often encourage unworthy behaviour, then stick-as-punishment should halt it, right?”

Well, not exactly.

This was illustrated well by what was discovered at some day care centres, by accident.

Following a persisting problem of parents showing up late for their kids at a group of childcare facilities, an attempt was made to put a stop to this.

It was decided that imposing a fine on the parents for coming late would most certainly decrease the frequency of the problem occurring.

But that’s not exactly what happened.

“After the introduction of the fine we observed a steady increase in the number of parents coming late.”

As it turns out, “the rate finally settled, at a level that was higher, and almost twice as large as the initial one.”

An increase in unfavourable behaviour is certainly not something they expected.

Reading this, I was just as surprised as you might be; but what Pink mentions next ties everything together completely.

“One reason most parents showed up on time is that they had a relationship with the teachers—who, after all, were caring for their precious sons and daughters—and wanted to treat them fairly.

Parents had an intrinsic desire to be scrupulous about punctuality.

But the threat of a fine—like the promise of [cash] in the blood experiment—edged aside that third drive.

The fine shifted the parents’ decision from a partly moral obligation (be fair to my kids’ teachers) to a pure transaction (I can buy extra time).

There wasn’t room for both. The punishment didn’t promote good behaviour; it crowded it out.”

I found the finding incredibly interesting, but I also found that it made complete sense after thinking about the matter.

That’s not all though, it gets even worse.

→ Addiction

Let’s start with a light example.

Suppose you would like your son to mow the lawn.

Well, pay him to do it, and you can be sure he’ll never want to do it for free.

Pink explains that by offering a reward, you communicate that the task is undesirable. Because otherwise, a reward wouldn’t be necessary.

As it turns out, upon realising there is a reward to be earned, dopamine is released in the person’s brain. And we already know what effect this has.

The sensation brings joy, fades away, and then craves another round.

“Rewards are addictive in that once offered, a contingent reward makes [the person] expect it whenever a similar task is faced.”

Pink then explains that “the existing reward may no longer suffice.

It will quickly feel less like a bonus and more like the status quo—which then forces [the persuader] to offer larger rewards to achieve the same effect.”

Essentially, just know that by offering rewards you are inducing a disturbingly similar addictive effect to that of cocaine, nicotine, or amphetamines.

5 The ‘carrot and stick’ approach can work under special circumstances.

As it turns out, there are certain circumstances where this ‘carrot and stick’ approach can work.

Specifically, they can work for routine tasks that aren’t intriguing and require minimal creative input.

Then, rewards can offer a modest motivational boost without adverse effects.

“Rewards do no undermine people’s intrinsic motivation for dull tasks because there is little or no intrinsic motivation to be undermined.”

To make this approach successful, there are three essential pieces for you to consider using:

→ Provide reasoning for the necessity of the task. A role that lacks inherent interest can become more meaningful, and therefore more engaging, when it’s part of a larger purpose.

→ Acknowledge that the task is boring. This showcases empathy. The acknowledgement will help people understand why this is the rare instance when ‘if-then’ rewards are part of how your organisation operates.

→ Allow people to complete the task their own way. Tell the person the outcome you need, and let them figure out their own way of doing it. Instead of instructing exactly how to do it, be clear on the outcome, and give them freedom over how they complete the task.

Ideally, the team will have:

• Autonomy → Freedom over how they complete the task.

• Opportunity to pursue mastery → The chance to get absorbed by the task at hand and focus simply on getting better at it.

• Sense of purpose → Their daily duties should relate and potentially be devoted to a higher purpose.

Once these are in place, get out of their way and let them do the work.

Also, generally just avoid ‘if-then’ rewards for any creative, right-brain, heuristic tasks, jobs, or roles.

Instead, it is better to use ‘now-that’ unexpected rewards.

Just make sure not to offer them too often. Doing so repeatedly can turn them into ‘now-that’ rewards.

Lastly, it is best if your ‘now-that’ rewards provide praise, feedback, and useful information.

Conclusion

Overall, Pink argues that the world of business is lagging behind what the field of science knows.

He explains that there seems to be a lack of knowledge and utilisation of what science has revealed about true motivation.

And it’s true!

He also explains that ‘Type I’ people, those who are intrinsically driven, almost always outperform ‘Type X’ people, those who are extrinsically driven.

“Ultimately, Type I behaviour depends on three nutrients: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Type I behaviour is self-directed. It is devoted to becoming better and better at something that matters.

And it connects that quest for excellence for excellence to a larger purpose.”

Well, I can tell you one thing for sure, and that is that this newsletter likely wouldn’t have been as good as it is if I were being paid for it.

For that matter, feel free to reply to this email with feedback.

Is the newsletter too long and overloaded?

Too short and boring?

I’m open.

Until next week.

B-Mega,

Fabian