102: Daniel Pink | Action Creates Motivation

Dan Pink is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, including his latest, The Power of Regret. 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.

Dan also hosted and produced “Crowd Control,” a TV series on the National Geographic Channel that aired in more than 100 countries. He hosts a popular MasterClass on sales and persuasion, and he appears frequently on NPR, PBS, ABC, CNN, and other TV and radio networks in the US and abroad. 

He has been a contributing editor at Fast Company and Wired as well as a business columnist for The Sunday Telegraph. His articles and essays have also appeared in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and other publications.

Before venturing out on his own 20 years ago, Dan worked in several positions in politics and government, including serving as chief speechwriter to Vice President Al Gore from 1995 to 1997.

He received a BA from Northwestern University and a JD from Yale Law School.

In this episode we discuss the following: 

• Just get started. So often we want to wait for the perfect time or conditions to do something. But in reality, the best way to find motivation to do things is to just get started.
• Acting creates motivation. If you don’t feel like writing, but then you start writing, you will then feel like writing.
• Julius Erving: “Being a professional is doing what you love to do, even on the days you don’t feel like doing it.”
• “If I decided that I was going to write when I was inspired, I would never write a word.” Instead, I show up in my office, I give myself a word count, and I don’t do anything until I hit that number.
• Once I start writing I feel like writing. I wish someone had told me when I was younger that action created motivation. It took me a while to figure that out and put it in practice.
• Our intuition reverses the sequence. We think we have to feel a certain way to act, when in fact you can act your way into feelings.
• Don’t wait until you feel like doing something to act. Act, and then in most cases, you’ll feel like doing it.
• Start with generosity. In almost any interaction you have, lead with generosity. It makes us feel better, and there are also massive returns to us.
• If we make our default setting to be generous, we may have to switch off the default for some people, but most people are worthy of our generosity.

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