Quotes from Daniel H. Pink

The differences in the two thinking styles, as Baron-Cohen describes them, are intriguing. "Systematizing involves exactness, excellent attention to local detail," and an attraction to fixed rules independent of context, he says. "To systematize, you need detachment." 21 (Baron describes autism as an "extreme" male brain.)

If Only counterfactuals degrade our feelings now, but—and this is key—they can improve our lives later. Regret is the quintessential upward counterfactual—the ultimate If Only. The source of its power, scientists are discovering, is that it muddles the conventional pain-pleasure calculus.[10] Its very purpose is to make us feel worse—because by making us feel worse today, regret helps us do better tomorrow.

People at work are thirsting for context, yearning to know that what they do contributes to a larger whole. And a powerful way to provide that context is to spend a little less time telling how and a little more time showing why.

This could be one reason that paying people to stop smoking often works in the short run. It replaces one (dangerous) addiction with another (more benign) one.

Type I behavior: A way of thinking and an approach to life built around intrinsic, rather than extrinsic, motivators. It is powered by our innate need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.   Type X behavior: Behavior that is fueled more by extrinsic desires than intrinsic ones and that concerns itself less with the inherent satisfaction of an activity and more with the external rewards to which that activity leads.

Motivation comes in spurts—which is why Stanford psychologist B. J. Fogg recommends taking advantage of "motivation waves" so you can weather "motivation troughs.

Design in its simplest form is the activity of creating solutions. Design is something that everyone does every day.

Harvard professor Teresa Amabile concurs. After examining 12,000 daily diary entries by several hundred workers, she found that the single largest motivator was making progress in meaningful work.16 Wins needn't be large to be meaningful. When you enter a new role, set up small "high-probability" targets and celebrate when you hit them.

Empathy is related to Symphony—because empathic people understand the importance of context. They see the whole person much as symphonic thinkers see the whole picture.

I call time-outs like these "vigilance breaks"—brief pauses before high-stakes encounters to review instructions and guard against error. Vigilance breaks have gone a long way in preventing the University of Michigan Medical Center from transmogrifying into the Hospital of Doom during the afternoon trough. Tremper says that in the time since he implemented these breaks, the quality of care has risen, complications have declined, and both doctors and patients are more at ease.

BMW's Chris Bangle says, "We don't make 'automobiles.'" BMW makes "moving works of art that express the driver's love of quality.

In addition, a study of 11,000 industrial scientists and engineers working at companies in the United States found that the desire for intellectual challenge—that is, the urge to master something new and engaging—was the best predictor of productivity. Scientists motivated by this intrinsic desire filed significantly more patents than those whose main motivation was money, even controlling for the amount of effort each group expended.

Likewise, several studies show that paying people to exercise, stop smoking, or take their medicines produces terrific results at first—but the healthy behavior disappears once the incentives are removed.

A brief reminder of the purpose of their work doubled their performance.

She has found that the single greatest motivator is "making progress in one's work." The days that people make progress are the days they feel most motivated and engaged. By creating conditions for people to make progress, shining a light on that progress, recognizing and celebrating progress, organizations can help their own cause and enrich people's lives.

The problem with making an extrinsic reward the only destination that matters is that some people will choose the quickest route there, even if it means taking the low road.

Which leads us inexorably to canned soup.

Some work in posh offices with glorious views, others in dreary cubicles with Dilbert cartoons and a free calendar.

Americans love complaining about bloated governments—but America's sales force outnumbers the entire federal workforce by more than 5 to 1.

Routine, not-so-interesting jobs require direction; nonroutine, more interesting work depends on self-direction. One business leader, who didn't want to be identified, said it plainly. When he conducts job interviews, he tells prospective employees: "If you need me to motivate you, I probably don't want to hire you.

It is in fact the discovery and creation of problems rather than any superior knowledge, technical skill, or craftsmanship that often sets the creative person apart from others in his field."8

writing is an act of discovering what you think and what you believe

The quality of the problem that is found is a forerunner of the quality of the solution that is attained . . ." Getzels concluded.

It's time to rescue humor from its status as mere entertainment and recognize it for what it is—a sophisticated and peculiarly human form of intelligence that can't be replicated by computers and that is becoming increasingly valuable in a high-concept, high-touch world.