Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Chapter 1)

     In this book the author, Daniel Pink, talks about the importance of recognizing motivation. He brings up the fact that people don’t acknowledge the primary drive, the biological one, of the need to eat and procreate. He then goes on to talk about the second drive that is triggered by a punishment and reward system. This is an external motivation as it is partially controllable unlike the primary drive. The final drive that he mentions is the third drive, which is the motivation people find to fulfill an inner need. He talks about how there’s evidence of these drives in business. Whether it’s to make money to survive, make money to thrive or make money to support the lifestyle that you’ve chosen, Pink believes that these are the motivations that create a powerful and successful business. I think that it’s important to understand what drives a person to want to create something. This same concept is applied to the work Bex and I are doing for our senior project. We didn’t have a concrete, set in stone, plan for what we were doing. It wasn’t so much that we didn’t have any ideas, but we wanted to get it started before we figured out what the best approach for the work we were doing would be. We were motivated to give to those who cannot help themselves at this point in their lives. It was important work for us to do and would probably fall under Pink’s second motivation; it’s rewarding work for us. We had an idea to fundraise but it wasn’t until we actually got started with our volunteer work that we figure out exactly how to effectively raise money. The motivation we now have is one that helps others, a community, which would fall under Pink’s third drive category.