Notes and Takeaways from How will you measure your life?
Source: HBR
When I read it: February 2020, most recently.
Why I read it: I rediscovered this article as part of my research on regret minimization. I was also reminded of it last month due to the author’s passing. I’ve followed Clayton Christensen’s work for years and will continue to revisit it over the rest of my life. I also loved watching his son, Matt Christensen, play basketball when he played for the Duke Blue Devils. He was a beast. Here are my notes from a timeless article.
Read the original article or scroll down for my notes.
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My notes
A bit about Clayton
Clayton M. Christensen was a best-selling author, academic, and business consultant. He wrote The Innovator's Dilemma, which is one of the most influential business books I’ve ever read. He also was a professor at Harvard Business School and a leader in the LDS (“mormon”) church.
Teach people how to think
Instead of telling people what to think, teach them how to think —> so they can reach the correct decision on their own.
When people ask you what they think, try not to answer the question directly —> Focus on sharing how you would think through the topic yourself, based on our own mental models, knowledge, and experience… (This might not give them the answer, but will give them some new ways of thinking so they can come to their own conclusion.)
How will you measure your life?
In this article, Clayton discusses an exercise he puts his students through on the last day of class. He ask his students to answer three questions about themselves:
How can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career?
How can I be sure that my relationships with my family become an enduring source of happiness?
How can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail?
1. How can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career?
Frederick Herzberg wrote The Motivation to Work ⇒ money is not the most powerful motivator in our lives ⇒ the most powerful motivators are the opportunities to:
Learn,
Grow in responsibilities
Contribute to others
Be recognized for achievements
Clayton: “Management is the most noble of professions if it’s practiced well.No other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognized for achievement, and contribute to the success of a team… Doing deals doesn’t yield the deep rewards that come from building up people.”
2. How can I be sure that my relationships with my family become an enduring source of happiness?
Due to shareholder supremacy, company decision-making systems often result in over-investment in short term gains and under-investment in long-term strategies.
Clayton: “People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers.”
Don’t let this happen to your life.
A solution to this mentality is to maintain a strong core purpose that forces / drives short term decision-making for the long term.
To have a clear purpose, you have to think long and hard about it. And then you have to keep it top-of-mind to guide your personal resource allocation ⇒ i.e. how you spend your personal time, energy, and talent.
Your personal resources are finite, and your purpose helps you decide how to allocate them.
Delayed gratification is key to success in life ⇒ business and personal failure are often traced back to over-indulging in efforts that offer immediate gratification.
Families have cultures just like companies ⇒ Cooperation (and teamwork) are key to a happy life with family. The Tools of Cooperation is a useful model for this. The simplest tools are power tools, but the most effective and enduring are culture tools.
Source: HBR
3. How can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail?
The marginal cost of doing something wrong “just this once” always seems low ⇒ this is very dangerous.
It’s much easier to hold to your commitments 100% of the time than it is to hold them 98% of the time.
“Just this once” is a source of great regret, that adds up over time.
Humility is important. Humble people:
Have a high level of respect for themselves, and
Have a high level of respect for others
You can only be humble if you both feel good about yourself AND you want to help those around you feel really good about themselves.
Humble people see the opportunity to learn from everybody ⇒ this leads to unlimited learning opportunities.
If you are acting in an abusive, arrogant, or demeaning manner toward others, your behavior is almost always a symptom of lack of your own self-esteem.
Final recommendation
Clayton: “Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success.”