Drive by Daniel H. Pink

This book kept coming up for me over the past year. I heard about it on NPR, my co-worker at my former job heard the author speak, it was mentioned in my entrance interview here at UVEI, and, of course, was mentioned in The Global Achievement Gap. I figured it was high time I read it.

This is a very readable overview of what actually motivates us. Pink suggests there have been three kinds of motivation: Motivation 1.0 - which is basically “we have needs that we must fulfill in order to survive.” That’s what we were doing when we were hunter/gatherer types. Motivation 2.0 - which is how most of the work world has been functioning - external rewards and punishments. Pink argues that Motivation 2.0 is outdated and incompatible with how we live to do. To fully engage employees or students, we need Motivation 3.0 - which depends on and fosters Type I behavior - which is more focused on the “inherent satisfaction of the activity itself.”

Pink has an interesting couple of chapters about carrots and sticks - why external rewards are or become self-defeating (by things like discouraging creativity and encouraging short-term thinking and cheating or shortcuts) and the times when carrots and sticks can work (when they are applied to routine, rule-based tasks) and how to make those times more effective (by acknowledging that these tasks are routine, they are boring, and giving autonomy for how people can attack them). 

He suggests giving “now that” rewards as opposed to "if-then" rewards - rewards that are given after a task is completed, and with a concrete description of why that reward is being given. 

Pink calls those who thrive in Motivation 3.0 "Type I" people. (If you're interested in finding out if you're one of them, you can take this test here). He says that there are three elements of Type I: Autonomy, Mastery through Engagement, and Purpose. 

Much of this book is framed as a discussion about the work world, though many of his ideas and the studies he cites clearly have echoes in the classroom. The last half of the book is basically resources and tools (which feels like a cheat if you wanted to read 230 pages, but the content more than makes up for it). One section in particular "Type I for Parents and Educators" is especially helpful in applying some of these concepts to school and citing some examples.

A question I was left with arose over a discussion of "flow" - that state where you get so engaged with a task that you become so focused and lose track of time. Pink points out that a good model for adults looking for flow is children, who approach much of life with this idea of "flow." He says that at a certain point, this 'flow' is instructed out of them usually by adults who are telling them not to be childish. Which leaves me with the question: how can we teach students and encourage that quality of flow?

Some of this feels like echoes of what we read about in The Global Achievement Gap, but reading it in this context, and so engagingly written, I really enjoyed this new perspective and additional information to back up the idea that self-motivation and intellectual curiosity (to oversimplify) are powerful tools if accessed correctly.