Quotes from Daniel H. Pink

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles BY STEVEN PRESSFIELD   Pressfield's

Rewards can deliver a short-term boost—just as a jolt of caffeine can keep you cranking for a few more hours. But the effect wears off—and, worse

While self-flagellation seems motivating—especially to Americans, whose mental models of motivation often begin with howling, red-faced, vein-popping football coaches—it often produces helplessness. Self-compassion, by contrast, prompts people to confront their difficulties head-on and take responsibility for them, researchers have found.

If one person embodies this approach to work and life—the apex predator of the anticipated regret food chain—that person is Jeff Bezos. He's one of the richest people in the world, thanks to founding Amazon, one of the largest companies on the planet. He owns The Washington Post. He visits outer space. Yet in the domain of our most misunderstood emotion, he is best known for a concept that he calls the "Regret Minimization Framework.

right hemisphere is responsible for our ability to comprehend metaphors

Not always, but a lot of the time, when you are doing a piece for someone else it becomes more "work" than joy. When I work for myself there is the pure joy of creating and I can work through the night and not even know it. On a commissioned piece you have to check yourself—be careful to do what the client wants.

You must understand video games. Seriously.

In general the left hemisphere participates in the analysis of information," says a neuroscience primer. "In contrast, the right hemisphere is specialized for synthesis; it is particularly good at putting isolated elements together to perceive things as a whole.

Empathy is the ability to imagine yourself in someone else's position and to intuit what that person is feeling. It is the ability to stand in others' shoes, to see with their eyes, and to feel with their hearts. It is something we do pretty much spontaneously, an act of instinct rather than the product of deliberation.

When you are playful, you are activating the right side of your brain. The logical brain is a limited brain. The right side is unlimited. You can be anything you want.

Motivation 2.0 is similar. At its heart are two elegant and simple ideas: Rewarding an activity will get you more of it. Punishing an activity will get you less of it.

Empathy isn't sympathy—that is, feeling bad for someone else. It is feeling with someone else, sensing what it would be like to be that person. Empathy is a stunning act of imaginative derring-do, the ultimate virtual reality—climbing into another's mind to experience the world from that person's perspective.

Across continents and time zones, as predictable as the ocean tides, was the same daily oscillation—a peak, a trough, and a rebound. Beneath the surface of our everyday life is a hidden pattern: crucial, unexpected, and revealing.

The left converges on a single answer; the right diverges into a Gestalt. The left focuses on categories, the right on relationships. The left can grasp the details. But only the right hemisphere can see the big picture.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan

Rewarding an activity will get you more of it. Punishing an activity will get you less of it.

But Empathy—like many of the other high-concept, high-touch aptitudes—wasn't always given its proper due in the Information Age. It was often considered a softhearted nicety in a world that demanded hardheaded detachment. To undermine an argument or dismiss an idea, you just had to call it "touchy-feely.

We simply don't take issues of when as seriously as we take questions of what.

Switch by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.

the Zeigarnik effect, our tendency to remember unfinished tasks better than finished ones.2

We're persuading, convincing, and influencing others to give up something they've got in exchange for what we've got.

Tuckman believed that all teams proceeded through four stages: forming, storming, norming, and performing.

salespeople adept at improvising "can generate ideas, incorporate changes quickly and easily, and communicate effectively and convincingly during sales presentations."5

Being honest about the existence of a small blemish can enhance your offering's true beauty.