Shownotes:
What if the emotions we try to avoid are actually pointing us toward something better? Bestselling author Daniel Pink reveals how regret can become a powerful teacher, helping us make wiser choices, live with more intention, and take the chances that truly matter. We also explore what fuels real motivation, how to master the timing of your day, and why your future self will thank you for acting boldly today.
Thrive Global Article:
About Our Guest:
Daniel Pink is the author of seven bestselling nonfiction books on a range of topics, from human motivation to the science of timing to a graphic novel career guide.
His books include the New York Times bestsellers The Power of Regret, A Whole New Mind, and When—as well as the #1 New York Times bestsellers Drive and To Sell is Human. His deeply researched works have been translated into 46 languages and have sold more than five million copies around the world.
Over the years, he has also hosted a National Geographic television series, given one of the 20 most popular TED talks of all time, worked as a columnist at the Sunday Telegraph and the Washington Post, served as chief speechwriter to Vice President Al Gore, and been a clue on Jeopardy. He lives in Washington, DC, with his family.
About Lainie:
Lainie Rowell is a bestselling author, award-winning educator, and TEDx speaker. She is dedicated to human flourishing, focusing on community building, emotional intelligence, and honoring what makes each of us unique and dynamic through learner-driven design. She earned her degree in psychology and went on to earn both a post-graduate credential and a master's degree in education. An international keynote speaker, Lainie has presented in 41 states as well as in dozens of countries across 4 continents. As a consultant, Lainie’s client list ranges from Fortune 100 companies like Apple and Google to school districts and independent schools. Learn more at linktr.ee/lainierowell.
Website - LainieRowell.com
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X/Twitter - @LainieRowell
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Transcript:
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Evolving with Gratitude podcast. I'm Lainie Rowell, and I'm thankful you're here. Let's live in bold gratitude to optimize happiness, relationships, and performance.
[00:00:12]
[00:00:12] What if the emotions we try to avoid are actually signposts pointing us toward a better future? Daniel Pink is the bestselling author of seven books, including Drive Win and The Power of Regret. His work has been translated into 46 languages and has sold more than 5 million copies worldwide.
[00:00:33] His TED Talk on motivation remains one of the most viewed of all time. When I sat down with Dan. We explored the emotion at the heart of his book, the Power of Regret. What emerged was a deeply human conversation about why regret shows up for us all, how counterfactual thinking works how looking backward can help us do better moving forward. And that's just the beginning friends.
[00:00:58] We talked a lot about the power of [00:01:00] regret, but we also really did dive into drive and motivation and also time management and what he learned in his research for his book win.
[00:01:11] What Dan shares will truly make a difference in your life. Enjoy.
[00:01:16] Lainie Rowell: I can't believe I get to say this. Welcome to the pod Dan Pink.
[00:01:19] Dan Pink: Thank you. Thank you.
[00:01:21] Lainie Rowell: I am so excited to have this conversation. I'm gonna tell you this was a joyful interview to prep for, but also a little overwhelming because I have been following your work for decades and there is so much to dive into. If you're cool with it, we can dive into your three most recent books.
[00:01:37] Dan Pink: Whatever works for you.
[00:01:38] Lainie Rowell: One of the reasons that I wanted to chat with you is because I notice a thread throughout your work of Gratitude. I, I hear you mention it, you face, does that not feel like it for you?
[00:01:51] Dan Pink: Well, it's interesting.
[00:01:52] I'm sorry to interrupt with peculiar facial expression there has never been an intentional thread tying everything together.
[00:01:58] Lainie Rowell: Okay.
[00:01:59] Dan Pink: Sometimes [00:02:00] threads can be evident when you look at it backwards, when you know retrospectively, other people might see a thread, but there has never ever been an intentional thread between the stuff that I'm writing.
[00:02:11] Lainie Rowell: Well, that's just, it's my...
[00:02:12] Dan Pink: Yeah, right, exactly.
[00:02:13] Lainie Rowell: I totally bring that.
[00:02:14] Dan Pink: No, listen, if you see a thread, God bless you. It's a thread. Just to be sure, I don't want to give the misimpression that I'm, I'm here crafting some grand strategic plan where each work leads inexorably to the next in some kind of grand tapestry of meaning.
[00:02:27] Lainie Rowell: No, it is completely my lens that I'm bringing to it, especially because when I started diving into Gratitude and the research, one of the practices that I just absolutely fell in love with was counterfactual thinking.
[00:02:40] Dan Pink: Yeah.
[00:02:40] Lainie Rowell: And you mentioned it in multiple of your books, so let's start with that because
[00:02:45] Dan Pink: Yeah.
[00:02:45] Lainie Rowell: The power of regret. You're writing a book about an emotion. That most people would consider an unpleasant emotion, but you're advocating for us to look backwards, to move forwards. There's good in this [00:03:00] emotion that we might not enjoy.
[00:03:02] Dan Pink: Lainie, I don't think there's anybody who would say that regret is not an unpleasant emotion. Yeah. So my argument isn't that regret is somehow pleasant. My argument is, is that that unpleasantness is a signal. And that there are many times in our, we at some level in the last, you know, 70 years, especially in America, we've been fed kind of a bill of goods.
[00:03:24] We've been sold a bill of goods. That the path to a life well lived is to be positive all the time and never be negative, always look forward, never look back and that is wrong, that is unscientific. Mm-hmm. What I want to do is, is kind of rescue some of our negative emotions and say
[00:03:40] let's use these negative emotions, including our most prominent negative emotion of regret as a signal, as a way to do better in the future.
[00:03:48] Lainie Rowell: It's definitely a signal and a signpost to guide us towards making better choices. So can you talk a little bit about the difference between the "at least"
[00:03:57] Dan Pink: Yeah.
[00:03:57] Lainie Rowell: Or the, if only kind of [00:04:00] counterfactual.
[00:04:00] Dan Pink: Yeah, absolutely. And that goes exactly what goes exactly to what you were asking about before on counterfactual thinking. So let's take one beat and talk about what counterfactual thinking is It should be somewhat self-evident from the name.
[00:04:11] But let's just be explicit here. So counterfactual thinking is when you imagine a set of circumstances that run counter to the facts. So if only I had married Fred instead of Ed. Alright, that's counterfactual thinking. There are two kinds of counterfactual thinking in the psychological literature about this , and also in the cognitive science literature, , there are upward counterfactuals and downward counterfactuals. All right, so a downward counterfactual is imagining how things could have been worse. So I should never have married Ed, but at least I have these three great kids. Mm-hmm. All right. So what I'm doing is I'm, I'm saying at least I'm imagining a, it could have been worse. I could have married Ed and not had these, these great kids and that would've been a huge disaster. But there is a, there is a silver lining here.
[00:04:53] I can imagine how things could have been worse. My counterfactual picture in my head [00:05:00] is of a situation that is worse than the status quo. Alright, so that's downward counterfactual. I like again, I like just call it an "at least." Yes. Right. Here's what we know about. At least they make us feel better and that's a good thing in many cases.
[00:05:13] Alright, so cut, fade out Upward Counterfactual is when we imagine how things could have been better if only I had married Jose instead of Ed. I would be living in a nicer community. I would be not financially stressed. I would have a relationship full of love rather than a relationship full of vitriol.
[00:05:38] All right, so I'm imagining how things could have been better. Now, when you imagine that, and this goes to your very first point, Lainie, when you imagine that, when you imagine upward counteract or things could have been better, you feel worse, all right? That's the key. Downward Counterfactuals make you feel better.
[00:05:55] Upward Counterfactuals make you feel worse, but here is the [00:06:00] thing. Upward Counterfactuals make us feel worse, but they can help us do better if we treat it right. They can help us do better if we treat it right. And here is you sort of zeroed in exactly on the central conundrum here.
[00:06:15] Everybody likes the doing better part. What they don't like to use your word is the unpleasant part. And here's the thing. It's a package deal. What we have to do with regret, not to mention our other negative emotions is not ignore it. That's a terrible idea. And a lot of us have been told to ignore the don't even think about it.
[00:06:35] Always look forward. Never look back. That's terrible advice. The other, what's also terrible, what's arguably even worse is wallowing in your negative emotions. Wallowing in your regrets, stewing in your regret. That's really bad too. What we should be doing is thinking about our negative emotions, in particular, our emotions of, of regret.
[00:06:53] We should be thinking about it, using it as a signal, using it as a data, using it as information. And [00:07:00] when we do that, when we think about our negative emotions, we take a step back and think about them. We have piles and piles of evidence that regret in particular, can be a transformative emotion.
[00:07:12] Mm-hmm. That we can take this emotion and use it as a way, as a guide to do better in the future.
[00:07:20] Lainie Rowell: I love that you said rescuing the negative emotions because they can be transformative as well, and I hear you sharing the nuance of, it's not wallow and just perseverate and just be at the worst.
[00:07:34] Dan Pink: Terrible.
[00:07:35] Lainie Rowell: And it's also not ignore the bad. I like to think about, it's not about ignoring the hard, it's about refusing to overlook the good. And I'm gonna lean more Gratitude, like I said, but no,
[00:07:46] Dan Pink: no, this, this is, this is, this is in, in some ways this is, I mean, and at least is, and at least is a form of Gratitude.
[00:07:53] Okay? So here's the thing about it. Think so. So let's go back to the example. So what did I say? It's like, if only I had. I wish I hadn't married Ed, [00:08:00] but at least they have these two great kids, and I'm grateful for these two great kids. All right. So that's good. That makes you, that makes you, that makes you feel better.
[00:08:07] Yeah. And Gratitude can make you feel better and here's the thing, feeling better is a good thing. Yeah. Okay. Alright. But we not only wanna feel better. We want to do better because if we do better, we also feel better in the future. Mm. And the, the, the, the, the challenge with these At Leasts is that while they help us feel better, which is a good thing, they don't always help us do better.
[00:08:29] And so if I deal with the unpleasantness of having married Ed, when I should have married Jose. What that does is say, okay, wait a second. What, what did I do wrong here? And what can I learn in the future? Maybe I'm too trusting of people. Maybe I'm not trusting enough of people. Maybe I am too emotionally needy about certain kinds of things.
[00:08:49] Maybe I, I am feeling insecure and use other kinds of decisions to fill that insecure. I'm just making this up. But the thing is, if, if we interrogate that, if we interrogate that unpleasantness, we can use [00:09:00] it as a way to make better decisions in the future.
[00:09:02] Lainie Rowell: Let's dive into the different types of regret.
[00:09:05] Dan Pink: Yeah.
[00:09:05] Lainie Rowell: I do appreciate that you are in there digging into the research, telling us what the literature says, and then making it super practical, actionable, like this is how to bring it into your life.
[00:09:16] So tell us about those.
[00:09:17] Dan Pink: Well, thank you. Yeah, so, so, so we, what we do have, just again to show my work here a little bit, what we do have is 60 years of research in, mostly in social psychology, but also in cognitive science and in cognitive psychology and in personality psychology. Some other fields about this emotion of regret, and what it tells us very simply is that regret is ubiquitous.
[00:09:39] It's one of the most common emotions that human beings have. It is absolutely widespread in the human experience. And that it makes us feel bad, but if we treat it right, it can help us do better. Yeah. So that's what it, that's what that, that's what it tells us. But one thing I really want to just underline is the universality of this emotion. If you are out there listening to this and, [00:10:00] and you've ever felt like, oh, I have these regrets, but no one else does, you are wrong. Everybody else has regrets. The only people who don't have regrets we know from this research are five year olds because their brains haven't developed that capacity for counterfactual thinking that you mentioned before, it's very cognitively sophisticated.
[00:10:16] You gotta be at least seven or eight before your brain can even do that kind of gymnastics. And then certain people with certain kinds of neurodegenerative disorders and, and sociopaths. So if you're not five, have a brain lesion or a sociopath, you almost certainly have regrets 'cause you're a human being.
[00:10:32] But I also did to answer, finally answered the question you actually asked. I also did a piece of original research, a couple pieces of original research, one of which was something called the World Regret Survey, where we have collected regrets from people right now we have a database of 26,000 regrets from people in 134 countries, and one of the things that I noticed about that having really literally had.
[00:10:57] Trying to use some, you know, a couple years ago, some [00:11:00] early instantiations of AI to try to analyze it. It didn't work very well. So I ended up, you know, just reading through about 16,000 of these things. And one of the things that I noticed is that around the world there seemed to be four very common regrets that people all over the world have.
[00:11:16] And so I can tell you about those very, yeah. I wanna say, I always say I can tell you about those very quickly, but I'm sure it won't be quick. Number one is what I call a foundation regret. Foundation regret is if only I'd done the work. And so these are small, bad decisions that people make early in life that accumulate the terrible consequences later on.
[00:11:35] The classic one is, I spent too much and saved too little, and now I'm broke. We have a surprising number of regrets about, I didn't work very hard in school and now I actually am suffering in the labor market because I don't have the skills that I need. Some things about health I never ate well or exercise, and now I'm profoundly out of shape, so if only I'd done the work.
[00:11:54] That's a foundation regret. Boldness regrets. This is one of my, I think one of the most interesting ones is [00:12:00] people found themselves described being at a juncture in their life in the past where they had a choice, they could play it safe or they could take the chance. And overwhelmingly, to my surprise, the, the volume of it overwhelmingly people regret not taking the chance more than taking a chance and having it go south on them. And it's not even close. And I think what's interesting here is that it doesn't really matter the domain of life in any of these. Like the foundation regrets. It doesn't matter whether the domain is finance or health or education or whatever.
[00:12:32] It's the fact that you didn't do the work, that's what you regret. Mm-hmm. And the same thing is true with these boldness regrets. These the second category if only I'd taken the chance. It doesn't matter the domain of life. So we have people who say, ah, you know, I always wanted to start a business, but I was always too chicken to do it.
[00:12:45] And if only I'd started a business, I wouldn't be at this dead end job and I might be more financially secure. That's a, you know, boldness regret huge, you know, from the book, but, but hundreds of, hundreds of regrets of people who regret not asking [00:13:00] somebody out on a date five years ago, 10 years ago, 40 years ago, I
[00:13:03] know people regret not traveling.
[00:13:05] People regret not taking the chance. Now there's some people who took a chance and it, and it completely backfired on them and they regret taking that chance. So it doesn't mean it's not binary, but overwhelmingly people regret not taking the chance.
[00:13:17] Third category, moral regrets. If only I'd done the right thing. Very similar set of circumstances. You had a juncture in your life. You can do the right thing, you can do the wrong thing. You take the high road, you can take the low road. And overwhelmingly, most people, most of the time regret doing the wrong thing and taking the low road.
[00:13:34] Yeah.
[00:13:34] Overwhelmingly and because most people are good and most people want to be good, and most people feel terrible when they're not good. And and when I say most people you know, I don't mean 51%, I mean, you know, 98%. I really think that's the case. 98%, the 2% really screw things up for the rest of us, but it's, it's, it's, it's most people.
[00:13:57] So that's moral regrets. And then finally [00:14:00] our connection regrets. These are regrets about Yeah. Relationships. And not only romantic relationships you, one of the big regrets among romantic relationships is marrying the wrong person. That happened that we see that a lot, but the, among the even broader category of regrets is relationship regrets, where you have a relationship with somebody
[00:14:19] a colleague, a friend a sibling, a parent another relative, whoever. And the relationship comes apart often in undramatic ways. This is really important. A lot of these relationships, a lot of our relationships come apart, not by in this explosive, dramatic way where people are throwing plates at each other, but they just kind of drift apart.
[00:14:40] And what happens is somebody wants to reach out and they don't because they think it's gonna be awkward and they think the other side's not gonna care. So the drift widens and sometimes it's, sometimes it's too late. So connection regrets are, if only I'd reached out. And so what we have here is, I told you this wouldn't be short, is foundation regrets if [00:15:00] only I'd done the work. Boldness regrets if only I taken the chance. Moral regrets if only I had done the right thing.
[00:15:06] Mm-hmm.
[00:15:07] And connection regrets if only I had reached out and around the world. We see, you know, incredible commonality in these kinds of regrets. It's really kind of remarkable.
[00:15:16] We had, as I said, we had you know, a hundred, I think it was 134 countries represented. We had the survey in Spanish, we had the survey in Mandarin. We got some responses in other languages that we ended up translating. Even though the prompt was in English, they responded in say, in, you know, Farsi or Portuguese or something.
[00:15:36] And just, you know, around the world it's pretty fricking similar.
[00:15:41] Lainie Rowell: That's incredible. And I really love that you did your own original research for this. I don't know, had you done that for any of your other books?
[00:15:48] Dan Pink: I did a survey for my book called To Sell Is Human.
[00:15:53] Lainie Rowell: Yes.
[00:15:54] Dan Pink: Yeah, this, this, I think this research was better.
[00:15:57] Lainie Rowell: Well, the magnitude of this research was quite [00:16:00] extensive.
[00:16:00] Dan Pink: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I did another piece of research for this book, which was a, that was all qualitative. I did another piece of research for this book that was a quantitative piece of research where we did the largest public opinion survey ever conducted on American attitudes on regret, and we got some insights there that are, you know a little bit more precise okay. Particularly when it comes to demographics. Yeah. So I can't, I don't, I can't make any claims about demographics based on this qualitative stuff. I feel very, very confident that that from these 26,000 regrets that a vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of them group into one of these four categories.
[00:16:30] I'm convinced of that, but I can't say men have more boldness regrets than women or women have more moral regrets than men or anything like that. I can't say that.
[00:16:39] Lainie Rowell: Now is the survey still open American regret?
[00:16:41] Dan Pink: No. We, we, we, we, we, we, we ended up, we ended up taking it down just 'cause managing.
[00:16:46] It was, managing it was somewhat expensive. And then one of the things that I wanted to see though is, is, is whether any of the regrets changed. Whether I noticed any changes in the kinds of regrets coming in once the book [00:17:00] was out and people knew the categories.
[00:17:01] Oh,
[00:17:01] interesting. And I didn't, I didn't see much.
[00:17:03] Okay. I think for a lot of people filling out the, the, the form was just an act of self-care in a way, you know?
[00:17:10] Lainie Rowell: I interviewed Eduardo Briceño recently, and he said, we don't learn from mistakes, we learn from reflecting on mistakes, which I tie to the
[00:17:17] Dan Pink: That's true. Yeah.
[00:17:18] Lainie Rowell: Yeah. We have to spend some time unpleasant, uncomfortable as you share so that we can actually get better.
[00:17:24] Let's touch on When the Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. You talk about the invisible power of timing and can you talk a little bit about how our type, our tasks, our time? I mean, by the way, this is one of the things that was in front of mind as I was talking about how you really dig into the research.
[00:17:41] 'cause man, did you really,
[00:17:43] Dan Pink: this was a, this was, this was a lot of research, but the thing is, is that the, the academic world created that opportunity. Yeah. And this is a really important point. The, the academic world created an opportunity for a non-specialist, because what I've discovered was, I tell you very, I won't be quick, but I'll tell you the, the genesis of that [00:18:00] book, which was that I found myself in my own individual life making all kinds of decisions about timing.
[00:18:05] When should I do my writing? When should I take a break? When should I do interviews? When should I start a project? When should I abandon a project that's not working? And I found myself making these decisions. I'm like, I don't even know what I'm doing here. I'm just kind of making it up. And so I looked around for guidance on this.
[00:18:22] I said, well, someone's like, figure this out. Lemme look around. And I looked around and it didn't, and this because the guidance didn't exist. So this is one of those cases where there's a book that I wanted to read, but in order to read it, I had to write it.
[00:18:33] Yeah.
[00:18:33] And one of the problems with this is that , the quote unquote, science of timing is not in a single domain. So you have economists who are doing research on things from like a time of day or episodic timing within projects. You have even sort of organizational psychology, organizational behavior. Doing this stuff at the project level, you have a lot of people in medical science from anesthesiologists to epidemiologists doing this research.
[00:18:59] [00:19:00] You have social psychologists doing this research. You, you really have probably two dozen fields where people are asking these questions about timing, and in some cases they're asking identical questions, but they're not talking to each other because God forbid a neuroscientist would talk to a social psychologist, God forbid a epidemiologist would talk to an organizational behavior scholar. So what we did is I ended up looking at about 700 studies to try to crack the code of, of timing. And I think one of the things that we see is that we can make smarter, better, more strategic decisions about when to do things.
[00:19:38] There's no question about that. And we can do it at kind of two levels or two and a half levels. One of them is in the course of a day. When we choose to do something in a day is monumentally important. More important than we realize, but there's also episodic timing because beginnings affect us one way.
[00:19:55] Mid points affect us another way. Endings affect us another way. And then there's some super interesting [00:20:00] research about it's a little bit more abstract, a little bit less immediately applicable, but it's fascinating about how how we synchronize with others in time, which is profoundly important and totally interesting.
[00:20:11] And then even in some ways, the way that we think about time can affect some of our behavior. So the idea here is there's this open territory because these scholars are so in their own domains,
[00:20:20] Lainie Rowell: right?
[00:20:20] Dan Pink: To say like, Hey guys, you're all asking the same questions.
[00:20:23] Let me tell you what you're saying.
[00:20:25] Lainie Rowell: Yeah. It is interesting to think about how. I mean, when you're a researcher, you have to go really deep and really narrow most of the time.
[00:20:33] Dan Pink: Absolutely. Right, right, right. Yeah. That, that's not that. It's a mild criticism. That's your job.
[00:20:36] Your job as an economist is to, study economics and master economics and do economic research. In my view, I think that you're better off, all of us are better off, economists are better off if they're t-shaped, that they know they have a lot of depth about economics, but they have some breadth on other kinds of things.
[00:20:52] Yeah, the depth is good and I think most academics would agree that they don't talk to people outside their field enough.
[00:20:57] Lainie Rowell: Well, and I think that's why your work is so important [00:21:00] is because you are bringing that interdisciplinary perspective.
[00:21:04] And I think time can be so abstract and the fact that you were able to pull in all of this in-depth work and then tell us the story of why we need to really be thinking about when we do things and even when in the day, or like you said, episodically. Yeah. What are we doing? Are we making the, the best choices for doing it at this time of day?
[00:21:26] And a great appreciation, again, I'm trying not to be overly effusive, but the appreciation that we're unique and dynamic and that there's a lot of, you know, just individuality at play.
[00:21:37] Dan Pink: Exactly, I think example comes into it. Exactly.
[00:21:38] Lainie Rowell: So we can kind of make these general , well, here's what the literature says, but then of course you could be the third bird.
[00:21:45] Dan Pink: yeah, yeah. So the idea that, that all, every single one of us should get up at four 30 in the morning and do a cold plunge is nonsense.
[00:21:53] Lainie Rowell: I really hope people check out When if they haven't already, because that was a really fun exploration for me
[00:21:59] thinking [00:22:00] about just, wow, there's, there's a lot to think about, but you gave us a really great roadmap. Okay. Let's talk about Drive. And I know this is, this is your TED talk you did for Drive.
[00:22:11] I have done so much sharing of this TED talk because I do think this surprising truth about what motivates us is something that can feel elusive. How do I get these people on my team to do what we need them to do?
[00:22:26] Can we talk about one of the mistakes that is commonly made? The If Then rewards.
[00:22:31] Dan Pink: Yeah, exactly. So that's exactly the heart of it, which is that, you know we use a lot of rewards inside of organizations, including schools as you know, but there's one, the kind of the mainstay reward that we use is a controlling contingent reward, or as I like to call it, and you like to call it an if then reward which is if you do this, then you get that.
[00:22:50] So if you do this, then you get that. And here's what. It's now 65 years of science tells us not about every reward, but about if then rewards in particular. If then [00:23:00] rewards are very good for simple tasks with short time horizons. There's no question about it. So if you want somebody to stuff a lot of envelopes, for instance, pay 'em per envelope and give 'em a bonus for every 100.
[00:23:09] You will give more envelope stuff, there's no question about that. So if then rewards are great for simple tasks with short time horizons. And the reason for that, and this is really important, Lainie, 'cause there's some nuance here. The reason for this is that human beings love rewards. This work is ultimately about the importance of intrinsic motivation.
[00:23:24] But the fact that human beings have intrinsic motivators doesn't mean that people don't like rewards. We love rewards, and rewards get our attention, but they get our attention in a particularly narrow way. That can be effective if you know exactly what you need to do. So the other side of this is that the same body of research tells us that if then rewards are far less effective for
[00:23:46] complex tasks with long time horizons. Mm-hmm. They just don't work very well. And sometimes they backfire. A lot of times they just don't do anything. The reason for that is that when you are solving a complex [00:24:00] problem or creative a problem you don't wanna look narrowly in the way that if then rewards get you to look, you wanna look expansively.
[00:24:06] And then also this shouldn't be politically charged, but I like to look at if then rewards as kind of like fossil fuel. They, they burn up pretty quickly and they create all kinds of externalities and they end up actually being quite expensive over the long term. Where other kinds of rewards are more like renewable energy, they burn cleaner, they have fewer externalities, and they're actually cheaper in the long run.
[00:24:27] And and so the problem that we've, that we, that we have in organizations and schools is that we use if then rewards for everything rather than for the category of things where we know that it works.
[00:24:39] Lainie Rowell: Again, that nuance of we love rewards, but
[00:24:43] Dan Pink: we do,
[00:24:43] Lainie Rowell: it's not always a fit for the circumstance.
[00:24:45] Please correct me if I got this wrong, but if we're really looking for the longer, the bigger, the wider projects, what people are gonna be more motivated by is meaning and purpose. Right?
[00:24:55] Dan Pink: And having control over what you do, getting better at something that matters.
[00:24:58] Now, it doesn't mean you don't pay people, [00:25:00] you pay people well, right. What you want to do, and this is, it's a little bit counterintuitive here, is that in some ways, especially for creative tasks, in some ways, the best use of money as a motivator for high level tasks is to pay people extremely well. Pay them enough so they don't even thinking about money, right?
[00:25:16] All they're thinking about is the work. Yeah. One of the problems with a contingent reward, the if then rewards, is that it makes the reward itself very salient, and so you're always thinking about the reward rather than about the work itself. And one way to get people to think about the work is if they say, wait a second, I'm being paid well, I'm being paid fairly great. I'm free. Let me just focus on doing a great job.
[00:25:37] Lainie Rowell: You promote autonomy. I heard you mention that. What are those major things that leaders can give autonomy in that are gonna help people? They've got the money taken care of, they're getting the paycheck hopefully paid well.
[00:25:49] Yeah. And then what are the things that we wanna give them autonomy over so that they can perform at their best?
[00:25:56] Dan Pink: There are four elements that, that seem to be most important on autonomy. One of them [00:26:00] is task. So do you have some control over what you do? We have time again. So do you have control over when you get to do certain kinds of things?
[00:26:07] Technique that varies from profession to profession, but do you have some control over how you do things? And team, this varies from place to place, but do you have some control over whom you get to work with? And what we see over and over again is that individuals who have greater autonomy tend to perform at a higher level over the long run.
[00:26:25] And what's really important here to understand, especially for the leaders in the audience, is... one thing I don't like about the word autonomy is that it's quite abstract. And it's sometimes hard to get your mind around that. It's like tomato. It's like if I say tomato, you know what I'm talking about.
[00:26:41] You can picture a red vegetable, fruit, whatever it is in your head. Yeah. But autonomy is harder to picture. And I think at least one way to get our minds around abstract concepts is to take a step back and say, okay, what's the opposite? What's the opposite of this concept?
[00:26:55] And to me, the opposite of autonomy is control. [00:27:00] And here's the thing, people know this intuitively about themselves. Human beings have only two reactions to control. They comply or they defy. And so if you're a leader and you're controlling, you're gonna get compliant behavior or you're gonna get defiant behavior, that's it.
[00:27:17] You're not gonna get engaged behavior. 'cause that's not how human beings engaged. Human beings don't engage by being controlled. And so if you actually want engagement rather than simply compliance, then you wanna offer some measure of autonomy over these kinds of things. This is why we're, you know, this is why we're, we've been in like a three and a half year fight over remote work and hybrid and return to office.
[00:27:40] Lainie Rowell: Do you have thoughts on that?
[00:27:41] Dan Pink: I mean, I think what you want to do is you want people to do their best work in the best place at the best time. And in many cases, those people know that way better than their bosses. And so hire great people, hold them [00:28:00] accountable and give them as much autonomy as is, as is reasonable. But the idea that you need to control people in order for them to do well is not true for many tasks. It's true for some things, for, for very routine tasks. Absolutely. I mean, I'm not even sure it's true for all routine tasks, right?
[00:28:17] But, but I mean, I actually don't think it's true for all routine tasks, and I think there are better ways, even for more routine tasks. But for more kind of creative conceptual tasks. It's not a great, it's not a great idea.
[00:28:29] Lainie Rowell: Yeah. And it seems like there's a lot of just, well, we can't make exceptions and it has to be for everyone, and it does seem to be coming from a bit of a place of control.
[00:28:38] I know it's a little bit tricky. I just think we should have after, I mean, if there would've been one upside post pandemic, it's that there should be more flexibility.
[00:28:46] Dan Pink: I mean, I think that's right. And here's the thing. It's like, like, I don't think that I, in my own view for, for many kinds of jobs, many kinds of projects, fully remote is not a good idea.
[00:28:59] Right.
[00:28:59] I also [00:29:00] believe that for many kinds of jobs and many kinds of projects. Requiring everybody to be in the same physical space for the same span of time is also not a great idea. I think what this is showing us, is that it's revealing that we haven't answered some even more fundamental questions, which is what kind of work should be done alone and what kind of work should be done solo.
[00:29:22] There's some kind of work that should be done alone and some kind of work that should be done together. If you're doing work that's alone, why do you need to come to the office? Right? But if you're doing work that requires like collaboration with other people, you probably wanna be in the office but we don't even have a good theory about what should be done alone and what should be done together.
[00:29:38] Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
[00:29:38] Dan Pink: What kinds of things should be done synchronously? What kind of things should be done asynchronously? One of the, the downsides of Zoom is that it continued to deify this idea that we all needed to be synchronously doing stuff together at the same time, when in fact we do in certain circumstances, but we don't have to be, do that all the time.
[00:29:56] That a lot of things can be done asynchronously and they can, can get done [00:30:00] better asynchronously. And when we do more asynchronously, we get even more benefits from what we end up doing synchronous. So there are all kinds of other deeper questions embedded in these superficial questions about return to office, which I can't even believe we're still talking about in 2025.
[00:30:14] Lainie Rowell: I know and I think about like my background in education. I love looking at the world of online learning, which was around way before COVID. And if you look at those practitioners who've been doing it for a while from a place of what is the best time for us to be synchronous versus asynchronous.
[00:30:32] Dan Pink: Exactly.
[00:30:32] Lainie Rowell: They've done some real hard thinking about this. Yeah. And it wasn't like, okay, well a brick and mortar school has six hours of in-person, so we should be on Zoom for six hours.
[00:30:42] Dan Pink: Exactly.
[00:30:43] Lainie Rowell: It's terrible.
[00:30:44] Dan Pink: Exactly.
[00:30:45] Lainie Rowell: When do we wanna be social in our learning? Exactly. When do we need to our own?
[00:30:48] Dan Pink: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And also, you know, I think it's a great point. And you think about the amount of learning that goes on online, forget about [00:31:00] formal online learning. Alright? And, you know, forget about the long forgotten world of MOOCs. The just there at this moment as we speak.
[00:31:11] Right. It'd be fantastic if we could somehow pull this up on this. You know, on the screen as we speak on this screen, there are gazillions of people forgive the technical term around the world who are learning online.
[00:31:24] Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
[00:31:25] Dan Pink: And they're learning by going to YouTube. How do you fix a carbu? Let me go to YouTube.
[00:31:31] How do you say this particular phrase in Bengali? Let's go to YouTube. How do you master this particular chord on the guitar? Let's go to YouTube. And so they are learning robustly. And the, the reason they're learning is that they have some autonomy mm-hmm in how they do that. And so the idea that the, you know, let's, I mean, I'm not a musician, but the thing is like there are people who are learning to play guitar via YouTube.
[00:31:57] Is that the only way to learn how to play guitar? No. [00:32:00] Should you be face to face with a guitar teacher? Absolutely. But for many, many things. There is massive, massive, massive learning going on autonomously via YouTube, and, , it's done outside of any formal institution.
[00:32:15] And I feel like that, that gets overlooked Yeah. In our conversations about about education and learning.
[00:32:23] Lainie Rowell: That organic just in time, like how, exactly, how could you be more motivated than I need to learn exactly right now. And then also tying back to When like, I need it in this moment.
[00:32:33] Dan Pink: Those four words are so important, . Organic, that is, it's organic in the sense that it is. Sort of synonym would be emergent. It isn't controlled by some single top down entity, so it's organic, but also the just in time thing is so incredibly important and I think we overlook that.
[00:32:53] So it's like, Hey, I, maybe I wanna learn how to play the guitar. And I don't learn how to play one chord on the guitar. Hmm. Let me go sign up at the [00:33:00] community center for a guitar class that starts in two months. No, let me go. I'm having a hard time sleeping. Let me go online at one o'clock in the morning because there's some dude in Albania who is a great guitar teacher who knows exactly how to teach people how to play that particular chord.
[00:33:15] Yeah, just in time.
[00:33:17] Lainie Rowell: Oh my goodness. You've been so generous with your time, Dan. I would love it if you could share something that you cannot share enough or maybe you haven't had a chance to share before, like you would love to just jump on the rooftops and shot this for everyone. That's a big question.
[00:33:33] Dan Pink: Good question. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:33:34] Yeah. I mean, I have a giant list of those things. You know, there's this, that's the wrong question to ask a man who has collected a duffel bag full of six decades of pet peeves. So tell me why I am shouting it from the rooftop.
[00:33:47] Lainie Rowell: Because this is the thing that you just really need people to understand. Like if there was nothing else they took from your body of work, like you really want them to understand this.
[00:33:55] Dan Pink: Okay.
[00:33:55] Lainie Rowell: And it could just be most top of mind.
[00:33:57] Dan Pink: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll talk. So I'll give you one for, I'll give you one from Regret.
[00:33:59] I [00:34:00] think this is truly overwhelming. Especially in social science, even the physical science, but in in social science, there is, there is nuance, there is, there are things that are dependent on context, there are ambiguities and so forth. But this is one thing that comes out in the research on regret.
[00:34:14] It's come out for decades. It came out in my own individual research. I think it conforms with most people's lived experiences as well, which is this over time, you'll regret what you didn't do way more than what you did do. We can make sense of our mistakes and our screw ups and our blunders. The regrets of action we can do a downward counterfactual and find a silver lining. If we hurt somebody, we can make amends. Regrets of action are shorter lived regrets of inaction stick with us and bug us and stick with us and bug us forever. And so if you are on this point where you say, should I do something or should I not do something?
[00:34:57] And you're, you're concerned. I really think there's an [00:35:00] argument just for doing something. Okay. That, for taking action, because to me, it's as clear as day that over time people regret their inactions way more than they regret their actions.
[00:35:11] Lainie Rowell: Mm. So it's like, do your future self a favor and take the action.
[00:35:17] Dan Pink: That's a great way to put it. That's a great way to put it. Your future self will thank you. Your future self will look back and your future self, that's a great way to put it. Your future self is more likely to look back and say, thank you for taking that shot. Even if it didn't work, rather than saying, you idiot, what were you thinking?
[00:35:34] But I can guarantee you your future self is if you want to act boldly on something and you don't, and you have to meet yourself in 10 years, that you of 10 years from now is gonna be saying, what the hell dude? It's like. You are not here forever. Yeah. Like when are you gonna step up?
[00:35:50] Yeah. Or you wanna reach out to somebody and who you care about and you say, oh, it's gonna be awkward. They're not gonna care. And then 10 years goes by and you're like, what are you doing? And so do the [00:36:00] you of your future a favor and, and just take the shot.
[00:36:03] Lainie Rowell: Dan, I have so loved this conversation.
[00:36:05] Thank you so much for this time. What is the best way for people to connect with you? Is there anything you want them looking out for?
[00:36:12] Dan Pink: One could just go to my website, which is, dan pink.com or daniel pink.com. I experimenting with different kinds of things.
[00:36:18] I'm starting to do a lot of experimentation on YouTube, so, okay. You can go to YouTube, Daniel Pink tv for some videos that are, some of which are the equivalent of me shouting my pet peeves on the roof.
[00:36:32] Lainie Rowell: I'm here for it. I'm here for it, my friend. And I just wanna say that I follow you on Instagram and I feel like every time I see a new post on Instagram, I'm just like, oh my gosh. That is so brilliant. And that is super helpful to me. Thanks. And I just really appreciate that you put that content out there. I'm here for it. We're all here for it. Thank you so much for that.
[00:36:53] And I will be sure to put links to your books in the show notes and make sure people can connect with you.
[00:36:58] Dan Pink: Sounds great.
[00:36:59] Lainie Rowell: Dan, [00:37:00] thank you for being here and thank you all for listening.
[00:37:02] If you're grateful for this episode, please be sure to subscribe today. And if you're feeling really thankful, please submit a review and share with others so they know the value. One last thing, please connect on social media using the hashtag EvolvingWithGratitude to share your gratitude stories.
