Quotes from Daniel H. Pink

So get rid of the unnecessary obligations, time-wasting distractions, and useless burdens that stand in your way.

And the first step in bulldozing these obstacles is to enumerate them. As Peters puts it, "What you decide not to do is probably more important than what you decide to do.

Here's Ohga: "At Sony, we assume that all products of our competitors have basically the same technology, price, performance, and features. Design is the only thing that differentiates one product from another in the marketplace.

What an individual does day to day on the job now must stretch across functional boundaries. Designers analyze. Analysts design. Marketers create. Creators market.

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.

business writer Polly LaBarre notes, "The United States spends more on trash bags than ninety other countries spend on everything.

Rewards do not undermine people's intrinsic motivation for dull tasks because there is little or no intrinsic motivation to be undermined.

start planning how to achieve those top five goals. And the other twenty? Get rid of them.

Mastery of design, empathy, play, and other seemingly "soft" aptitudes is now the main way for individuals and firms to stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Lawyers often face intense demands but have relatively little "decision latitude." Behavioral scientists use this term to describe the choices, and perceived choices, a person has. In a sense, it's another way of describing autonomy—and lawyers are glum and cranky because they don't have much of it.

frequent short breaks are more effective than occasional ones

Foundation regrets sound like this: If only I'd done the work.

Jobs that are demanding but don't offer autonomy burn us out.

The longer it takes for a boss to respond to their e-mails, the less satisfied people are with their leader.

The best endings don't leave us happy. Instead, they produce something richer—a rush of unexpected insight, a fleeting moment of transcendence, the possibility that by discarding what we wanted we've gotten what we need.

E-mail response time is the single best predictor of whether employees are satisfied with their boss, according to research by Duncan Watts, a Columbia University sociologist who is now a principal researcher for Microsoft Research. The longer it takes for a boss to respond to their e-mails, the less satisfied people are with their leader.1

Goals may cause systematic problems for organizations due to narrowed focus, unethical behavior, increased risk taking, decreased cooperation, and decreased intrinsic motivation. Use care when applying goals in your organization.

Pitches that rhyme are more sublime.

Moral regrets sound like this: If only I'd done the right thing.

grades become a reward for compliance—but don't have much to do with learning. Meanwhile, students whose grades don't measure up often see themselves as failures and give up trying to learn.

That's why Linux and Wikipedia and Firefox work.

Temporal landmarks slow our thinking, allowing us to deliberate at a higher level and make better decisions

We often understand something better when we see it in comparison with something else than when we see it in isolation.

The most successful people, the evidence shows, often aren't directly pursuing conventional notions of success. They're working hard and persisting through difficulties because of their internal desire to control their lives, learn about their world, and accomplish something that endures.