Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

  The second tactic that smart organizations use to increase their flow-friendliness and their employees’ opportunities for mastery is to trigger the positive side of the Sawyer Effect. Recall from Chapter 2 that extrinsic rewards can turn play into work. But it’s also possible to run the current in the other direction—and turn work into play. Some tasks at work don’t automatically provide surges of flow, yet still need to get done. So the shrewdest enterprises afford employees the freedom to sculpt their jobs in ways that bring a little bit of flow to otherwise mundane duties. Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane Dutton, two business school professors, have studied this phenomenon among hospital cleaners, nurses, and hairdressers. They found, for instance, that some members of the cleaning staff at hospitals, instead of doing the minimum the job required, took on new tasks—from chatting with patients to helping make nurses’ jobs go more smoothly. Adding these more absorbing challenges increased these cleaners’ satisfaction and boosted their own views of their skills. By reframing aspects of their duties, they helped make work more playful and more fully their own. “Even in low-autonomy jobs,” Wrzesniewski and Dutton write, “employees can create new domains for mastery.”7

  THE THREE LAWS OF MASTERY

  Flow is essential to mastery. But flow doesn’t guarantee mastery—because the two concepts operate on different horizons of time. One happens in a moment; the other unfolds over months, years, sometimes decades. You and I each might reach flow tomorrow morning—but neither one of us will achieve mastery overnight.

  So how can we enlist flow in the quest for something that goes deeper and endures longer? What can we do to move toward mastery, one of the key elements of Type I behavior, in our organizations and our lives? A few behavioral scientists have offered some initial answers to those questions, and their findings suggest that mastery abides by three, somewhat peculiar, laws.

  Mastery Is a Mindset

  As with so many things in life, the pursuit of mastery is all in our head. At least that’s what Carol Dweck has discovered.

  Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford University, has been studying motivation and achievement in children and young adults for nearly forty years, amassing a body of rigorous empirical research that has made her a superstar in contemporary behavioral science. Dweck’s signature insight is that what people believe shapes what people achieve. Our beliefs about ourselves and the nature of our abilities—what she calls our “self-theories”—determine how we interpret our experiences and can set the boundaries on what we accomplish. Although her research looks mostly at notions of “intelligence,” her findings apply with equal force to most human capabilities. And they yield the first law of mastery: Mastery is a mindset.

  According to Dweck, people can hold two different views of their own intelligence. Those who have an “entity theory” believe that intelligence is just that—an entity. It exists within us, in a finite supply that we cannot increase. Those who subscribe to an “incremental theory” take a different view. They believe that while intelligence may vary slightly from person to person, it is ultimately something that, with effort, we can increase. To analogize to physical qualities, incremental theorists consider intelligence as something like strength. (Want to get stronger and more muscular? Start pumping iron.) Entity theorists view it as something more like height. (Want to get taller? You’re out of luck.)f If you believe intelligence is a fixed quantity, then every educational and professional encounter becomes a measure of how much you have. If you believe intelligence is something you can increase, then the same encounters become opportunities for growth. In one view, intelligence is something you demonstrate; in the other, it’s something you develop.

  “Figure out for yourself what you want to be really good at, know that you’ll never really satisfy yourself that you’ve made it, and accept that that’s okay.”

  ROBERT B. REICH

  Former U.S. Secretary of Labor

  The two self-theories lead down two very different paths—one that heads toward mastery and one that doesn’t. For instance, consider goals. Dweck says they come in two varieties—performance goals and learning goals. Getting an A in French class is a performance goal. Being able to speak French is a learning goal. “Both goals are entirely normal and pretty much universal,” Dweck says, “and both can fuel achievement.”8 But only one leads to mastery. In several studies, Dweck found that giving children a performance goal (say, getting a high mark on a test) was effective for relatively straightforward problems but often inhibited children’s ability to apply the concepts to new situations. For example, in one study, Dweck and a colleague asked junior high students to learn a set of scientific principles, giving half of the students a performance goal and half a learning goal. After both groups demonstrated they had grasped the material, researchers asked the students to apply their knowledge to a new set of problems, related but not identical to what they’d just studied. Students with learning goals scored significantly higher on these novel challenges. They also worked longer and tried more solutions. As Dweck writes, “With a learning goal, students don’t have to feel that they’re already good at something in order to hang in and keep trying. After all, their goal is to learn, not to prove they’re smart.”9

  Indeed, the two self-theories take very different views of effort. To incremental theorists, exertion is positive. Since incremental theorists believe that ability is malleable, they see working harder as a way to get better. By contrast, says Dweck, “the entity theory . . . is a system that requires a diet of easy successes.” In this schema, if you have to work hard, it means you’re not very good. People therefore choose easy targets that, when hit, affirm their existing abilities but do little to expand them. In a sense, entity theorists want to look like masters without expending the effort to attain mastery.

  Finally, the two types of thinking trigger contrasting responses to adversity—one that Dweck calls “helpless,” the other, “mastery-oriented.” In a study of American fifth- and sixth-graders, Dweck gave students eight conceptual problems they could solve, followed by four they could not (because the questions were too advanced for children that age). Students who subscribed to the idea that brain-power is fixed gave up quickly on the tough problems and blamed their (lack of ) intelligence for their difficulties. Students with a more expansive mindset kept working in spite of the difficulty and deployed far more inventive strategies to find a solution. What did these students blame for their inability to conquer the toughest problems? “The answer, which surprised us, was that they didn’t blame anything,” Dweck says. The young people recognized that setbacks were inevitable on the road to mastery and that they could even be guideposts for the journey.

  Dweck’s insights map nicely to the behavioral distinctions underlying Motivation 2.0 and Motivation 3.0. Type X behavior often holds an entity theory of intelligence, prefers performance goals to learning goals, and disdains effort as a sign of weakness. Type I behavior has an incremental theory of intelligence, prizes learning goals over performance goals, and welcomes effort as a way to improve at something that matters. Begin with one mindset, and mastery is impossible. Begin with the other, and it can be inevitable.

  Mastery Is a Pain

  Each summer, about twelve hundred young American men and women arrive at the United States Military Academy at West Point to begin four years of study and to take their place in the fabled “long gray line.” But before any of them sees a classroom, they go through seven weeks of Cadet Basic Training—otherwise known as “Beast Barracks.” By the time the summer ends, one in twenty of these talented, dedicated young adults has dropped out. A group of scholars—two from West Point, another from the University of Pennsylvania, and a fourth from the University of Michigan—wanted to understand why some students continued on the road toward military mastery and others got off at the first exit.

  “Try to pick a profession in which you enjoy even the most mundane, tedious parts. Then you will always be happy.”

  WI
LL SHORTZ

  Puzzle guru

  Was it physical strength and athleticism? Intellect? Leadership ability? Well-roundedness?

  None of the above. The best predictor of success, the researchers found, was the prospective cadets’ ratings on a noncognitive, non-physical trait known as “grit”—defined as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals.”10 The experience of these army officers-in-training confirms the second law of mastery: Mastery is a pain.

  As wonderful as flow is, the path to mastery—becoming ever better at something you care about—is not lined with daisies and spanned by a rainbow. If it were, more of us would make the trip. Mastery hurts. Sometimes—many times—it’s not much fun. That is one lesson of the work of psychologist Anders Ericsson, whose groundbreaking research on expert performance has provided a new theory of what fosters mastery. As he puts it, “Many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the results of intense practice for a minimum of 10 years.”11 Mastery—of sports, music, business—requires effort (difficult, painful, excruciating, all-consuming effort) over a long time (not a week or a month, but a decade).12 Sociologist Daniel Chambliss has referred to this as “the mundanity of excellence.” Like Ericsson, Chambliss found—in a three-year study of Olympic swimmers—that those who did the best typically spent the most time and effort on the mundane activities that readied them for races.13 It’s the same reason that, in another study, the West Point grit researchers found that grittiness—rather than IQ or standardized test scores—is the most accurate predictor of college grades. As they explained, “Whereas the importance of working harder is easily apprehended, the importance of working longer without switching objectives may be less perceptible . . . in every field, grit may be as essential as talent to high accomplishment.”14

  Flow enters the picture here in two ways. If people are conscious of what puts them in flow, they’ll have a clearer idea of what they should devote the time and dedication to master. And those moments of flow in the course of pursuing excellence can help people through the rough parts. But in the end, mastery often involves working and working and showing little improvement, perhaps with a few moments of flow pulling you along, then making a little progress, and then working and working on that new, slightly higher plateau again. It’s grueling, to be sure. But that’s not the problem; that’s the solution.

  As Carol Dweck says, “Effort is one of the things that gives meaning to life. Effort means you care about something, that something is important to you and you are willing to work for it. It would be an impoverished existence if you were not willing to value things and commit yourself to working toward them.”15

  Another doctor, one who lacks a Ph.D. but has a plaque in the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, put it similarly. “Being a professional,” Julius Erving once said, “is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don’t feel like doing them.”16

  Mastery Is an Asymptote

  To understand the final law of mastery, you need to know a little algebra and a little art history.

  From algebra, you might remember the concept of an asymptote. If not, maybe you’ll recognize it below. An asymptote (in this case, a horizontal asymptote) is a straight line that a curve approaches but never quite reaches.

  From art history, you might remember Paul Cézanne, the nineteenth-century French painter. You needn’t remember much—just that he was significant enough to have art critics and scholars write about him. Cézanne’s most enduring paintings came late in his life. And one reason for this, according to University of Chicago economist David Galenson, who’s studied the careers of artists, is that he was endlessly trying to realize his best work. For Cézanne, one critic wrote, the ultimate synthesis of a design was never revealed in a flash; rather he approached it with infinite precautions, stalking it, as it were, now from one point of view, now from another. . . . For him the synthesis was an asymptote toward which he was for ever approaching without ever quite reaching it.17

  This is the nature of mastery: Mastery is an asymptote.

  You can approach it. You can home in on it. You can get really, really, really close to it. But like Cézanne, you can never touch it. Mastery is impossible to realize fully. Tiger Woods, perhaps the greatest golfer of all time, has said flatly that he can—that he must—become better. He said it when he was an amateur. He’ll say it after his best outing or at the end of his finest season. He’s pursuing mastery. That’s well-known. What’s less well-known is that he understands that he’ll never get it. It will always hover beyond his grasp.

  The mastery asymptote is a source of frustration. Why reach for something you can never fully attain? But it’s also a source of allure. Why not reach for it? The joy is in the pursuit more than the realization. In the end, mastery attracts precisely because mastery eludes.

  THE OXYGEN OF THE SOUL

  The subjects were displaying the warning signs of “generalized anxiety disorder,” a mental illness that afflicts roughly 3 percent of the adult population. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV ), the presence of any three of the following six symptoms indicates what could be a serious problem: • Restlessness or feeling keyed up or on edge

  • Being easily fatigued

  • Difficulty concentrating or mind going blank

  • Irritability

  • Muscle tension

  • Sleep disturbance

  These men and women seemed textbook cases. One person, who had previously glided through life with equanimity, now felt “tense, more hostile, angry, and irritated.” Another reported being “more irritable, restless,” and suffering from “shorter concentration.” Yet another scribbled this self-description: “Slept badly, listless, more nervous, more guarded.” Some people feared they were having a nervous breakdown. One person’s mind was so muddied that he inadvertently walked into a wall and broke his glasses.

  Time for a trip to the psychiatrist or a prescription for antianxiety medicine?

  No. It was time for people to let flow back into their lives. In the early 1970s, Csikszentmihalyi conducted an experiment in which he asked people to record all the things they did in their lives that were “noninstrumental”—that is, small activities they undertook not out of obligation or to achieve a particular objective, but because they enjoyed them. Then he issued the following set of instructions:Beginning [morning of target date], when you wake up and until 9:00 PM, we would like you to act in a normal way, doing all the things you have to do, but not doing anything that is “play” or “noninstrumental.”

  In other words, he and his research team directed participants to scrub their lives of flow. People who liked aspects of their work had to avoid situations that might trigger enjoyment. People who relished demanding physical exercise had to remain sedentary. One woman enjoyed washing dishes because it gave her something constructive to do, along with time to fantasize free of guilt, but could wash dishes only when absolutely necessary.

  The results were almost immediate. Even at the end of the first day, participants “noticed an increased sluggishness about their behavior.” They began complaining of headaches. Most reported difficulty concentrating, with “thoughts [that] wander round in circles without getting anywhere.” Some felt sleepy, while others were too agitated to sleep. As Csikszentmihalyi wrote, “After just two days of deprivation . . . the general deterioration in mood was so advanced that prolonging the experiment would have been unadvisable.”18

  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.

  And one of Csikszentmihalyi’s more surprising findings is that people are much more likely to reach that flow state at work than in leisure. Work can often have the structure of other autotelic experi
ences: clear goals, immediate feedback, challenges well matched to our abilities. And when it does, we don’t just enjoy it more, we do it better. That’s why it’s so odd that organizations tolerate work environments that deprive large numbers of people of these experiences. By offering a few more Goldilocks tasks, by looking for ways to unleash the positive side of the Sawyer Effect, organizations can help their own cause and enrich people’s lives.

  Csikszentmihalyi grasped this essential reality more than thirty years ago, when he wrote, “There is no reason to believe any longer that only irrelevant ‘play’ can be enjoyed, while the serious business of life must be borne as a burdensome cross. Once we realize that the boundaries between work and play are artificial, we can take matters in hand and begin the difficult task of making life more livable.”19

  But if we’re looking for guidance on how to do this right—on how to make mastery an ethic for living—our best role models are probably not sitting around a boardroom table or working in the office down the hall.

  Over lunch, Csikszentmihalyi and I talked about children. A little kid’s life bursts with autotelic experiences. Children careen from one flow moment to another, animated by a sense of joy, equipped with a mindset of possibility, and working with the dedication of a West Point cadet. They use their brains and their bodies to probe and draw feedback from the environment in an endless pursuit of mastery.