Most people believe that the best way to motivate is with rewards like money - the carrot-and-stick approach. That's a mistake, says Daniel H. Pink (author of To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others). In this provocative and persuasive new book, he asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction - at work, at school, and at home - is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

Discover how to become the best version of you and develop healthy habits, find inspiring new perspectives and live a motivated, joy-filled life! Who is your Future Self? That question is the answer to all your life's questions. When you know who you want to be then you know what you're going to do today. That answer directly impacts how motivated you are, and how you feel about yourself. It's the answer to whether you'll distract yourself on social media for hours, whether you'll eat junk food and what time you get up in the morning.

With Give and Take, Adam Grant not only introduced a landmark new paradigm for success but also established himself as one of his generation’s most compelling and provocative thought leaders. In Originals he again addresses the challenge of improving the world, but now from the perspective of becoming original: choosing to champion novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battle conformity, and buck outdated traditions. How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all?

In this eye-opening account, Cal Newport debunks the long-held belief that "follow your passion" is good advice. Not only is the cliché flawed - preexisting passions are rare and have little to do with how most people end up loving their work - but it can also be dangerous, leading to anxiety and chronic job hopping. After making his case against passion, Newport sets out on a quest to discover the reality of how people end up loving what they do.

In StrengthsFinder 2.0, Gallup unveils the new and improved version of its popular assessment, language of 34 themes, and much more. While you can listen to this book in one sitting, you'll use it as a reference for decades.

Why do some people perform better at work than others? This deceptively simple question continues to confound professionals in all sectors of the workforce. Now, after a unique, five-year study of more than 5,000 managers and employees, Morten Hansen reveals the answers in his "Seven Work Smarter Practices" that can be applied by anyone looking to maximize their time and performance. Each of Hansen's seven practices is highlighted by inspiring stories from individuals in his comprehensive study.

This book will help you flourish. With this unprecedented promise, internationally esteemed psychologist Martin Seligman begins Flourish, his first book in 10 years - and the first to present his dynamic new concept of what well-being really is. Traditionally, the goal of psychology has been to relieve human suffering, but the goal of the Positive Psychology movement, which Dr. Seligman has led for 15 years, is different - it’s about actually raising the bar for the human condition.

In a world that thrives on competition and individual achievement, we’re measuring and pursuing potential incorrectly. Pursuing success in isolation—pushing others away as we push ourselves too hard—not only limits our potential but makes us more stressed and disconnected than ever.

Everyone knows that you are supposed to "follow your dream". But where is the road map to help you discover what that dream is? You have just found it. In Springboard, award-winning author and teacher G. Richard Shell helps you find your future. His advice: Take an honest look inside and then answer two questions: What, for me, is success? How will I achieve it? You will begin by assessing your current beliefs about success, including the hidden influences of family, media, and culture. These are where the pressures to live "someone else's life" come from.

How to learn effectively when you have to be both the teacher and student. Work smarter and save yourself countless hours. Self-learning is not just about performing better in the classroom or the office. It’s about being able to aim your life in whatever direction you choose and conquering the obstacles in front of you.

Do you need parenting advice on how to inspire your child to love learning? Whether you homeschool, or send your kids to public or private school, this is essential listening for your situation. Why? Because schooling has become a disaster. Your child's interests and uniqueness are disregarded, and structured curriculum and standards like Common Core place them on a conveyor belt that treats all children the same. This system crushes a child's curiosity. Your child deserves better!

If everyone wants to live a happy and successful life, why do so few achieve it? This simple question launched a multi-year, multi-million dollar research project searching for the commonalities of happy and successful people. After thousands of hours of research, 400 interviews, and the deconstruction of over 100 books, the results are astounding. So what do happy and successful people have in common? Well, it's not whether they grew up in a loving home or a broken home, or whether they were rich or poor....

Growing up, I’ve struggled with wearing different personality masks. I realized that unless I find my real self and discover my true personality type, there was a very good chance that I would never be able to enjoy healthy, happy, and meaningful relationships. So I looked at all the research I could find that could give me clues to my real personality. Ultimately, I stumbled upon this secret that would be responsible for helping me find my true type and finally be myself.

Somehow, deeply conservative assumptions about how children behave and how parents raise them have become the conventional wisdom in our society. It's widely assumed that parents are both permissive and overprotective, unable to set limits and afraid to let their kids fail. We're told that young people receive trophies, praise, and A's too easily, and suffer from inflated self-esteem and insufficient self-discipline. However, complaints about pushover parents and entitled kids are actually decades old and driven, it turns out, by ideology more than evidence.

Most of us have no idea why we fail to reach our goals. Now eminent social psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson shows us how we can finally win by revealing how goals really work—and by showing us how to avoid what typically goes wrong.

Everyone knows that you are supposed to "follow your dream". But where is the road map to help you discover what that dream is? You have just found it. In Springboard, award-winning author and teacher G. Richard Shell helps you find your future. His advice: Take an honest look inside and then answer two questions: What, for me, is success? How will I achieve it? You will begin by assessing your current beliefs about success, including the hidden influences of family, media, and culture. These are where the pressures to live "someone else's life" come from.

With Give and Take, Adam Grant not only introduced a landmark new paradigm for success but also established himself as one of his generation’s most compelling and provocative thought leaders. In Originals he again addresses the challenge of improving the world, but now from the perspective of becoming original: choosing to champion novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battle conformity, and buck outdated traditions. How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all?

In Mastering the Art of Quitting, the authors show us how to let go when we need to and how to start over. A guide to increasing our emotional and mental flexibility, assessing our goals, and knowing when to hang in or bail out, it tackles our tendencies to overanalyze, ruminate, and put a positive spin on situations we actually need to avoid. In a culture which perceives quitting as a last resort, Alan Bernstein and Peg Streep show that it’s an essential tool for a happy and successful life. They reveal simple truths which apply to goals in all areas of life including love, relationships, and work.

In Leadership BS Jeffrey Pfeffer shines a bright light on the leadership industry, showing why it's failing and how it might be remade. He sets the record straight on the oft-made prescriptions for leaders to be honest, authentic, and modest; tell the truth; build trust; and take care of others. By calling BS on so many of the stories and myths of leadership, he gives people a more scientific look at the evidence and better information to guide their careers.

We all want to experience pleasure and avoid pain. But there are really two kinds of pleasure and pain that motivate everything we do. If you are promotion-focused, you want to advance and avoid missed opportunities. If you are prevention-focused, you want to minimize losses and keep things working. And as Tory Higgins has found in his groundbreaking research, if you understand how people focus, you have the power to motivate yourself and everyone around you.

The corporatisation of the contemporary university has sped up the clock. In The Slow Professor, Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber discuss how adopting the principles of the Slow movement in academic life can counter this erosion of humanistic education. Focusing on the individual faculty member and his or her own professional practice, Berg and Seeber present both an analysis of the culture of speed in the academy and ways of alleviating stress while improving teaching, research, and collegiality.

Somehow, deeply conservative assumptions about how children behave and how parents raise them have become the conventional wisdom in our society. It's widely assumed that parents are both permissive and overprotective, unable to set limits and afraid to let their kids fail. We're told that young people receive trophies, praise, and A's too easily, and suffer from inflated self-esteem and insufficient self-discipline. However, complaints about pushover parents and entitled kids are actually decades old and driven, it turns out, by ideology more than evidence.

What do you need besides motivation and willpower? In Commit to Win, Heidi Reeder, PhD, unpacks over forty years of research by psychologists and economists to show that the key to reaching any goal, whether it’s to hit the gym more often or to finally quit that dead-end job, isn’t motivation, willpower, or determination. It’s commitment. Busting the myths most of us believe about commitment, Reeder shows that it all comes down to four variables.

Goldsmith implores listeners to avoid the Great Western Disease of “I’ll be happy when. . . .” He offers practical advice and exercises aimed at helping us shed the obstacles, especially the failures of imagination, that prevent us from creating our own fulfilling lives. With this book as their guide, listeners can close the gap between what they plan to achieve and what they actually get done—and avoid the trap of existential regret, the kind that reroutes destinies and persecutes our memories.

Are you above average? Is your child an A student? Is your employee an introvert or an extrovert? Every day we are measured against the yardstick of averages, judged according to how close we come to it or how far we deviate from it. The assumption that metrics comparing us to an average—like GPAs, personality test results, and performance review ratings—reveal something meaningful about our potential is so ingrained in our consciousness that we don't even question it. That assumption, says Harvard's Todd Rose, is spectacularly—and scientifically—wrong.

Ryan Babineaux and John Krumboltz have come to a compelling conclusion: happy and successful people tend to spend less time planning and more time acting. They get out into the world, try new things, and make mistakes, and in doing so, they benefit from unexpected experiences and opportunities. Drawing on the authors’ research in human development and innovation, Fail Fast, Fail Often shows readers how to allow their enthusiasm to guide them, to act boldly, and to leverage their strengths - even if they are terrified of failure.

How important is luck in economic success? No question more reliably divides conservatives from liberals. As conservatives correctly observe, people who amass great fortunes are almost always talented and hardworking. But liberals are also correct to note that countless others have those same qualities yet never earn much. In recent years, social scientists have discovered that chance plays a much larger role in important life outcomes than most people imagine.

For decades we've been told the key to prosperity is to look out for number one. But recent science shows that to achieve durable success, we need to be more than just achievers; we need to be compassionate achievers. New research in biology, neuroscience, and economics has found that compassion - recognizing a problem or caring about another's pain and making a commitment to help - not only improves others' lives; it can transform our own.

Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their PhDs. And each year only a small percentage of them will land jobs that justify and reward their investments. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts and many more who simply give up in frustration. Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help job seekers join the select few who get the most out of their PhDs.

Professional athletes, surgeons, first responders - all perform remarkable feats in the face of intense stress. Why do they thrive under pressure while others succumb? What separates the two is attitude. Resilient people meet adversity head on and bounce back from setbacks. They seem to naturally exude an inner strength - but studies show that resilience is something that anyone can build.