April 16, 2023 • 40 mins
"I think a secret to life is figuring out where do you draw the balance? What do you maximize on? And what do you satisfy on? And I think that the universe of things that we should satisfy on is extraordinarily large and the universe of things we should maximize on is relatively small." Daniel Pink
Daniel H. Pink is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, including his latest, The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward which was named best book of 2022 by NPR, Amazon, Apple books and Financial Times.
His other books include the New York Times bestsellers When and A Whole New Mind — as well as the #1 New York Times bestsellers Drive and To Sell is Human.
Dan’s books have won multiple awards, have been translated into 42 languages, and have sold millions of copies around the world. He is also the host and co-executive producer of "Crowd Control" a National Geographic TV series on human behavior that aired in more than 100 countries.
He has appeared multiple times on NPR, PBS, ABC, CNN and a bunch of other TV and radio networks.
You will not want to miss this as Daniel has an incredible, in-depth understanding of motivation and human behavior!
Website:
https://www.danpink.com/
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Episode Transcript
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Daniel Pink (00:00):
The only regrets that matter ultimately are,"Did
(00:03):
you build a stable foundationfor yourself and for your
family?
Did you act with some boldnessto learn and grow during the
vanishingly short time that youwere alive?
Did you do the right thing anddid you connect with people that
you that you love?" And that'sit.
And those are the kinds ofregrets you should avoid.
Everything else doesn't reallymatter that much.
Michael Bauman (00:27):
How do we truly feel like a success in every
area of our lives?
How do we feel enough and knowthat we are not alone?
Join me as I interview some ofthe top leaders and experts in
the world, from Broadwaydirectors to multimillionaire,
CEOs, neuroscientists, and moreto look behind the curtain of
success and examine not only theachievements, but also the
(00:49):
fears.
The.
doubts The loneliness and how wecan navigate through that to
create the incredible life weactually want to live.
Welcome to Success Engineering.
So welcome back to SuccessEngineering.
I'm your host, Michael Bauman.
Today I have Daniel Pink on.
He's the author of five New YorkTimes bestselling books.
(01:11):
His latest is The Power ofRegret, so How Looking Backward
actually moves us forward.
And this was named the Best bookof 2022 by NPR, Amazon, Apple
Books.
Some of his other books includeNew York Times Bestseller, When:
a Whole New Mind as well as#1New York times Bestseller Drive
and to Sell is Human.
So it won multiple awards aroundthe world, translated into tons
(01:32):
of different languages, soldmillions of copies.
He's also the host andco-executive producer of Crowd
Control.
So a National Geographic TVseries on human behavior that's
aired in more than a hundredcountries.
And he's appeared multiple timeson N P R, pbs, abc, all the big
names.
So it's a pleasure to have youon the show here.
I'm excited for thisconversation.
Daniel Pink (01:49):
Thanks for having me, Michael.
Good to be here.
Michael Bauman (01:51):
Absolutely.
So I wanna start off the beatentrack a little bit.
I'm actually curious aroundJapanese, you know, you're a
Japanese society, media fellowaround comic books and manga,
and I'm curious as where thatlove kind of started for you,
that interest started for youand what was the path to
basically, you know, going overto Japan and doing.
Daniel Pink (02:11):
There are a couple of different things here.
One of'em was, is that, youknow, I'm a writer and I've been
self-employed for a long timenow over 20 years.
When you are self-employed andyou have little kids, they
actually end up being fairlyportable.
And so my wife and I decided,this is a long time ago, it's 15
years ago.
My wife and I decided that if Icould get, we should go try to
live somewhere else, even if itwas only for like part of a
(02:31):
year.
Go live somewhere else.
And I'd always been fascinatedby Japan.
I had only been there a coupleof times and one of the things
that fascinated me about Japan,Was this whole industry, they
have surrounding mangasurrounding comics.
In Japan.
Comics are not simply for kidsor freaks and geeks, or it's not
only about superheroes and thatkind of thing.
It's actually a very robustmedium.
(02:54):
So there are comics about.
Finance, there are comics aboutrelationships, there are comics
about history.
In fact, I have one, I don't,well, your audience can't see it
but back here, somewhere on thispile is a, this I haven't read
yet.
There's giant kind of history ofJapan, a certain era of Japan in
manga form.
So anyway, the point of all thatis that I was fascinated by
(03:15):
that, and my wife and I and ourkids wanted to go live somewhere
else for a while.
And so I got a fellowship to goto Tokyo.
And we lived there and I studiedthe comic industry and I was so
inspired by that.
I did some journalism there, butI was so inspired by that, that
I ended up writing my own comic,my own business book in the
Japanese comic form of Mangathat came out 12 years, 13 years
(03:38):
ago called The Adventures ofJohnny Bunko, the last Career
Guide you'll ever need.
Michael Bauman (03:43):
Yeah, and it's, I mean, obviously you have dived
so deep into behavior and howour brain works, but it's
interesting because that is howour brain works.
Like it works in pictures andit's such a medium for tr, you
know, translating andinformation.
And so I just thought that wasfascinating.
One
Daniel Pink (03:58):
Our brain works.
Our brain works in, in, youknow, obviously in some
fascinating and mysterious ways.
And and the way that peopleprocess ideas is mixed.
And, you know, it's from avariety.
There are variety of media outthere.
There is the printed word, thereis the visual image, there is
the moving image.
There is sound.
And all of those things are, canbe really powerful ways to
(04:21):
convey ideas and tell stories.
And I think when it comes toconveying ideas, I felt like the
visual image, especially comics,Japanese, you know, manga in
particular, comics in generalwas woefully underused.
That's why I wanted to give it ashot.
For your listeners who areinterested, There's a brilliant
book.
It's probably 25 years old nowby Scott McLeod, called
Understanding Comics.
(04:42):
Understanding Comics, which is abrilliant guide to what, how do
comics work as a narrative?
For instance, what's going onbetween the frames?
How does your brain fill inwhat's going on between the
frames of a comic, whether it'sa comic strip you know,
old-fashioned comic strip likepeanuts or whether it is a
graphic novel or anything likethat.
(05:03):
So, Understanding Comics byScott McLeod is a really
interesting read for the 14people out there who are, has
interested in, I as I am in thenarrative engine power and
comic.
Michael Bauman (05:15):
Yeah I mean, I love graphic novels and comics
as well, partially because ofthe stories, just it's very
precise, you know, you have tobe very precise to communicate
ideas like you're talking aboutin such a short frame.
And then also the illustrationsin there are just masterworks a
lot of times of art.
So I was just
Daniel Pink (05:34):
the interesting thing about the interesting
thing about that for me as awriter, when I worked on that
and I engaged this very talentedAmerican manga artist named Rob
Tempus to do this was how muchit changed how you write,
because the pictures arecarrying a lot of the freight
when it comes to telling thestory and conveying the ideas.
And so, as you know, I don'thave to say he was wearing a
white hat, you.
(05:56):
You know, decked in a plaidsweater, you know, it's like,
just put'em in a plaid sweater.
You don't have to say it.
it's pretty, so, so you end upwriting in a more spare and to
use your word, and it's in agood word to use here, a more
precise way.
Michael Bauman (06:12):
I'm curious, like kind of along that line,
you've done a lot of things,whether it's you know, in the
show, crowd control, diffdifferent areas of how we can
shape behavior that areessentially outside of what's
typically thought of.
So stuff as far as music, stuff,as far as, you know, sound and
color shaping the environment.
I'm really curious around, andthis is a super broad question
(06:32):
and it's, I'll kind of leave itup to you and it's specific to
what behavior you're looking atchanging, but I'm curious as
what are some of your thoughtsaround some of those external
things that people don'tnecessarily think about in terms
of changing, behavior?
Daniel Pink (06:45):
Oh, that's a hard question because I mean, you
know, there, there's, so,there's so many different
things.
I think there's, there is a wayto think about it and look at
it, which is this, when we.
When we look at behavior ingeneral behavior, the way that
we behave each of us behaves isa, is an intersection of who we
are and the situation that we'rein.
(07:08):
And the whole field of socialpsychology is premised on the
fact that.
We don't take the situationseriously enough.
So when we say we, we look at,we say, Fred over there, Fred is
a jerk, and because he is ajerk, he's gonna do this.
Bob over there is kind andbecause he is kind, he's gonna
(07:29):
do this.
And we discount the importanceof the situation Bob and Fred
are in.
And so, You know, so I think ata broad level it's a question of
when we try to, when we want totry to change behavior, we focus
sometimes too much on the personand not enough on the situation.
And when we focus on thesituation, there are all kinds
of things that are that arepowerful.
(07:49):
So for instance to me, like oneof the best ways is if you want
someone to do something, make iteasy for them to do it.
You know, don't try to, don'ttry to change their minds.
Just make it easy for them to doit.
We see that there was a lot ofresearch on this.
There's a, you know, famousexample from here in the United
States of the federal governmentand other nonprofits spending,
(08:10):
you know, literally hundreds ofmillions of dollars trying to
get people to save forretirement.
And particularly in the UnitedStates where our system in the
last 30 years or so has movedfrom defined benefit pensions to
defined contribution pensionsthat is from basically you,
you're getting a check when youretire to no, you, during your
working life, you have to putaside money for your retirement
(08:31):
401ks.
And so we had this phenomen.
Years ago where people were notputting money in, it was getting
matched by their employeeemployers, but they weren't
putting money in.
They would have a chance to optin.
They would say, do you wanna optin to this 401k?
If you put in a dollar youremployer will put in a dollar.
And people say, ah, no thanks.
Michael Bauman (08:48):
It's a good return on investment right now.
Daniel Pink (08:50):
And so the federal government, including the, you
know, branches of the UnitedStates Department of Labor where
I worked a hundred years ago,would, you know, do all this
messaging saying, oh, you gottasee it for retirement.
You don't wanna be left up,blah, blah.
Some decision scientist came upwith a better way to change
people's behavior.
And you know what they did?
They made the form opt-out.
(09:12):
So they basically automaticallyau they, they automatically
opted everybody in.
They gave people free choice.
You can opt out if you want.
You don't have to do this, butwe're just gonna, we're gonna
check the box for you.
And the participation in 401Kwent up dramatically.
So again that's a, I think it'san interesting example of how
you can change the environment,make it easy for people to do
(09:35):
what you want them to do, ratherthan trying to hoang them,
persuade them, and always changetheir mind.
There are many other examplesthere.
I mean, you want people to, youwant people to to walk more in
your community, have sidewalks,you know, rather than y you
know, I mean, I'm not, I don'tmean that as a joke.
You know, if you want people toYou know, you want people to
(09:55):
take public transportation more,you know, make tran put public
transportation closer to wherepeople live.
It's a stupid example, but youget the idea.
Michael Bauman (10:03):
No it's a, it's an often overlooked aspect of
changing behavior.
You know, we focus so much in,you know, motivation is also
your thing, but we focus so muchon that aspect of things.
And a lot of times we get itwrong, but we don't look at what
you're talking about.
It's like, How can I just shapethe environment to make this as
easy as possible and thedifferent aspects of your
environment, like the physicalenvironment, your relational,
(10:25):
the social environment.
Like what can I do to make thisas, as simple as possible?
And I think it's very importantto, to think about that.
I want to dive into motivationbecause this is your, you know,
area.
I mean, you have a lot of areasof expertise, but what are, what
would you say is a big aspect ofmotivation, and this can be, I'm
curious on an individual leveland a corporate level where
(10:47):
people get it wrong, and if youcould say, Hey, I'd recommend
changing this area.
What's a big area where peoplemake a mistake in terms of
relying on motivation or notrelying on motivation or doing
it kind of correctly?
Daniel Pink (11:00):
Okay.
I'll give you, I'll give you twothings.
The first one is directlyrelated to what we were just
talking about, and this goes tosomething that Edward DC who is
one of the great scholars ofmotivation, he's at the
University of Rochester.
A legendary figure said to mewhen I interviewed him for a
book that I wrote, he said, wegotta get past the idea that
motivation is something that oneperson does to another.
(11:21):
And understand that motivationis something that people do for
themselves now.
So, so, so that when you thinkabout motivation that way, you
think about it completelydifferently.
I'm not trying to motivate you.
What I'm trying to do is change,once again, going back to what
we were talking about before.
I'm gonna try to change thesituation, the circumstances,
the rules, so you have thecapacity to motivate yourself.
(11:42):
So that's pretty, that, that'spretty fundamental.
The other big thing that we getwrong is we tend to think that
it's about, it's entirely aboutcontingent rewards and
punishments what I like to callif then rewards.
We, we tend to say that if youreward beha, we tend to believe
it's, it works like, The law ofgravity, it works like rolling a
(12:03):
ball down a hill.
It works like my dropping thispencil on planet Earth and it's
gonna fall to the ground.
We we say that when you rewardbehavior, you get more of it.
When you punish behavior, youget less of it, and that's true
a lot of time, but it's not trueall the time.
And so, you know, and it'suntrue more often than we
realize.
And so there's, there are a setof things where those kinds of
(12:26):
contingent rewards, if you dothis, then you get that really
don't work very well.
And it's important for us torethink that, get past that,
overcome.
Barrier.
So, so it's two things.
One is that motivation issomething one person does to
another.
The other one is that rewardsand punishments, carrots and
sticks, particularly contingentcarrots and sticks.
(12:47):
If you do this, then you getthat.
If you don't do this, then youget whacked in this way are a
universal solution tomotivational problems that is
fundamentally untrue.
Michael Bauman (12:57):
Can you talk about, you know, there's three
main things that you discoveredwhen you were doing the research
for Drive.
Can you talk about that and alittle bit of the research
behind what you know,contributed to those findings?
Daniel Pink (13:09):
Well, so, so when we think about motivating people
at work, to my mind, my argumentin that book, and it's built on
some of the work that a lot ofthe work that Edward DC did,
Richard Ryan did.
The late MihalyCsikszentmihalyi, did some of
the work that Carol Dweck hasdone to some extent leaving some
of the st the early stuff ofAngela Duckworth and so forth.
My theory is, my, my argument isessentially this, that if you
(13:30):
want people to be motivated,okay, if then rewards are pretty
good for simple task with shorttime horizons.
They work pretty well.
People love rewards.
They get you to focus.
So if you know exactly what youneed if people know exactly what
they need to do, if then rewardswill get them to do it better.
You want people to stuffenvelopes.
It's not even close.
Pay in per envelope and give'ema bonus for stuffing a hundred
(13:51):
envelope, every a hundredenvelope you'll get more
envelope stuff.
There's no question about that.
But if you want people to designa new marketing plan, you want
people to invent a new productand you say, you know, if you
come up with a good idea, I'llpay you a bonus.
There's pretty good evidencethat doesn't work that well.
Sometimes it backfires, but mosttimes it has no effect because
it, people like rewards so much.
They narrow their focus whenthey should be expanding it.
(14:14):
And so when we think about thetask that require a more
expansive view of things, ratherthan a purely like, sort of
short-term, narrow view.
And that's, I think, a lot ofthe tasks that people are doing
on the job because thoseshort-term algorithmic tasks are
increasingly being done.
By very low wage labor or morelikely by machines and by
(14:34):
computers.
And so the hu human beings aregonna have to do things that are
more long-term and that requirejudgment, creativity,
discernment, et cetera, etcetera.
And for those tasks.
Now I'm gonna actually steerthis ship around and answer your
question for those tasks.
What seems to work best is thisone pay people well.
It's not that money isn't amotivator.
(14:55):
It is a motivator.
You have to pay people well, youhave to pay people fairly.
If you're trying to sort of, theresearch does not say that you
can scrimp on pay anddecompensate people in intrinsic
motivation that's bullshit.
What you have to do is you haveto actually pay people, well pay
people fairly once you do that.
What I think show the researchshows is that there are three,
(15:17):
these three factors that lead toenduring motivation,
particularly for these morecomplicated, complex tasks.
One is autonomy auto, and thisis, comes very much from the DC
work.
Autonomy.
Autonomy is, do you have somecontrol?
Do you have some sovereignty?
Do you have some authority overwhat you do when you do it,
where you do it, who you do itwith?
(15:39):
And I think a lot of this goesinto our fundamental notion of
human nature is that are, youknow, are we, you know, you
know, do human beings prefer tobe controlled or do they prefer
to be autonomous?
And I think that the history ofhuman civilization is that human
being.
Ultimately resist beingcontrolled.
(15:59):
And so, and when we arecontrolled, when human beings
are controlled, we reply werespond in, in two ways.
One, we comply, or two we defy.
But that's not what we want inmost cases, not what we want in
offices.
It's not what we don't want.
Comply pure compliance.
We don't want, certainly don'twant defiance in, in education.
We don't want people to be asstudents, purely compliant.
(16:20):
We don't want them to be defianteither.
We want them to be engaged inthe way that people are engaged.
Is when they get places undertheir own steam.
And that's what autonomy is.
The second one is mastery.
Mastery is about our desire toget better at something, our
desire to improve, to learn, togrow, to make progress in
meaningful work.
It is a powerful humanmotivation.
(16:42):
Human motivator.
We see it on display.
Throughout the human conditionsince the beginning of human
civilization.
I mean, it's a powerful thing.
Why do pe people play musicalinstruments on the weekend?
Because they like it and becausethey get better at it.
And to some extent, becausethey're doing it with other
people.
Why do people play?
You know, why do pe why dopeople try to get better at
painting or basketball oranything like that?
(17:04):
So that's mastery.
And the final one is purpose.
And purpose is essentially, doyou know, The reason you're
doing something, do you know whyyou're doing something?
And there's a pile of reallyexciting evidence, again, in
social psychology, reallyaccumulated over the last 15
years or so showing thatpurpose.
Whether it's sort of knowing howyour work affects somebody else,
(17:26):
how your work improves the lifeof somebody else, how your work
just helps out a teammate, howyour world just has an impact in
the world is a powerful.
Extraordinarily cost effectiveperformance enhancer.
There are plenty of examples ofthat.
And so when we look at this,when we're looking for a
motivational recipe, or not evena recipe, a set of design
(17:48):
principles, what you want is youwant to hire great people.
You want to pay them well andpay them fairly.
And you wanna offer a degree ofautonomy.
You know, some sovereignty, somecontrol over the important
aspects of their work.
You want to help them get betterat something that matters.
Put them in situations againwhere they can make progress and
meaningful work and show themthe purpose of what they're
(18:11):
doing so they know not only howto do it well, but why they're
doing it in the first place andthey can see some impact out
there in the wider world.
When we do that, people arequite motivat.
Michael Bauman (18:20):
You talk about with the shift to remote work,
some of the things that peopleneed to make sure to focus on
to, to hit those three areas.
Daniel Pink (18:28):
Which people?
You mean bosses
Michael Bauman (18:29):
Yeah.
Entrepreneurs and stuff.
If they're having employees thatare working remotely, how can
they make sure to hit those,check those three boxes.
Daniel Pink (18:38):
Well, I mean, okay, so let's talk about, let's talk
about autonomy.
Autonomy really is autonomy.
I mean, what you want to do isyou want to have, you want to
have high standards.
You wanna have people's backs,and, but you want to give people
as much freedom to do it the waythat they want to do it as you
possibly can.
It's gonna vary from industry toindustry.
It's gonna vary from function tofunction.
And so, So one thing not to dois these ridiculous kind of
(18:58):
keystroke monitoring things.
They're absurd.
They're nefarious, they'rehorrible.
So don't do things like that.
So I think that's, you know, soautonomy has to really be
autonomy.
It's not, it can't be this kindof fake autonomy.
It can't be, you know, there'sa, there's this tendency
sometimes inside of.
You know, in, in physicalworkplaces in the old days, that
(19:18):
bosses would walk around at 4 55to make sure everybody was in
their seat because being intheir seat meant they were
working, they weren't shirking.
So don't do the electronicequivalent of that.
So I think that's I think that'sa autonomy.
And the other thing about that,the autonomy that we're seeing
in remote work, there's a littlebit of a head fake here in that
we think that the autonomy ofremote work is where people
(19:40):
work.
That is, oh, I can work at home,I can work where I wanna work.
And that's part of it.
But don't discount the autonomyover when.
And people remote work givespeople greater autonomy over the
when of their work.
Not only the where of theirwork, but over their, when of
their work, over their time, notonly their location.
And that ends up being a veryvaluable.
(20:03):
Aspect of remote work when wesee this, I mean, if you're
interested, feel if yourlisteners are interested.
Check out the work of NicholasBloom at Stanford University,
who's been studying remote workfor 20 years, and that comes
out, I, I think pretty clearlyin some of the stuff that he's
done.
So, so focus on that.
When, in terms of mastery,that's a really important one.
I mean, I think what you want todo is you wanna establish ways
(20:24):
to have regular check-ins andmechanisms to help people see
the progress that they'remaking.
So I don't think you wanna justlet people adrift.
I think you wanna come up withsome kind of cadence of having a
five.
You know, one-on-one every weekyou know, where you ask people,
what are you working on, what doyou need?
You know, how's it go?
You know, that, that kind ofthing.
I mean, the cadence is gonnavary from person to person and
(20:47):
industry to industry and soforth.
And then my favorite techniquefor, so when it comes to purpose
you know, just truly just havemore conversations about why,
and, you know, a few moreconversations about why, and a
few more.
Few fewer about how, so whenyou're coaching somebody, you
say, okay, we gotta, you gottado the sales presentation.
(21:08):
Here's how you do it.
You know, say, that's okay, butyou should also say, here's why
we're doing that salespresentation.
Here's why we're creating thispiece of marketing collateral.
Here's why we are.
Trying to design this new pieceof software.
And that can help people see thepurpose of it.
And you know, anything that youcan do to show people the effect
of their work.
Here's a customer who wastouched by what you did here.
(21:30):
Is it a fellow employee who wastouched by what you did?
I don't mean touched in sort ofthe emotional sense, but just
like improved had a problemsolve.
Those kinds of things can bereally.
Michael Bauman (21:41):
Yeah, I mean it's super, super important.
One of the other things, andthis is a lot of your work has
done, you know, whether it's tosell as human, you know, I'm
curious around belonging andtribes and how you're syncing
with other people and attuningwith other people.
One, how does that work with reremote work, but just company
culture in general.
(22:01):
How do you go, what are yourrecommendations for that?
Daniel Pink (22:04):
I don't know.
That's a hard one.
And because I do think that asense of affinity and
belongingness is betteraccomplished in person.
I don't think it's onlyaccomplished in person.
So y so, you know, I think whatyou have to look for are how are
people doing this organically?
How are they connecting withtheir colleagues and fostering a
sense of belonging organicallywithout, you know, without the
(22:27):
boss.
Do you know there's there's somework out there.
I can't remember who did thisshowing that when e again,
leaving aside remote is thatthese kinds of these kind of
group fun activities on the job,right office, fun stuff is
completely ineffective.
some circumstances and quiteeffective in other
circumstances, and the dividingline seems to be that when it is
(22:49):
imposed on people, it doesn't doanything for belonging and
relatedness and affinity when itemerges.
From the people themselves.
It's a powerful bonding tool.
So I would look for things thatare emergent in that.
And then, you know, I think youreally do have to, you know, you
really do have to keep in touch,you know, just, it doesn't have
(23:10):
to be these long, horrible.
Zoom meetings.
It can be these the relativelyfrequent check-ins and just say,
Hey, you know, letting peopleknow what's going on.
Sta you know, you gotta think ofit as like a, depending on the
size of your team, you know, asa, a, you're always having a
conversation.
And and that can be that can behelpful.
And then you also, I think youhave to be intentional about,
(23:32):
you know, if you're gonna go toa situation.
There aren't that, there aren'tthat, that many places that are
fully 100% everybody is remote.
I think there that, what seemsto be going on here is a move
toward hybrid basically every,you know, what hybrid as
essentially the norm.
And so when you think aboutthat, you have to be intentional
about what do you, using thosemoments when people are.
(23:54):
Not to have them do heads downwork that they could do on their
own, but to use those momentswhen they're together to do
things that you can only do inperson and together.
And that could be certain kindsof discussions, it could be
certain kinds of groupactivities, whatever that is.
I think you have to be veryintentional about that.
And I think that intention endsup cascading into the form of
the office itself.
(24:16):
So when you think about a whitecollar I, it just, it's
unimaginable to me that it'sgonna, that the office of five
years from now is gonna looklike the office of 15 years ago
with rows and rows of cubicles,and a lot of people sitting
there in front of computersdoing heads down work.
I think it's gonna look muchmore like a lounge, a library, a
cafe.
A nightclub, something likethat.
(24:36):
Because precisely for thereasons you're suggesting that
the point of an office is toconvene, to bring people
together, to gather in ameaningful, intentional way to
connect, to belong, to show ouraffinity.
Michael Bauman (24:49):
Yeah, that's really interesting.
I was gonna ask a follow upquestion around that, but you
kind of answered it because you.
You obviously have verytechnical aspects of a job.
There's things that need to beaccomplished, but then there's
the purpose of like connectionand belonging.
And I was curious how you'd kindof split those if you're doing
meetings, like do you havemeetings that are all technical?
Do you have meetings that areall connection?
(25:09):
Do you know, kind of mix it?
Is it individual?
That was
Daniel Pink (25:12):
I think that boundary, I think that boundary
is more porous than you think.
If we're gonna take your, let'suse your terms.
If you're gonna take, like whatpart of, what aspect of work is
technical and what part is B,what part is belonging?
All right.
I don't think there's a starkline between that.
So if you have somebody who islet's say you, you have a senior
comp software engineer and sheis actually working with a
(25:35):
junior software engineer and sheis actually helping that junior
software engineer.
Fix her code you know, to makeit better, to make it run
better, to identify the bugs, tomake it more efficient whatever
the case.
Okay.
That sounds very technical, butthe act of doing that and doing
that in a way that haspsychological safety and doing
that in a way that coachessomebody to get better and doing
(25:57):
that in a way where the boss hasyour back and doing that in a
way where the boss is saying notonly.
Here's how to fix that line, butalso saying, Hey, let's go back
to first principles and talkabout why we're doing this.
That's belonging right there.
And so, so the boundary linebetween technical and belonging
is not nearly as stark as wemight think.
Michael Bauman (26:17):
Yeah, I really like that answer.
And it's like what you'retalking about, if you have these
underlying things of autonomy,you know, that aligns right
along with mastery and purpose,and if you're working together
on those things, you get thebelonging and you're
accomplishing whatever you'rewanting to accomplish.
So I
Daniel Pink (26:31):
That's a really good, that's a really good point
too.
And it depends on, you know,like when we think the fact that
we are talking, which is linearand sequential.
The fact that I write, which islinear and sequential, means
that I can't say autonomy,mastery, and purpose all at the
same time.
All right.
There's a sense that it's asequence and when in fact it's
(26:52):
actually they all work together.
You can think of them as like,you know, ingredients in a soup.
Rather than this kind of morekind of mechanical, first you do
this, then you do this, and thenyou do this that they work
together.
And there, there is affinityamong all three of those
affinity among all three ofthose elements.
If you have, if you areself-determined at work, if you
(27:12):
have some authority, you'regonna, you're gonna be much more
likely to get better atsomething than if you're.
All right, if you know thepurpose of what you're doing,
you're more likely to getbetter.
You know, achieve that achievethat mastery.
If you are getting better atsomething that matters, you're
more likely to want to do it inthe service of something bigger
than yourself.
(27:33):
Purpose.
So they all work together.
Michael Bauman (27:35):
Yeah, absolutely.
And so I want to kind of shift alittle bit cuz you, you know,
obviously you had a book thatjust came out on regret, but
we're, you know, what we're ddoing is we're talking about
kind of these fundamental needsthat human.
Beings have, we have these needsfor autonomy and mastery and
purpose, but can you talk abouthow using the research around
using regret almost as thatphotographic negative for
(27:56):
fundamental values and what aresome of those fundamental values
that came out through theresearch that you did?
Daniel Pink (28:02):
So, so thanks for asking that.
One of the, one of the things inthis latest book that I did to
understand this profoundlymisunderstood emotion of regret
is I looked at about 50 or 60years of science on this, you
know, science from cognitivescience to.
Developmental psychology back toour old friend, social
psychology to neuroscience.
I did a big public opinionsurvey of the US population, but
(28:24):
to get to your question here, Ialso did something called the
World Regret Survey, where Igathered regrets from over.
We now have a database of over24,000 regrets from people in
109 countries.
And what I found.
Exactly as you say is thataround the world people seem to
have the same four core regrets.
And I can tell you quickly whatthey are and then answer your
question more directly.
(28:45):
The four core regrets are, firstone is what I call foundation
regrets.
These are small, these are smalldecisions people make early in
life that cascade and accumulateto terrible consequences later
in life.
Classic one, I spent too muchand saved too little, and now
I'm broke.
I I didn't work hard enough inschool and now I have no skills.
(29:05):
I ate crappy food in there forexercise, and now I'm unhealthy.
So that's foundation.
Regrets boldness, regrets, bigcategory.
These are people who regret.
So we're at a juncture in theirlife when they could play it
safe or take the chance.
And when they didn't take the.
Many of them regretted it.
Not all of them, but many ofthem regretted it.
(29:25):
If only I'd asked out Frida foron a date, if only I had started
a business, if only I had takenmy family to China for that kind
of adventure.
If only I had studied abroad, ifonly I had spoken up.
Right?
So not being bold.
Third category, moral regrets.
If only I'd done the rightthing.
(29:46):
These are people who, at ourjuncture in their life, they
could take the high road, takethe low road, and when they
take, when we take the low road,not all the time, and not
everyone, but most of the time,and most of us, End up
regretting it.
So these are people who bulliedpeople years ago who cheated on
their spouse, who did otherdastardly things.
And then finally, our connectionregrets, which are about
(30:07):
relationships.
Particularly relationships thathave slowly relationships that
have come apart.
Usually in slow undramatic ways.
People wanna reach out, theydon't.
And the relationship wide thelack of relationship the r the
drift widens, and.
Sometimes it's too late.
So connection, regrets are ifonly I had reached out.
And so to actually answer thequestion you posed, here is the
(30:29):
answer to the question.
We have foundation regrets.
If only I'd taken the chance,I'm sorry if only I'd done the
work.
You have boldness regrets.
If only I'd taken the chance,you have connection.
Regrets if only I'd reached outand more regrets if only I'd
done the right thing.
These reg the big punchline hereis that when people tell you
what they regret the most,they're telling you what they
(30:50):
value The.
That's the key.
It's a reverse image, and thisis extraordinarily important
when we think about an emotionlike regret.
When we think about all thedecisions and indecisions we
make in our life, all of theindecisions and dec, the
decisions and indecisions andchoices and actions and so forth
that you took today, Michael,you.
(31:12):
Most of them, you're not evengonna remember tomorrow.
Tomorrow, right?
But if you have an action or aninaction from five years ago or
10 years ago, and not only doyou remember it, it makes you
feel bad.
That's a very strong signal.
That's a very strong signalabout, about what you value.
And so foundation regrets tellus that we value stability,
(31:32):
boldness regrets tell us that wevalue learning and growth and
just doing something before wedie.
Moral regrets tell us that wevalue goodness and connection.
Regrets tell us that we valuelove.
And so this profoundlymisunderstood emotion of regret
gives us a window into what Ithink most people want out of.
Michael Bauman (31:51):
Super.
Yeah, super powerful.
And so can you talk about whatpeople can do with the regrets
that they've either had orplanning for regrets in the
future?
Daniel Pink (31:59):
Okay.
So those are two differentthings, but I'll tell you.
So let's talk about the regretsthat you have.
First of all I look at it likethis as a process.
Okay?
The key thing here is that, isto know is that everybody has
regrets.
It's one of the most commonemotions that human beings have.
If you.
If you have regrets, it doesn'tmean there's something wrong
with you, but also it doesn'tmean that you're that special.
You're just, you're a humanbeing.
Okay?
(32:20):
And so the question then reallybecomes, what do you do with
your regrets?
And this is where we have beenled astray.
Some of us say we should ignoreour regrets.
We've been coached to ignore ourregrets, to put our fingers in
our ears to be positive all thetime, and never be negative.
To always look forward and neverlook back.
That's a bad idea.
But it's also a bad idea towallow in your regrets.
(32:42):
To ruminate in your regrets, tosteward your regrets.
That's a real, that's arguably aworse idea.
What we want to do is we want toconfront our regrets in a
systematic way, and the way todo that is to begin sort of
inward outward forward.
So inward is how do you framethe regret in yourself?
So there's a whole line ofresearch and what's called
self-compassion, and so I thinkyou start by You know, how do
(33:04):
you talk, how do you talk toyourself about your regret?
A lot of times when we makemistakes, we're vicious on
ourselves.
Don't do that.
There's no sign that'seffective.
Instead, treat yourself withkindness rather than contempt.
And again, we have very goodevidence that's effective.
Lacerating, self-criticism, wedon't have a lot of good
evidence that's effective.
I would advocate las or I would.
(33:26):
To advocate, advocate laceratingself-criticism as a performance
enhancer, but the evidencedoesn't exist.
So.
But what the evidence does existfor treating yourself with
kindness rather than contempt.
Recognizing your mistakes arepart of the human condition.
All right, so you sort ofexonerate yourself.
Then there's a second isoutward.
There's a strong argument to bemade for disclosure.
(33:48):
We tend to feel a sense of shameabout our mistakes and our
regrets fearing that if weexpose them, if we disclose
them, people will think less ofus.
There's some pretty goodevidence that people think more
of.
When we do that they admire ourcourage.
And then more important thananything else is that when we
write about our regrets or talkabout our regrets, we convert
this abstract emotion intosomething more concrete words.
(34:11):
And those words are always lessmenacing.
It could be in the sense-makingprocess.
And finally, you have to draw alesson from it.
You have to say, okay, what isthis?
What is, what's the lesson Ilearned here and what should I
do about it?
And that requires often someself distancing where you sort
of ask yourself, if my bestfriend was in the situation,
what would I tell them to do?
And so when we think about this,we treat ourselves with kindness
(34:32):
rather than contempt.
We disclose and talk about itto.
We leave the burden and makesense of it, and then we
explicitly and directly say,what did I learn from this and
what am I gonna do about it?
And when we do that, thisrelatively simple process
regret, we have a lot ofevidence again, Michael that
when we do that with ourregrets, it's really helpful.
(34:54):
I mean, it helps us becomebetter negotiators.
It helps us become betterproblem solvers.
It helps us become clearerthinkers.
It helps us become betterstrategists.
It helps us find more meaningin.
Michael Bauman (35:05):
Yeah.
What about the ones in thefuture?
Daniel Pink (35:08):
so when we think of, when we anticipate our
regrets, this is a little bittricky because there's something
to be said for trying toanticipate your regrets, but.
You wanna actually be carefulabout what regrets you
anticipate.
So for instance, as we aretalking here in the evening, I
am going to I have to go in and,cause my son is visiting and he.
(35:30):
Is coming back from work and weare gonna sit and watch a game
together.
And, but I gotta make somethingto eat for us.
And so, so if I say, gee, whatwill I anticipate?
What will I regret more?
Make, you know?
Or, you know, what will be theleast regretful thing?
Should I make hamburgers?
Oh, maybe I'll regret havingbeef.
Should I make chicken?
Oh, maybe I'll regret, okay.
(35:51):
That decision doesn't.
So if you try to anticipateevery regret that you have,
you're gonna drive yourselfcrazy.
What you want to do is you wantto think about back to those
four core regrets, right?
The only regrets that matterultimately are,"Did you build a
stable foundation for yourselfand for your family?
Did you act with some boldnessto learn and grow during the
(36:13):
vanishingly short time that youwere alive?
Did you do the right thing anddid you connect with people that
you that you love?" And that'sit.
And those are the kinds ofregrets you should avoid.
Everything else doesn't reallymatter that much.
And this is hard for people todo because again, we'll go back
to, you know, you know, anybodywho's listening to this show can
(36:36):
basically, it can actually haveintroduction to social
psychology as a prerequisitefilled because there's.
Principle from that course thatyou'll get the started by a
wonderful guy named BarrySchwartz about the difference
between maximizers andsatisfiers.
Maximizers.
Try to get the best ofeverything.
(36:57):
All right, I'm gonna get, I'mgonna order the best hamburger
in town.
I'm gonna get the best roofer tofix my house.
I'm gonna get the best sweater Icould possibly.
All right.
And then the people satisfierswho are like, okay, it's good.
And what the evidence shows isthat there's some evidence that
maximizers perform at a higherlevel in certain things.
(37:17):
But maximizers are miserablebecause you're never gonna win
that game.
And so I think a secret to lifeis figuring out where do you
draw the balance?
What do you maximize on?
And what do you satisfy on?
And I think that the universe ofthings that we should satisfy on
is extraordinarily large and theuniverse of things we should
maximize on is relatively small.
(37:39):
And we should focus our effortson maximizing those four, you
know, you know, maximizing thosethings.
And just forgetting aboutanything else.
And if we do that, we're gonnabe able to an because what we're
gonna regret, here's the.
What we're gonna regret, whatI'm gonna regret, let's make it
about me, what I'm gonna regret10 years from now, all right?
(37:59):
What I'm gonna regret 10 yearsfrom now is not, I made a bad
choice for dinner tonight.
What I will regret.
When my son is 30 and not 20,and he's gone off into the
world, it's like, wait a second.
My, my son was here for, inWashington, DC for a trimester,
and he was actually living inour house and I didn't hang out
(38:22):
with him.
What was I thinking?
All right, that's the kind ofthing that I'll regret in 10
years.
And so that connection kind ofregret that regrets about love.
And so maximize on that andsatisfies on everything.
Michael Bauman (38:35):
I, I love that.
I usually ask as we wrap uphere, You know, people's
definition of success, but that,that aligns with that.
But I am curious for you, Imean, you talk about in Drive
and some your other books, likeA Great Man is a sentence.
So I'm curious for you, what isthe sentence that you have that
you kind of align with yourlife?
If it's different than what youjust said, which it might not
be.
Daniel Pink (38:56):
I mean, I mean, I would like professionally, you
know, for people to say when Iperish ak that guy he wrote
books that, that helped peoplesee the world more clearly and
live their lives more fully.
Michael Bauman (39:07):
That's awesome.
And then like you said,maximizing for the stability of
the growth is the goodness, thelove, the things that you'll
regret 10 years down the road.
Thank you so much for your
Daniel Pink (39:17):
Right, and satisfying on whether I'm about
to make nachos or hamburgers or,you know, just uncork a big
thing of tub of pretzels orsomething.
Michael Bauman (39:27):
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Well, I'll let you get to that.
Where can people go to connectwith your.
Daniel Pink (39:32):
The best part place is the best place to connect is
at my website, Daniel Pink.
Dan pink.com.
Daniel pink.com.
We've got newsletter, we've gotvideos, we've got free resources
unicorn rides,
Michael Bauman (39:48):
Perfect.
Sign me up.
Daniel Pink (39:50):
Yeah.
All kinds of things.
Michael Bauman (39:53):
Perfect.
Thank you so much for your time.
I really appreciate it.
Just jam-packed with excellentinsight.
Daniel Pink (39:59):
Thanks Michael.
Thanks for having me.
Michael Bauman (40:00):
Absolutely.
Before you go, I would love itif you actually just shared this
episode with a friend.
I'm sure while you werelistening, someone just popped
in your head and you're like,oh, they would probably like
this as well.
So it's really easy.
You just click the share buttonon either the website or
whatever podcast platform you'reon and send it over to'em, and
chances are they'll probablylike it too.
Until next time, keepengineering your success.
The only regrets that matter ultimately are,"Did
(00:03):
you build a stable foundationfor yourself and for your
family?
Did you act with some boldnessto learn and grow during the
vanishingly short time that youwere alive?
Did you do the right thing anddid you connect with people that
you that you love?" And that'sit.
And those are the kinds ofregrets you should avoid.
Everything else doesn't reallymatter that much.
Michael Bauman (00:27):
How do we truly feel like a success in every
area of our lives?
How do we feel enough and knowthat we are not alone?
Join me as I interview some ofthe top leaders and experts in
the world, from Broadwaydirectors to multimillionaire,
CEOs, neuroscientists, and moreto look behind the curtain of
success and examine not only theachievements, but also the
(00:49):
fears.
The.
doubts The loneliness and how wecan navigate through that to
create the incredible life weactually want to live.
Welcome to Success Engineering.
So welcome back to SuccessEngineering.
I'm your host, Michael Bauman.
Today I have Daniel Pink on.
He's the author of five New YorkTimes bestselling books.
(01:11):
His latest is The Power ofRegret, so How Looking Backward
actually moves us forward.
And this was named the Best bookof 2022 by NPR, Amazon, Apple
Books.
Some of his other books includeNew York Times Bestseller, When:
a Whole New Mind as well as#1New York times Bestseller Drive
and to Sell is Human.
So it won multiple awards aroundthe world, translated into tons
(01:32):
of different languages, soldmillions of copies.
He's also the host andco-executive producer of Crowd
Control.
So a National Geographic TVseries on human behavior that's
aired in more than a hundredcountries.
And he's appeared multiple timeson N P R, pbs, abc, all the big
names.
So it's a pleasure to have youon the show here.
I'm excited for thisconversation.
Daniel Pink (01:49):
Thanks for having me, Michael.
Good to be here.
Michael Bauman (01:51):
Absolutely.
So I wanna start off the beatentrack a little bit.
I'm actually curious aroundJapanese, you know, you're a
Japanese society, media fellowaround comic books and manga,
and I'm curious as where thatlove kind of started for you,
that interest started for youand what was the path to
basically, you know, going overto Japan and doing.
Daniel Pink (02:11):
There are a couple of different things here.
One of'em was, is that, youknow, I'm a writer and I've been
self-employed for a long timenow over 20 years.
When you are self-employed andyou have little kids, they
actually end up being fairlyportable.
And so my wife and I decided,this is a long time ago, it's 15
years ago.
My wife and I decided that if Icould get, we should go try to
live somewhere else, even if itwas only for like part of a
(02:31):
year.
Go live somewhere else.
And I'd always been fascinatedby Japan.
I had only been there a coupleof times and one of the things
that fascinated me about Japan,Was this whole industry, they
have surrounding mangasurrounding comics.
In Japan.
Comics are not simply for kidsor freaks and geeks, or it's not
only about superheroes and thatkind of thing.
It's actually a very robustmedium.
(02:54):
So there are comics about.
Finance, there are comics aboutrelationships, there are comics
about history.
In fact, I have one, I don't,well, your audience can't see it
but back here, somewhere on thispile is a, this I haven't read
yet.
There's giant kind of history ofJapan, a certain era of Japan in
manga form.
So anyway, the point of all thatis that I was fascinated by
(03:15):
that, and my wife and I and ourkids wanted to go live somewhere
else for a while.
And so I got a fellowship to goto Tokyo.
And we lived there and I studiedthe comic industry and I was so
inspired by that.
I did some journalism there, butI was so inspired by that, that
I ended up writing my own comic,my own business book in the
Japanese comic form of Mangathat came out 12 years, 13 years
(03:38):
ago called The Adventures ofJohnny Bunko, the last Career
Guide you'll ever need.
Michael Bauman (03:43):
Yeah, and it's, I mean, obviously you have dived
so deep into behavior and howour brain works, but it's
interesting because that is howour brain works.
Like it works in pictures andit's such a medium for tr, you
know, translating andinformation.
And so I just thought that wasfascinating.
One
Daniel Pink (03:58):
Our brain works.
Our brain works in, in, youknow, obviously in some
fascinating and mysterious ways.
And and the way that peopleprocess ideas is mixed.
And, you know, it's from avariety.
There are variety of media outthere.
There is the printed word, thereis the visual image, there is
the moving image.
There is sound.
And all of those things are, canbe really powerful ways to
(04:21):
convey ideas and tell stories.
And I think when it comes toconveying ideas, I felt like the
visual image, especially comics,Japanese, you know, manga in
particular, comics in generalwas woefully underused.
That's why I wanted to give it ashot.
For your listeners who areinterested, There's a brilliant
book.
It's probably 25 years old nowby Scott McLeod, called
Understanding Comics.
(04:42):
Understanding Comics, which is abrilliant guide to what, how do
comics work as a narrative?
For instance, what's going onbetween the frames?
How does your brain fill inwhat's going on between the
frames of a comic, whether it'sa comic strip you know,
old-fashioned comic strip likepeanuts or whether it is a
graphic novel or anything likethat.
(05:03):
So, Understanding Comics byScott McLeod is a really
interesting read for the 14people out there who are, has
interested in, I as I am in thenarrative engine power and
comic.
Michael Bauman (05:15):
Yeah I mean, I love graphic novels and comics
as well, partially because ofthe stories, just it's very
precise, you know, you have tobe very precise to communicate
ideas like you're talking aboutin such a short frame.
And then also the illustrationsin there are just masterworks a
lot of times of art.
So I was just
Daniel Pink (05:34):
the interesting thing about the interesting
thing about that for me as awriter, when I worked on that
and I engaged this very talentedAmerican manga artist named Rob
Tempus to do this was how muchit changed how you write,
because the pictures arecarrying a lot of the freight
when it comes to telling thestory and conveying the ideas.
And so, as you know, I don'thave to say he was wearing a
white hat, you.
(05:56):
You know, decked in a plaidsweater, you know, it's like,
just put'em in a plaid sweater.
You don't have to say it.
it's pretty, so, so you end upwriting in a more spare and to
use your word, and it's in agood word to use here, a more
precise way.
Michael Bauman (06:12):
I'm curious, like kind of along that line,
you've done a lot of things,whether it's you know, in the
show, crowd control, diffdifferent areas of how we can
shape behavior that areessentially outside of what's
typically thought of.
So stuff as far as music, stuff,as far as, you know, sound and
color shaping the environment.
I'm really curious around, andthis is a super broad question
(06:32):
and it's, I'll kind of leave itup to you and it's specific to
what behavior you're looking atchanging, but I'm curious as
what are some of your thoughtsaround some of those external
things that people don'tnecessarily think about in terms
of changing, behavior?
Daniel Pink (06:45):
Oh, that's a hard question because I mean, you
know, there, there's, so,there's so many different
things.
I think there's, there is a wayto think about it and look at
it, which is this, when we.
When we look at behavior ingeneral behavior, the way that
we behave each of us behaves isa, is an intersection of who we
are and the situation that we'rein.
(07:08):
And the whole field of socialpsychology is premised on the
fact that.
We don't take the situationseriously enough.
So when we say we, we look at,we say, Fred over there, Fred is
a jerk, and because he is ajerk, he's gonna do this.
Bob over there is kind andbecause he is kind, he's gonna
(07:29):
do this.
And we discount the importanceof the situation Bob and Fred
are in.
And so, You know, so I think ata broad level it's a question of
when we try to, when we want totry to change behavior, we focus
sometimes too much on the personand not enough on the situation.
And when we focus on thesituation, there are all kinds
of things that are that arepowerful.
(07:49):
So for instance to me, like oneof the best ways is if you want
someone to do something, make iteasy for them to do it.
You know, don't try to, don'ttry to change their minds.
Just make it easy for them to doit.
We see that there was a lot ofresearch on this.
There's a, you know, famousexample from here in the United
States of the federal governmentand other nonprofits spending,
(08:10):
you know, literally hundreds ofmillions of dollars trying to
get people to save forretirement.
And particularly in the UnitedStates where our system in the
last 30 years or so has movedfrom defined benefit pensions to
defined contribution pensionsthat is from basically you,
you're getting a check when youretire to no, you, during your
working life, you have to putaside money for your retirement
(08:31):
401ks.
And so we had this phenomen.
Years ago where people were notputting money in, it was getting
matched by their employeeemployers, but they weren't
putting money in.
They would have a chance to optin.
They would say, do you wanna optin to this 401k?
If you put in a dollar youremployer will put in a dollar.
And people say, ah, no thanks.
Michael Bauman (08:48):
It's a good return on investment right now.
Daniel Pink (08:50):
And so the federal government, including the, you
know, branches of the UnitedStates Department of Labor where
I worked a hundred years ago,would, you know, do all this
messaging saying, oh, you gottasee it for retirement.
You don't wanna be left up,blah, blah.
Some decision scientist came upwith a better way to change
people's behavior.
And you know what they did?
They made the form opt-out.
(09:12):
So they basically automaticallyau they, they automatically
opted everybody in.
They gave people free choice.
You can opt out if you want.
You don't have to do this, butwe're just gonna, we're gonna
check the box for you.
And the participation in 401Kwent up dramatically.
So again that's a, I think it'san interesting example of how
you can change the environment,make it easy for people to do
(09:35):
what you want them to do, ratherthan trying to hoang them,
persuade them, and always changetheir mind.
There are many other examplesthere.
I mean, you want people to, youwant people to to walk more in
your community, have sidewalks,you know, rather than y you
know, I mean, I'm not, I don'tmean that as a joke.
You know, if you want people toYou know, you want people to
(09:55):
take public transportation more,you know, make tran put public
transportation closer to wherepeople live.
It's a stupid example, but youget the idea.
Michael Bauman (10:03):
No it's a, it's an often overlooked aspect of
changing behavior.
You know, we focus so much in,you know, motivation is also
your thing, but we focus so muchon that aspect of things.
And a lot of times we get itwrong, but we don't look at what
you're talking about.
It's like, How can I just shapethe environment to make this as
easy as possible and thedifferent aspects of your
environment, like the physicalenvironment, your relational,
(10:25):
the social environment.
Like what can I do to make thisas, as simple as possible?
And I think it's very importantto, to think about that.
I want to dive into motivationbecause this is your, you know,
area.
I mean, you have a lot of areasof expertise, but what are, what
would you say is a big aspect ofmotivation, and this can be, I'm
curious on an individual leveland a corporate level where
(10:47):
people get it wrong, and if youcould say, Hey, I'd recommend
changing this area.
What's a big area where peoplemake a mistake in terms of
relying on motivation or notrelying on motivation or doing
it kind of correctly?
Daniel Pink (11:00):
Okay.
I'll give you, I'll give you twothings.
The first one is directlyrelated to what we were just
talking about, and this goes tosomething that Edward DC who is
one of the great scholars ofmotivation, he's at the
University of Rochester.
A legendary figure said to mewhen I interviewed him for a
book that I wrote, he said, wegotta get past the idea that
motivation is something that oneperson does to another.
(11:21):
And understand that motivationis something that people do for
themselves now.
So, so, so that when you thinkabout motivation that way, you
think about it completelydifferently.
I'm not trying to motivate you.
What I'm trying to do is change,once again, going back to what
we were talking about before.
I'm gonna try to change thesituation, the circumstances,
the rules, so you have thecapacity to motivate yourself.
(11:42):
So that's pretty, that, that'spretty fundamental.
The other big thing that we getwrong is we tend to think that
it's about, it's entirely aboutcontingent rewards and
punishments what I like to callif then rewards.
We, we tend to say that if youreward beha, we tend to believe
it's, it works like, The law ofgravity, it works like rolling a
(12:03):
ball down a hill.
It works like my dropping thispencil on planet Earth and it's
gonna fall to the ground.
We we say that when you rewardbehavior, you get more of it.
When you punish behavior, youget less of it, and that's true
a lot of time, but it's not trueall the time.
And so, you know, and it'suntrue more often than we
realize.
And so there's, there are a setof things where those kinds of
(12:26):
contingent rewards, if you dothis, then you get that really
don't work very well.
And it's important for us torethink that, get past that,
overcome.
Barrier.
So, so it's two things.
One is that motivation issomething one person does to
another.
The other one is that rewardsand punishments, carrots and
sticks, particularly contingentcarrots and sticks.
(12:47):
If you do this, then you getthat.
If you don't do this, then youget whacked in this way are a
universal solution tomotivational problems that is
fundamentally untrue.
Michael Bauman (12:57):
Can you talk about, you know, there's three
main things that you discoveredwhen you were doing the research
for Drive.
Can you talk about that and alittle bit of the research
behind what you know,contributed to those findings?
Daniel Pink (13:09):
Well, so, so when we think about motivating people
at work, to my mind, my argumentin that book, and it's built on
some of the work that a lot ofthe work that Edward DC did,
Richard Ryan did.
The late MihalyCsikszentmihalyi, did some of
the work that Carol Dweck hasdone to some extent leaving some
of the st the early stuff ofAngela Duckworth and so forth.
My theory is, my, my argument isessentially this, that if you
(13:30):
want people to be motivated,okay, if then rewards are pretty
good for simple task with shorttime horizons.
They work pretty well.
People love rewards.
They get you to focus.
So if you know exactly what youneed if people know exactly what
they need to do, if then rewardswill get them to do it better.
You want people to stuffenvelopes.
It's not even close.
Pay in per envelope and give'ema bonus for stuffing a hundred
(13:51):
envelope, every a hundredenvelope you'll get more
envelope stuff.
There's no question about that.
But if you want people to designa new marketing plan, you want
people to invent a new productand you say, you know, if you
come up with a good idea, I'llpay you a bonus.
There's pretty good evidencethat doesn't work that well.
Sometimes it backfires, but mosttimes it has no effect because
it, people like rewards so much.
They narrow their focus whenthey should be expanding it.
(14:14):
And so when we think about thetask that require a more
expansive view of things, ratherthan a purely like, sort of
short-term, narrow view.
And that's, I think, a lot ofthe tasks that people are doing
on the job because thoseshort-term algorithmic tasks are
increasingly being done.
By very low wage labor or morelikely by machines and by
(14:34):
computers.
And so the hu human beings aregonna have to do things that are
more long-term and that requirejudgment, creativity,
discernment, et cetera, etcetera.
And for those tasks.
Now I'm gonna actually steerthis ship around and answer your
question for those tasks.
What seems to work best is thisone pay people well.
It's not that money isn't amotivator.
(14:55):
It is a motivator.
You have to pay people well, youhave to pay people fairly.
If you're trying to sort of, theresearch does not say that you
can scrimp on pay anddecompensate people in intrinsic
motivation that's bullshit.
What you have to do is you haveto actually pay people, well pay
people fairly once you do that.
What I think show the researchshows is that there are three,
(15:17):
these three factors that lead toenduring motivation,
particularly for these morecomplicated, complex tasks.
One is autonomy auto, and thisis, comes very much from the DC
work.
Autonomy.
Autonomy is, do you have somecontrol?
Do you have some sovereignty?
Do you have some authority overwhat you do when you do it,
where you do it, who you do itwith?
(15:39):
And I think a lot of this goesinto our fundamental notion of
human nature is that are, youknow, are we, you know, you
know, do human beings prefer tobe controlled or do they prefer
to be autonomous?
And I think that the history ofhuman civilization is that human
being.
Ultimately resist beingcontrolled.
(15:59):
And so, and when we arecontrolled, when human beings
are controlled, we reply werespond in, in two ways.
One, we comply, or two we defy.
But that's not what we want inmost cases, not what we want in
offices.
It's not what we don't want.
Comply pure compliance.
We don't want, certainly don'twant defiance in, in education.
We don't want people to be asstudents, purely compliant.
(16:20):
We don't want them to be defianteither.
We want them to be engaged inthe way that people are engaged.
Is when they get places undertheir own steam.
And that's what autonomy is.
The second one is mastery.
Mastery is about our desire toget better at something, our
desire to improve, to learn, togrow, to make progress in
meaningful work.
It is a powerful humanmotivation.
(16:42):
Human motivator.
We see it on display.
Throughout the human conditionsince the beginning of human
civilization.
I mean, it's a powerful thing.
Why do pe people play musicalinstruments on the weekend?
Because they like it and becausethey get better at it.
And to some extent, becausethey're doing it with other
people.
Why do people play?
You know, why do pe why dopeople try to get better at
painting or basketball oranything like that?
(17:04):
So that's mastery.
And the final one is purpose.
And purpose is essentially, doyou know, The reason you're
doing something, do you know whyyou're doing something?
And there's a pile of reallyexciting evidence, again, in
social psychology, reallyaccumulated over the last 15
years or so showing thatpurpose.
Whether it's sort of knowing howyour work affects somebody else,
(17:26):
how your work improves the lifeof somebody else, how your work
just helps out a teammate, howyour world just has an impact in
the world is a powerful.
Extraordinarily cost effectiveperformance enhancer.
There are plenty of examples ofthat.
And so when we look at this,when we're looking for a
motivational recipe, or not evena recipe, a set of design
(17:48):
principles, what you want is youwant to hire great people.
You want to pay them well andpay them fairly.
And you wanna offer a degree ofautonomy.
You know, some sovereignty, somecontrol over the important
aspects of their work.
You want to help them get betterat something that matters.
Put them in situations againwhere they can make progress and
meaningful work and show themthe purpose of what they're
(18:11):
doing so they know not only howto do it well, but why they're
doing it in the first place andthey can see some impact out
there in the wider world.
When we do that, people arequite motivat.
Michael Bauman (18:20):
You talk about with the shift to remote work,
some of the things that peopleneed to make sure to focus on
to, to hit those three areas.
Daniel Pink (18:28):
Which people?
You mean bosses
Michael Bauman (18:29):
Yeah.
Entrepreneurs and stuff.
If they're having employees thatare working remotely, how can
they make sure to hit those,check those three boxes.
Daniel Pink (18:38):
Well, I mean, okay, so let's talk about, let's talk
about autonomy.
Autonomy really is autonomy.
I mean, what you want to do isyou want to have, you want to
have high standards.
You wanna have people's backs,and, but you want to give people
as much freedom to do it the waythat they want to do it as you
possibly can.
It's gonna vary from industry toindustry.
It's gonna vary from function tofunction.
And so, So one thing not to dois these ridiculous kind of
(18:58):
keystroke monitoring things.
They're absurd.
They're nefarious, they'rehorrible.
So don't do things like that.
So I think that's, you know, soautonomy has to really be
autonomy.
It's not, it can't be this kindof fake autonomy.
It can't be, you know, there'sa, there's this tendency
sometimes inside of.
You know, in, in physicalworkplaces in the old days, that
(19:18):
bosses would walk around at 4 55to make sure everybody was in
their seat because being intheir seat meant they were
working, they weren't shirking.
So don't do the electronicequivalent of that.
So I think that's I think that'sa autonomy.
And the other thing about that,the autonomy that we're seeing
in remote work, there's a littlebit of a head fake here in that
we think that the autonomy ofremote work is where people
(19:40):
work.
That is, oh, I can work at home,I can work where I wanna work.
And that's part of it.
But don't discount the autonomyover when.
And people remote work givespeople greater autonomy over the
when of their work.
Not only the where of theirwork, but over their, when of
their work, over their time, notonly their location.
And that ends up being a veryvaluable.
(20:03):
Aspect of remote work when wesee this, I mean, if you're
interested, feel if yourlisteners are interested.
Check out the work of NicholasBloom at Stanford University,
who's been studying remote workfor 20 years, and that comes
out, I, I think pretty clearlyin some of the stuff that he's
done.
So, so focus on that.
When, in terms of mastery,that's a really important one.
I mean, I think what you want todo is you wanna establish ways
(20:24):
to have regular check-ins andmechanisms to help people see
the progress that they'remaking.
So I don't think you wanna justlet people adrift.
I think you wanna come up withsome kind of cadence of having a
five.
You know, one-on-one every weekyou know, where you ask people,
what are you working on, what doyou need?
You know, how's it go?
You know, that, that kind ofthing.
I mean, the cadence is gonnavary from person to person and
(20:47):
industry to industry and soforth.
And then my favorite techniquefor, so when it comes to purpose
you know, just truly just havemore conversations about why,
and, you know, a few moreconversations about why, and a
few more.
Few fewer about how, so whenyou're coaching somebody, you
say, okay, we gotta, you gottado the sales presentation.
(21:08):
Here's how you do it.
You know, say, that's okay, butyou should also say, here's why
we're doing that salespresentation.
Here's why we're creating thispiece of marketing collateral.
Here's why we are.
Trying to design this new pieceof software.
And that can help people see thepurpose of it.
And you know, anything that youcan do to show people the effect
of their work.
Here's a customer who wastouched by what you did here.
(21:30):
Is it a fellow employee who wastouched by what you did?
I don't mean touched in sort ofthe emotional sense, but just
like improved had a problemsolve.
Those kinds of things can bereally.
Michael Bauman (21:41):
Yeah, I mean it's super, super important.
One of the other things, andthis is a lot of your work has
done, you know, whether it's tosell as human, you know, I'm
curious around belonging andtribes and how you're syncing
with other people and attuningwith other people.
One, how does that work with reremote work, but just company
culture in general.
(22:01):
How do you go, what are yourrecommendations for that?
Daniel Pink (22:04):
I don't know.
That's a hard one.
And because I do think that asense of affinity and
belongingness is betteraccomplished in person.
I don't think it's onlyaccomplished in person.
So y so, you know, I think whatyou have to look for are how are
people doing this organically?
How are they connecting withtheir colleagues and fostering a
sense of belonging organicallywithout, you know, without the
(22:27):
boss.
Do you know there's there's somework out there.
I can't remember who did thisshowing that when e again,
leaving aside remote is thatthese kinds of these kind of
group fun activities on the job,right office, fun stuff is
completely ineffective.
some circumstances and quiteeffective in other
circumstances, and the dividingline seems to be that when it is
(22:49):
imposed on people, it doesn't doanything for belonging and
relatedness and affinity when itemerges.
From the people themselves.
It's a powerful bonding tool.
So I would look for things thatare emergent in that.
And then, you know, I think youreally do have to, you know, you
really do have to keep in touch,you know, just, it doesn't have
(23:10):
to be these long, horrible.
Zoom meetings.
It can be these the relativelyfrequent check-ins and just say,
Hey, you know, letting peopleknow what's going on.
Sta you know, you gotta think ofit as like a, depending on the
size of your team, you know, asa, a, you're always having a
conversation.
And and that can be that can behelpful.
And then you also, I think youhave to be intentional about,
(23:32):
you know, if you're gonna go toa situation.
There aren't that, there aren'tthat, that many places that are
fully 100% everybody is remote.
I think there that, what seemsto be going on here is a move
toward hybrid basically every,you know, what hybrid as
essentially the norm.
And so when you think aboutthat, you have to be intentional
about what do you, using thosemoments when people are.
(23:54):
Not to have them do heads downwork that they could do on their
own, but to use those momentswhen they're together to do
things that you can only do inperson and together.
And that could be certain kindsof discussions, it could be
certain kinds of groupactivities, whatever that is.
I think you have to be veryintentional about that.
And I think that intention endsup cascading into the form of
the office itself.
(24:16):
So when you think about a whitecollar I, it just, it's
unimaginable to me that it'sgonna, that the office of five
years from now is gonna looklike the office of 15 years ago
with rows and rows of cubicles,and a lot of people sitting
there in front of computersdoing heads down work.
I think it's gonna look muchmore like a lounge, a library, a
cafe.
A nightclub, something likethat.
(24:36):
Because precisely for thereasons you're suggesting that
the point of an office is toconvene, to bring people
together, to gather in ameaningful, intentional way to
connect, to belong, to show ouraffinity.
Michael Bauman (24:49):
Yeah, that's really interesting.
I was gonna ask a follow upquestion around that, but you
kind of answered it because you.
You obviously have verytechnical aspects of a job.
There's things that need to beaccomplished, but then there's
the purpose of like connectionand belonging.
And I was curious how you'd kindof split those if you're doing
meetings, like do you havemeetings that are all technical?
Do you have meetings that areall connection?
(25:09):
Do you know, kind of mix it?
Is it individual?
That was
Daniel Pink (25:12):
I think that boundary, I think that boundary
is more porous than you think.
If we're gonna take your, let'suse your terms.
If you're gonna take, like whatpart of, what aspect of work is
technical and what part is B,what part is belonging?
All right.
I don't think there's a starkline between that.
So if you have somebody who islet's say you, you have a senior
comp software engineer and sheis actually working with a
(25:35):
junior software engineer and sheis actually helping that junior
software engineer.
Fix her code you know, to makeit better, to make it run
better, to identify the bugs, tomake it more efficient whatever
the case.
Okay.
That sounds very technical, butthe act of doing that and doing
that in a way that haspsychological safety and doing
that in a way that coachessomebody to get better and doing
(25:57):
that in a way where the boss hasyour back and doing that in a
way where the boss is saying notonly.
Here's how to fix that line, butalso saying, Hey, let's go back
to first principles and talkabout why we're doing this.
That's belonging right there.
And so, so the boundary linebetween technical and belonging
is not nearly as stark as wemight think.
Michael Bauman (26:17):
Yeah, I really like that answer.
And it's like what you'retalking about, if you have these
underlying things of autonomy,you know, that aligns right
along with mastery and purpose,and if you're working together
on those things, you get thebelonging and you're
accomplishing whatever you'rewanting to accomplish.
So I
Daniel Pink (26:31):
That's a really good, that's a really good point
too.
And it depends on, you know,like when we think the fact that
we are talking, which is linearand sequential.
The fact that I write, which islinear and sequential, means
that I can't say autonomy,mastery, and purpose all at the
same time.
All right.
There's a sense that it's asequence and when in fact it's
(26:52):
actually they all work together.
You can think of them as like,you know, ingredients in a soup.
Rather than this kind of morekind of mechanical, first you do
this, then you do this, and thenyou do this that they work
together.
And there, there is affinityamong all three of those
affinity among all three ofthose elements.
If you have, if you areself-determined at work, if you
(27:12):
have some authority, you'regonna, you're gonna be much more
likely to get better atsomething than if you're.
All right, if you know thepurpose of what you're doing,
you're more likely to getbetter.
You know, achieve that achievethat mastery.
If you are getting better atsomething that matters, you're
more likely to want to do it inthe service of something bigger
than yourself.
(27:33):
Purpose.
So they all work together.
Michael Bauman (27:35):
Yeah, absolutely.
And so I want to kind of shift alittle bit cuz you, you know,
obviously you had a book thatjust came out on regret, but
we're, you know, what we're ddoing is we're talking about
kind of these fundamental needsthat human.
Beings have, we have these needsfor autonomy and mastery and
purpose, but can you talk abouthow using the research around
using regret almost as thatphotographic negative for
(27:56):
fundamental values and what aresome of those fundamental values
that came out through theresearch that you did?
Daniel Pink (28:02):
So, so thanks for asking that.
One of the, one of the things inthis latest book that I did to
understand this profoundlymisunderstood emotion of regret
is I looked at about 50 or 60years of science on this, you
know, science from cognitivescience to.
Developmental psychology back toour old friend, social
psychology to neuroscience.
I did a big public opinionsurvey of the US population, but
(28:24):
to get to your question here, Ialso did something called the
World Regret Survey, where Igathered regrets from over.
We now have a database of over24,000 regrets from people in
109 countries.
And what I found.
Exactly as you say is thataround the world people seem to
have the same four core regrets.
And I can tell you quickly whatthey are and then answer your
question more directly.
(28:45):
The four core regrets are, firstone is what I call foundation
regrets.
These are small, these are smalldecisions people make early in
life that cascade and accumulateto terrible consequences later
in life.
Classic one, I spent too muchand saved too little, and now
I'm broke.
I I didn't work hard enough inschool and now I have no skills.
(29:05):
I ate crappy food in there forexercise, and now I'm unhealthy.
So that's foundation.
Regrets boldness, regrets, bigcategory.
These are people who regret.
So we're at a juncture in theirlife when they could play it
safe or take the chance.
And when they didn't take the.
Many of them regretted it.
Not all of them, but many ofthem regretted it.
(29:25):
If only I'd asked out Frida foron a date, if only I had started
a business, if only I had takenmy family to China for that kind
of adventure.
If only I had studied abroad, ifonly I had spoken up.
Right?
So not being bold.
Third category, moral regrets.
If only I'd done the rightthing.
(29:46):
These are people who, at ourjuncture in their life, they
could take the high road, takethe low road, and when they
take, when we take the low road,not all the time, and not
everyone, but most of the time,and most of us, End up
regretting it.
So these are people who bulliedpeople years ago who cheated on
their spouse, who did otherdastardly things.
And then finally, our connectionregrets, which are about
(30:07):
relationships.
Particularly relationships thathave slowly relationships that
have come apart.
Usually in slow undramatic ways.
People wanna reach out, theydon't.
And the relationship wide thelack of relationship the r the
drift widens, and.
Sometimes it's too late.
So connection, regrets are ifonly I had reached out.
And so to actually answer thequestion you posed, here is the
(30:29):
answer to the question.
We have foundation regrets.
If only I'd taken the chance,I'm sorry if only I'd done the
work.
You have boldness regrets.
If only I'd taken the chance,you have connection.
Regrets if only I'd reached outand more regrets if only I'd
done the right thing.
These reg the big punchline hereis that when people tell you
what they regret the most,they're telling you what they
(30:50):
value The.
That's the key.
It's a reverse image, and thisis extraordinarily important
when we think about an emotionlike regret.
When we think about all thedecisions and indecisions we
make in our life, all of theindecisions and dec, the
decisions and indecisions andchoices and actions and so forth
that you took today, Michael,you.
(31:12):
Most of them, you're not evengonna remember tomorrow.
Tomorrow, right?
But if you have an action or aninaction from five years ago or
10 years ago, and not only doyou remember it, it makes you
feel bad.
That's a very strong signal.
That's a very strong signalabout, about what you value.
And so foundation regrets tellus that we value stability,
(31:32):
boldness regrets tell us that wevalue learning and growth and
just doing something before wedie.
Moral regrets tell us that wevalue goodness and connection.
Regrets tell us that we valuelove.
And so this profoundlymisunderstood emotion of regret
gives us a window into what Ithink most people want out of.
Michael Bauman (31:51):
Super.
Yeah, super powerful.
And so can you talk about whatpeople can do with the regrets
that they've either had orplanning for regrets in the
future?
Daniel Pink (31:59):
Okay.
So those are two differentthings, but I'll tell you.
So let's talk about the regretsthat you have.
First of all I look at it likethis as a process.
Okay?
The key thing here is that, isto know is that everybody has
regrets.
It's one of the most commonemotions that human beings have.
If you.
If you have regrets, it doesn'tmean there's something wrong
with you, but also it doesn'tmean that you're that special.
You're just, you're a humanbeing.
Okay?
(32:20):
And so the question then reallybecomes, what do you do with
your regrets?
And this is where we have beenled astray.
Some of us say we should ignoreour regrets.
We've been coached to ignore ourregrets, to put our fingers in
our ears to be positive all thetime, and never be negative.
To always look forward and neverlook back.
That's a bad idea.
But it's also a bad idea towallow in your regrets.
(32:42):
To ruminate in your regrets, tosteward your regrets.
That's a real, that's arguably aworse idea.
What we want to do is we want toconfront our regrets in a
systematic way, and the way todo that is to begin sort of
inward outward forward.
So inward is how do you framethe regret in yourself?
So there's a whole line ofresearch and what's called
self-compassion, and so I thinkyou start by You know, how do
(33:04):
you talk, how do you talk toyourself about your regret?
A lot of times when we makemistakes, we're vicious on
ourselves.
Don't do that.
There's no sign that'seffective.
Instead, treat yourself withkindness rather than contempt.
And again, we have very goodevidence that's effective.
Lacerating, self-criticism, wedon't have a lot of good
evidence that's effective.
I would advocate las or I would.
(33:26):
To advocate, advocate laceratingself-criticism as a performance
enhancer, but the evidencedoesn't exist.
So.
But what the evidence does existfor treating yourself with
kindness rather than contempt.
Recognizing your mistakes arepart of the human condition.
All right, so you sort ofexonerate yourself.
Then there's a second isoutward.
There's a strong argument to bemade for disclosure.
(33:48):
We tend to feel a sense of shameabout our mistakes and our
regrets fearing that if weexpose them, if we disclose
them, people will think less ofus.
There's some pretty goodevidence that people think more
of.
When we do that they admire ourcourage.
And then more important thananything else is that when we
write about our regrets or talkabout our regrets, we convert
this abstract emotion intosomething more concrete words.
(34:11):
And those words are always lessmenacing.
It could be in the sense-makingprocess.
And finally, you have to draw alesson from it.
You have to say, okay, what isthis?
What is, what's the lesson Ilearned here and what should I
do about it?
And that requires often someself distancing where you sort
of ask yourself, if my bestfriend was in the situation,
what would I tell them to do?
And so when we think about this,we treat ourselves with kindness
(34:32):
rather than contempt.
We disclose and talk about itto.
We leave the burden and makesense of it, and then we
explicitly and directly say,what did I learn from this and
what am I gonna do about it?
And when we do that, thisrelatively simple process
regret, we have a lot ofevidence again, Michael that
when we do that with ourregrets, it's really helpful.
(34:54):
I mean, it helps us becomebetter negotiators.
It helps us become betterproblem solvers.
It helps us become clearerthinkers.
It helps us become betterstrategists.
It helps us find more meaningin.
Michael Bauman (35:05):
Yeah.
What about the ones in thefuture?
Daniel Pink (35:08):
so when we think of, when we anticipate our
regrets, this is a little bittricky because there's something
to be said for trying toanticipate your regrets, but.
You wanna actually be carefulabout what regrets you
anticipate.
So for instance, as we aretalking here in the evening, I
am going to I have to go in and,cause my son is visiting and he.
(35:30):
Is coming back from work and weare gonna sit and watch a game
together.
And, but I gotta make somethingto eat for us.
And so, so if I say, gee, whatwill I anticipate?
What will I regret more?
Make, you know?
Or, you know, what will be theleast regretful thing?
Should I make hamburgers?
Oh, maybe I'll regret havingbeef.
Should I make chicken?
Oh, maybe I'll regret, okay.
(35:51):
That decision doesn't.
So if you try to anticipateevery regret that you have,
you're gonna drive yourselfcrazy.
What you want to do is you wantto think about back to those
four core regrets, right?
The only regrets that matterultimately are,"Did you build a
stable foundation for yourselfand for your family?
Did you act with some boldnessto learn and grow during the
(36:13):
vanishingly short time that youwere alive?
Did you do the right thing anddid you connect with people that
you that you love?" And that'sit.
And those are the kinds ofregrets you should avoid.
Everything else doesn't reallymatter that much.
And this is hard for people todo because again, we'll go back
to, you know, you know, anybodywho's listening to this show can
(36:36):
basically, it can actually haveintroduction to social
psychology as a prerequisitefilled because there's.
Principle from that course thatyou'll get the started by a
wonderful guy named BarrySchwartz about the difference
between maximizers andsatisfiers.
Maximizers.
Try to get the best ofeverything.
(36:57):
All right, I'm gonna get, I'mgonna order the best hamburger
in town.
I'm gonna get the best roofer tofix my house.
I'm gonna get the best sweater Icould possibly.
All right.
And then the people satisfierswho are like, okay, it's good.
And what the evidence shows isthat there's some evidence that
maximizers perform at a higherlevel in certain things.
(37:17):
But maximizers are miserablebecause you're never gonna win
that game.
And so I think a secret to lifeis figuring out where do you
draw the balance?
What do you maximize on?
And what do you satisfy on?
And I think that the universe ofthings that we should satisfy on
is extraordinarily large and theuniverse of things we should
maximize on is relatively small.
(37:39):
And we should focus our effortson maximizing those four, you
know, you know, maximizing thosethings.
And just forgetting aboutanything else.
And if we do that, we're gonnabe able to an because what we're
gonna regret, here's the.
What we're gonna regret, whatI'm gonna regret, let's make it
about me, what I'm gonna regret10 years from now, all right?
(37:59):
What I'm gonna regret 10 yearsfrom now is not, I made a bad
choice for dinner tonight.
What I will regret.
When my son is 30 and not 20,and he's gone off into the
world, it's like, wait a second.
My, my son was here for, inWashington, DC for a trimester,
and he was actually living inour house and I didn't hang out
(38:22):
with him.
What was I thinking?
All right, that's the kind ofthing that I'll regret in 10
years.
And so that connection kind ofregret that regrets about love.
And so maximize on that andsatisfies on everything.
Michael Bauman (38:35):
I, I love that.
I usually ask as we wrap uphere, You know, people's
definition of success, but that,that aligns with that.
But I am curious for you, Imean, you talk about in Drive
and some your other books, likeA Great Man is a sentence.
So I'm curious for you, what isthe sentence that you have that
you kind of align with yourlife?
If it's different than what youjust said, which it might not
be.
Daniel Pink (38:56):
I mean, I mean, I would like professionally, you
know, for people to say when Iperish ak that guy he wrote
books that, that helped peoplesee the world more clearly and
live their lives more fully.
Michael Bauman (39:07):
That's awesome.
And then like you said,maximizing for the stability of
the growth is the goodness, thelove, the things that you'll
regret 10 years down the road.
Thank you so much for your
Daniel Pink (39:17):
Right, and satisfying on whether I'm about
to make nachos or hamburgers or,you know, just uncork a big
thing of tub of pretzels orsomething.
Michael Bauman (39:27):
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Well, I'll let you get to that.
Where can people go to connectwith your.
Daniel Pink (39:32):
The best part place is the best place to connect is
at my website, Daniel Pink.
Dan pink.com.
Daniel pink.com.
We've got newsletter, we've gotvideos, we've got free resources
unicorn rides,
Michael Bauman (39:48):
Perfect.
Sign me up.
Daniel Pink (39:50):
Yeah.
All kinds of things.
Michael Bauman (39:53):
Perfect.
Thank you so much for your time.
I really appreciate it.
Just jam-packed with excellentinsight.
Daniel Pink (39:59):
Thanks Michael.
Thanks for having me.
Michael Bauman (40:00):
Absolutely.
Before you go, I would love itif you actually just shared this
episode with a friend.
I'm sure while you werelistening, someone just popped
in your head and you're like,oh, they would probably like
this as well.
So it's really easy.
You just click the share buttonon either the website or
whatever podcast platform you'reon and send it over to'em, and
chances are they'll probablylike it too.
Until next time, keepengineering your success.
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