The Motivational Theory of Daniel Pink in His Book Drive: The Truth About What Motivates Us

In Drive: The Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink argues about how we motivate people. Everyone has something to motivate them and it can be a person, book or even a quote that inspires the person to do more and to be more successful in this hard life. Pink illustrate the problem with 2. 0 method. He explains “Workers, this approach held, were like part in complicated machine. If did the right work in the right way at the right time, the machine would function smoothly” (17).

The Method 2. 0 helps the workers who work in factories they can work without any thinking it is just a routine you can just turn on the machine and the machine start to work, and the workers do not use their mind they just use their muscles. What Pink is trying to say is that this motivation does not work with this kind of work. Pink theory the companies should treats the workers in a better way.

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They should be more creative because this way of work makes the routine that kills the people’s skills and that will make the workers lazier and do not help them to create or develop their lives. Pink uses another example of motivation in his book and he explains the difference between Wikipedia and Microsoft company. He says Wikipedia is more successful than Microsoft company because Wikipedia is non-profit organization that allow people to write whatever they want and there are no boundaries. I think that Pink is right that Autonomy, mastery and purpose motivate people more than external rewards or punishments but only in a career work environment.

This is not going to work for those employees that just have job and have to make a living. After That Pink starts to explain the difference between type X and type I. I like the way that Pink use to explain the types and how he connected by the method 2. 0. in my opinion We fall into a routine of motivation 2. 0, or the type X which is work in time, going to work on time, do the work on time, leave work on time, and go home on time. All that for paychecks. And that allows us to go with a process type I. Because the type I people think out of the box there is no system.

As Pink asks “Does what energizes you what gets you up in the morning- and propels you through the day come from inside or come from outside” (76). To do whatever you love you need a bonus. If people do whatever they love to do everything is going to be easy and the society will be more successful, and life will be easier. Jeff Gunther says “People do not have schedules. They show up when they want. They do not have to be in the office at certain time or any time, for that matter. They just have to get their work done. How they do it, when they do it, and where the do it is up to them” (84). Gunther is a CEO, entrepreneur, manager, and capitalist. He gave his twenty-two employees complete autonomy. The results of his ROWE- a result only work environment was very interesting. After some time two of the employees left but the rest were at most successful in their jobs. In chapter five, Pink introduces three laws of mastery which are “Mastery is a mindset, Mastery is a pain, Mastery is an asymptote”. Mastery is a mindset is the first.

Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford University and behavioral sciences, he is a superstar in this mindset method “Dweck’s signature insight is that what people believe shapes what people achieve” (118). Pink continues to support this argument and explains that people who work harder to achieve something they believe if they work hard they will achieve it but sometimes it is out of their ability. Having the right mindset can be life changing, and even better it can be easier to the people who have the extreme ideas. Mastery is a pain. Pink states, “But in the end, mastery often involves working and working and showing little improvement, perhaps with a few moments of flow pulling you a long, then making a little progress, and then working and working on that new, slightly higher plateau again” (123). Pink mention how the process is the problem and how it makes everything harder, but then Julius Erving says, “Being professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you do not feel like doing them” (123).

This is a reminder to us to do whatever we like to do under any kind of pressure and not care about what people are going to say. “Mastery is an asymptote”, it is the last mastery law in Pink’s book. By Pink’s definition “The mastery asymptote is a source of frustration” (125). People will often do anything to get what they cannot have. For example, fancy sport car or a brand-new iPhone. Pink mentions “In the end mastery attracts precisely because mastery eludes” (125). What pink is trying to say here is that when we want to achieve something we do good but not great.