Daniel H. Pink

This is one of the central findings on regret: it can deepen persistence, which almost always elevates performance.

A look at the research shows that regret, handled correctly, offers three broad benefits. It can sharpen our decision-making skills. It can elevate our performance on a range of tasks. And it can strengthen our sense of meaning and connectedness.

Regret makes us human. Regret makes us better.

Too much negative emotion, of course, is debilitating. But too little is also destructive.

Nearly all regrets fall into four core categories—foundation regrets, boldness regrets, moral regrets, and connection regrets. This deep structure, previously hidden from view, offers new insights into the human condition as well as a pathway to the good life.

After a few years immersed in the science and experience of our most misunderstood emotion, I’ve discovered about myself what I’ve discovered about others. Regret makes me human. Regret makes me better. Regret gives me hope.

If we know what we truly regret, we know what we truly value. Regret—that maddening, perplexing, and undeniably real emotion—points the way to a life well lived.

If you even have modest control over your schedule, try to nudge your most important work, which usually requires vigilance and clear thinking, into the peak and push your second-most important work, or tasks that benefit from disinhibition, into the rebound period. Whatever you do, do not let mundane tasks creep into your peak period.

In this chapter, we’ve seen that breaks matter—that even little ones can make a big difference. Vigilance breaks prevent deadly mistakes. Restorative breaks enhance performance. Lunches and naps helps us elude the trough and get more and better work done in the afternoon. A growing body of science makes clear: Breaks are not a sign of sloth but a sign of strength.

The most fulfilling jobs share a common trait: They prod us to work at our highest level but in a way that we, not someone else, control. Jobs that are demanding but don’t offer autonomy burn us out. Jobs that offer autonomy but little challenge bore us.

When we reach a midpoint, sometimes we slump, but other times we jump. A mental siren alerts us that we’ve squandered half our time. That injects a healthy dose of stress—Uh-oh, we’re running out of time!—that revives our motivation and reshapes our strategy.

Taken together, all of these studies suggest that the path to a life of meaning and significance isn’t to ‘live in the present’ as so many spiritual gurus have advised. It is to integrate our perspectives on time into a coherent whole, one that helps us comprehend who we are and why we’re here.

Sales and non-sales selling are ultimately about service. But ‘service’ isn’t just smiling at customers when they enter your boutique or delivering a pizza in thirty minutes or less, though both are important in the commercial realm. Instead, it’s a broader, deeper, and more transcendent definition of service—improving others’ lives and, in turn, improving the world.

In the new world of sales, being able to ask the right questions is more valuable than producing the right answers.

Next time you’re getting ready to persuade others, reconsider how you prepare. Instead of pumping yourself up with declarations and affirmations, take a page from Bob the Builder and pose a question instead. Ask yourself: ‘Can I move these people?’

Yes, positive self-talk is generally more effective than negative self-talk. But the most effective self-talk of all doesn’t merely shift emotions. It shifts linguistic categories. It moves from making statements to asking questions.

Attuning yourself to others—exiting your own perspective and entering theirs—is essential to moving others.

Twisting the dial toward someone else’s perspective doesn’t mean claiming that you’ve been to the place where your prospect just vacationed or that your uncle lives in her hometown. That’s not attunement. That’s lying. The key is to be strategic *and* human—to be strategic *by* being human.

The ‘What Do You Do at Work?’ survey begins to provide a richer portrait of the twenty-first-century workforce, as exemplified in the world’s largest economy. The existing data show that 1 in 9 Americans works in sales. But the new data reveal something more startling: So do the other 8 in 9. They, too, are spending their days moving others and depending for their livelihoods on the ability to do it well. Whether it’s selling’s traditional form or its non-sales variation, we’re all in sales now.

In our offices and our classrooms we have way too much compliance and way too little engagement. The former might get you through the day, but only the latter will get you through the night.

Perhaps it’s time to toss the very word ‘management’ onto the linguistic ash heap alongside ‘icebox’ and ‘horseless carriage.’ This era doesn’t call for better management. It calls for a renaissance of self-direction.

‘Being a professional,’ Julius Erving once said, ‘is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don’t feel like doing them.’

Autonomous people working toward mastery perform at very high levels. But those who do so in service of some greater objective can achieve even more. The most deeply motivated people—not to mention those who are most productive and satisfied—hitch their desires to a cause larger than themselves.

Science shows that the secret to high performance isn’t our biological drive or our reward-and-punishment drive, but our third drive—our deep-seated desire to direct our own lives, to extend and expand our abilities, and to live a life of purpose.