Book Review - Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

“Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us" was written by Mr. Daniel H. Pink, who was a famous speechwriter and also wrote “Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself”.

I read it in Japanese. The title in Japanese version is “Motivation 3.0”. It is well translated I think.

The author claims that we have been controlled by motivation 2.0. Motivation 1.0 is human instinct for survival. And motivation 2.0 is a scheme based on rewards and punishments. We believed that motivation was made from rewards. However, it is not true. According to the author, motivation 2.0 often interfere internal motivation, to reduce creativity.
Motivation 3.0 presented by the author is composed of three elements. These are, “autonomy”, “mastery”, and “purpose”. Managing circumstance to enhance these three elements makes us work more effectively. Concrete tips to do are written in this book.

As you know, maintaining motivation is so difficult that we often abandon a certain task which is truly important. This book tells us how to encourage our team to accomplish a creative work. It is very suggestive.

This book criticizes the traditional idea about management. The author hates the word “management” itself. Administrating individuals with supervision and commands is not cool way to improve the outcome, the author says. His opinion is against traditional economic theory. Microeconomics explains various phenomena in the world with incentives of human. Behavioral therapists also use reinforcement with rewards and punishers for behavior modification of the clients. It is interesting that both economics and behavioral science is evolving. It seems that modern behavioral economics and cognitive behavioral therapy (e.g. Mindfulness) have introduced the thought similar to motivation 3.0.

This book is easy to read. However, theoretical background is not described enough. Criticism against motivation 2.0 was a little weak. Reading it as a scientific paper, it is not satisfactory. Nonetheless this is an exciting and fascinating book.