Quotes from Daniel H. Pink

When buyers can know more than sellers, sellers are no longer protectors and purveyors of information. They're the curators and clarifiers of it—helping to make sense of the blizzard of facts, data, and options. "If a customer has any question at all

we've progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. And now we're progressing yet again—to a society of creators and empathizers, of pattern recognizers and meaning makers.

But all of you are likely spending more time than you realize selling in a broader sense—pitching colleagues, persuading funders, cajoling kids. Like it or not, we're all in sales now.

Indeed, the very premise of extrinsic incentives is that we'll always respond rationally to them. But even most economists don't believe that anymore. Sometimes these motivators work. Often they don't. And many times, they inflict collateral damage. In short, the new way economists think about what we do is hard to reconcile with Motivation 2.0.

People use rewards expecting to gain the benefit of increasing another person's motivation and behavior, but in so doing, they often incur the unintentional and hidden cost of undermining that person's intrinsic motivation toward the activity."4 This is one of the most robust findings in social science—and also one of the most ignored

To survive in this age, individuals and organizations must examine what they're doing to earn a living and ask themselves three questions: 1. Can someone overseas do it cheaper? 2. Can a computer do it faster? 3. Is what I'm offering in demand in an age of abundance?

The other study examined the effect of awe. Awe lives "in the upper reaches of pleasure and on the boundary of fear," as two scholars put it. It "is a little studied emotion . . . central to the experience of religion, politics, nature, and art."19 It has two key attributes: vastness (the experience of something larger than ourselves) and accommodation (the vastness forces us to adjust our mental structures).

Ample research has shown that people working in self-organized teams are more satisfied than those working in inherited teams.

Taken together, all of these studies suggest that the path to a life of meaning and significance isn't to "live in the present" as so many spiritual gurus have advised. It is to integrate our perspectives on time into a coherent whole, one that helps us comprehend who we are and why we're here.

Pair New Year's resolutions with Old Year's regrets.

Regret is the quintessential upward counterfactual—the ultimate If Only.

Do rewards motivate people? Absolutely. They motivate people to get rewards.

For a generation of people, games have become a tool for solving problems as well as a vehicle for self-expression and self-exploration. Video games are as woven into this generation's lives as television was into that of their predecessors.

people oriented toward autonomy and intrinsic motivation have higher self-esteem, better interpersonal relationships, and greater general well-being than those who are extrinsically motivated.

This is what it means to serve: improving another's life and, in turn, improving the world. That's the lifeblood of service and the final secret to moving others.

richest experiences in our lives aren't when we're clamoring for validation from others, but when we're listening to our own voice—doing something that matters, doing it well, and doing it in the service of a cause larger than ourselves. So, in the end, repairing the mismatch and bringing our understanding of motivation into the twenty-first century is more than an essential move for business. It's an affirmation of our humanity.

began by writing about creativity. Creativity took him into the study of play. And his exploration of play unlocked an insight about the human experience that would make him famous. In the midst of play, many people enjoyed what Csikszentmihalyi called "autotelic experiences"—from the Greek auto (self) and telos (goal or purpose). In an autotelic experience, the goal is self-fulfilling; the activity is its own reward.

secrets of a perfect nap.

When used in these situations, "if-then" rewards usually do more harm than good. By neglecting the ingredients of genuine motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose—they limit what each of us can achieve.

When money is used as an external reward for some activity, the subjects lose intrinsic interest for the activity," he wrote.5 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, can reduce a person's longer-term motivation to continue the project.

Create a peaceful environment.

Down a cup of coffee.

Mediocrity is expensive—and

Design is a classic whole-minded aptitude. It is, to borrow Heskett's terms, a combination of utility and significance.