1. The four essentials are: Task, Time, Technique, and Team.

Each one
describes the autonomous mindsets that one must adapt in order to lead a
fulfilling and successful life. Industries and business firms (especially law)
that are still stuck in the outdated 20th century attitude towards work as a
drudgery, see less company profits, less employee satisfaction, loyalty, and
retention. One such company that embraces the method of trusting and
giving autonomy to employees is Atlassian. After a few instances of trial and
error, Atlassian is now flourishing under the practice of offering Atlassian
developers 20 percent of their time to work on any personal project they
wanted. Giving employees the power and lessening the negative impact of
formal management can have extremely positive effects for a company.
The best-known company to embrace it is Google, which has long
encouraged engineers to spend one day a week working on a side project.
As a result, Google implemented Gmail, Google Talk, Google Sky, Google
Translate, and Google News. These ventures all stemmed from a creative
insight that employees had while working under their own autonomy. One
key principle that must be understood is that a CEO must have faith in the
employees to be enthusiastic and efficient in producing an innovative
product. In regards to Time, lawyers are miserable because they often
face intense demands but have relatively little decision latitude. In
contrast, Best Buy adopted the Results-Only Work Environment which allows
employees to contribute to the well-being of the company instead of just
showing up and grinding as a part of routine. These employees report better
relationships with family and friends, more company loyalty, and more focus
and energy. The main message is that the perceived restrictions of time
need to be put aside and that the blooming creativity of employees in the
pursuit of attaining a goal need to be emphasized. Zappos, the online shoeretailer hires employees based on the applicants desire. At the end of those
[seven days of training] Hsieh (CEO of Zappos) makes them an offer. If they
feel Zappos isnt for them and want to leave, hell pay them $2,000. As a
result, employees who do stay enjoy their job with the benefit of decent pay
because they have autonomy over technique. Zappos now ranks among
the best in customer service because of its lax monitoring policy. Lastly,
building a successful team is the most difficult out of all the other three
essentials. To put it simply, Facebook selects the talent, but the talent
selects her team. Research has shown that self-organized teams perform
better and its members are more satisfied than those working in static and
inherited teams. Motivation 3.0 overarches the message by beginning with
the notion that people want to be accountable. Having control over their
task, their time, their technique, and their team is the most effective
pathway to that destination. Individual desires are inadvertently suffocated
by society and its distrust of people wanting to be productive members of
society. The course of human history has always moved in the direction of
greater freedom. In attaining mastery, what matters more than anything is
grit. The perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Mastery requires true
effort and talent. For example, Olympic swimmers who did the best spent

the most time and effort on the mundane activities that readied them for
races. Although they did not like waking up early in the morning and
performing endless repetitions of strokes, that very discipline and will to push
to the end results in mastery. Julius Erving once said, Being a professional is
doing the things you love to do, on the days you dont feel like doing them.
Daniel Pink then continues to make analogies in the more abstract and
mathematical sense. Mastery is an asymptote because it can never ever be
achieved. As the author pits it, you can approach it, you can home in on it,
you can get really, really, really close to it but you can never touch it.
Another misconception many people (especially employers) have is that
people will never like word because it is intrinsically boring and unfulfilling.
However, almost all humans will reach a state of flow at work than in
leisure. Clear goals, immediate feedback, challenges well matched to our
abilities. Companies capitalize on this aspect of human nature so employees
make desired progress. Researchers who studied recent graduates from the
University of Rochester found out that workers who are motivated
extrinsically are increasingly more unsatisfied in their career pursuits than
those who are intrinsically motivated. The people whod had purpose goals
and felt they were attaining them reported higher levels of satisfaction and
subjective well-being. When a person wants to become famous and
become rich, he or she will suffer the consequences of living a life based on
external perceptions which increases anxiety and depression. It is important
to realize that it is not just enough to have a goal, but to pursue a correct
goal. Human nature tends to seek purpose in life and companies must realize
that tendency in order to succeed on the vast scale. Science shows that our
deep-seated desire to direct our own lives, to extend and expand our
abilities, and to make a contribution, brings out the best in business.
Listening to our own individual good will and voice leads twenty-first century
motivation and therefore to successful and humane companies.
2. I found this part of Drive to be unsatisfactory. I did not enjoy reading
about redundant notions of how to maximize company efficiency through the
use of human nature. I have nothing to say but that I already know most of
these aspects of human nature and these techniques of allowing employees
to self-manage. I wonder how much leeway the advisers on the Carl Hayden
Community High School Robotics Team allowed the team members.
However, I do agree with the fact that mastery is pain and that examples
such as Elon Musk suffer every day in order to fulfill their life goal. In
addition, I do see the pattern of company success when there is room for
specific team-building. The Carl Hayden Community High School Robotics
Team was able to beat MIT because the team was composed on its own.
Cristian, Lorenzo, Oscar, and Luis all came together arbitrarily and brought
the best about them onto the table.
3. 1) Why are most engineering positions highly structured? Contrary to
popular belief, engineers do not encounter much creative freedom in the
workplace.

2) Are there any instances of negative long-term growth for a company

because it gave too much leeway to customers?
4. While I was reading, I was annoyed at having to be reminded of the same
concepts over and over again. Of course self-selected teams perform better
than fixed ones as cited in real-world examples such as startup teams. The
traitorous eight of FairChild Semiconductors were able to be successful
because they were a group of like-minded engineers who ended up founding
the Silicon Valley. However, the time went quickly because the syntax is easy
to understand and the direct language of the book is clear. I also finally
understood why I have many rich friends, because I had the opportunity to
attend San Marino High School, who are just as miserable as I am when the
occasion occurs.
5. 1) Mechanistic (adj.) Of or relating to theories that explain phenomena in
purely physical or deterministic terms: I found that a mechanistic mindset in
the workplace is contradictorily less effective than trusting mindsets. Giving
employees autonomous control over their projects gives them power to
contribute to the company as a whole instead of the conventional
mechanistic viewpoint.
2) Zero-sum game - A representation of a situation in which each
participants gain is exactly balanced by the loss of the other participant:
Whereas law is zero-sum, technological progress is not. Silicon Valley
companies which emphasize innovation and engineering are usually never
zero-sum because many companies can be winners at the same time such as
Google and Yahoo!
3) Autonomous (adj.) Acting independently or having the freedom to do so:
Autonomy is an extremely important theme to keep in mind when reading
Drive. It is also interesting to note the controversy of artificial intelligence
and the extent to which it can be autonomous. For example, are we giving
too much control to Autopilot on Tesla cars?