Another study offers a second possible purpose-centered policy prescription. Physicians in high-profile settings like the Mayo Clinic face pressures and demands that can often lead to burnout. But field research at the prestigious medical facility found that letting doctors spend one day a week on the aspect of their job that was most meaningful to them—whether patient care, research, or community service—could reduce the physical and emotional exhaustion that accompanies their work. Doctors who participated in this trial policy had half the burnout rate of those who did not.13 Think of it as “20 percent time” with a purpose.
THE GOOD LIFE
Each year about thirteen hundred seniors graduate from the University of Rochester and begin their journey into what many of their parents and professors like to call the real world. Edward Deci, Richard Ryan, and their colleague Christopher Niemiec decided to ask a sample of these soon-to-be graduates about their life goals—and then to follow up with them early in their careers to see how they were doing. While much social science research is done with student volunteers, scientists rarely track students after they’ve packed up their diplomas and exited the campus gates. And these researchers wanted to study the post-college time frame because it represents a “critical development period that marks people’s transitions to their adult identities and lives.”14
Some of the U of R students had what Deci, Ryan, and Niemiec label “extrinsic aspirations”—for instance, to become wealthy or to achieve fame—what we might call “profit goals.” Others had “intrinsic aspirations”—to help others improve their lives, to learn, and to grow—or what we might think of as “purpose goals.” After these students had been out in the real word for between one and two years, the researchers tracked them down to see how they were faring.
The people who’d had purpose goals and felt they were attaining them reported higher levels of satisfaction and subjective well-being than when they were in college, and quite low levels of anxiety and depression. That’s probably no surprise. They’d set a personally meaningful goal and felt they were reaching it. In that situation, most of us would likely feel pretty good, too.
But the results for people with profit goals were more complicated. Those who said they were attaining their goals—accumulating wealth, winning acclaim—reported levels of satisfaction, self-esteem, and positive affect no higher than when they were students. In other words, they’d reached their goals, but it didn’t make them any happier. What’s more, graduates with profit goals showed increases in anxiety, depression, and other negative indicators—again, even though they were attaining their goals.
“One cannot lead a life that is truly excellent without feeling that one belongs to something greater and more permanent than oneself.”
MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI
“These findings are rather striking,” the researchers write, “as they suggest that attainment of a particular set of goals [in this case, profit goals] has no impact on well-being and actually contributes to i ll-being.”15
When I discussed these results with Deci and Ryan, they were especially emphatic about their significance—because the findings suggest that even when we do get what we want, it’s not always what we need. “People who are very high in extrinsic goals for wealth are more likely to attain that wealth, but they’re still unhappy,” Ryan told me.
Or as Deci put it, “The typical notion is this: You value something. You attain it. Then you’re better off as a function of it. But what we find is that there are certain things that if you value and if you attain them, you’re worse off as a result of it, not better off.”
Failing to understand this conundrum—that satisfaction depends not merely on having goals, but on having the right goals—can lead sensible people down self-destructive paths. If people chase profit goals, reach those goals, and still don’t feel any better about their lives, one response is to increase the size and scope of the goals—to seek more money or greater outside validation. And that can “drive them down a road of further unhappiness thinking it’s the road to happiness,” Ryan said.
“One of the reasons for anxiety and depression in the high attainers is that they’re not having good relationships. They’re busy making money and attending to themselves and that means that there’s less room in their lives for love and attention and caring and empathy and the things that truly count,” Ryan added.
And if the broad contours of these findings are true for individuals, why shouldn’t they also be true for organizations—which, of course, are collections of individuals? I don’t mean to say that profit doesn’t matter. It does. The profit motive has been an important fuel for achievement. But it’s not the only motive. And it’s not the most important one. Indeed, if we were to look at history’s greatest achievements—from the printing press to constitutional democracy to cures for deadly diseases—the spark that kept the creators working deep into the night was purpose at least as much as profit. A healthy society—and healthy business organizations—begins with purpose and considers profit a way to move toward that end or a happy by-product of its attainment.
And here the boomers—maybe, just maybe—can take the lead. On the subjects of autonomy and mastery, adults should look to the eloquent example of children. But perhaps purpose is another matter. Being able to contemplate the big picture, to ponder one’s own mortality, to understand the paradox that attaining certain goals isn’t the answer seem to require having spent a few years on the planet. And since the planet very soon will contain more people over age sixty-five than under age five for the first time in its existence, the timing couldn’t be better.
It’s in our nature to seek purpose. But that nature is now being revealed and expressed on a scale that is demographically unprecedented and, until recently, scarcely imaginable. The consequences could rejuvenate our businesses and remake our world.
A CENTRAL IDEA of this book has been the mismatch between what science knows and what business does. The gap is wide. Its existence is alarming. And though closing it seems daunting, we have reasons to be optimistic.
The scientists who study human motivation, several of whom we’ve encountered in this book, offer us a sharper and more accurate account of both human performance and the human condition. The truths they’ve revealed are simple, yet powerful. The science shows that those typical twentieth-century carrot-and-stick motivators—things we consider somehow a “natural” part of human enterprise—can sometimes work. But they’re effective in only a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances. The science shows that “if-then” rewards—the mainstays of the Motivation 2.0 operating system—not only are ineffective in many situations, but also can crush the high-level, creative, conceptual abilities that are central to current and future economic and social progress. The science shows that the secret to high performance isn’t our biological drive or our reward-and-punishment drive, but our third drive—our deep-seated desire to direct our own lives, to extend and expand our abilities, and to live a life of purpose.
Bringing our businesses in sync with these truths won’t be easy. Unlearning old ideas is difficult, undoing old habits even harder. And I’d be less sanguine about the prospects of closing the motivation gap anytime soon, if it weren’t for this: The science confirms what we already know in our hearts.
We know that human beings are not merely smaller, slower, better-smelling horses galloping after that day’s carrot. We know—if we’ve spent time with young children or remember ourselves at our best—that we’re not destined to be passive and compliant. We’re designed to be active and engaged. And we know that the 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 affirmat
ion of our humanity.
Part Three
The Type I Toolkit
Welcome to the Type I Toolkit.
This is your guide to taking the ideas in this book and putting them into action.
Whether you’re looking for a better way to run your organization, navigate your career, or help your kids, there’s a tip, a best practice, or a recommended book for you. And if ever you need a quick summary of Drive, or you want to look up one of its terms, you can find that here, too.
You don’t have to read this section in any particular order. Pick an entry that interests you and dive right in. Like any good toolkit, this one is versatile enough for you to return to again and again.
P.S. I’d love to hear your suggestions for what to include in future editions of the Type I Toolkit. Send your ideas directly to me at
[email protected] WHAT’S IN THIS TOOLKIT
Type I for Individuals: Nine Strategies for Awakening Your Motivation
Type I for Organizations: Nine Ways to Improve Your Company, Office, or Group
The Zen of Compensation: Paying People the Type I Way
Type I for Parents and Educators: Nine Ideas for Helping Our Kids
The Type I Reading List: Fifteen Essential Books
Listen to the Gurus: Six Business Thinkers Who Get It
The Type I Fitness Plan: Four Tips for Getting (and Staying) Motivated to Exercise
Drive: The Recap
Drive: The Glossary
The Drive Discussion Guide: Twenty Conversation Starters to Keep You Thinking and Talking
Find Out More—About Yourself and This Topic
Type I for Individuals: Nine Strategies for Awakening Your Motivation
Type I’s are made, not born. Although the world is awash in extrinsic motivators, there’s a lot we can do to bring more autonomy, mastery, and purpose into our work and life. Here are nine exercises to get you on the right track.
GIVE YOURSELF A “FLOW TEST”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi did more than discover the concept of “flow.” He also introduced an ingenious new technique to measure it. Csikszentmihalyi and his University of Chicago team equipped participants in their research studies with electronic pagers. Then they paged people at random intervals (approximately eight times a day) for a week, asking them to describe their mental state at that moment. Compared with previous methods, these real-time reports proved far more honest and revealing.
You can use Csikszentmihalyi’s methodological innovation in your own quest for mastery by giving yourself a “flow test.” Set a reminder on your computer or mobile phone to go off at forty random times in a week. Each time your device beeps, write down what you’re doing, how you’re feeling, and whether you’re in “flow.” Record your observations, look at the patterns, and consider the following questions:• Which moments produced feelings of “flow”? Where were you? What were you working on? Who were you with?
• Are certain times of day more flow-friendly than others? How could you restructure your day based on your findings?
• How might you increase the number of optimal experiences and reduce the moments when you felt disengaged or distracted?
• If you’re having doubts about your job or career, what does this exercise tell you about your true source of intrinsic motivation?
FIRST, ASK A BIG QUESTION . . .
In 1962, Clare Boothe Luce, one of the first women to serve in the U.S. Congress, offered some advice to President John F. Kennedy. “A great man,” she told him, “is one sentence.” Abraham Lincoln’s sentence was: “He preserved the union and freed the slaves.” Franklin Roosevelt’s was: “He lifted us out of a great depression and helped us win a world war.” Luce feared that Kennedy’s attention was so splintered among different priorities that his sentence risked becoming a muddled paragraph.
You don’t have to be a president—of the United States or of your local gardening club—to learn from this tale. One way to orient your life toward greater purpose is to think about your sentence. Maybe it’s: “He raised four kids who became happy and healthy adults.” Or “She invented a device that made people’s lives easier.” Or “He cared for every person who walked into his office regardless of whether that person could pay.” Or “She taught two generations of children how to read.”
As you contemplate your purpose, begin with the big question: What’s your sentence?
. . . THEN KEEP ASKING A SMALL QUESTION
The big question is necessary, but not sufficient. That’s where the small question comes in. Real achievement doesn’t happen overnight. As anyone who’s trained for a marathon, learned a new language, or run a successful division can attest, you spend a lot more time grinding through tough tasks than you do basking in applause.
Here’s something you can do to keep yourself motivated. At the end of each day, ask yourself whether you were better today than you were yesterday. Did you do more? Did you do it well? Or to get specific, did you learn your ten vocabulary words, make your eight sales calls, eat your five servings of fruits and vegetables, write your four pages? You don’t have to be flawless each day. Instead, look for small measures of improvement such as how long you practiced your saxophone or whether you held off on checking e-mail until you finished that report you needed to write. Reminding yourself that you don’t need to be a master by day 3 is the best way of ensuring you will be one by day 3,000.
So before you go to sleep each night, ask yourself the small question: Was I better today than yesterday?
TAKE A SAGMEISTER
The designer Stefan Sagmeister has found a brilliant way to ensure he’s living a Type I life. Think about the standard pattern in developed countries, he says. People usually spend the first twenty-five or so years of their lives learning, the next forty or so years working, and the final twenty-five in retirement. That boilerplate timeline got Sagmeister wondering: Why not snip five years from retirement and sprinkle them into your working years?
So every seven years, Sagmeister closes his graphic design shop, tells his clients he won’t be back for a year, and goes off on a 365-day sabbatical. He uses the time to travel, to live places he’s never been, and to experiment with new projects. It sounds risky, I know. But he says the ideas he generates during the year “off ” often provide his income for the next seven years. “Taking a Sagmeister,” as I now call it, requires a fair bit of planning and saving, of course. But doesn’t forgoing that big-screen TV seem a small price to pay for an unforgettable—and un-get-backable—year of personal exploration? The truth is, this idea is more realistic than many of us realize. Which is why I hope to take a Sagmeister in a couple of years and why you should consider it, too.
GIVE YOURSELF A PERFORMANCE REVIEW
Performance reviews, those annual or biannual rituals of organizational life, are about as enjoyable as a toothache and as productive as a train wreck. Nobody likes them—not the giver, not the receiver. They don’t really help us achieve mastery—since the feedback often comes six months after the work is complete. (Imagine Serena Williams or Twyla Tharp seeing their results or reading reviews only twice a year.) And yet managers keep on hauling employees into their offices for those awkward, painful encounters.
Maybe there’s a better way. Maybe, as Douglas McGregor and others have suggested, we should give ourselves our own performance reviews. Here’s how. Figure out your goals—mostly learning goals, but also a few performance goals—and then every month, call yourself to your office and give yourself an appraisal. How are you faring? Where are you falling short? What tools, information, or support might you need to do better?
Some other hints:• Set both smaller and larger goals so that when it comes time to evaluate yourself you’ve already accomplished some whole tasks.
• Make sure you understand how every aspect of your work relates to your larger purpose.
• Be brutally honest. This exercise is aimed at helping you improve performance and achieve mastery—so if you ra
tionalize failures or gloss over your mistakes instead of learning from them, you’re wasting your time.
And if doing this solo isn’t your thing, gather a small group of colleagues for regular peer-based do-it-yourself performance reviews. If your comrades really care, they’ll tell you the truth and hold you accountable. One last question for bosses: Why in God’s name are you not encouraging all your employees to do this?
GET UNSTUCK BY GOING OBLIQUE
Even the most intrinsically motivated person sometimes gets stuck. So here’s a simple, easy, and fun way to power out of your mental morass. In 1975, producer Brian Eno and artist Peter Schmidt published a set of one hundred cards containing strategies that helped them overcome the pressure-packed moments that always accompany a deadline. Each card contains a single, often inscrutable, question or statement to push you out of a mental rut. (Some examples: What would your closest friend do? Your mistake was a hidden intention. What is the simplest solution? Repetition is a form of change. Don’t avoid what is easy.) If you’re working on a project and find yourself stymied, pull an Oblique card from the deck. These brain bombs are a great way to keep your mind open despite constraints you can’t control. You can buy the deck at www.enoshop.co.uk/ or follow one of the Twitter accounts inspired by the strategies, such as: http://twitter.com/oblique_chirps.