Drive

by Daniel Pink

Drive seeks to explain the fundamentals of what Daniel Pink calls ‘Motivation 3.0’. In Drive, intrinsic motivation is subscribed to over extrinsic motivation, relegating the latters usefulness to a small subset of highly specific contexts. This is combined with advocacy for Flow theory and packaged as “Motivation 3.0”.  The books shining feature is the practical techniques given for incoperating Flow and intrinsic motivation into everyday processes. These techniques cover parenting, studying, managerial styles among others. They are presented in an easy to follow manner, with several alternatives offered to better suit different people. For these techniques alone, the book is worth reading. Before you reach the techniques however, one has to slog through considerable filler text. The concepts are only explained at the base level, with complexity being substituted with cases illustrating the concepts. These cases are not only too many, they are also lengthly and you have multiple cases providing similar insight to the same concept. Throughout the book, Daniel attempts to cram concepts into byte-sized, maketable lists (“The 7 types of …”, “3 rules for ..”) which offer no simplification to the already simple content in the book. The final notable flaw is Pink’s constant need to assert legitimacy by name dropping prominent institutions, sometimes as much as three times on a single page. Combined, these flaws make the first half tiring, eventually opening into a much more interesting and insightful second half. 

Darryl Ursin 

Rating: 3 Worth Reading