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Drive

About the Book

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us — from the bestselling author of When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing — offers a paradigm-shattering new way to think about motivation. Most people believe that the best way to motivate is with rewards like money—the classic carrot-and-stick approach. That’s a mistake, says Daniel H. Pink. In this provocative and persuasive book, he asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction – at work, at school, and at home – is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does – and how that affects every aspect of life. He examines the three elements of true motivation — autonomy, mastery, and purpose — and offers smart, surprising techniques for putting these into action in a book that will change how we think and transform how we live. 1

Why This Book

Drive aligns with Stage 2 — Illumination, as both examine intrinsic motivation as the foundation for meaningful and sustainable action. Pink's framework of "autonomy, mastery, and purpose" provides an empirical explanation for what the Path defines as intrinsic drivers, and translates these abstract ideas into observable psychological mechanisms. The book shows how internal motivation operates and why it endures when external validation fails.

Drive complements the Path by adding behavioural science and empirical support, where the Path remained more philosophical. The book demonstrates what intrinsic motivation is through measurable research and practical examples, adding a practical edge to the more conceptual Path itself. While it does reinforce the philosophy of Stage 2, it deviates through its focus on productivity and workplace reform rather than personal authorship. The principles and knowledge remain valuable to the Path nonetheless.

  1. Source: Drive — Daniel H. Pink ↩