Book - How Will You Measure Your Life?

How Will You Measure Your Life?

by Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, Karen Dillon

"In 2010 world-renowned innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen gave a powerful speech to the Harvard Business School's graduating class. Drawing upon his business research, he offered a series of guidelines for finding meaning and happiness in life. He used examples from his own experiences to explain how high achievers can all too often fall into traps that lead to unhappiness.

The speech was memorable not only because it was deeply revealing but also because it came at a time of intense personal reflection: Christensen had just overcome the same type of cancer that had taken his father's life. As Christensen struggled with the disease, the question "How do you measure your life?" became more urgent and poignant, and he began to share his insights more widely with family, friends, and students.

In this groundbreaking book, Christensen puts forth a series of questions: How can I be sure that I'll find satisfaction in my career? How can I be sure that my personal relationships become enduring sources of happiness? How can I avoid compromising my integrity—and stay out of jail? Using lessons from some of the world's greatest businesses, he provides incredible insights into these challenging questions.

How Will You Measure Your Life? is full of inspiration and wisdom, and will help students, midcareer professionals, and parents alike forge their own paths to fulfillment."

 review & image from goodreads.com

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JHT comments

I am inspired by Christensen and his personal story - overcoming cancer and then a stroke. Years ago we heard Clayton Christensen speak in a church meeting. I remember being impressed and inspired with him then. This was long before the cancer and stroke. He was a world renowned “expert” but was a very approachable and humble person. His main message was about the necessity of each of us to be Christlike and do what Christ would do – every day of our lives. Just go out and do as Christ would do and you’ll make a difference in people’s lives.

This fits in with what he wrote in the epilogue of this book (p 203-204)

“… the only metrics that will truly matter to my life are the individuals whom I have been able to help, one by one, to become better people. When I have my interview with God, our conversation will focus on the individuals whose self-esteem I was able to strengthen, whose faith I was able to reinforce, and whose discomfort I was able to assuage – a doer of good, ....... These are the metrics that matter in measuring my life.”  

Christensen writes of being aware of how we are allocating the resources. We can tell a lot about a person's priorities by looking at where his/her time and energies are directed. “If your family matters most to you, when you think about all the choices you’ve made with your time in a week, does your family seem to come out on top? Because if the decisions you make about where you invest your blood, sweat, and tears are not consistent with the person you aspire to be, you’ll never become that person.” (p. 75)

Christensen talks of the importance of giving children experiences they need to be successful in life as well as building a strong family culture. 

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Some of the best wisdom in the book, in my opinion, is 

Life is just one unending stream of extenuating circumstances

Many of us have personal rules and we are tempted to break them “just this once.” We can usually provide a justification for breaking the rule "just this once." Says Christensen,  “None of those things, when they first happen, feels like a life-changing decision. The marginal costs are almost always low. But each of those decisions can roll up into a much bigger picture, turning you into the kind of person you never wanted to be. That instinct to just use the marginal costs hides from us the true cost of our actions.” Then Christensen gave a person example.

Christensen was studying at Oxford and made the basketball team.  The team made it all the way to the finals of “the British equivalent of the NCAA tournament.” The championship game was going to be on Sunday. When Christensen was 16 he made a commitment to himself and to God that he wouldn’t “play ball on Sunday because it is our Sabbath.” The coach and his teammates were “incredulous.” They told him God would understand if he played on Sunday, just this once. Christensen prayed and weighed his commitment to God and to his team. He decided to go with his commitment to God.  Says Christensen, “In so many ways, that was a small decision – involving one of several thousand Sundays in my life. In theory, surely I could have crossed over the line just that one time and then not done it again. But looking back on it, I realize that resisting the temptation of “in this one extenuating circumstance, just this once, it’s okay” has proved to be one of the most important decisions of my life. Why? Because life is just one unending stream of extenuating circumstances.... That's the lesson I learned: it's easier to hold to your principles 100 percent of the time. The boundary - your personal moral line - is powerful, because you don't cross it; if you have justified doing it once, there's nothing to stop you doing it again.... “Decide what you stand for. And then stand for it all the time." (p 189-191)

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I think it's interesting the book's title addresses how I will measure my life, not how someone else will measure it. In terms of my life here on earth, I'm pretty far along in that journey. I do ponder and pray about my life, what I have done, who I have helped, and how I will do better and be more Christ-like with the time I have left.