Quotes from Daniel H. Pink

Two days. Forty-eight hours without flow plunged people into a state eerily similar to a serious psychiatric disorder. The experiment suggests that flow, the deep sense of engagement that Motivation 3.0 calls for, isn't a nicety. It's a necessity. We need it to survive. It is the oxygen of the soul.

The lesson: Clarity on how to think without clarity on how to act can leave people unmoved.

Selling makes many of us uncomfortable and even a bit disgusted ("ick," "yuck," "ugh"), in part because we believe that its practice revolves around duplicity, dissembling, and double-dealing.

actions and addictive behavior—have in common, perhaps more than anything else, is that they're entirely short-term.

Asymmetrical information creates all sorts of headaches. If the seller knows much more about the product than the buyer, the buyer understandably gets suspicious. What's the seller concealing?

Meantime, British organizations such as the London Business School and the Yorkshire Water Company have established artist-in-residence programs.

He said that in an attempt to understand the law—or, for that matter, just about anything—the key was to focus on what he termed the "one percent." Don't get lost in the crabgrass of details, he urged us. Instead, think about the essence of what you're exploring—the one percent that gives life to the other ninety-nine.

injecting the personal into the professional can boost performance and increase quality of care.

Addicts want the quick fix regardless of the eventual harm. Cheaters want the quick win—regardless of the lasting consequences.

When honest sellers opt out, the only ones who remain are the shysters and the charlatans—pushy guys in suits using sleazy tactics to stick you with a heap of junk. Ick.

we do better when we move beyond solving a puzzle to serving a person.

Alas, at the heart of private legal practice is perhaps the most autonomy-crushing mechanism imaginable: the billable hour.

2016 study looked at more than eight hundred workers (mostly in information technology, education

Alas, the social science shows something different and more nuanced. We human beings talk to ourselves all the time—so much, in fact, that it's possible to categorize our self-talk. Some of it is positive, as in "I'm strong," "I've got this," or "I will be the world's greatest salesman." Some

According to Goleman, IQ can influence the profession one enters. My IQ, for instance, is way too low for a career in astrophysics. But within a profession, mastery of L-Directed Thinking matters relatively little. More important are qualities that are tougher to quantify, the very kinds of high-concept and high-touch abilities I've been mentioning—imagination, joyfulness, and social dexterity.

a world of perfect information and low transaction costs, the parties will bargain to a wealth-maximizing result.

Buyers today aren't "fully informed" in the idealized way that many economic models assume. But neither are they the hapless victims of asymmetrical information they once were.

For instance, research by Goleman and the Hay Group has found that within organizations, the most effective leaders were funny (that is, funny ha-ha, not funny strange). These leaders had their charges laughing three times more often than their managerial counterparts.

They think they know a lot about me, because I know a lot about them.

People want a fair deal from someone they like.

To be clear, it wasn't necessarily the rewards themselves that dampened the children's interest. Remember: When children didn't expect a reward, receiving one had little impact on their intrinsic motivation. Only contingent rewards—if you do this, then you'll get that—had the negative effect.

Choose things in your life that will endure, that are a pleasure to use. Classic clothes never go out of style. Furniture should get better with age. Choose things because they delight you, not because they impress others. And never let things be more important than your family, friends, and your own spirit.

I have known strong minds, with imposing, undoubting, Cobbett-like manners; but I have never met a great mind of this sort. The truth is, a great mind must be androgynous." —SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

High performers, its research concludes, work for fifty-two minutes and then break for seventeen minutes. DeskTime never published the data in a peer-reviewed journal, so your mileage may vary. But the evidence is overwhelming that short breaks are effective—and deliver considerable bang for their limited buck. Even "micro-breaks" can be helpful.19