Daniel Pink

NOTABLE QUOTES:

"The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table."

"We're not very good at making decisions about our future selves."

"Regret feels terrible. So why would something so ubiquitous be so unpleasant? ... The answer is, because it's useful if we treat it right."

Auren Hoffman (00:00.859)

Hello fellow data nerds. guest today is Daniel Pink. Dan is the author of several bestselling books on business, work, and human behavior, including Drive and To Sell as Human. His Ted Talk on science and motivation has been viewed more than 20 million times. Wow. And his most recent book is The Power of Regret, How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward. Dan, welcome to World of Deaths.

Daniel Pink (00:26.486)

Thank you, thank you, I'm glad to be here.

Auren Hoffman (00:28.163)

Really excited. Now, in your book, To Sell as Human, which I loved, you say sales has changed fundamentally in the last decade or so. Like what is different about selling today compared to one or two decades ago?

Daniel Pink (00:32.524)

Thank you.

Daniel Pink (00:41.89)

Well, I think there are two big differences. One of them has to do with the substance of work in general. We did some research back then where we asked a very large selection of full -time employees in the US and Canada a bunch of questions about what they actually did all day on the job. Not what their job description said, but what they actually did. And we found that white collar workers are spending a, we found an average of spending 40 % of their time in essentially persuading,

Auren Hoffman (01:00.495)

he's saying.

Daniel Pink (01:11.062)

convincing, cajoling, influencing other people. Now the average is little misleading because it was bimodal, so you had some people who weren't spending a huge amount of time on that and then others spending most of their time on that.

Auren Hoffman (01:23.055)

And that might include like all the time they're spending on like Slack internally and on email and even on like, you know, posting funny memes out and stuff.

Daniel Pink (01:33.174)

Well, yeah, yeah. I don't know if the memes qualify, the first two definitely, because it's like you're, and here's the thing that the point of that, the point of it is, is that if you look at the guts of what people actually do all day on the job, no matter what their function is, a good portion of it is kind of sort of like selling that is, and so that's what that was. Absolutely. It's trying to convince somebody to join your team rather than another team, trying to convince your boss to stop doing something stupid.

Auren Hoffman (01:50.169)

Yep. And so a lot of it might be selling internally. Yeah.

Daniel Pink (02:02.566)

trying to convince your employees to do something different or do something in a different way. And so that's one point about, I think, how selling has changed is that we're basically all doing it all the time.

Auren Hoffman (02:06.078)

Mmm, yep.

Auren Hoffman (02:12.475)

So essentially like before you might've just been like a quote unquote engineer and now you're, you're really like at least a huge portion of job as a salesperson.

Daniel Pink (02:20.674)

Absolutely, in the multi -dimensional kind of way. And you see a lot of that with engineers. You see even a few software companies basically not having formal salespeople, but essentially using their engineers as kind of forward deployed engineers and salespeople out there. So that's one insight. The second insight is that I'm convinced that sales has changed more in the past 20 years than in the past 2000.

because almost everything we've known about sales has come from a world of information asymmetry, where the seller always had more information than the buyer. When the seller has more information than the buyer, the seller can rip you off. Information asymmetry is why we have the principle of buyer beware in our laws and our commerce. Because yeah, the seller, you have to caveat the mTOR because the mTOR has all the advantages. And so, but what we've gone in this world

Auren Hoffman (03:04.793)

Yeah, yeah, caveat mtor.

Auren Hoffman (03:13.125)

Yeah.

Daniel Pink (03:16.62)

We've lived in a world where buyers had not much information, not many choices, and not many ways to talk back to a world where they have often as much information as sellers, all kinds of choices and all kinds of ways to talk back. I think that's a fundamental change. think that's caveat venditor. I think we're in a world of seller beware now because it's harder to take the low road. So the combination of those two things to me represents a kind of pretty significant

Auren Hoffman (03:27.909)

Yep.

Auren Hoffman (03:33.302)

Hahaha

Daniel Pink (03:46.274)

transformation in what selling is, who does it and how they do it.

Auren Hoffman (03:50.221)

And are there certain kinds of people that are better in today's environment? Maybe weren't as good in yesterday's environment.

Daniel Pink (03:57.974)

That's a really interesting question. And I think it's a really important question. I'll give you one dimension on that. Because, know, in this, once I sort of made this, once I, in this book, once I laid out this case, as you know, I looked at what some of the research said about how to do this effectively. And one of the myths out there is that to be effective in sales, one needs to be a strong extrovert. And that is not true. I mean, it is fundamentally not true.

Auren Hoffman (04:23.429)

Yeah.

Daniel Pink (04:27.322)

There's some evidence that that works against you. But it doesn't mean that being a strong introvert is better. What the research tells us is that the most effective people in sales are ambiverts, people who are somewhat introverted and somewhat extroverted, not strongly one way or another. They're ambidextrous in a way. let's say you're playing basketball. If you're ambidextrous, you want to be able to dribble to the left and dribble to the right. so the most effective sellers are

Auren Hoffman (04:51.419)

Yep.

Daniel Pink (04:56.838)

are, are ambiverts. That is they're in the middle. And the thing about that is, is that most people are ambiverts. Myers -Briggs has completely poisoned us to thinking that we're in a world of eyes and ease when in fact we're in a world where most people are somewhere between the two. and, so, so the most effective sellers are, are, are ambiverts. So most of us have in some ways the native personality type to do that. I think that there are other attributes that make you effective today. things like curiosity.

Auren Hoffman (05:08.185)

Yeah.

Daniel Pink (05:26.946)

discovering problems at the...

Auren Hoffman (05:29.243)

because you're asking good sales people are always asking questions.

Daniel Pink (05:33.044)

And not pro forma, perfunctory, manipulative kind of questions, but questions that come from genuine curiosity. And certainly, certainly in B2B, because in B2B, you, my view, I've said this many times is that B2B sales is essentially a form of management consulting. That is what you have to do is you have to understand the business to whom you're selling in some ways as well, better than they to discover problems they don't realize that they're having.

Auren Hoffman (05:38.169)

Yeah, yeah, just like they're clearly want to learn. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (06:03.491)

I've that it's been kind of like two successful types of sales people I've worked with in the past, at least with selling software and data. One is that kind of relationship salesperson going to take you to the Yankee game and build that like long -term relationship with you. And then, and build that trust. The second one is, the product kind of salesperson where they really know the product super well and they could help you and they may, they may be really bad at relationships, but

Daniel Pink (06:16.896)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Daniel Pink (06:28.032)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (06:32.929)

and in general, found that the product sales people, at least in my experience have completely outsold the relationship salespeople. but in a world where we're going to have like AI can potentially like really help you on the product side and maybe not like you can't really, they, I might not be able to take you out to the Yankee game anytime soon. Like, could we, could we see that flipped?

Daniel Pink (06:53.282)

It could be. think it's very plausible. And I think your analysis is absolutely spot on. think that in some ways, the relationship driven. You want to have relationships, obviously. And you want to have legitimate relationships. But I also think that companies are under so much, especially B2B, companies are under so much pressure to make the right decisions, make the right choices, stay alive, that they'd rather have a great product than a trip to the Yankees game, ultimately.

Auren Hoffman (07:06.073)

Yeah, of course, you want to both ideal. Yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (07:23.012)

Yeah.

Daniel Pink (07:23.634)

And so I think that in some ways, those relationship driven folks, some of them are very good, but some of it is almost a residue of the old way of sales where you had information where the buyer didn't have many choices, where you were the font of information and you could get by on, as Arthur Miller famously said, a shoe shine and a smile. And I think that's changing. Now, I think you make a very good argument that it could flip back.

So that AI actually does the, you know, you have an AI, artificial intelligence agent that helps you discover your problems and find a solution. And maybe the salesperson's job is to, you know, manage the, manage the AI and, and take you to Yankees games or Orioles games. So you don't feel completely untethered from human beings.

Auren Hoffman (08:14.586)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (08:19.979)

What do think of wealth managers? Cause in some ways like they're, they're very much like a sales class. A lot of it is almost like taking you out to these games to try to get you to convert slowly as clients or take you to the ballet or what, don't know, whatever the person's interest is, the wine cellar or something. like how are their jobs going to change?

Daniel Pink (08:36.822)

Yeah.

Daniel Pink (08:40.598)

Well, that's a great question. mean, so in that, are two different varieties with two different kind of fiduciary standards. mean, you know, and so the one that has, I can't remember precisely what the language is, but there's one where you have to put the fiduciary standard, where you have to put the best interest of the client first. The other one is that you have to take into account the best interest of the client. The second group are going to be toast.

because they're essentially, they're commissioned salespeople for insurance companies and financial products and so forth. The other one, absolutely. so, all they have to, and legally all they have to do is factor in your best interest. It doesn't have to be determinative. The other ones with a fiduciary standard have to abide by your best interest. I think it's foolish to go to anybody but those ones with a fiduciary standard. Now that said,

Auren Hoffman (09:11.129)

Yep, yep. They're taking vigs on other products and so they're pushing products to their customers.

Daniel Pink (09:35.106)

When it comes, I think that their jobs are changing a little bit in the way that you envision the, that AI is going to take over the, change the selling. So for instance, that's happening already with things like, not for necessarily ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra high income, but pretty high up there. Like with things like Betterment and other kinds of robo advisors. Because an ETF of,

Auren Hoffman (09:57.571)

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Or even Vanguard, you know. Yeah.

Daniel Pink (10:02.978)

So financial wealth managers are doing less asset allocation because anybody can do it. You can go to a calculator online and do that right now.

Auren Hoffman (10:12.803)

And speaking of buyer beware versus like, now the buyers are so much more well informed. They understand the power of, you know, diversification of low fee funds. so they're, they're coming in much more knowledgeable than, than maybe our, parents' generation did.

Daniel Pink (10:31.19)

Yeah. the, so the, so the wealth, so the, so the financial advisors, at some level, you know, just, they just as like B2B salespeople have become management consultants. think in some ways wealth advisors have become wealth advisors and quasi therapists, life coaches, the concierge services or things like that. It's like, my gosh, my family's taking an emergency trip to Mauritania. need help, you know, and

Auren Hoffman (10:50.255)

Yeah, concierge like help you find that. Yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (10:58.393)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. That's actually worth a lot of bips if someone does a good job. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Daniel Pink (11:03.458)

it might, it might be, the other thing about it is, that, you know, wealth management wealth is not only money. Wealth is your relationships with your kids and other people, the legacy that you're leaving, the influence you want to have on the world. And so I think that

Auren Hoffman (11:14.352)

Yes.

Auren Hoffman (11:22.073)

Yeah, charitable giving, all these other things that they could potentially help you with holistically.

Daniel Pink (11:25.312)

You want guidance on those kinds of things. You want someone who can see downstream a little bit and says, what are going to be the consequences when everyone has kind of figured out that you should go into that you just park your money in index funds that charge like three basis points a year and just stick it in there early and wait.

Auren Hoffman (11:46.84)

Yeah, yeah, totally.

Daniel Pink (11:49.6)

Well, once everybody figures that out, that's going to have some consequences. So you financial advisor, tell me what to do about that. But I think that I think financial advisors are, they're doing something that is sort of to me at the intersection of therapy, clergy, and life coaching.

Auren Hoffman (12:04.227)

Yeah. And many of those things, I think AI is getting good at, they're getting good at, very good at being a therapist as well too, right?

Daniel Pink (12:11.63)

actually that's been a very, that's been very impressive. The ability of AI to, empathize. see some research and among, among physicians, the ability to empathize and also just the ability to ask questions that elicit the kind of answers and self discovery that therapy is supposedly about. and for a lot less.

Auren Hoffman (12:39.739)

Well, front. Like, do you think that it's gonna also not just a lot less, but, maybe some people feel uncomfortable talking to a human, but they might feel better about talking to, you know, they might be more truthful talking to a robot or something.

Daniel Pink (12:47.287)

Sure.

Daniel Pink (12:53.26)

Could be, could be. mean, I think that we're going to see, I think we're going to see the implications that I can also see the other way. It's that, it's that people feel that, that ultimately what they, don't know. I'm just guessing here. I have no idea, but the, the, the, the, that, that, that some people, for some people, the experience of being in therapy is simply sitting across is, is partly the instru, the, the, the instructions in how to analyze your feelings and that kind of stuff. But I think for other people, it could simply be.

Auren Hoffman (13:01.412)

Yeah, yeah, different types of people.

Daniel Pink (13:22.924)

There's another person in the room sitting across from me who's listening to me. And that's it. And a bot might not do that.

Auren Hoffman (13:25.893)

Listen to it, yep, yep.

Yeah, part of the problem with guess with therapy also is just like, I imagine the therapist isn't always on like, it's like, they probably have off days themselves. They're probably, or they're sluggish or they, they ate too many donuts the right beforehand or something, right? I assume, right.

Daniel Pink (13:38.242)

How could they not?

Yeah, that's a great point. mean, the AI is not exhausted by the four previous clients. The AI is not wigged out about the person who came in right before who might be suicidal. And then we're actually legitimately worried about that. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (13:47.395)

The AI is probably more consistent.

Auren Hoffman (13:55.32)

Exactly. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (14:01.376)

Yeah. Yeah. Imagine that's on your mind right now. Yeah. Yeah. And then even if I think like a relationships, like if you're having a conversation with your spouse, like you want to be super empathetic at the end, they're having a tough day. They told you something you, and it's at the end of the day, but you also had your own day. You're in your, so you're trying your best to do that or best to have a good conversation. Like could, could it be a spousal aid as well or

Daniel Pink (14:25.512)

interesting. That's interesting. I mean, I actually can see a world where, you know, the AI become people's companions in a way, depending on what that means as a friend. The romantic interest thing. I don't know. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (14:36.964)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (14:43.247)

Well, maybe not romantic, like part of being a good, and I are married, we're husbands, right? you know, part of being a good spouse is there's correct. We're not married to each other. Yeah, exactly. and, but like we, you know, part of being a good spouse is that we, we, you, you, you, have the romantic side for sure. But then there's also the empathetic side of being a life partner or being a, they're supportive being, you know, and

Daniel Pink (14:47.264)

Yeah.

Daniel Pink (14:50.986)

I mean, we're married to other people, we're not married to each other, just for your listeners,

Daniel Pink (15:05.96)

Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.

Auren Hoffman (15:10.521)

Yes, I don't know the AI. I mean, maybe the AI will help on the romantic side. don't know. on the romantic, on the empathetic side, it does like some, feel like I could be replaced. Like I feel like I might do a better job than me with my wife. I don't know.

Daniel Pink (15:24.182)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not too worried about that just because I do think that there is, you know, I mean, I do, think it, I think, who knows, Orin, but, you know, in my view, a lot of this stuff is going to augment what human beings do, not necessarily replace it. You know what I mean? It could make you a better husband. could make you a more empathetic husband. It could make you saying, it could make you, you know, let's say you have a disagreement with your...

Auren Hoffman (15:42.159)

Yeah, okay. Maybe make me better. Maybe I'd be a better spouse. Yeah, yeah. I'll know.

Daniel Pink (15:52.758)

not even disagreement. say you have sort of, you know, you feel like you didn't do your best in a conversation with your one spouse. You could go to the AI and say, you know, you are a skilled relationship coach who is good at giving advice to people of a certain age. Let me describe to you a scenario that just happened. Please give me three ways to respond to this and it might make you better. You might, you might be able to get, you, if you blow up.

Auren Hoffman (16:16.931)

Yeah, yeah, or it's listening in. It's like the sero... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Telling me, am I... Exactly.

Daniel Pink (16:21.238)

Lord have mercy, yeah I don't know about that. Like sort of Dr. Alexa. Yeah, I always thought about that for translation. I think that's gonna happen with translation. I always wanted that when I'm traveling abroad because I don't speak any languages but I have a smattering of enough where I can begin a conversation and then it just sort of gallops ahead of me. And I always wanted like a little earpiece in there.

Auren Hoffman (16:31.916)

It seems like it's almost here, right? Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (16:46.533)

Yeah.

Daniel Pink (16:50.464)

of like sort of a Cyrano de Bergerac who speaks Spanish telling me what to say and repeating. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I mean, the thing where you type in, I mean, I've done this traveling. Yeah, exactly. You type in what you want to say and then press the sound and they say, you know, you just, yeah. Right. Right. Right.

Auren Hoffman (16:54.373)

How is that not, that is coming very soon though, right? Yeah, I mean.

Auren Hoffman (17:02.648)

Yeah, the Google Translate works well.

Auren Hoffman (17:10.595)

Yep. Yeah. In fact, you could even speak it and then there's the sound and then they could speak it in a sense. It just it just takes a long time because there's like a translator in the middle. What you want is like a real time kind of so you can actually have a conversation.

Daniel Pink (17:21.206)

Right. I think that we will get there. The downstream consequences on that are actually quite interesting too, because what it does, you already see a kind of a long tail and fat head of languages spoken in the world, where you have basically five languages and everybody's speaking. And then it's like a huge decline after that.

Auren Hoffman (17:42.852)

Yeah.

Well, this might, this might change that radically, right? Cause right now everyone needs to learn English. If you had an, if you had a something in your ear, maybe no one needs to learn English anymore. And so it could, it could, it could, it could change that, that, that, that kind of winner take all language.

Daniel Pink (18:02.902)

Maybe, maybe it also, could, it could also, again, this is what's so interesting about this stuff. It's like, who knows? I mean, I can also see it, it exposes more people, even more to English and that English and then English just takes over. But right now, I mean, you, what you have is you have, you have Mandarin, Hindi, English, Spanish, and Arabic, and then massive, and even like Russian, German, those kinds of things that were languages that people learned when, at least when I was like in school, Japanese.

Auren Hoffman (18:12.529)

interesting.

Auren Hoffman (18:21.135)

Maybe, yeah, maybe Rashid or something. Yeah.

Daniel Pink (18:32.224)

You know, those are still significant, but big drop off.

Auren Hoffman (18:35.641)

Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, exactly. but like, I don't know. Is that, I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but if we can all communicate, that's probably a good thing. we can communicate easily with one another.

Daniel Pink (18:48.962)

It is a great question. it's also, I think you can make a very strong case that you don't in the same way that you biodiversity, you want some linguistic diversity.

Auren Hoffman (19:01.443)

Yeah, that's right. Cause it probably gets people thinking different. There's all these studies how like people in like maybe East Asian languages think very differently than people with like Latin based languages based on like the character set and the formation of language, et cetera.

Daniel Pink (19:14.642)

Exactly. Exactly. And then also, you know, when languages die out, and many languages die out, because there is culture and stories and wisdom contained in those languages that can't be retrieved if that language dies out fully.

Auren Hoffman (19:29.423)

Yeah. Remember like the late, I think it was like the late seventies when like Esperanto was like the big thing and ever like, why did that never take off? It was just like, no. you are. had no idea. Okay. I'm glad I asked the right question.

Daniel Pink (19:35.66)

Haha

Daniel Pink (19:39.138)

Okay, you don't know this. I'm obsessed with Esperanto. I am, I am. I have been wanting to write something about Esperanto for years because it's such a wackadoodle thing, all right? And I actually went in Vienna to the Esperanto Museum. Yes. Yes, there is.

Auren Hoffman (19:50.85)

Okay.

Auren Hoffman (20:00.813)

Okay, of course. There's a museum for everything. I love that there's Desperado Museum.

Daniel Pink (20:04.77)

And strangely, I was in, my wife Jessica and I were at the Esperanto Museum. It's a very small museum in Vienna. We were there for maybe 90 minutes, a very small museum. There was not a single other guest who came into that museum during that 90 minute period. no, it's perfectly reasonable. I think that Esperanto is so whacked, okay? Because it's one of those things where it's like these utopian communities where it's like, you're like, okay, I'm like,

Auren Hoffman (20:17.605)

I don't know if that's strange or expected. Yeah.

Daniel Pink (20:33.642)

I see what you're doing here. I admire this impulse here. You actually care. You want to do something good. This is not going to work out. And so, no, it doesn't work out because for number one is that languages are not fixed. They evolve. That's fundamental to any kind of language. In rare cases, sometimes when they're like sort of governments that systematically kind of eradicate a language and impose another one, you can do that.

Auren Hoffman (20:36.953)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (20:41.647)

You

Auren Hoffman (20:48.291)

Yep. Yep.

Daniel Pink (21:03.276)

but without kind an authoritarian regime, you can't oppose a language on people. And so it is one of those things, it's like one of those.

Auren Hoffman (21:10.907)

But sometimes they do. mean, like, like in some ways, like a lot of these, like when, when the Soviet Union collapsed, there's all these kinds of like languages that were kind of there, but like no one really spoke them. Like, I don't think that many people spoke Ukrainian or something, but then all of a sudden it's like, okay, that's the official language. like when, you know, the state of Israel got formed, it's like, Hey, we're all speaking Hebrew. Like a lot of people are speaking lots of different other languages or something.

Daniel Pink (21:24.769)

Right.

Daniel Pink (21:34.604)

This is exactly my point. essentially a police state to enforce Esperanto, it's not gonna happen. Unless it has such utility for people, it's going to emerge. so what you have is you have the perfect storm of like, it has limited utility and there's no police state behind it. So it's not gonna go anywhere. What it's gonna be...

Auren Hoffman (21:40.345)

Yeah. You need it. That's right. Yeah. It's like a

Auren Hoffman (21:59.151)

Maybe if it was like a cryptocurrency, at least there's a way people could make money and then they would like buy into it or something.

Daniel Pink (22:05.638)

All you can do is, with Esperanto right now, is find a date with someone else who also is mysteriously interested in Esperanto. There is no, there is little utility. There's not a place in the world where you can walk into a store and start speaking Esperanto and have anybody understand what the hell you're talking about.

Auren Hoffman (22:16.001)

Totally.

Auren Hoffman (22:31.103)

I feel like this would be a good movie or something. Yeah.

Daniel Pink (22:33.314)

That's what I thought. I actually had on my list of, I keep this list of running ideas, I feel like there is a documentary to be made about Esperanto because it is a case of these, people who started, the guy who started it. These are people who are hardcore idealists.

Auren Hoffman (22:52.399)

Are these guys like, are they in like a tweed jacket with their pipes? Like it's like they're like, they're like old communists, but then they kind of morphed over time or something or

Daniel Pink (23:00.034)

They're less like communism, they are like kind of world government, kind of, you know what I mean, end of the nation state.

Auren Hoffman (23:08.237)

Okay, yeah. like with the Venn Dyer and with the Literary Society or something.

Daniel Pink (23:14.946)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. so it's like the people are just, it's not like, there's no, the trouble with telling the story is that there's no villain. What you have is you have, you basically have like a, basically want Will Ferrell to star in this because it's like a hapless guy who's trying to do something and everybody knows it's not gonna work.

Auren Hoffman (23:25.88)

Right.

Auren Hoffman (23:30.671)

Totally, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, that's hilarious. Let's do it. All right, let's do it. We can raise some money for it right here on this podcast. Now, you know, one of the things that I know you've written about on salespeople is that they have just, just how they're compensated. And I think like,

Daniel Pink (23:38.87)

The Esperanto the movie starring Will Ferrell, Orrin Hoffman, executive producer. Yeah.

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (23:55.351)

All of us, least two of higher salespeople have this kind of way of designing compensation and changing the comp and changing the weights and stuff. But you gave in your Ted talk, you kind of challenged the conventional wisdom about motivation and financial incentives. Can you kind of break down like how motivation actually works?

Daniel Pink (24:14.07)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's nuanced here. And so it's not so much about the, there's a head fake here of sorts in that it's not so much about the financial part of it. It has to do in some ways with the construction of the reward itself. There's a certain kind of reward that we use in organizations, a mainstay of sales compensation, which psychologists call a controlling contingent reward. I call it an if -then reward. If you do this, then you get that. If you do this, then you get that.

Auren Hoffman (24:16.293)

Yeah.

Daniel Pink (24:42.274)

60 years of science now tells us is that if -then rewards are pretty good for simple tasks with short time horizons, but they're less good for complex tasks with longer time horizons. so as sales becomes less transactional, as sales becomes, especially in B2B, where the sales cycle can be very, very long, where the deal itself is fairly complicated, where you're operating as a manage... When we don't pay management consultants commission, you know? And so...

Auren Hoffman (25:11.035)

Well, I think BCG consultants clearly do get a commission right from their sales. I mean, yeah. They get paid like lawyers. Yeah.

Daniel Pink (25:19.743)

That's a fair point. They get a bonus in part based on total number on the billings that they have for that year. Fair point. So what I'm saying is that instead of automatically assuming that the way to motivate salespeople is simply to increase the size of the bonus, increase the

Auren Hoffman (25:28.453)

Their book of sales, yeah.

Yeah.

Daniel Pink (25:47.586)

dial down the base comp, dial up the variable comp. I think that's mistake. I think the more you have high stakes contingent rewards, the more people are going to think short term and risk take the low road. so now that said, I am not against, I don't think the evidence says that we should be against a variable comp of any kind. I think what it says for most jobs, including sales, is I think one should pay a healthy base salary.

Auren Hoffman (26:01.829)

Got it. Interesting.

Daniel Pink (26:17.218)

That is, there's a tendency to say the only way that you can get salespeople to sell is if they're hungry. So we're to pay them a limited base salary so they can't feed their family unless they bring stuff in. I think, first of all, hiring great people. That's me. Those are first three steps. Hire great people, hire great people, hire great people. Pay a healthy base salary and then offer variable comp that is connected to measures that matter.

Auren Hoffman (26:29.253)

Yeah.

Daniel Pink (26:45.482)

And that aren't super complicated. One of the things that I think companies don't factor in with a lot of these very, complicated compensation schemes that fuel the book of business of compensation consultants is how much time they spend. Designing the comp scheme, administering the comp scheme, litigating disputes within the comps. It's like that's an extra carrying cost of these kinds of complicated. So I like simple connected to measures that matter.

Auren Hoffman (27:01.786)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (27:12.539)

But I mentioned like all these people get paid where a big portion of their competition is a bonus, which could be an executive, which is getting like stock based kind of comp or something. Or like anyone who works for a financial institution, which could be like you know, a hedge fund portfolio manager or investment banker or something like that. Like you're saying for all of those, like we should dial up the

Daniel Pink (27:24.705)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (27:40.123)

the more guaranteed comp and dial down the variable for them or how should we be thinking about it? Yeah.

Daniel Pink (27:46.114)

It depends because it depends on where you're starting at. mean, lot of the variable comp, a lot of the bonuses, let's take a hedge fund. Excuse me. Let's take a hedge fund or any kind of, know, one reason that hedge funds go up is because the overall market goes up, right? And so,

Auren Hoffman (28:08.025)

Yep, yep, yeah.

Daniel Pink (28:10.164)

It's like, so you're going to get, you're going to, you know, it's like, it'd be like giving people a bonus for the sun come for a sunny day rather than a cloudy day. Okay. So you have to, so again, you have to think about how much is the individual contribution to that gain? How much of it is simply being in the system? What I want to do is what my view is like higher grade, higher grade people pay them well, pay them fairly and use variable comp, but in very simple, very simple measures for

Auren Hoffman (28:16.143)

Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah.

Daniel Pink (28:37.068)

for measures that matter. For instance, you go back to the wealth managers. mean, they're getting a portion of, they get a fee for, and so it seems to be pretty well aligned that if the value of your portfolio goes up, their compensation goes up. That seems to be reasonably fair. What we wanna try to do here though is like we're dealing with, we're chasing a phantom in a way.

we're moving toward an, you know, can, it's an asymptotic. There is no perfect compensation scheme. No matter what compensation scheme you have, someone will figure out a way to game it. And there will be some element of it that is unfair. And so for me, again, I keep coming back to the idea of focusing on really on hiring great people. I think one of the things you see particularly with sales is the idea that anybody can do it. And therefore we just hire somebody and we, an extroverted ex -athlete.

And then we put them in, because our compensation scheme is so carefully calibrated, we can deposit them in that compensation scheme, and we're going to get the outputs that we want. And that's foolish. Hire great people, pay them well, pay them fairly, and use variable compensation in a simple way so that it's fair. If I sell more than you, I deserve more money than you. Now, one of the things you see, forgive me, this is not going to be an Esperanto -style rant, but it's going to

Auren Hoffman (29:35.61)

All

Auren Hoffman (29:55.781)

Yeah.

Daniel Pink (30:04.214)

But if you look at the, I think one of the things that pisses people off is in, is not so much in startup companies, privately held companies, but in public companies, you have CEOs who come in and do a demonstrably terrible job and get paid a huge amount of money. And so if they do a very good job, they get paid an insane amount of money.

Auren Hoffman (30:29.339)

But isn't that clearly just the shareholders fault? Like they could get rid of the CEO. There's obviously, the board might be captured. Blackrock and Vanguard may not care because they're just like just betting on the S &P 500 or whatever. If someone's doing demonstratively bad job, I know it's like a private equity owned thing that they would get rid of the CEO.

Daniel Pink (30:33.858)

Absolutely, it's the compensation committees.

Daniel Pink (30:40.639)

Exactly.

Auren Hoffman (30:55.531)

like they wouldn't keep that person around, in a public company where you have these like shareholders, which with diffuse power, maybe no shareholders more than a few percentage of the other thing. Like they're just, they're just, they just keep around these low performers.

Daniel Pink (31:06.43)

It's a governance problem, but my view, absolutely, but it also can metastasize. Give me an example. GE, Jeff Immelt. Jeff Immelt was not a good CEO, right? By any measure, and he made hundreds of millions of dollars. And meanwhile, General GE,

Auren Hoffman (31:20.473)

No, clearly not. Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Pink (31:33.482)

spun stuff out, spun it back together again, spun it out again, and thousands of people lost their job. That's not good for the integrity, for the well -being of the people in that company.

Auren Hoffman (31:43.929)

Yeah, yeah, many people had gene and pen shit and you know all these other types of things and so it was bad. It was bad for lots of people.

Daniel Pink (31:48.418)

And so this one guy who is one guy who is so like right now there is nobody out there complaining that Jensen Wong is getting paid too much money because Nvidia has gone up, you know, 87 ,000 % in the last 24 hours.

Auren Hoffman (31:57.893)

Correct.

Auren Hoffman (32:02.011)

But also he is completely, I don't know how he gets paid, but my guess is like 99 % of his wealth is just owning basic common stock in a video, whether he was, you know, and so he's completely aligned with the success of the company. Yeah.

Daniel Pink (32:16.704)

Let's see, mean, you could pull his compensation packet for some of these places, their compensation package is beyond simply stock ownership. It is, yeah. For him, it's probably, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (32:19.908)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (32:23.587)

Yeah, I know. But for, I guess for him, it's just cause the stocks got up so much. I'm sure it's like, you know, it's some of these, some of these people, mean, there are, there are plenty of CEOs where they're, they got paid like a dollar a year and, know, like, like a Warren Buffett type person and their comp is all in their stock. Some of them get more stock over time. Now, what do you think of like the Elon Musk kind of famous stock grant where he got these like very out of the money options in Tesla?

Nobody thought they would hit when he got them and then they hit and then now like, you know, certain, certain maybe he's minority of shareholders Sue because of that. how do you think about that? Like, was that motivating him? Was it not like

Daniel Pink (33:02.21)

mean, listen, I don't know. Who knows what the hell's motivating him. to me, that seems fair. seems totally fair to me. It's be like, hey, I went to a garage sale and bought a bunch of baseball cards no one thought were valuable. And it turned out they were really valuable. And I was going to sell them. I really think, Warren, that the...

Auren Hoffman (33:06.841)

Yeah, yep.

Yeah, totally.

Auren Hoffman (33:21.338)

Right, right.

Daniel Pink (33:32.49)

We have in some ways an intuitive sense of fairness and especially in the West, I mean, of like, the US and to some extent Western Europe, it's basically we want some correlation between impact and compensation. And when that is aligned, people are generally fine with that.

Auren Hoffman (33:59.674)

Yeah.

Daniel Pink (34:00.034)

This is why I don't think that you're ever going to have, this is why this country has never really had any kind of like ground swell, grassroots, know, pitchfork coming after the enormously wealthy. Because I think at some, in part because of the way that people, many people today have accumulated their wealth. If like, if I'm using Google every day and the Google guys made a lot of money, it's like, all right, that's good. It's all right. They did something, you know?

Auren Hoffman (34:27.343)

Yeah. Yeah. That's super useful.

Daniel Pink (34:28.738)

If Kevin Hart is making a huge amount of money and I've gone to like four of his shows and watched all of his movies, I'm good for Kevin Hart. It's when that... Sure, exactly. He's totally rolling in Kevin Hart money.

Auren Hoffman (34:35.481)

Right, right.

Yeah. If Dan Pink gives me money, read all of his books. Well, good for Dan Pink. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.

Daniel Pink (34:49.494)

And so, but I think it's an, I really think that a lot of this comes down to, I think a lot of this comes down to fairness. And we see, we see research on this about how people inside of firms evaluate fairness. What they do is they evaluate fairness in sort of two dimensions, internally and externally. And so the best way to get somebody to quit, best way to get you to quit is if you and I are in a company, we have the same job and same level of experience and you are demonstrably better, but I'm getting paid more. You're going to quit.

Auren Hoffman (35:11.109)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (35:17.421)

Yeah, I'm to quit immediately. Yeah.

Daniel Pink (35:18.442)

No question about that. And so because it's not fair. If we were paid it exactly well.

Auren Hoffman (35:21.881)

Right. Even if I'm getting overcompensated, if I'm getting compared to like everyone else in the world, but in this particular situation, yeah, correct. It's all right.

Daniel Pink (35:31.83)

Compared to everyone else in the world, no one gives a shit about anyone else in the world. No one is saying, my God, I'm being paid fairly because someone in Burkina Faso doing my job is gonna get paid less. No one has ever said that.

Auren Hoffman (35:41.691)

But even in a scenario where like they're paying me $10 million a year to, you know, and I'm shooting basketball hoops in them, but I'm at, you're getting paid $15 million a year, but I'm better at shooting basketballs than you. I'm going to be like, I'm moving to another team to get paid more.

Daniel Pink (35:55.964)

Exactly. Exactly. And also, so you compare it internally, but you also compare it externally. So what is the going rate for a point guard in the NBA? And now again, trick you think about the NBA is that it has a salary cap. that is a

Auren Hoffman (36:04.911)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (36:17.209)

Yeah. And the tricky thing is that all the salaries are public.

Daniel Pink (36:21.43)

Well, that's it. See, I think that's the really interesting thing. I think that I think that pro sports is a is a again pro sports is different because some of the leagues have salary caps and also the compensation is determined in part by collective bargaining agreements. So it's not like the labor. It's not like the labor markets in other kinds of other kinds of things. But I do think that pro sports are a possible counter argument to people who fear

Auren Hoffman (36:36.015)

Yep. Strong D dudes.

Daniel Pink (36:50.082)

this move towards salary transparency, where you can see the salary of anybody else in company. Because what you have is you have two people sitting on a bench, two people on the same team, in an NBA very small team, 12, 13 players, and you know everybody's salary. And there are big differences.

Auren Hoffman (36:57.273)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (37:14.267)

But I mean, difference though, in like, first of all, there's only like 12 players, a team or so in the NBA and you, it's very clear. We can argue who's better Steph Curry or LeBron James or something, but like, and that's a great fun argument, but there's very clear differences like that. Any, any, anybody could understand by just looking at their stats between like Steph Curry and the number like 300 player, right? Like.

Daniel Pink (37:35.852)

No question about her. No question about her.

Auren Hoffman (37:41.795)

You could just look at the stat. You could like very clearly understand that. You also know like who's drawing like more fans to come watch the game. you know, like all those things are just like well known and very, very easy to quantify where it's like in a company it's like that. And again, it's not perfect because even in the team, you may have that glue guy who's like bringing everyone together and doesn't do their stats aren't so good, but without them, you know, but even there you could look like when points per minute went them in the, on the field points for when they're not.

Daniel Pink (37:48.236)

That's.

Daniel Pink (37:58.059)

Right, right.

Auren Hoffman (38:10.873)

You could start to try to understand. And there's so many great analytics. They just don't have those like in the, in general electric or something.

Daniel Pink (38:17.89)

No, no, at least, at least, at least not yet. But, but again, and the other thing, this is a fascinating issue because the other thing is that, that, mean, in sports and in any realm, mean, you know, I go to, go to, go to any company or try this experiment, go to any company, do a survey. Are you inside of this, inside of this company of a thousand people, a hundred people, a thousand people, 10 ,000 people, are you ask each person in a

Private survey, are you a better than the average employee here? Yeah, 90 % of people say they're better than the average. So people have a distorted view of their own.

Auren Hoffman (38:51.385)

Everyone say yes.

Auren Hoffman (38:55.588)

Yeah.

Though sometimes if you, sometimes it will be realistic when you compare them, are you better than Dan Pink? And they'll say, okay, I'm not as good as, I'm a good author, but I'm not as good as Dan Pink, you know? so, right, right, right. Totally. Yeah. No, no. In the federal government, like all salaries are public and I don't, I don't. Yeah. I don't know that that is a good thing. Like I feel like that does calcify things quite a bit. Maybe it's not the transparency. Maybe it's just the fact that there's like a lockstep and.

Daniel Pink (39:03.946)

Yeah, yeah, that's in. of course not. No, he's the Kevin Hart of, of.

Daniel Pink (39:15.656)

Absolutely. And they're lockstep and there's a ceiling.

Auren Hoffman (39:28.217)

like like other I'm not sure but it doesn't seem like it's good.

Daniel Pink (39:33.41)

Having worked in the federal government myself, I think it has some perverse consequences. I again, I think it's well intentioned. what I saw, I was a political, so 100 years ago, I was a political appointee at the US Department of Labor. And one of the things that I saw there, and then also also did, you also worked in some other political jobs. And one of the things that I saw among the federal workforce, as a Washington, among the federal workforce is that you have,

Auren Hoffman (39:42.628)

Yeah.

Daniel Pink (40:03.17)

you know, do a plus minus 10 % on any of these numbers, but you had maybe 20 % of the people working there were as talented and skilled as anybody you'd encounter anywhere, right? About 50 % were fine. And then about 30 % would have been fired from a private sector job.

Auren Hoffman (40:23.291)

Yeah. Well, actually I'll disagree. I'll say that almost every private sector companies, I bet you the ratio is the same. There's like, there's probably 30 % of their employees that have negative value. They're not, not even, they're literally negative valued. and so I just think most companies don't like, I think it's very, very hard to fire the people. And unless you have like a really good reason to fire someone, most companies won't. And they just deal with these people have negative value. almost like, it's almost like.

Daniel Pink (40:30.827)

Okay, good.

Daniel Pink (40:36.555)

Okay, great. So it's.

Daniel Pink (40:46.646)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (40:52.571)

free government employment or something, or UBI, it's UBI for like these 30 % of people who have negative value.

Daniel Pink (40:58.92)

UBI paid for by the company itself. Yeah. That's good. That's interesting. Yeah, could be.

Auren Hoffman (41:01.627)

Correct. Yeah, exactly. I bet you if we went to any company today, even a great company like Microsoft, 30 % of people that are like adding negative value.

Daniel Pink (41:13.506)

That's interesting. That would be very interesting. The problem with that, though, at least in my limited experience, is that that 30 %...

really bums out the 20 % who are good.

Auren Hoffman (41:30.491)

That's correct. It really does. And I think even all these companies have bubs about and that part of the reason I think they have to compensate people so much. Like why does someone at a big company have to be compensated a lot more than someone at a small company of 10 people? Partially it's because they have to deal with these 30 % all the time.

Daniel Pink (41:32.969)

It hurts their performance, it hurts their well -being.

Daniel Pink (41:40.652)

Good argument.

Daniel Pink (41:50.306)

So these 30%, they're basically, they're costing the company a massive amount because you have to up the compensation of the 20%. And so it's basically, and so what you're doing.

Auren Hoffman (41:56.801)

Correct, correct. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And they take all this time by like by like being annoying all the time.

Daniel Pink (42:06.498)

Yeah. Well, for those of you in the bottom 30 % of your organization, congratulations on a pretty good gig.

Auren Hoffman (42:07.962)

or what

Auren Hoffman (42:14.619)

Yeah, totally. But no one will ever admit they're in the bottom 30%. Yeah. Now, you know, the on it's kind of this fairness idea, like the employer employee may not always agree on what like paid well and fairly means. Like, how do you find that common ground? It's just the market. Yeah.

Daniel Pink (42:17.058)

No, no, no, no one's in the bottom 30%.

Daniel Pink (42:29.992)

Absolutely. You I mean, I think one way is that, as I said, people compare internally, but they also compare externally. So it's basically it's like internal equity, equity as fairness, not ownership, but internal equity. Am I getting paid what someone doing my job at my ability level inside my firm is getting paid? And then also, is the market paying? I'm in the Pittsburgh labor market and I'm a

a full stack software engineer with five years of experience. We can find out like a range of what they're getting. Now, what's interesting is that George Akerlof won a Nobel Prize in part for, he won a Nobel Prize for that, but George Akerlof did research showing that the high performing firms were paying outside of that market, were paying above the market clearing wage. So you think about,

Auren Hoffman (43:05.935)

Yep, yep, what other? Yep, that's right.

Auren Hoffman (43:28.538)

Yeah.

Daniel Pink (43:29.951)

Pittsburgh's full -stack software engineer the range is going to be here and the higher performing firmers were paying more than that they were they were basically whatever this

Auren Hoffman (43:38.095)

But because they were potentially getting a better class of person who could demand more or something, right?

Daniel Pink (43:43.042)

But the thing is, person would take the job at the upper end of the range. Let's say the upper end of the range is $130 ,000. They're paying $145 ,000, even though the person... And so it seems counterintuitive. And there are a couple of reasons why that would be. Number one is that it raises the opportunity cost of quitting. So that could be... The other thing is that I think sort of psychologically it does something else, that it's really...

Auren Hoffman (43:48.068)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (43:53.102)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (44:03.599)

Yeah, you're never going to leave if you, you know, yeah.

Daniel Pink (44:11.884)

positive, which is that for most jobs, there's some sort of an American fallacy where the way to improve performance on jobs is to get people thinking about money. And that's true for certain things. But in most jobs, the way to do your job better is to focus on the job, to focus on the work. And so if you're getting paid outside the market clearing wage, it's like, I don't need to litigate fairness. I'm good.

Auren Hoffman (44:33.231)

Yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (44:39.983)

Yeah. Yeah. yeah, I like that. Yeah. Yeah. If you know, if you know you're being treated fairly from a competition standpoint, if they recognize you in your, if they treat you well, if people are nice to you, like all the other kinds of, if those needs are, are, are met, then, then yeah, might as well just like focus on the job and do a good job.

Daniel Pink (44:40.992)

I'm going to focus on the job and then you get higher performance. So I think they're two.

Daniel Pink (45:01.41)

At some level, the best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table. So they're not thinking about the money, they're thinking about the job. Now there's certain kinds of things where you want people thinking about the job, thinking about the money. If you've hired a bunch of envelope stuffers and you want people to stuff envelopes a lot and quickly, pay them per envelope, give them a bonus for every 500 envelopes, you'll get more envelope stuff. But beyond that, you don't want them to think about the intrinsic worth and

Auren Hoffman (45:06.628)

Yeah, yep.

Auren Hoffman (45:24.611)

Yeah, yeah, yep.

Daniel Pink (45:30.752)

challenge of envelope stuffing and what it contributes to the company. But for a lot of things, truly the best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table and just make sure it's fair. The thing I like about stock options, the I like about profit sharing is that in general it's fair. If the company flourishes and I help the company succeed, I deserve a piece of the action. Absolutely.

Auren Hoffman (45:46.489)

Yeah, yeah, totally.

Auren Hoffman (45:52.089)

Yep. Yep. Now you wrote this really interesting book called When on like the science of chronotypes. What is a chronotype and how do you figure yours out like reliably?

Daniel Pink (46:03.916)

So that book is in part about timing in general. So it's daily timing, which involves the chronotype, but also other elements of timing, like how do beginnings affect us, how do midpoints affect us, how do endings affect us, how do groups synchronize in time. So chronotype is essentially your natural propensity. Do you naturally wake up late and go to sleep late? Do you naturally wake up early and go to sleep early? And it turns out that that's more important than many of us realize.

in part because if you look at daily timing, all times of the day are not created equal. There are material differences in performance based on time of day. And some of that is key to what someone's chronotype is. so what we know in the distribution is about 15 % of us are very strong morning people, larks, just sort of naturally get up early and go to sleep early. I'm not one of those.

20 % of people are very strong night owls. They naturally go to sleep very late and wake up very late. I'm not one of those either. I'm in the majority of people, but two thirds of us are kind of in the middle. But we tend to lean a little bit more toward the larky side. The people who are real, the content is really disadvantaged in the workplace are night owls. People, now they're not lazy. They are simply, it's like.

Auren Hoffman (47:22.745)

No, they could they could get a they could get a job promotes out of if you're in stand -up comedy, it's probably better to be a night owl or something, right?

Daniel Pink (47:29.634)

Absolutely right. there are, there's a little bit of evidence of people opting out of professions because a good example is teachers. If you want to be a school teacher, you don't want to be a night owl because you're getting into the office at like seven o 'clock in the morning dealing with screaming kids. So if your natural propensity is to wake up, go to sleep at 2 30 in the morning and wake up at 10 30 in the morning, waking, having you be at a job at 7 AM is suboptimal. And so

Auren Hoffman (47:41.795)

Right, it's a bad idea. Yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (47:53.049)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (47:58.075)

It's also hard to be a parrot if you're a night owl.

Daniel Pink (48:01.122)

I mean, night owls have it difficult because our world is configured for the 80 % who are not. Now, what you see also, this is I think that one of the things about remote work, I think sort of the hidden secrets about remote work and hybrid and how that's become almost a standard now is that the remote is in some ways a proxy for the temporal aspect of it.

Auren Hoffman (48:07.824)

Yeah.

Daniel Pink (48:30.22)

that if I'm remote, I can more easily work when I want to work. Like I have control over, I have control over the width of my work.

Auren Hoffman (48:34.491)

Correct. Yeah.

Yeah, especially if things are a little bit more async, if I don't have to have like a synchronized meeting at 8 a or something like that, yeah.

Daniel Pink (48:41.99)

Exactly. Exactly. So you can, can, you can, you can align it. There's also some evidence in, this is kind of Till Ronenberg, who's a chronic chronobiologist in Germany, who's done some work with German manufacturing companies showing that, that when you, that you get better production and less attrition, when you align, you basically discover people's chronotypes and then align their shifts to that rather than force them into whatever it is that they.

So I mean, if there's a lesson here for those of you who are bosses, it's be kind to your night owls.

Auren Hoffman (49:17.795)

No, I was thinking about this. I wrote this piece while ago about like how people make decisions in time. And there's certain people who are really good at making decisions in like sub -second time. Certain people are really good at making decisions. Let's say over a minute, certain people making decisions over an hour, certain people make decisions over a few days. then there's like the, you know, like the, the, the, you know, Yuval Horari is really good at making decisions like over a year's period. Yeah.

Daniel Pink (49:25.846)

Mm.

Daniel Pink (49:33.386)

Interesting. Interesting, yeah.

Daniel Pink (49:43.872)

Millennials, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (49:45.295)

Yeah, like, like they're more the academic, writing the big books or something like that, or maybe more of the authors and stuff. And certain jobs are more like there's like salespeople, you have to be quick on your toes or, you know, an athlete has to make sub -second decisions all the time. CEO might be more, let's say within the hours, they have to make decisions within hours, like they have to make them quick, but they get, at least can get some information in there. Is, is, is there, is that, is that

Is there like potentially like a biological piece to that as well?

Daniel Pink (50:19.456)

don't know. I think that's super interesting. I never thought about it in terms of decision making kind of bounded by those time segments. I don't know. I think that it's fascinating. I tend to be, you know, I our evolution, I'm going to guess here. I'm going to guess on one dimension of it, but I just want to emphasize that it's a guess. It seems logical that the ability to make decisions very quickly in the moment.

is an evolutionary adaptation. Because if you see something that's a threat, you want to run the hell out of the way. So I would think that that is. In general, is some, we're not very good at making decisions about our future selves. So that when the time horizon is quite good, quite long, our decision -making abilities, our decision -making abilities deteriorate. Hal Hirschfield has a very good book.

Auren Hoffman (50:50.362)

Yes.

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (51:04.891)

That's true.

Daniel Pink (51:18.984)

on this about how we make decisions on how we make decisions about our future selves. And so we're not, I don't know if that is my.

Auren Hoffman (51:27.259)

That could also be, there could be like something smart about that. Like maybe we don't feel like our future self is completely related to us. Like maybe we think our self 10 years from now is like our cousin. You know, they're like somewhat related, but it isn't really me.

Daniel Pink (51:43.682)

But have you seen any of research by any chance? Because you're exactly right. You got it 100 % right. Basically, how Hirschfield has researched on this very topic, I'll give you what he did, is that one reason, you got it exactly right, Orrin, one reason that people don't save money is that they consider their future selves in some ways a different person.

Auren Hoffman (51:46.542)

No.

okay.

Daniel Pink (52:10.05)

Why would I save money for my next door neighbor? Like that's not me. It's sort of, it's similar to that. mean, cousin is actually a better example. what Hirschfield did is he showed people, so he had people make decisions forward looking like 10 year, no, 10 or 20 years like retirement decision. I'm going to get this 75 % right in the details. He had people make decisions about retirement savings 20 years hence or 30 years hence.

Auren Hoffman (52:13.806)

Right. Yeah.

Daniel Pink (52:38.466)

And so in one condition, they just made the decision. You have a choice to put away this much money. Do you want to do this? And the other one, what they did, he showed them, he showed them and by the way, here's what you're, he showed them the piece of software that does like age advancing. By the way, here's what you're going to look like in 30 years. So to say, no, this isn't your cousin, this is you. And when he did that,

Auren Hoffman (52:57.325)

Ooooo

Auren Hoffman (53:03.355)

with some gray hair or something. Yeah, of course, yeah, yeah.

Daniel Pink (53:05.218)

Have you seen that software that age advances you? I'm actually using that right now. When you do that, people are much more likely to save for retirement because what you've done is you've closed the gap between thinking of you today and you in 30 years as the same person.

Auren Hoffman (53:10.78)

Hahaha

Auren Hoffman (53:18.444)

it's your steak.

Auren Hoffman (53:27.227)

That's it's when I think of my past self, always like when I think of my future self, I think of it as me. But when I think of my past self, I always think of it as like a distant relative to me. I'm like, I'm not really related to that idiot who used to, who used to think all those things 10 years, 20 years ago. Like I'm, I'm, I'm like somewhat related to them, but that wasn't me, but like 20 years from now it is me.

Daniel Pink (53:47.254)

What do you, do you, okay, so this is, so here we go. So this is, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the senior seminar in social psychology. This is the work Dan, so Hirschfield did the research on sort of thinking of our future selves as different people. He's at UCLA, he some really good work. Dan Gilbert at Harvard has done some research on this very issue. And what he calls it is the end of history illusion.

Auren Hoffman (53:57.019)

Hahaha

Auren Hoffman (54:10.465)

okay, interesting.

Daniel Pink (54:16.162)

And this has to do with, it has to do with our own notions of ourselves and how we evolve and how we change. So almost word for word, what people do, Warren, is exactly what you say. It's like, if you ask people, are you the same person you were 20 years ago? And by same person, I mean, you have the same interest, same taste in music, same taste in food, da -da -da -da. And you say, my God, no, I'm totally, I've changed a lot. Okay, then they say, in 20 years from now, looking at the same dimensions,

Auren Hoffman (54:36.133)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (54:40.109)

Right. Right, I've evolved.

Daniel Pink (54:46.146)

Interests work passions musical tastes food tastes pretty much the same and it's not Because because if I asked if I asked you 20 years ago, you would say I'm basically the same I asked you today It's like my god, that guy was a fucking idiot And so it's so so so Dan Gilbert calls us the end of history illusion that we don't we sometimes don't fathom So they pair were really nice that we sometimes don't fathom How much we will change?

Auren Hoffman (54:52.065)

Yeah, totally.

Auren Hoffman (54:58.231)

Right, right.

Right, totally.

Daniel Pink (55:16.158)

in our interests, in our preferences, there also are over in a population level changes in our personality as we age. So over time, become more agreeable, we become slightly more extroverted, we become less open. So yeah, so it is a fascinating issue of

And it goes to our incredible brains, is our ability to think past, present, and future. That's an incredible, incredible, incredible superpower. I mean, it's so complicated.

Auren Hoffman (55:55.621)

This speak of the past, I want to just ask you about regret because I know you wrote a book on it. Like what does your research show about like who experiences regret the most? What types of regrets people have, et cetera.

Daniel Pink (55:59.489)

Yeah.

Daniel Pink (56:09.698)

Okay, so on the first question, experiences regret? Everybody, okay? I mean, is ubiquitous in the human experience. It is, we have recently...

Auren Hoffman (56:12.794)

Okay.

Auren Hoffman (56:18.619)

And regret could be like, I wish I did something differently earlier today to I wish I did something differently 50 years ago type of thing. Okay.

Daniel Pink (56:26.4)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. mean, it's more a little bit more distant. So if only I had married Fred instead of Ed. Not like if only I had had chicken salad rather than a burrito. That's what come up as like, you know, the...

Auren Hoffman (56:30.383)

Okay.

Okay, yeah

OK, yeah, yeah, yeah, because I sometimes regret having like the eighth cookie or something. Yeah, yeah.

Daniel Pink (56:42.41)

Yeah. and so, so what you see in the, in, this research is including some that I did in my, some of the data on my own is that it's, it's just, it's, it's ubiquitous. The, it's one of the most common emotions that human beings have. it is arguably the most common negative emotion that human beings have truly the only, the only people who don't experience regret are people who, whose, whose brains don't function properly to do that kind of exactly.

Auren Hoffman (57:00.196)

Interesting.

Auren Hoffman (57:09.573)

Like a sociopath in a way or, yeah.

Daniel Pink (57:12.308)

Sociopaths, people with certain kinds of brain lesions, certain kinds of neurodegenerative diseases interrupt that. Five -year -olds don't experience regret because they haven't developed the cognitive sophistication to go back. Think about what you're doing with regret. You're traveling backward in time. You're negating something that happened. You're coming back to the present. The present is not reconfigured because of your decision in this imaginary past. I mean, it's crazy. It's incredibly cognitive and complex. So everybody has regrets. So that's the most important thing. The second thing is

Auren Hoffman (57:22.059)

okay.

Auren Hoffman (57:31.161)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (57:34.937)

Yeah, yeah.

Daniel Pink (57:40.704)

goes to one of your earlier questions, is, so this doesn't make this, in some ways, doesn't compute, right? Because regret feels terrible. So why would something so ubiquitous be so unpleasant? Why would we have this natural state where we regularly experience something that is deeply unpleasant? And the answer is, because it's useful if we treat it right. We haven't been treating it right, especially in

Auren Hoffman (58:03.535)

Yeah.

Daniel Pink (58:08.46)

sort of this overly indexed on positivity American life that we lead. And so what we should be doing with our regrets, and then I'll answer the other part of your question in a second, what we should be doing with our regrets is not ignoring them, sort of doing this kind of positivity, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, no regrets, no, everything happens for a reason. That's a bad idea. We should be wallowing them then. That's a worse idea. What we should be doing is confronting them, thinking about them, using them as data. And when we do that, it's a transformative emotion on many dimensions. Now, what do people regret?

Auren Hoffman (58:23.545)

Yeah.

Daniel Pink (58:38.282)

Okay, so at one level, there's overwhelming evidence that people regret what they didn't do much more than what they did do. That regrets of inaction...

Auren Hoffman (58:45.709)

Okay, got it. interesting. So it's not that I regret, I regret this person, you know, sometimes someone will marry someone and then they got divorced and had a bad experience. instead of that regret, they kind of regret like not asking somebody else to marry them or something.

Daniel Pink (59:01.122)

Okay, I don't know. It's like, like, like your instincts are just so incredible here, Orin, because I did this survey in this book of 20, we now have a database of 26 ,000 regrets of people all over the world. And one of the regrets is a regret of boldness where you're at a juncture in your life. You can play it safe and you can take the chance. And overwhelmingly when people don't take the chance, they regret that much more than when they take the chance. And it doesn't matter the domain of life.

Auren Hoffman (59:12.026)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (59:16.698)

Yes

Auren Hoffman (59:27.001)

debt. When I, when I speak to older people, that is, that is the most common thing I wish I, you know, followed and try at least tried to be the actor. I never, I never had that. I just, I just followed, became the accountant. I never even like try. could have looked took a year and tried to follow my dream type of thing.

Daniel Pink (59:45.986)

Amen. I literally have this database of 26 ,000 regrets and hundreds of them are, wished I asked somebody out on a date. And then in other research, there's a very strong age effect too. So people in their 20s tended to have equal numbers of regrets of action and inaction. People in their 30s, more inaction. People in their 40s, a lot more inaction. By the time you get your 50s, 60s, it's overwhelming. It's three to one, four to one inaction.

Auren Hoffman (59:53.168)

Wow.

Auren Hoffman (01:00:08.66)

wow.

Auren Hoffman (01:00:12.085)

wow. Okay. Unless maybe something really bad happened in their life, like they went to jail or something or yeah.

Daniel Pink (01:00:17.406)

If they did something, yeah, yeah, yeah. they couldn't know that. the thing is about action regrets is that we can sometimes do something. There are two things we can do with action regrets that are psychologically healthy that mitigate some of the sting. We can make amends. So let's say that I hurt somebody. We have a lot of regrets about bullying, but also a number of stories about people going back to the people they bullied and apologizing, trying to make amends. That's one thing. The second thing is that you can do what's called a downward counterfactual is that you

Auren Hoffman (01:00:33.253)

Yep.

Auren Hoffman (01:00:39.599)

Yes.

Daniel Pink (01:00:47.19)

what I call it the call and at least. let's take your example of the marriage. I should never have married Fred, but at least I have these two great kids. We have a lot of things like this. You can find a silver silver lining in it. But if I never asked this person out on a date, if I never traveled, if I never tried to start a business, I don't, can't do either of those things. And so they stick with you. They stick with you over time. So boldness regrets is a big category. There's another category that I call foundation regrets.

Auren Hoffman (01:00:54.169)

At least I have kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (01:01:06.585)

Yeah, interesting.

Daniel Pink (01:01:14.7)

where small decisions early that accumulate to terrible consequences later. I spent too much and saved too little and now I'm broke. That's quintessential examin. All right. There are moral regrets. We have not a huge category, but a very deeply felt category. You're at a juncture in your life where you could do the right thing or do the wrong thing. When people do the wrong thing, most of us regret it most of the time, because most of us are good and most of us want to be good. So we have regrets about marital infidelity.

Auren Hoffman (01:01:21.083)

yeah, yep.

Auren Hoffman (01:01:37.701)

Yes, for sure.

Daniel Pink (01:01:44.204)

bullying, hurting other people. And then finally, there are connection regrets, which are about relationships that have come apart. Often, in undramatic ways, they drift apart. Somebody wants to reach out, they don't, because they think it's going to be awkward. They think the other side is not going to care. And then sometimes...

Auren Hoffman (01:01:54.542)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (01:01:59.597)

I assume this is super common. What is like, Bobby and I used to be super close and like, and now I barely ever see him or something. And nothing is maybe nothing. No breakup happened. It was just that for whatever reason, life intervened or something.

Daniel Pink (01:02:15.554)

This is classic that most of these relationships that come apart, it's a drift, not a rift. That's the language that we use. Yeah. It's a drift, not a rift. And so the thing is, like one ought to do something about that. And so what happens is, is like you say, well, if I reach, if I decide to reach out to Bobby after 20 years, it's going to be really weird and he's not going to care one way or another. And we're wrong on both. We're wrong on both counts. It's near, it's not nearly as awkward as people think. And Bobby's always.

Auren Hoffman (01:02:37.943)

It's completely wrong. Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Pink (01:02:45.364)

Like the person on the other. my God. like you were. And also the thing is like like what I've done when I I had this thing in this book that I wrote where I found a character who had this very tight friendship with somebody in college and it came apart with a drift and she didn't know what to do. And she you know and it's like I really should reach out but it's going to be really awkward. She's not going to care. And I'm like what what if it were the reverse.

Auren Hoffman (01:02:47.003)

He's probably thinking the same thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Pink (01:03:11.414)

What if she reached out to you out of the blue? What would you think? Would you think that was weird? She said, my God, no. That would be so touched by that. That would be like, it would make my day. And it's like, hello. So truly the lesson of the connection regrets, this is a lesson I've taken as someone who hasn't been great at this for the first half century of his life, is that if you're at a junction, for me, I'll tell you, your mileage may vary, but for me, this is what I do.

Auren Hoffman (01:03:12.986)

Right, right.

Auren Hoffman (01:03:18.671)

Totally, that's a great question.

Daniel Pink (01:03:39.274)

If I'm ever at a juncture where I'm contemplating, should I reach out to this person or should I not reach out to this person? Reaching the juncture has answered the question. When in doubt, reach out.

Auren Hoffman (01:03:44.079)

Always reach out.

Auren Hoffman (01:03:47.887)

Yes, that's right.

What a downer, I like that. Now couple of personal questions. You and I both live in the DC area and we've become friends from, since I've moved here. What do you like living about living in this area?

Daniel Pink (01:04:02.466)

There are a lot of things I like. I like the other people who live here. I think there are a lot of super interesting people doing really, really interesting things. It's not homogenous on people's, it's a little homogenous on people's perspectives, but it's not homogenous on their professions. And so you get to talk to a lot of interesting.

Auren Hoffman (01:04:06.233)

Yeah, yeah, so do I. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (01:04:20.249)

Yeah, I used to think like it'd be like only political people, but I don't even meet that many political people. Yeah, I'm out in the seeds. Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Pink (01:04:25.154)

Exactly. So I like the people here. I also like the accessibility of being able to do things. live, you know, you live all the way out in the mean streets of McLean, Virginia. I live in the People's Republic of the District of Columbia. But where I live in Northwest Washington, D .C., it's amazing. I mean, I'm sometimes blown away. And I actually do this, especially now that I'm an empty nested. It's like I can go to within like 15, 20 minutes of easy transportation.

Auren Hoffman (01:04:33.679)

You

Auren Hoffman (01:04:38.416)

haha

Daniel Pink (01:04:55.166)

I can go to great theater, which I do. I can go to professional sports, which I do. I can go to world -class museums, which I do. I can go to excellent restaurants. I'm not fighting traffic. I'm not living in a place that's filthy and hellish with garbage piling on the streets. It's like everything is so accessible. I can also live in a, like where I live now, I live in a city, but I have like a little yard. live in a house with a little yard. And so I have...

Auren Hoffman (01:05:06.768)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (01:05:21.348)

Yeah, yep.

Daniel Pink (01:05:24.706)

I came to DC 30 years ago, my wife and I thinking, my now wife and I weren't married at the time, thinking that we'd do our jobs here and then go somewhere else. And we ended up raising three kids here and growing to really love living here in DC.

Auren Hoffman (01:05:38.799)

That's amazing. Alright, last question we ask all of our guests. What conventional wisdom or advice do you think is generally bad advice?

Daniel Pink (01:05:48.834)

I would say the, think we sometimes tell young people to plan out their careers, to have like a, to have a career plan. And I think that's generally a bad idea. I think that it's too difficult to plan with any kind of certainty. I think what you're better off doing is, and it's hard for people, and this is why I see people in like, like my kids who are college graduates, so many of their friends, like going into consulting.

for instance, and they go into, or yeah, exactly.

Auren Hoffman (01:06:18.723)

Yeah, yeah, that's why people like became lawyers back in the day if they didn't love the law, but they're like, I guess I got to go do something.

Daniel Pink (01:06:26.434)

Exactly. so they go with it. So but they have this thing. It's like, OK, I'm going to become I'm going to become a consultant and then I'll do that for three years and then I'll go get an MBA and then I'll go do something else. And then all this stuff is going to lead me to wherever. And it's. Yeah, it's and it doesn't it doesn't or even if you want to be secretary of state, it's very hard to plan to be secretary of state, you know. And so and so to me, it's like this idea of this excessive career planning is bad ideas. I think what you should do is you should work your ass off.

Auren Hoffman (01:06:39.683)

Right, I don't know, be secretary of state or something.

Auren Hoffman (01:06:47.949)

Yeah, totally.

Daniel Pink (01:06:56.48)

You should do great at what you do and you should make decisions about your career based not on instrumental reasons. X is going to lead to Y, but on fundamental reasons. This is something where I can learn, where I can grow, where I can, where I'm interested in it, where I can contribute, where I'm with great people. I don't know where it's going to go. And, but I'll figure that out. so dealing with that uncertainty and ambiguity rather than the kind of the false certainty that if I work at consulting company or law firm, it's inevitably going to lead to something great.

Auren Hoffman (01:07:06.777)

I'm interested in, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (01:07:12.729)

Yeah.

Daniel Pink (01:07:26.466)

when in fact I'm going to be miserable for a few years. So less planning, more making decisions for fundamental reasons rather than instrumental reasons.

Auren Hoffman (01:07:37.125)

Would you give the same advice for people thinking about their personal life, like getting married, having kids, like those types of things?

Daniel Pink (01:07:45.344)

What, so that, what.

Auren Hoffman (01:07:47.803)

Like, like if they're planning, I got, I'm going to get married by, by 30 years old. I'm kids at 33, like, or like, I don't know, but.

Daniel Pink (01:07:54.912)

Yeah, I I, you know, I empathize with that more than I do with the career stuff. I really do. I empathize with that more. So I'm hesitant to say, no, you shouldn't do that. That if you're feeling like you're lonely and you're lonely at a certain age and you really want to have kids, it's not

Auren Hoffman (01:07:59.289)

Yeah. Because there is a time you got to get at some point you got to get you got to get moving. Yeah.

Daniel Pink (01:08:24.614)

I don't, I'm hesitant to say, suck it up. Suck it up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I have, so I have a lot more empathy with that than I do with the, than I do with the, the, the career, the career, the career stuff.

Auren Hoffman (01:08:26.171)

Yeah, it's not going to get easier when you're 50. Like do it now. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (01:08:39.835)

All right. This has been awesome. Thank you, Daniel Pink for joining us. By the way, I follow you at Daniel Pink on X or Twitter, whatever it's called. I definitely encourage our listeners to engage you there. This has been a ton of fun. Super interesting.

Daniel Pink (01:08:52.992)

Hey Orin, it was fun, thanks for having me.

Auren Hoffman (01:08:54.913)

Absolutely.