Bonjour! We’ve made another episode! 🥳🎙️🔉
This time, I spoke with best-selling author Daniel Pink.
For anyone with even a passing interest in motivation theory, Daniel Pink will likely need little introduction. His 2009 talk ‘The Puzzle of Motivation’ is one of the most popular TED talks ever.
Pink has a knack for turning a tangle of big (and sometimes misunderstood) ideas and academic research into approachable content that will make you think. He is the author of seven books including Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, and his latest one, The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward.
In this interview, we talked about:
why intrinsic motivation matters in the 21st century
how some workplaces are–still–getting it wrong
lowering the bar for what meaningful work1 is
sensible tips to protect the inner drive of children
his method to sustain long-term motivation
using regrets as data to live according to our values
You can listen directly in your browser (click the play button above☝🏾) or use an external app. I’ve included about a third of our discussion below as a written Q&A, and a complete transcript of the interview here.
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With a *big* merci to sound engineer and composer Hugo Rabes 💫🎧
I want to talk about your new book, The Power of regret. How looking backward moves us forward. You turn the mantra of “no regrets” on its head and push us to look at regrets as a guide toward a better life. How can regret act as a source of motivation?
Let me start with some background. There are two key things we know about regret. One is that it's integral to our cognitive machinery; everybody has regrets. This is really important. [...] It is one of the most common emotions that human beings have. The only people who don't have regrets are people with some kind of disorder, or little kids whose brains haven’t developed. The second thing is: Why would something that feels bad be so ubiquitous? The answer is: it's useful. It clarifies what we value and instructs us on how to do better.
We need to actually have a new view of regret: not ignore our regrets, which I think a lot of us in this overly positive environment are encouraged to do, but also not wallow in our regrets, but actually confront our regrets: use them as information, as signals, as data.
So now, what does it teach us about motivation? I think that when you understand what people regret the most, you understand what they value the most. So as you know, I've collected at this point over 21,000 regrets from people in 109 countries around the world. These four core regrets keep coming up over and over again. And they operate as a reverse image of what people want out of life.
Could you give us an example of a regret that you've had, and how you use it as a positive drive?
I have regrets about kindness, particularly when I was younger. [Not] from being a bully, it was sort of unkindness by inaction. I was in many situations where people were not being treated well, where they were being excluded, not handled fairly. And I saw, and I didn't do anything. And it bugs me, man.
So [...] what do I do with that? I can do this ridiculous thing and say, “No regrets! I never look backward. I'm always positive.” Okay, that's delusional. Or I can say: “Oh, my God, I was unkind by inaction. I'm a terrible human being, I always do this, I'm worthless!” That's a bad idea too. What I want to do is say, Wait a second, this regret that I've been feeling for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, is telling me something, it's a knock at the door. It's telling me, okay, Dan, here's what you need to do. Now, when you see somebody being excluded, you need to say something, you need to bring that person in, you need to actually step up.
(In the video below, Pink talks about the findings from The Power of Regret.
This is a recording of a recent online event about behaviour science, called Nudgestock:)
Why is intrinsic motivation so powerful?
I think it's so powerful because it's a fundamental part of being human. And it is an often neglected part of being human. Sometimes we do things not because we're biologically compelled to do them, not because we want to get a reward or a punishment, but because we like doing it. It's enjoyable, it's meaningful. It brings us pleasure, it brings us joy, it brings us significance. It moves us closer to a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning. We do things because it's the right thing to do.
And my gripe, such as it is, is that in too many organisations and too many schools, we only have this two-dimensional view of human beings as essentially biological creatures with a reward and punishment drive. And we've neglected that intrinsic motivation drive. What's more is that intrinsic motivation seems to be the most important of those drives for high performance in just about any field.
You published Drive in 2010. Your gripe that organisations don't pay enough attention to intrinsic motivation–have you seen that change in the past 12 years?
Some. Some. The essential point in motivation, in organisations, and even in schools, is that there's a certain kind of motivator that we rely on quite a bit. Psychologists call it a controlling contingent motivator; I like to call it an “if then” reward. As in: “if you do this, then you get that”. What 60 years of research tells us is that “if then” rewards are effective for simple tasks with short time horizons. You want somebody to stuff envelopes? Pay them per envelope, give them a bonus for every 100 envelopes, you will get more envelopes stuffed, right? There's no question about that. However, “if then” rewards are not very effective for complex tasks that require judgement, discernment, creativity, or with long time horizons.
The problem with “if then” rewards is not the reward. It's not the money. It's the contingency, because that is a form of control. What we want, especially in schools, especially in workplaces, is neither compliance nor defiance, but engagement, and you cannot control somebody into engagement.
“you cannot control somebody into engagement”
I understand that children, when they are born, are intrinsically driven to do most things, and we kind of suck that out of them.
I think there's evidence of that. Go find me a four-year-old who's not autonomous and self-directed, go find me a four-year-old who's not interested in growing and learning and getting better, who's not asking questions about why.
I think that in certain kinds of structures, for instance, schools, kids can easily unlearn that. I think that this capacity that we have is somewhat fragile, and it can be shattered, it can be suppressed, it can be suffocated. And it's important that our institutions—companies, schools, community groups, whatever—allow this innate, intrinsic motivation to flourish, because people are going to do better and live more happily.
I want to ask you for your top tip, maybe something you've applied with your children?
Well, my kids are older now. But I'll give you a few ideas here.
One, do not link allowances and chores. They're totally different worlds; don't do that. I'm all for parents giving kids allowances, to give them a little bit of a sense of how to manage money, how to defer gratification. But I don't like linking them to chores. It's not a transaction; they help out their family members, because it's the right thing to do.
Two, allow kids to explore. I think that there is too much pressure, especially in upper middle class families, to begin specialising in anything–in a musical instrument, in a sport—very, very early in life. And there is a lot of evidence showing that kids’ interests change. People need experience, periods of exploration, before they go deep on something.
[Three,] we have to disabuse these kids of thinking that grades are the point of school. Ideally, grades are feedback on what you're learning, that allows you to learn and grow more effectively. We need to separate performance goals from learning goals. And I think that in too many schools, grades for the students and the parents are the point of the exercise, and that's very dangerous.
If you enjoyed this conversation, check out my interview with Nir Eyal here. May it help you figure out why you get distracted, and stack the cards in your favour to stay focussed.
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