Motivation

Careful readers of Drive will remember the “What’s Your Sentence?” exercise from page 154 of the book. (If you’ve forgotten, shame on you. But you can watch the 2-minute video below or can click here to get up to speed.) The exercise asks you to distill your life — what it’s about, why you’re here — […]

Over at the HBR blog, Julia Kirby offers up an innovation that is brilliant (and that I wish I’d thought of myself.)  You know how each year the MacArthur Foundation awards those famous genius grants? How about if organizations did something similar? In a great post, Julia lays out the evidence that unstructured time and […]

Steve Akers of Louisville writes: “I know from your blog that you like signs, so I’m attaching the photo of a sign I saw at our local zoo this past weekend. It is not emotionally intelligent, but it certainly illustrates extreme extrinsic motivation. It seems this construction company feels that company swag is exactly the […]

Should you psych yourself up with confident declarations — or ask yourself questions about whether you’re up to the job? In my latest Sunday Telegraph column, I turn to a team of University of Illinois researchers — and the legendary management theorist Bob the Builder — for the answer.

From the playing fields of 21st century America to the killing fields of 20th century Europe, here are two interesting perspectives on motivation. The first comes from Los Angeles Dodgers manager Joe Torre, who’s interviewed in the new BusinessWeek and explains why he left a job managing the New York Yankees: “I was offered a very […]

That’s the question I examine in my new monthly business column for the Sunday Telegraph of London, which debuts today. In the piece, which takes about four minutes to read, I describe the experiences of two companies — Red Gate Software in Cambridge, UK and System Source in Baltimore — that have eliminated commissions for […]

(Via Alexander Commercials. HT: Craig Safir)

My pal Scott Underwood directed me to a fascinating study that stands at the intersection of two of my obsessions: motivation and signs. Say you need to go from the ground floor of a building to the fourth floor. Climbing stairs is obviously better for your health than standing in an elevator. But how can […]

Over at the Inside Influence Report, Noah Goldstein writes about a recent study that examined whether infusing a task with purpose can motivate high performance. The study, conducted by Wharton’s Adam Grant, involved the call center at a university fundraising organization. Grant obtained permission to talk to the folks working at the call center — […]