Book Review: Drive

[liralen]

Just read Daniel H. Pink's Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us and I really liked it. Four out of five stars... and the missing one is just that they didn't go into quite the depth I wanted them to go into.



I don't know why I wish there was more to this book, but I kind of do. Still, it is one of those books where it presents something very simple and not always intuitive and you go... huh. Why didn't I think of that before? Kind of... some of this I got intuitively, but having it spelled out logically was kind of nice.

The basic premise is that people have an intrinsic desire to do good work. That the old economic model of carrots and sticks can actually do harm in the case of jobs that require creativity, versus the old assembly line jobs that were just 'do a certain set of clear steps'. That money and bonuses beyond what they need to live and do what they want with their lives can actually destroy or depress that desire.

I mean... being retired, I know that money for work depresses my motivation to do that. I have absolutely no desire to write code anymore. Period. One thing I really liked was that the fact that we've kept our child's allowance as a completely independent thing from his chores was vindicated in spades by this. Allowance is good for money management. Chores are simply a way to learn how to live with others and do things the right way. This book's good about pointing out that if the allowance is contingent on the chores, then the chores become onerous, something you have to get *paid* to do. Which was the experience I had as a kid, which is why I won't clean a house to save my life, now. *laughs* I'll pay someone else to do it.

Interesting thing is being able to now apply what I've learned from this to my painting and my writing. That getting paid *after* the work is done, especially unexpectedly can only help motivation. So I may well avoid the path of commissions and just go with "buy what I have already done if you want." We'll see.

Anyway, I liked it, though I kind of found the 'exercises' in the back to be more perfunctory than I wanted.

Comments

[archangelbeth]

Yeah, that's true -- if the ego's not getting fed, by comments or cash, it's harder. I need feedback! (Or, sometimes, a push, if there's writing for pay involved. The sense that someone's there who is personally invested in seeing what I write.)

I'm not sure if I could write a total book without any feedback, unless I had a really Firm Idea. But writing it only for the feedback is disheartening, or writing something and not getting "enough" feedback is disheartening. (Where "enough" is a variable that depends on how invested I am in writing the thing in the first place. The less invested, the more feedback I need...)

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Mm... yeah... I do need feedback, too. It's too hard to get through a whole book without someone caring that about it, too, with me.

I didn't realize, though, that just *one* person would be enough to get me through a whole novel, though. That was... an experience.

So. yeah... balance. I think with writing, which really has to have both a writer and a reader to make it *live*, there has to be some kind of feedback to make sure it's touches someone.

[archangelbeth]

My first novel... Hm. I did that one with no Internet, really, so it was just Ze Spouse reading it, and that worked.

Feedback! Is important! Ivory towers need Internet! *grin*