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How Will You Measure Your Life?
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Best Nonfiction (2012)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.
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.
240 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 1, 2012
About the author
Clayton M. Christensen
109 books2,023 followersClayton M. Christensen is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, with a joint appointment in the Technology & Operations Management and General Management faculty groups. He is best known for his study of innovation in commercial enterprises. His first book, The Innovator's Dilemma, articulated his theory of disruptive technology.
Christensen was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, the second of eight children. He holds a B.A. with highest honors in economics at Brigham Young University (1975), an M.Phil. in applied econometrics and the economics of less-developed countries at Oxford University (1977, Rhodes Scholar), an MBA with High Distinction at the Harvard Business School (1979, George F. Baker Scholar), and a DBA at the Harvard Business School (1992).
Clay Christensen lives in Belmont, Massachusetts with his five children, wife Christine, and is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has served in several leadership positions in the Church. He served as an Area Seventy beginning in April 2002. Prior to that he served as a counselor in the Massachusetts Boston Mission Presidency. He has also served as a bishop. He speaks fluent Korean.
Christensen is currently battling follicular lymphoma.
For further details and an ordered list of the author's works, see the author's Wikipedia page.
Christensen was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, the second of eight children. He holds a B.A. with highest honors in economics at Brigham Young University (1975), an M.Phil. in applied econometrics and the economics of less-developed countries at Oxford University (1977, Rhodes Scholar), an MBA with High Distinction at the Harvard Business School (1979, George F. Baker Scholar), and a DBA at the Harvard Business School (1992).
Clay Christensen lives in Belmont, Massachusetts with his five children, wife Christine, and is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has served in several leadership positions in the Church. He served as an Area Seventy beginning in April 2002. Prior to that he served as a counselor in the Massachusetts Boston Mission Presidency. He has also served as a bishop. He speaks fluent Korean.
Christensen is currently battling follicular lymphoma.
For further details and an ordered list of the author's works, see the author's Wikipedia page.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,153 reviews
May 27, 2016
The rare non-fiction book that isn't actually an essay parading as a book. This was a quick read in simple, clear language with good analogies and no unnecessary repetition. A summary of the career-focused bits:
Find Your Purpose
Likeness - who you want to become
Commitment - to becoming that at every step. Actually spending your time and energy in ways that get you closer to your likeness.
Metrics - to measure your progress towards becoming the likeness
Clayton’s Likeness
A man who is dedicated to helping improve the lives of other people
A kind, honest, forgiving, and selfless husband, father, and friend
A man who doesn't just believe in God but who believes God
Don't confuse hygiene with motivation
Motivation:
The things that make you love going to work. Feeling that you are doing work that is meaningful to you and making a meaningful contribution; Challenging work, recognition, responsibility, and personal growth.
Hygiene Factors:
Status, compensation, job security, work conditions, company policies, and supervisory practices. Bad hygiene causes dissatisfaction. But good hygiene factors just mean you are not dissatisfied with your job, not that you love your job.
Strategy
Deliberative - a focused plan
Emergent - unexpected opportunities that arise
Ask what has to prove true
Ask yourself “What are the assumptions that have to prove true in order for me to be happy with this choice?” List them. Test their validity: how do you know the company really has a team culture? How do you know they will be growing this group? etc. Are they within your control?
Find Your Purpose
Likeness - who you want to become
Commitment - to becoming that at every step. Actually spending your time and energy in ways that get you closer to your likeness.
Metrics - to measure your progress towards becoming the likeness
Clayton’s Likeness
A man who is dedicated to helping improve the lives of other people
A kind, honest, forgiving, and selfless husband, father, and friend
A man who doesn't just believe in God but who believes God
Don't confuse hygiene with motivation
Motivation:
The things that make you love going to work. Feeling that you are doing work that is meaningful to you and making a meaningful contribution; Challenging work, recognition, responsibility, and personal growth.
Hygiene Factors:
Status, compensation, job security, work conditions, company policies, and supervisory practices. Bad hygiene causes dissatisfaction. But good hygiene factors just mean you are not dissatisfied with your job, not that you love your job.
Strategy
Deliberative - a focused plan
Emergent - unexpected opportunities that arise
Ask what has to prove true
Ask yourself “What are the assumptions that have to prove true in order for me to be happy with this choice?” List them. Test their validity: how do you know the company really has a team culture? How do you know they will be growing this group? etc. Are they within your control?
November 9, 2015
This book is an effort by a well known Harvard Business School prof, notable for his work on the dangers of marginal thinking in innovative industries (The Innovator's Dilemma) that attempts to apply theories of motivation, management, and strategy to the task of self management. Apparently the author's experiences with illness, aging, and other aspects of his life combined to convince him that such an effort would be worthwhile. It is a short book and reads fairly quickly.
I am giving the book three stars because I believe it to be an honest effort that was written in good faith and with the best of intentions. I doubt that I could have been anywhere near as open and the book is not without insights.
Overall, I was disappointed with the book. The difficult task for a project like this is to provide an insight beyond what most of us can get from thinking carefully and honestly about our own experiences. I noted few if any of these and was left wondering what I had missed. For example, people are motivated by both monetary and non-monetary factors, not just incentives (Herzberg versus Jensen/Meckling)-- not exactly news. Then, we find out that things in life sometimes develop unexpectedly rather than according to plan -- another surprise!? All of the points raised are reasonable and defensible but there is little that has not already appeared somewhere in the Harvard Business Review.
When the advice goes to marriage and the running of the family, there is more of the same that may prove useful to new parents but will seem like old hat to more experienced ones -- don't be a helicopter parent, don't do everything for your child, provide your child the opportunity to deal with difficult situations. Again, all this is fine, but hardly novel. (Perhaps I have just had a greater opportunity to learn from my own mistakes.) I wasn't expecting "August Osage County" type issues but was hoping for a bit more. The concluding discussion on integrity was fairly good, although the issue of getting up after a fall is more relevant to most of us than avoiding falls.
I do appreciate the author's efforts in producing this book. It is very unusual among business book authors (whether professors or consultants) and I wish others would follow this lead.
I am giving the book three stars because I believe it to be an honest effort that was written in good faith and with the best of intentions. I doubt that I could have been anywhere near as open and the book is not without insights.
Overall, I was disappointed with the book. The difficult task for a project like this is to provide an insight beyond what most of us can get from thinking carefully and honestly about our own experiences. I noted few if any of these and was left wondering what I had missed. For example, people are motivated by both monetary and non-monetary factors, not just incentives (Herzberg versus Jensen/Meckling)-- not exactly news. Then, we find out that things in life sometimes develop unexpectedly rather than according to plan -- another surprise!? All of the points raised are reasonable and defensible but there is little that has not already appeared somewhere in the Harvard Business Review.
When the advice goes to marriage and the running of the family, there is more of the same that may prove useful to new parents but will seem like old hat to more experienced ones -- don't be a helicopter parent, don't do everything for your child, provide your child the opportunity to deal with difficult situations. Again, all this is fine, but hardly novel. (Perhaps I have just had a greater opportunity to learn from my own mistakes.) I wasn't expecting "August Osage County" type issues but was hoping for a bit more. The concluding discussion on integrity was fairly good, although the issue of getting up after a fall is more relevant to most of us than avoiding falls.
I do appreciate the author's efforts in producing this book. It is very unusual among business book authors (whether professors or consultants) and I wish others would follow this lead.
January 30, 2015
(3.5)
1. Find your passion
2. Follow a path but be open to opportunity
3. Make sure your actions match your priorities, plans, goals, strategy
4. Don't neglect family friends when all is well. They won't be there when you need them or want to enjoy those relationships
5. Don't be cats in the cradle. Spend time with your family when you're young, when you can
6. Figure out what 'job' your spouse and family need you to play to be happy and do that. Make sure you're right. (Analogy is a product fitting a 'job': chocolate milkshake is morning commute activity that happens to last a while and prevent AM hunger...learning this helped make the milkshake thicker, don't worry about making it healthy)
7. Don't outsource what you need to be successful, core competencies. Don't outsource your child's development and don't rob them of life lessons, failures, getting caught doing something wrong.
8. Let your kids make decisions, fail, succeed on their own
9. Family culture is there whether you plan or not. Decide what your family values and stands for and be consistent. Don't let just this once happen, be consistent. You can shape culture to some degree that way
10. Don't compromise on your values, ethics. No just this once I'll let myself do do something I believe to be wrong. Slippery slope, easier to commit 100% and be consistent than to stay at 98%..you'll end up making more compromises because each decision is small but on whole can be big. Barings bank for example
11. I didn't know Christensen was LDS.
11. Have and define and revisit your purpose. Likeness: who do you want to be, how to behave, what influence on others....commitment...metrics: how to measure how you're doing
1. Find your passion
2. Follow a path but be open to opportunity
3. Make sure your actions match your priorities, plans, goals, strategy
4. Don't neglect family friends when all is well. They won't be there when you need them or want to enjoy those relationships
5. Don't be cats in the cradle. Spend time with your family when you're young, when you can
6. Figure out what 'job' your spouse and family need you to play to be happy and do that. Make sure you're right. (Analogy is a product fitting a 'job': chocolate milkshake is morning commute activity that happens to last a while and prevent AM hunger...learning this helped make the milkshake thicker, don't worry about making it healthy)
7. Don't outsource what you need to be successful, core competencies. Don't outsource your child's development and don't rob them of life lessons, failures, getting caught doing something wrong.
8. Let your kids make decisions, fail, succeed on their own
9. Family culture is there whether you plan or not. Decide what your family values and stands for and be consistent. Don't let just this once happen, be consistent. You can shape culture to some degree that way
10. Don't compromise on your values, ethics. No just this once I'll let myself do do something I believe to be wrong. Slippery slope, easier to commit 100% and be consistent than to stay at 98%..you'll end up making more compromises because each decision is small but on whole can be big. Barings bank for example
11. I didn't know Christensen was LDS.
11. Have and define and revisit your purpose. Likeness: who do you want to be, how to behave, what influence on others....commitment...metrics: how to measure how you're doing
March 2, 2019
Clayton Christensen, an extraordinary businessman, teacher and person, penned this self-help book (with the help of two co-authors) when (and after) he was reevaluating his life due to a bout with cancer - the same cancer that killed his father. It's a clearly written book with many stories and examples (YAY! I love stories) from both business and family events that illustrate his many points. Where people went right. Where people went wrong.
This books poses a lot of interrelated questions for readers, dealing with both career success ("How can I find satisfaction in my career?) and interpersonal relationships and happiness in life generally. Too often we let the parts of our life that seem important at the time, or are more demanding in the moment, take away from the things that really matter, like family and friends. Certainly I've been guilty of spending time on things that don't ultimately matter much, while letting more productive and important things (talking and hanging out with my kids, for example) get short shrift.
I appreciated the author's distinction in our careers between the things that make us dissatisfied - what he calls hygiene factors: money, status, compensation, and job security (they don't actually make us happy, but if they're making us dissatisfied that's a problem) and the things that we need to make us satisfied with our job. These are "motivation factors": challenging work, recognition, responsibility, and personal growth.
Some key quotes:
This books poses a lot of interrelated questions for readers, dealing with both career success ("How can I find satisfaction in my career?) and interpersonal relationships and happiness in life generally. Too often we let the parts of our life that seem important at the time, or are more demanding in the moment, take away from the things that really matter, like family and friends. Certainly I've been guilty of spending time on things that don't ultimately matter much, while letting more productive and important things (talking and hanging out with my kids, for example) get short shrift.
I appreciated the author's distinction in our careers between the things that make us dissatisfied - what he calls hygiene factors: money, status, compensation, and job security (they don't actually make us happy, but if they're making us dissatisfied that's a problem) and the things that we need to make us satisfied with our job. These are "motivation factors": challenging work, recognition, responsibility, and personal growth.
Some key quotes:
Regarding the need for flexibility and willingness to reconsider plans that aren't working well, and look at unexpected alternatives: "Successful companies don’t succeed because they have the right strategy at the beginning; but rather, because they have money left over after the original strategy fails, so that they can pivot and try another approach. Most of those that fail, in contrast, spend all their money on their original strategy—which is usually wrong."This book is worth buying and keeping, and studying more closely from time to time. Very worthwhile ideas, and a lot of them aren't obvious ones. Recommended!
"How you allocate your own resources can make your life turn out to be exactly as you hope or very different from what you intend.”
“The trap many people fall into is to allocate their time to whoever screams loudest, and their talent to whatever offers them the fastest reward. That’s a dangerous way to build a strategy.”
"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.”
"I genuinely believe that relationships with family and close friends are one of the greatest sources of happiness in life. It sounds simple, but like any important investment, these relationships need consistent attention and care. But there are two forces that will be constantly working against this happening. First, you’ll be routinely tempted to invest your resources elsewhere—in things that will provide you with a more immediate payoff. And second, your family and friends rarely shout the loudest to demand your attention. They love you and they want to support your career, too. That can add up to neglecting the people you care about most in the world. The theory of good money, bad money explains that the clock of building a fulfilling relationship is ticking from the start. If you don’t nurture and develop those relationships, they won’t be there to support you if you find yourself traversing some of the more challenging stretches of life, or as one of the most important sources of happiness in your life."
June 24, 2012
I had read articles that mentioned Clayton Christensen, and he was always described as a brilliant business consultant and professor at Harvard Business School, who is also LDS. Recently, he came and spoke at our quarterly department meeting, and I came to understand why people spoke so highly of him. While he was only scheduled to speak for an hour, I listened to him speak for 2 hours, and found myself wanting more. He told fascinating anecdotes from his days as a consultant, and applied the lessons he learned to some the of the issues we are facing at our company and in our industry.
When I saw he had recently published a new book, I was interested to read it. In a similar fashion to our meeting, he applies the theories and lessons learned from a career in business to how we make the decisions in our lives. Too often, we seem to wander through phases of our lives without too much of a plan, or the wrong approaches to achieving our goals. Clayton states that just as successful businesses follow certain practices and principles, many of those same approaches can also help us to be successful in our personal lives.
As an MBA graduate, I found the business stories very interesting. As a person who has worked for many different companies over my career, I found that he "gets it" -- these aren't just abstract theories, but I've seen similar examples in the companies I've worked for.
When it comes to applying those same theories to personal life, it also rings true. I've seen in my own life, and in the lives of others, how simple choices, or the lack of a plan, can leave to unwanted results and tragedies. Likewise, having an idea of what you want to make of your life, and following through, can result in great rewards.
I agree with others who have read the book that it made me feel inadequate in many areas, but also gave me many things to think about as I fill my role in my career, as a father, and as a person.
When I saw he had recently published a new book, I was interested to read it. In a similar fashion to our meeting, he applies the theories and lessons learned from a career in business to how we make the decisions in our lives. Too often, we seem to wander through phases of our lives without too much of a plan, or the wrong approaches to achieving our goals. Clayton states that just as successful businesses follow certain practices and principles, many of those same approaches can also help us to be successful in our personal lives.
As an MBA graduate, I found the business stories very interesting. As a person who has worked for many different companies over my career, I found that he "gets it" -- these aren't just abstract theories, but I've seen similar examples in the companies I've worked for.
When it comes to applying those same theories to personal life, it also rings true. I've seen in my own life, and in the lives of others, how simple choices, or the lack of a plan, can leave to unwanted results and tragedies. Likewise, having an idea of what you want to make of your life, and following through, can result in great rewards.
I agree with others who have read the book that it made me feel inadequate in many areas, but also gave me many things to think about as I fill my role in my career, as a father, and as a person.
December 24, 2012
I don't know how many stars to give--3 or 4--but it was a good, quick read that makes you think about what's important and how you make your life manifest that. Kindle highlights:
two different types of factors: hygiene factors and motivation factors. On one side of the equation, there are the elements of work that, if not done right, will cause us to be dissatisfied. These are called hygiene factors. Hygiene factors are things like status, compensation, job security, work conditions, company policies, and supervisory practices. It matters, for example, that you don’t have a manager who manipulates you for his own purposes—or who doesn’t hold you accountable for things over which you don’t have responsibility. Bad hygiene causes dissatisfaction. You have to address and fix bad hygiene to ensure that you are not dissatisfied in your work. Interestingly, Herzberg asserts that compensation is a hygiene factor, not a motivator. As Owen Robbins, a successful CFO and the board member who chaired our compensation committee at CPS Technologies, once counseled me, “Compensation is a death trap. The most you can hope for (as CEO) is to be able to post a list of every employee’s name and salary on the bulletin board, and hear every employee say, ‘I sure wish I were paid more, but darn it, this list is fair.’ Clayton, you might feel like it is easy to manage this company by giving incentives or rewards to people. But if anyone believes that he is working harder but is being paid less than another person, it would be like transplanting cancer into this company.” Compensation is a hygiene factor. You need to get it right. But all you can aspire to is that employees will not be mad at each other and the company because of compensation. This is an important insight from Herzberg’s research: if you instantly improve the hygiene factors of your job, you’re not going to suddenly love it. At best, you just won’t hate it anymore. The opposite of job dissatisfaction isn’t job satisfaction, but rather an absence of job dissatisfaction. They’re not the same thing at all. It is important to address hygiene factors such as a safe and comfortable working environment, relationship with managers and colleagues, enough money to look after your family—if you don’t have these things, you’ll experience dissatisfaction with your work. But these alone won’t do anything to make you love your job—they will just stop you from hating it. - location 402
Motivation factors include challenging work, recognition, responsibility, and personal growth. Feelings that you are making a meaningful contribution to work arise from intrinsic conditions of the work itself. - location 423
Gloria Steinem framed strategy for her world as Andy Grove did for his: “We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs.” - location 875
Though they may believe that their family is deeply important to them, they actually allocate fewer and fewer resources to the things they would say matter most. - location 913
As such, there is no one-size-fits-all approach that anyone can offer you. The hot water that softens a carrot will harden an egg. - location 978
Few companies have launched their product with more fanfare than the Iridium Satellite Network—mobile phones that would allow people to call from literally anywhere on the planet by tapping into a complex celestial network of satellites. Vice President Al Gore helped launch Iridium’s product by placing its first call—to Alexander Graham Bell’s grandson. - location 1003
Professor Amar Bhide showed in his Origin and Evolution of New Business that 93 percent of all companies that ultimately become successful had to abandon their original strategy—because the original plan proved not to be viable. In other words, successful companies don’t succeed because they have the right strategy at the beginning; but rather, because they have money left over after the original strategy fails, so that they can pivot and try another approach. Most of those that fail, in contrast, spend all their money on their original strategy—which is usually wrong. - location 1029
on average, parents speak 1,500 words per hour to their infant children. “Talkative” (often college-educated) parents spoke 2,100 words to their child, on average. By contrast, parents from less verbal (and often less-educated) backgrounds spoke only 600 per hour, on average. If you add that up over the first thirty months, the child of “talkative” parents heard an estimated 48 million words spoken, compared to the disadvantaged child, who heard only 13 million. The most important time for the children to hear the words, the research suggests, is the first year of life. - location 1130
And it didn’t matter that just any words were spoken to a child—the way a parent spoke to a child had a significant effect. The researchers observed two different types of conversations between parents and infants. One type they dubbed “business language”—such as, “Time for a nap,” “Let’s go for a ride,” and “Finish your milk.” Such conversations were simple and direct, not rich and complex. Risley and Hart concluded that these types of conversations had limited effect on cognitive development. In contrast, when parents engaged in face-to-face conversation with the child—speaking in fully adult, sophisticated language as if the child could be part of a chatty, grown-up conversation—the impact on cognitive development was enormous. These richer interactions they called “language dancing.” Language dancing is being chatty, thinking aloud, and commenting on what the child is doing and what the parent is doing or planning to do. “Do you want to wear the blue shirt or the red shirt today?” “Do you think it will rain today?” “Do you remember the time I put your bottle in the oven by mistake?” and so on. Language dancing involves talking to the child about “what if,” and “do you remember,” and “wouldn’t it be nice if”—questions that invite the child to think deeply about what is happening around him. And it has a profound effect long before a parent might actually expect a child to understand what is being asked. - location 1137
They lovingly cart children around to soccer, lacrosse, basketball, football, hockey, and baseball teams; dance, gymnastics, music, and Chinese lessons; send them on a semester abroad to London; and to so many camps that many children don’t even have the time to get a part-time job in the summer. Taken individually, each of these can be a wonderful chance for a child to develop, and an excellent substitute for all the work that used to take place around the home. Kids can learn to overcome difficult challenges, take on responsibility, become good team players. They’re opportunities to develop the critical processes that kids will need to succeed later in life. Too often, however, parents foist all these experiences on their children without that in mind. Now, on one hand, exposing them to lots of activities is commendable. You want to help your kids discover something that they truly enjoy doing, and it’s actually critical for them to find something that will motivate them to develop their own processes. But that’s not always the impetus of parents imposing these activities on their children’s lives. Parents have their own job to be done, and it can overshadow the desire to help their children develop processes. They have a job of wanting to feel like a good parent: see all the opportunities I’m providing for my child? Or parents, often with their heart in the right place, project their own hopes and dreams onto their children. When these other intentions start creeping in, and parents seem to be carting their children around to an endless array of activities in which the kids are not truly engaged, it should start to raise red flags. Are the children developing from these experiences the deep, important processes such as teamwork, entrepreneurship, and learning the value of preparation? Or are they just going along for the ride? When we so heavily focus on providing our children with resources, we need to ask ourselves a new set of questions: Has my child developed the skill to develop better skills? The knowledge to develop deeper knowledge? The experience to learn from his experiences? These are the critical differences between resources and processes in our children’s minds and hearts—and, I fear, the unanticipated residual of outsourcing. - location 1595
The end result of these good intentions for our children is that too few reach adulthood having been given the opportunity to shoulder onerous responsibility and solve complicated problems for themselves and for others. Self-esteem—the sense that “I’m not afraid to confront this problem and I think I can solve it”—doesn’t come from abundant resources. Rather, self-esteem comes from achieving something important when it’s hard to do. - location 1622
I’m not advocating throwing kids straight into the deep end to see whether they can swim. Instead, it’s a case of starting early to find simple problems for them to solve on their own, problems that can help them build their processes—and a healthy self-esteem. As I look back on my own life, I recognize that some of the greatest gifts I received from my parents stemmed not from what they did for me—but rather from what they didn’t do for me. - location 1632
Although in retrospect these were very simple things, they represent a defining point in my life. They helped me to learn that I should solve my own problems whenever possible; they gave me the confidence that I could solve my own problems; and they helped me experience pride in that achievement. - location 1646
As for my mom, I have wondered what she felt when she saw me walk out the door to school wearing those patched-knee trousers. Some mothers might have been embarrassed to have their child seen in such tatters—that it evidenced how few pennies our family had to spare. But I think my mom didn’t even look at my Levi’s. I think she was looking at me, and probably saw in me the same thing I saw in the patch: “I did that.” - location 1651
“When the kids come home for a family reunion, I like to listen to their banter back and forth about the experiences they had growing up, and which had the greatest impact on their lives. I typically have no memory of the events they recall as being important. And when I ask them about the times when Jim and I sat them down specifically to share what we thought were foundationally important values of our family, well, the kids have no memory of any of them. I guess the thing to learn from this is that children will learn when they are ready to learn, not when we’re ready to teach them.” - location 1663
You can probably recall similar moments from your own childhood—the times that you picked up something important from your parents that they probably weren’t aware they were sharing. - location 1669
two different types of factors: hygiene factors and motivation factors. On one side of the equation, there are the elements of work that, if not done right, will cause us to be dissatisfied. These are called hygiene factors. Hygiene factors are things like status, compensation, job security, work conditions, company policies, and supervisory practices. It matters, for example, that you don’t have a manager who manipulates you for his own purposes—or who doesn’t hold you accountable for things over which you don’t have responsibility. Bad hygiene causes dissatisfaction. You have to address and fix bad hygiene to ensure that you are not dissatisfied in your work. Interestingly, Herzberg asserts that compensation is a hygiene factor, not a motivator. As Owen Robbins, a successful CFO and the board member who chaired our compensation committee at CPS Technologies, once counseled me, “Compensation is a death trap. The most you can hope for (as CEO) is to be able to post a list of every employee’s name and salary on the bulletin board, and hear every employee say, ‘I sure wish I were paid more, but darn it, this list is fair.’ Clayton, you might feel like it is easy to manage this company by giving incentives or rewards to people. But if anyone believes that he is working harder but is being paid less than another person, it would be like transplanting cancer into this company.” Compensation is a hygiene factor. You need to get it right. But all you can aspire to is that employees will not be mad at each other and the company because of compensation. This is an important insight from Herzberg’s research: if you instantly improve the hygiene factors of your job, you’re not going to suddenly love it. At best, you just won’t hate it anymore. The opposite of job dissatisfaction isn’t job satisfaction, but rather an absence of job dissatisfaction. They’re not the same thing at all. It is important to address hygiene factors such as a safe and comfortable working environment, relationship with managers and colleagues, enough money to look after your family—if you don’t have these things, you’ll experience dissatisfaction with your work. But these alone won’t do anything to make you love your job—they will just stop you from hating it. - location 402
Motivation factors include challenging work, recognition, responsibility, and personal growth. Feelings that you are making a meaningful contribution to work arise from intrinsic conditions of the work itself. - location 423
Gloria Steinem framed strategy for her world as Andy Grove did for his: “We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs.” - location 875
Though they may believe that their family is deeply important to them, they actually allocate fewer and fewer resources to the things they would say matter most. - location 913
As such, there is no one-size-fits-all approach that anyone can offer you. The hot water that softens a carrot will harden an egg. - location 978
Few companies have launched their product with more fanfare than the Iridium Satellite Network—mobile phones that would allow people to call from literally anywhere on the planet by tapping into a complex celestial network of satellites. Vice President Al Gore helped launch Iridium’s product by placing its first call—to Alexander Graham Bell’s grandson. - location 1003
Professor Amar Bhide showed in his Origin and Evolution of New Business that 93 percent of all companies that ultimately become successful had to abandon their original strategy—because the original plan proved not to be viable. In other words, successful companies don’t succeed because they have the right strategy at the beginning; but rather, because they have money left over after the original strategy fails, so that they can pivot and try another approach. Most of those that fail, in contrast, spend all their money on their original strategy—which is usually wrong. - location 1029
on average, parents speak 1,500 words per hour to their infant children. “Talkative” (often college-educated) parents spoke 2,100 words to their child, on average. By contrast, parents from less verbal (and often less-educated) backgrounds spoke only 600 per hour, on average. If you add that up over the first thirty months, the child of “talkative” parents heard an estimated 48 million words spoken, compared to the disadvantaged child, who heard only 13 million. The most important time for the children to hear the words, the research suggests, is the first year of life. - location 1130
And it didn’t matter that just any words were spoken to a child—the way a parent spoke to a child had a significant effect. The researchers observed two different types of conversations between parents and infants. One type they dubbed “business language”—such as, “Time for a nap,” “Let’s go for a ride,” and “Finish your milk.” Such conversations were simple and direct, not rich and complex. Risley and Hart concluded that these types of conversations had limited effect on cognitive development. In contrast, when parents engaged in face-to-face conversation with the child—speaking in fully adult, sophisticated language as if the child could be part of a chatty, grown-up conversation—the impact on cognitive development was enormous. These richer interactions they called “language dancing.” Language dancing is being chatty, thinking aloud, and commenting on what the child is doing and what the parent is doing or planning to do. “Do you want to wear the blue shirt or the red shirt today?” “Do you think it will rain today?” “Do you remember the time I put your bottle in the oven by mistake?” and so on. Language dancing involves talking to the child about “what if,” and “do you remember,” and “wouldn’t it be nice if”—questions that invite the child to think deeply about what is happening around him. And it has a profound effect long before a parent might actually expect a child to understand what is being asked. - location 1137
They lovingly cart children around to soccer, lacrosse, basketball, football, hockey, and baseball teams; dance, gymnastics, music, and Chinese lessons; send them on a semester abroad to London; and to so many camps that many children don’t even have the time to get a part-time job in the summer. Taken individually, each of these can be a wonderful chance for a child to develop, and an excellent substitute for all the work that used to take place around the home. Kids can learn to overcome difficult challenges, take on responsibility, become good team players. They’re opportunities to develop the critical processes that kids will need to succeed later in life. Too often, however, parents foist all these experiences on their children without that in mind. Now, on one hand, exposing them to lots of activities is commendable. You want to help your kids discover something that they truly enjoy doing, and it’s actually critical for them to find something that will motivate them to develop their own processes. But that’s not always the impetus of parents imposing these activities on their children’s lives. Parents have their own job to be done, and it can overshadow the desire to help their children develop processes. They have a job of wanting to feel like a good parent: see all the opportunities I’m providing for my child? Or parents, often with their heart in the right place, project their own hopes and dreams onto their children. When these other intentions start creeping in, and parents seem to be carting their children around to an endless array of activities in which the kids are not truly engaged, it should start to raise red flags. Are the children developing from these experiences the deep, important processes such as teamwork, entrepreneurship, and learning the value of preparation? Or are they just going along for the ride? When we so heavily focus on providing our children with resources, we need to ask ourselves a new set of questions: Has my child developed the skill to develop better skills? The knowledge to develop deeper knowledge? The experience to learn from his experiences? These are the critical differences between resources and processes in our children’s minds and hearts—and, I fear, the unanticipated residual of outsourcing. - location 1595
The end result of these good intentions for our children is that too few reach adulthood having been given the opportunity to shoulder onerous responsibility and solve complicated problems for themselves and for others. Self-esteem—the sense that “I’m not afraid to confront this problem and I think I can solve it”—doesn’t come from abundant resources. Rather, self-esteem comes from achieving something important when it’s hard to do. - location 1622
I’m not advocating throwing kids straight into the deep end to see whether they can swim. Instead, it’s a case of starting early to find simple problems for them to solve on their own, problems that can help them build their processes—and a healthy self-esteem. As I look back on my own life, I recognize that some of the greatest gifts I received from my parents stemmed not from what they did for me—but rather from what they didn’t do for me. - location 1632
Although in retrospect these were very simple things, they represent a defining point in my life. They helped me to learn that I should solve my own problems whenever possible; they gave me the confidence that I could solve my own problems; and they helped me experience pride in that achievement. - location 1646
As for my mom, I have wondered what she felt when she saw me walk out the door to school wearing those patched-knee trousers. Some mothers might have been embarrassed to have their child seen in such tatters—that it evidenced how few pennies our family had to spare. But I think my mom didn’t even look at my Levi’s. I think she was looking at me, and probably saw in me the same thing I saw in the patch: “I did that.” - location 1651
“When the kids come home for a family reunion, I like to listen to their banter back and forth about the experiences they had growing up, and which had the greatest impact on their lives. I typically have no memory of the events they recall as being important. And when I ask them about the times when Jim and I sat them down specifically to share what we thought were foundationally important values of our family, well, the kids have no memory of any of them. I guess the thing to learn from this is that children will learn when they are ready to learn, not when we’re ready to teach them.” - location 1663
You can probably recall similar moments from your own childhood—the times that you picked up something important from your parents that they probably weren’t aware they were sharing. - location 1669
January 15, 2019
من الكتب الجميلة جداً ولأسباب كثيرة
منها أنّه بعيد عن هُراء التنمية البشرية والنفخ والوهم
والأمر الثاني أنّه لا يعطيك النتيجة المباشرة بل يعطيك الخريطة ويقول لك: امش
والأمر الثالث أنّه صادق
صدقني الكاتب الصادق تشعر به دون أن يتكلم، وعندي أنّ التواضع سبب رئيسي للعَظَمة.
في هذا الكتاب ستجد نصائح لحياتك العملية والمهنية والأسرية والنفسية أيضاً وبشكل مختصر ولطيف.
أحببت فكرة "الهدف الاستراتيجي" و " الهدف العاجل"
وفكرة "التعهيد" أو التفويض في التعاملات وأثرها على حياتك.
الفصول الأولى ممتعة لأقصى حدّ.
لو كان بإمكاني نصح أي أحد يحب أن يبدأ سنته بكتاب مفيد سيكون ترشيحي الأول له
منها أنّه بعيد عن هُراء التنمية البشرية والنفخ والوهم
والأمر الثاني أنّه لا يعطيك النتيجة المباشرة بل يعطيك الخريطة ويقول لك: امش
والأمر الثالث أنّه صادق
صدقني الكاتب الصادق تشعر به دون أن يتكلم، وعندي أنّ التواضع سبب رئيسي للعَظَمة.
في هذا الكتاب ستجد نصائح لحياتك العملية والمهنية والأسرية والنفسية أيضاً وبشكل مختصر ولطيف.
أحببت فكرة "الهدف الاستراتيجي" و " الهدف العاجل"
وفكرة "التعهيد" أو التفويض في التعاملات وأثرها على حياتك.
الفصول الأولى ممتعة لأقصى حدّ.
لو كان بإمكاني نصح أي أحد يحب أن يبدأ سنته بكتاب مفيد سيكون ترشيحي الأول له
December 25, 2018
If you don't know your purpose, be patient, try out things, get feedback, and correct your course as the new opportunities unfold.
Purpose is not something to be found, it's something to be developed.
May 21, 2012
I was lucky enough to read ‘The Innovators Dilemma’ at a formative point in my Pharma R&D career. Like many others, I was captivated by the ability of Christensen’s ‘big idea’ (disruptive innovation) to explain the perplexing phenomenon whereby small startups were able to upend established players in industry segments where the latter should have held all the aces. I have read a number of other books he has put out over the the years. These have invariably given me much to reflect on as a business leader and someone plying their trade in the innovation space.
This latest book (http://www.measureyourlife.com/) represents a definite change of direction for the big man and his co-authors - down the ‘Road Less Travelled’ as it were - and they are definitely going for the big one. To quote : “The paramount assertion of this book is that the theories that describe how management works also explain a lot about what causes success and happiness in families, marriages, and within ourselves—and what causes the opposite as well.”
The big questions I had going into this new book were these : would it stack up against his previous business classics and would the management-theoretic approach yield useful insight into the knotty problems of personal relationships, child-rearing and life purpose?
The answer to these is a qualified yes.
Once again it is a stimulating read from Christensen that has got my grey cells whirring pondering some real life-lesson nuggets:
* Aligning your resource allocation with your strategy (your strategy is not what you say it is) - be on guard as one invariably subordinates the immediate accomplishment (invariably work related) to the supposed strategic (partner / family / friends)
* Dusting off Hertzberg and thinking about your motivational factors separate from hygiene factors
* Situations in life where you should be thinking about a deliberate strategy and those when you should be employing an emergent approach
* Thinking about your assumptions (what has to prove true) for your life strategy to work and listing these ranked by importance and uncertainty with those most important and least certain at the top.
On the other hand, some aspects of the book were uncomfortable / unhelpful.
I didn’t like the smug way in which the authors dissed much of the self-help literature out there (“the difference between what to think and how to think”).
I also had an adverse reaction to the religious certainty that permeates much of the book and for me ultimately detracted. To be honest, Clay bless him is just too darned nice and perfect - and as the chapters went on I couldn’t help feeling more and more inadequate in terms of how my life conduct contrasted. It’s just good that I’ve recently read Brene Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection (http://www.brenebrown.com/books/) or I might have been off to the bathroom to slit my wrists on about page 160!
Overall, hats off to Clay, James and Karen for having the mojo to put this personally risky business/self-help mashup out there.
Time will tell whether this book will have the intended effect of nailing the big personal questions knawing away at the psyche of today’s thrusting business professional in an evidence-based way they will better be able to relate to. For me, newly retired from big Pharma and turning my mind to other endeavours I have long been postponing, it’s conceptual framework is a timely gift.
This latest book (http://www.measureyourlife.com/) represents a definite change of direction for the big man and his co-authors - down the ‘Road Less Travelled’ as it were - and they are definitely going for the big one. To quote : “The paramount assertion of this book is that the theories that describe how management works also explain a lot about what causes success and happiness in families, marriages, and within ourselves—and what causes the opposite as well.”
The big questions I had going into this new book were these : would it stack up against his previous business classics and would the management-theoretic approach yield useful insight into the knotty problems of personal relationships, child-rearing and life purpose?
The answer to these is a qualified yes.
Once again it is a stimulating read from Christensen that has got my grey cells whirring pondering some real life-lesson nuggets:
* Aligning your resource allocation with your strategy (your strategy is not what you say it is) - be on guard as one invariably subordinates the immediate accomplishment (invariably work related) to the supposed strategic (partner / family / friends)
* Dusting off Hertzberg and thinking about your motivational factors separate from hygiene factors
* Situations in life where you should be thinking about a deliberate strategy and those when you should be employing an emergent approach
* Thinking about your assumptions (what has to prove true) for your life strategy to work and listing these ranked by importance and uncertainty with those most important and least certain at the top.
On the other hand, some aspects of the book were uncomfortable / unhelpful.
I didn’t like the smug way in which the authors dissed much of the self-help literature out there (“the difference between what to think and how to think”).
I also had an adverse reaction to the religious certainty that permeates much of the book and for me ultimately detracted. To be honest, Clay bless him is just too darned nice and perfect - and as the chapters went on I couldn’t help feeling more and more inadequate in terms of how my life conduct contrasted. It’s just good that I’ve recently read Brene Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection (http://www.brenebrown.com/books/) or I might have been off to the bathroom to slit my wrists on about page 160!
Overall, hats off to Clay, James and Karen for having the mojo to put this personally risky business/self-help mashup out there.
Time will tell whether this book will have the intended effect of nailing the big personal questions knawing away at the psyche of today’s thrusting business professional in an evidence-based way they will better be able to relate to. For me, newly retired from big Pharma and turning my mind to other endeavours I have long been postponing, it’s conceptual framework is a timely gift.
May 3, 2014
قد لا يبدو العنوان جاذباً للكثيرين بسبب إيحائه باحتواء مادة لا قيمة لها من شبيهات التنمية البشرية والحشو غير القيّم .. ولكنه بالعكس تماماً كتاب للأعمال بشكل مباشر وأجمل ما به أن إسقاطاته حتى في الدور العائلي مبنية على أمثلة من عالم الأعمال وهو ما قدّم ميزة جميلة بالنسبة لي.
اللغة رائعة والأمثلة جميلة جداً والتناسق والتسلسل عالٍ جداً .. وتكمن أيضاً فائدته بكتابته من 3 أطراف متنوعة ومتخصصة ومليئة بالخيرة العملية.
لن تمل وستستفيد بالتأكيد.
اللغة رائعة والأمثلة جميلة جداً والتناسق والتسلسل عالٍ جداً .. وتكمن أيضاً فائدته بكتابته من 3 أطراف متنوعة ومتخصصة ومليئة بالخيرة العملية.
لن تمل وستستفيد بالتأكيد.
November 11, 2012
Many in a time we get asked (or ask ourselves) what are our life goals? what do we want to be remembered for before we say goodbye to this world? How do we live a life of purpose and fulfillment? This book offers a way to deeply think about these questions, and perhaps chart some possible answers and directions that we need to take to achieve them.
One interesting issue that Clay talks about revolves around parenting. As parents, we would want our children to be equipped with the knowledge and skills to succeed in their lives. Hence most parents try to expose their children to as many opportunities as possible (such as learning a musical instrument, sport, tuition classes, etc), in hope that they will be in a more advantageous position to succeed in life than their peers. I used to hold the same viewpoint too.
Clay contends, however, that these are merely Resources. The problem comes when exposing children to an endless array of activities is when they are not truly engaged and when these activities don't challenge them to do hard things and learn the correct values and responsibilities out of it. What children need to learn are Processes, i.e. the skills needed to learn a skill, the knowledge needed to acquire new knowledge, the experience to learn from experiences.
This got me to understand that rather than by giving children Resources, it is more important for them to learn about Processes. These often cannot be taught by outsourcing what we need to teach our children to the "activities" themselves. But rather, we need to be a role model for our children and make the correct decisions so as to impart the correct values when we interact with them on a daily basis. With the right Processes and Priorities they will then be able to learn better from the Resources they have and this, if anything will make them better individuals.
One interesting issue that Clay talks about revolves around parenting. As parents, we would want our children to be equipped with the knowledge and skills to succeed in their lives. Hence most parents try to expose their children to as many opportunities as possible (such as learning a musical instrument, sport, tuition classes, etc), in hope that they will be in a more advantageous position to succeed in life than their peers. I used to hold the same viewpoint too.
Clay contends, however, that these are merely Resources. The problem comes when exposing children to an endless array of activities is when they are not truly engaged and when these activities don't challenge them to do hard things and learn the correct values and responsibilities out of it. What children need to learn are Processes, i.e. the skills needed to learn a skill, the knowledge needed to acquire new knowledge, the experience to learn from experiences.
This got me to understand that rather than by giving children Resources, it is more important for them to learn about Processes. These often cannot be taught by outsourcing what we need to teach our children to the "activities" themselves. But rather, we need to be a role model for our children and make the correct decisions so as to impart the correct values when we interact with them on a daily basis. With the right Processes and Priorities they will then be able to learn better from the Resources they have and this, if anything will make them better individuals.
March 1, 2015
Sometimes, I don’t mind the obvious being stated. But the way this author puts it makes me question my sanity. The ‘theories’ he claims to advance are nothing short of preposterous and self-evident in all conventional measures. The fact that every idea must have its echoing in business is mental straining for a guy like me. Not to mention the wannabe distillate that purpose is a process of “likeness, commitment, and metrics”. “Companies that aspire to positive impact must never leave their purpose to chance.” Hear that companies? Or was the distillate the last paragraph of the book underneath the not so humble title: “The Most Important Thing You’ll Ever Learn” in which the author blabbers about cancer and some students of his that discovered ‘life’s purpose’? Side note: I would not be shocked if these are the same people that find The Alchemist awe-inspiring.
In the end, not even the ischemic stroke salvaged this work from half a star except the whole-star system rating on here.
In the end, not even the ischemic stroke salvaged this work from half a star except the whole-star system rating on here.
September 14, 2015
كنت مهتمة بكتب تطوير الذات عندما كنت في المرحلة المتوسطة، قلّ هذا الاهتمام لأني لم أكن أرى فائدةً حقيقية منها – خصوصًا العربية - سوى بعض العبارات الإيجابية التي قد تعطي حماسًا مؤقتًا.
ما يميّز هذا الكتاب هو أن المؤلف يُشجع على تطبيق النظريات التي تُدّرس في كليات إدارة الأعمال على الحياة الشخصية.
ينقسم الكتاب إلى ثلاثة أقسام أحببت القسم الثاني منها:
1- العثور على السعادة في الحياة المهنية.
2- العثور على السعادة في العلاقات.
3- حول الحياة النزيهة. أو " البقاء خارج السجن"
أيضًا أُعجبت بالنصائح العميقة التي تدل على حكمة كلايتون وإلمامه بالحياة.
ما يميّز هذا الكتاب هو أن المؤلف يُشجع على تطبيق النظريات التي تُدّرس في كليات إدارة الأعمال على الحياة الشخصية.
ينقسم الكتاب إلى ثلاثة أقسام أحببت القسم الثاني منها:
1- العثور على السعادة في الحياة المهنية.
2- العثور على السعادة في العلاقات.
3- حول الحياة النزيهة. أو " البقاء خارج السجن"
أيضًا أُعجبت بالنصائح العميقة التي تدل على حكمة كلايتون وإلمامه بالحياة.
January 28, 2015
من أروع الكتب التي قرأتها في حياتي
الكتاب يتحدث عن النظريات الإدارية
يشرحها بدقة وعمق
ثم يسقطها على حياتك الشخصية
ويعطيك نصائحا وطرقا لتستخدمها على حياتك الشخصية وضمن اسرتك
لتطور عائلتك وأبنائك وترقى بنفسك
الكتاب يتحدث عن النظريات الإدارية
يشرحها بدقة وعمق
ثم يسقطها على حياتك الشخصية
ويعطيك نصائحا وطرقا لتستخدمها على حياتك الشخصية وضمن اسرتك
لتطور عائلتك وأبنائك وترقى بنفسك
November 16, 2013
This book blew my mind and heart. It fundamentally challenged me to think about my life choices. Is a fairly quick read though it took me a while to get into. This is not a self-help book, it does not offer a set path or any quick fixes. Clay draws on theories he has learnt in business and life effortlessly and interchangeably. I will refer to this book and its lessons again and again.
Here's a snapshot of my 10 main takeaways:
1. Theories are powerful tools. Without a plan or a theory you are at sea without a sextant. Good theory helps people steer to good decisions, not just in business but in life too.
2. What makes us tick? One of the easiest mistakes we can make is to focus on trying to over satisfy the tangible trappings of professional success in the mistaken belief that this will make us happy. As most of us usually find out, often too late, pursuing happiness is a hopeless quest. Instead we need to ask ourselves - is this work meaningful, will I learn new things, will I have the opportunity for recognition and achievement and am I going to have responsibility? These are the things that truly motivate human beings (leaning, meaning, achievement and responsibility), the rest (compensation, perks, etc) are just hygiene factors.
3. Emergence. Only a few lucky companies start of with the strategy that ultimately leads to success, strategy for most evolves over time. In reality success relies on our continuing to experiment until we find an approach that works. Expecting to have a clear vision of where life will take you from the start is a waste of time. What's even worse is that you close yourself off from unexpected opportunities. You should be prepared to experiment with different opportunities, ready to pivot and continue to adjust your strategy until you find what it is that both satisfies the hygiene factors and give you all the things you need to be motivated.
4. Strategy isn't what you say, but it what you do. In business and in life, a strategy is not just a one-off vision, goal or plan, it is actually created through hundreds of everyday decisions about how you spend your time, energy and money (resource allocation). With each of these decisions we make a statement about what really matters to us. We can talk about our purpose, values and goals but ultimately this means nothing if we are not investing our time, energy and money in a way that is consistent with that. If you think you're charitable, ask yourself how often so you really give time or money to a worthy cause? If your family are important to you, think about how often does your family come out top in all the choices you have made in the past week. If our daily decisions about where to invest our blood, sweat and tears are not consistent with the person we say we are, think we are or aspire to be, we'll never become that person.
5. Why do we take our relationships with friends and family for granted (not giving then the necessary attention and care), even though we know that they are the greatest source of happiness in life. The first reason is we are mostly tempted to invest our resources in things that offer immediate rewards and feedback like our careers. Secondly, family and friends rarely shout the loudest for our attention. If we don't recognize this, to nurture and develop these relationships early on, then they won't there for us when we need them the most. It will always be tempting to defer this, because you are busy with your career right now, but that's the wrong way round. You have to invest in relationships long before you need them.
6. Marriage: Being a good spouse is one of the most important jobs you can be hired to do. Asking yourself "what job does my spouse most need me to do?" comes first. Then you need to go beyond just knowing this, you have to do that job, you have to devote your time and energy to the effort, suppressing your own needs and desires and focusing on what will make the other person happy. The path to happiness in a relationship is not just about finding someone who you think will make you happy; it is about finding someone who you want to make happy. Marriage is about finding someone whose happiness is worth devoting yourself to." This doesn't build resentment, quite the opposite, in sacrificing for something worthwhile, you deeply strengthen your commitment to it. Sacrifice deepens commitment. It is an essential foundation to deep friendships, happy families and marriages.
7. Parenting: Be careful about outsourcing parenting. If your children learn everything they know from teachers, friends, clubs, TV, etc in what way are they your children? We live in an affluent society that is obsessed with giving children opportunities. Whilst that is valuable it is only one of three things our children really need to succeed - resources, processes and routines (just like a business or organisation does). A musical instrument, sport, after school club, books, TV, Wii, DS, etc teach skills, which are 'resources', just like the other material and economic privileges, skills and talents we offer our children. However, they need more than resources. They need 'processes', habits and routines to convert those resources into something useful, to create something for themselves. They need to learn routines for how to think, how to solve problems, how to deal with failure, to get somewhere on time, to share, to make sacrifices, to deal with peer pressure, to build relationships, etc. Most important of all they need values and 'priorities'. This defines how they will make decisions, what they will invest their time and resources in and what not. The best way of developing processes and priorities is by solving hard problems for themselves. Self-esteem comes from knowing "I am not afraid of confronting this problem, I've seen something like it before and I think I know how to go about trying to solve it." As parents we need to find problems for our children to solve on their own, problems that can help them build their processes and self esteem. Children learn when they are ready to learn, not when you're free to teach them. So if you're not with them as they encounter challenges in their lives, then you are missing important opportunities to shape their priorities and their lives.
8. School of experience. The idea that some people have innate talents that just need to be identified through interviews and other recruitment processes has proven to be an unreliable predictor of success in business. The 'right stuff' that most companies are looking for is not a superior set of skills that someone is born with but skills people have honed through life's experiences. We should not focus too much on the grades, trophies and accolades someone has but instead look carefully for whether a person has actually wrestled with the problems you need them to tackle. Similarly the challenges our children face serve an important purpose: they help them hone and develop the capabilities necessary to succeed in life. We all know that challenges, difficulties, failure and sorrow are all courses in the school of life/experience we need, so why not work backwards and find the right experiences to help our children build the skills they will need to succeed. You need to figure out what courses will be important for you to master before you need them. As a parent find small opportunities for your child to take these life courses early on. Encourage them to stretch, to have goals, to try and fail and learn. Celebrate failure and success. If our children don't face difficult challenges and sometimes fail along the way, they will not build the resilience they will need in life.
9. Culture. Culture happens in a company or in a family whether you want it to or not, the only question is how hard you are going to try to influence it. A culture is set through everyday interactions, how you react, reward and respond. Once it is set it's almost impossible to change. Every time children or employees face a problem they aren't just solving it they are learning what matters to you. They are developing an understanding of what matters to the business, what are the priorities and how to execute them (the processes).
10. Morality and purpose. Decide what you stand for and stand for it all of the time. Define your own boundaries, your personal moral line, and don't cross it, not even once.
Thank you Clayton for sharing your lessons from a lifetime of learning, working, observing and experimenting. I highly recommend this book to all.
Here's a snapshot of my 10 main takeaways:
1. Theories are powerful tools. Without a plan or a theory you are at sea without a sextant. Good theory helps people steer to good decisions, not just in business but in life too.
2. What makes us tick? One of the easiest mistakes we can make is to focus on trying to over satisfy the tangible trappings of professional success in the mistaken belief that this will make us happy. As most of us usually find out, often too late, pursuing happiness is a hopeless quest. Instead we need to ask ourselves - is this work meaningful, will I learn new things, will I have the opportunity for recognition and achievement and am I going to have responsibility? These are the things that truly motivate human beings (leaning, meaning, achievement and responsibility), the rest (compensation, perks, etc) are just hygiene factors.
3. Emergence. Only a few lucky companies start of with the strategy that ultimately leads to success, strategy for most evolves over time. In reality success relies on our continuing to experiment until we find an approach that works. Expecting to have a clear vision of where life will take you from the start is a waste of time. What's even worse is that you close yourself off from unexpected opportunities. You should be prepared to experiment with different opportunities, ready to pivot and continue to adjust your strategy until you find what it is that both satisfies the hygiene factors and give you all the things you need to be motivated.
4. Strategy isn't what you say, but it what you do. In business and in life, a strategy is not just a one-off vision, goal or plan, it is actually created through hundreds of everyday decisions about how you spend your time, energy and money (resource allocation). With each of these decisions we make a statement about what really matters to us. We can talk about our purpose, values and goals but ultimately this means nothing if we are not investing our time, energy and money in a way that is consistent with that. If you think you're charitable, ask yourself how often so you really give time or money to a worthy cause? If your family are important to you, think about how often does your family come out top in all the choices you have made in the past week. If our daily decisions about where to invest our blood, sweat and tears are not consistent with the person we say we are, think we are or aspire to be, we'll never become that person.
5. Why do we take our relationships with friends and family for granted (not giving then the necessary attention and care), even though we know that they are the greatest source of happiness in life. The first reason is we are mostly tempted to invest our resources in things that offer immediate rewards and feedback like our careers. Secondly, family and friends rarely shout the loudest for our attention. If we don't recognize this, to nurture and develop these relationships early on, then they won't there for us when we need them the most. It will always be tempting to defer this, because you are busy with your career right now, but that's the wrong way round. You have to invest in relationships long before you need them.
6. Marriage: Being a good spouse is one of the most important jobs you can be hired to do. Asking yourself "what job does my spouse most need me to do?" comes first. Then you need to go beyond just knowing this, you have to do that job, you have to devote your time and energy to the effort, suppressing your own needs and desires and focusing on what will make the other person happy. The path to happiness in a relationship is not just about finding someone who you think will make you happy; it is about finding someone who you want to make happy. Marriage is about finding someone whose happiness is worth devoting yourself to." This doesn't build resentment, quite the opposite, in sacrificing for something worthwhile, you deeply strengthen your commitment to it. Sacrifice deepens commitment. It is an essential foundation to deep friendships, happy families and marriages.
7. Parenting: Be careful about outsourcing parenting. If your children learn everything they know from teachers, friends, clubs, TV, etc in what way are they your children? We live in an affluent society that is obsessed with giving children opportunities. Whilst that is valuable it is only one of three things our children really need to succeed - resources, processes and routines (just like a business or organisation does). A musical instrument, sport, after school club, books, TV, Wii, DS, etc teach skills, which are 'resources', just like the other material and economic privileges, skills and talents we offer our children. However, they need more than resources. They need 'processes', habits and routines to convert those resources into something useful, to create something for themselves. They need to learn routines for how to think, how to solve problems, how to deal with failure, to get somewhere on time, to share, to make sacrifices, to deal with peer pressure, to build relationships, etc. Most important of all they need values and 'priorities'. This defines how they will make decisions, what they will invest their time and resources in and what not. The best way of developing processes and priorities is by solving hard problems for themselves. Self-esteem comes from knowing "I am not afraid of confronting this problem, I've seen something like it before and I think I know how to go about trying to solve it." As parents we need to find problems for our children to solve on their own, problems that can help them build their processes and self esteem. Children learn when they are ready to learn, not when you're free to teach them. So if you're not with them as they encounter challenges in their lives, then you are missing important opportunities to shape their priorities and their lives.
8. School of experience. The idea that some people have innate talents that just need to be identified through interviews and other recruitment processes has proven to be an unreliable predictor of success in business. The 'right stuff' that most companies are looking for is not a superior set of skills that someone is born with but skills people have honed through life's experiences. We should not focus too much on the grades, trophies and accolades someone has but instead look carefully for whether a person has actually wrestled with the problems you need them to tackle. Similarly the challenges our children face serve an important purpose: they help them hone and develop the capabilities necessary to succeed in life. We all know that challenges, difficulties, failure and sorrow are all courses in the school of life/experience we need, so why not work backwards and find the right experiences to help our children build the skills they will need to succeed. You need to figure out what courses will be important for you to master before you need them. As a parent find small opportunities for your child to take these life courses early on. Encourage them to stretch, to have goals, to try and fail and learn. Celebrate failure and success. If our children don't face difficult challenges and sometimes fail along the way, they will not build the resilience they will need in life.
9. Culture. Culture happens in a company or in a family whether you want it to or not, the only question is how hard you are going to try to influence it. A culture is set through everyday interactions, how you react, reward and respond. Once it is set it's almost impossible to change. Every time children or employees face a problem they aren't just solving it they are learning what matters to you. They are developing an understanding of what matters to the business, what are the priorities and how to execute them (the processes).
10. Morality and purpose. Decide what you stand for and stand for it all of the time. Define your own boundaries, your personal moral line, and don't cross it, not even once.
Thank you Clayton for sharing your lessons from a lifetime of learning, working, observing and experimenting. I highly recommend this book to all.
February 28, 2018
I know many people have found the reflections and insights of contained in this extended essay by Clayton Christensen really profound and helpful--my father certainly thought they were; he bought copies of the book for all his children years ago, before he passed away, and I've only just gotten around to reading it. Unfortunately, my reaction to the book was a big "meh." His arguments about being willing to re-evaluate your goals as situations change, about trying to understand the actual meaning of the tasks before you (not just their nominal ones), about making the decision to act consistently with one's values and never wavering from that--all of them are persuasive and, I think, obviously correct. But they're also pretty anodyne. And while I recognize that my own biases make me suspicious of Harvard Business School types, I could help but pick up on multiple times a certain privilege, an elitism, on his own part begged for some self-critique, which was never forthcoming. (He'd talk about his own failures and mistakes, to be sure--though none were apparently all that damaging in the long run--but he never seemed to engage in re-evaluation or any structural thinking.) So, not a bad book, but probably not one I've ever re-read, or ever recommend to anyone else.
August 31, 2012
This book made me think about how I "manage" my family and my own life and has made me actually define my purposes. My favorite excerpt is :
"The challenges your children face serve an important purpose: they will help them hone and develop the capabilities necessary to succeed throughout their lives. Coping with a difficult teacher, failing at a sport, learning to navigate the complex social structure of cliques in school--all those things become "courses" in the school of experience. We know that people who fail in their jobs often do so not because they are inherently incapable of succeeding, but because their experiences have not prepared them for the challenges of that job--in other words, they've taken the wrong "courses."
The natural tendency of many parents is to focus entirely on building your child's resume: good grades, sports successes, and so on. It would be a mistake, however, to neglect the courses your children need to equip them for the future. Once you have that figured out, work backward: find the right experiences to help them build the skills they'll need to succeed. It's one of the greatest gifts you can give them."
"The challenges your children face serve an important purpose: they will help them hone and develop the capabilities necessary to succeed throughout their lives. Coping with a difficult teacher, failing at a sport, learning to navigate the complex social structure of cliques in school--all those things become "courses" in the school of experience. We know that people who fail in their jobs often do so not because they are inherently incapable of succeeding, but because their experiences have not prepared them for the challenges of that job--in other words, they've taken the wrong "courses."
The natural tendency of many parents is to focus entirely on building your child's resume: good grades, sports successes, and so on. It would be a mistake, however, to neglect the courses your children need to equip them for the future. Once you have that figured out, work backward: find the right experiences to help them build the skills they'll need to succeed. It's one of the greatest gifts you can give them."
February 29, 2020
2020 review: Even more meaningful this time, after several years working for a large corporation. I found the advice essential in some recent major decisions.
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2013 review: Outstanding advice in the smart, soothing voice of a man who walks the walk. Makes a fine gift that's sure to "disrupt" many lives for the better; anyone from a teenager to the most accomplished executive will benefit from its blend of high-stakes business expertise and humble common sense.
_
2013 review: Outstanding advice in the smart, soothing voice of a man who walks the walk. Makes a fine gift that's sure to "disrupt" many lives for the better; anyone from a teenager to the most accomplished executive will benefit from its blend of high-stakes business expertise and humble common sense.
July 24, 2012
I thought this book was great. Well worth the (very fast) read. I have heard many of his theories before from reading his other books so some of the stuff is repetitive here, but there is a different angle. CC takes business theories and applies them to life. Sometimes they work and sometimes I thought it was a stretch. In all, I learned from the book and would recommend it.
April 14, 2022
As I started the first chapter of this book, I let out a mental yawn.
I had picked this book from my shortlist of books to read, a shortlist usually reserved for the best of the best as recommended by others and additionally evidenced by its ubiquitous recommendation on social media.
So why did I tire at my first read of it, and why have I subsequently rated it 5 stars?
It turns out I was very wrong. My habit of always finishing books I started absolutely came in clutch here. I've read books before where examples in the business world are used to explain concepts in other fields, and while it may work, its often a tedious, boring read which I cant wait to end. This is why I doubted this book initially.
What this book actually is is a collection of incredibly wise advice sourced from deep business concepts used to steer a company to success. Even for someone like me who tires easily and doesn't care much more than average about business/start-up philosophy or culture, the examples were insightful and I found myself learning about both the business world and the lessons extracted from it for use in my life.
These aren't your typical business examples either like "treat your employees well" or similar generic advice, these are root cause reasons for success and failure gleaned from the wide experience Clayton M. Christensen has gained in his lifetime.
Questions such as "How can I ensure that my children do the right thing even when I am not around?", "How will I know when to seize or ignore an opportunity?" and "What job did my Spouse hire me for?" are answered in such a way that although you may never have thought of these questions yourself, you will wonder how you got through life without them.
I can describe this book as not simply advice, but meta-advice. It arms you with the tools to advise yourself in the best way such that you can deal with many of the main issues that will inevitably arise in life.
I found the chapter about culture and raising children especially insightful. By fostering a family culture reflecting the values you wish to instill in your children, you will set the scene for the homage to these values to be paid in perpetuity without needing constant supervision. After all, it is not possible to always be there with your children making sure that they honour the values you have taught them. I instantly showed chapters like this to my immediate family and used other pieces of advice from this book within days when advising friends on related issues.
Many books encourage you to make good decisions, but not many arm you with the capability to understand the underlying ideas that help you make good decisions dynamically. This is such a book and despite its relatively short length, it is worth its weight in gold with regards to the benefit that can be gained from it.
I now find myself armed with ideas about chasing emergent opportunities in life, understanding what roles my Wife may require of me for her at any given time and a deeper understanding of how to both embody and teach my future children of the values I believe to be important.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to have the same fundamental questions answered, even if they themselves never thought to ask them.
I had picked this book from my shortlist of books to read, a shortlist usually reserved for the best of the best as recommended by others and additionally evidenced by its ubiquitous recommendation on social media.
So why did I tire at my first read of it, and why have I subsequently rated it 5 stars?
It turns out I was very wrong. My habit of always finishing books I started absolutely came in clutch here. I've read books before where examples in the business world are used to explain concepts in other fields, and while it may work, its often a tedious, boring read which I cant wait to end. This is why I doubted this book initially.
What this book actually is is a collection of incredibly wise advice sourced from deep business concepts used to steer a company to success. Even for someone like me who tires easily and doesn't care much more than average about business/start-up philosophy or culture, the examples were insightful and I found myself learning about both the business world and the lessons extracted from it for use in my life.
These aren't your typical business examples either like "treat your employees well" or similar generic advice, these are root cause reasons for success and failure gleaned from the wide experience Clayton M. Christensen has gained in his lifetime.
Questions such as "How can I ensure that my children do the right thing even when I am not around?", "How will I know when to seize or ignore an opportunity?" and "What job did my Spouse hire me for?" are answered in such a way that although you may never have thought of these questions yourself, you will wonder how you got through life without them.
I can describe this book as not simply advice, but meta-advice. It arms you with the tools to advise yourself in the best way such that you can deal with many of the main issues that will inevitably arise in life.
I found the chapter about culture and raising children especially insightful. By fostering a family culture reflecting the values you wish to instill in your children, you will set the scene for the homage to these values to be paid in perpetuity without needing constant supervision. After all, it is not possible to always be there with your children making sure that they honour the values you have taught them. I instantly showed chapters like this to my immediate family and used other pieces of advice from this book within days when advising friends on related issues.
Many books encourage you to make good decisions, but not many arm you with the capability to understand the underlying ideas that help you make good decisions dynamically. This is such a book and despite its relatively short length, it is worth its weight in gold with regards to the benefit that can be gained from it.
I now find myself armed with ideas about chasing emergent opportunities in life, understanding what roles my Wife may require of me for her at any given time and a deeper understanding of how to both embody and teach my future children of the values I believe to be important.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to have the same fundamental questions answered, even if they themselves never thought to ask them.
March 19, 2017
Phenomenal little read replete with intense nuggets of vocational and personal advice. Intense nuggets.
As the owner of a popular YouTube startup and poised at the brink of starting up a family with my wife, this book came at a great time. The central premise is that we need to pay attention to the process of decision-making in our business and personal spheres, not just our nominal end goals or whatever seems to be the most immediately rewarding way to invest our time and resources in the short-term. Learning how to replicate successful processes happens by "watching movies" (analyzing how implemented values and healthy processes led to a company's or individual's success at each separate decision along the way) rather than by "viewing shapshots" (looking at the current state of a successful company or individual and assuming that the same steps they took will result in similar success).
Christensen, a Harvard business professor who also happens to be a devout Mormon, has clearly thought about and rarefied his theories over and over again, refining his ideas like tumbled rocks and figuring out the optimally eloquent way to express them.
A smattering of my favorite nuggets:
– I want you to be able to experience that feeling – to wake up every morning thinking how lucky you are to be doing what you're doing.
– You can talk all you want about having a strategy for your life, understanding motivation, and balancing aspirations with unanticipated opportunities. But ultimately, this means nothing if you do not align those with where you actually expend your time, money, and energy.
– This means, almost paradoxically, that the time when it is most important to invest in building strong families and close friendships is when it appears, at the surface, an is if it's not necessary.
– Capital that seeks growth before profits is bad capital.
– Self-esteem – the sense that "I'm not afraid to confront this problem and I think I can solve it" – doesn't come from abundant resources. Rather, self-esteem comes from achieving something important when it's hard to do.
– As Henry Ford once put it, "If you need a machine and don't buy it, then you will ultimately find that you have paid for it and don't have it." Thinking on a marginal basis can be very, very dangerous.
– Decide what you stand for. And then stand for it all the time.
As the owner of a popular YouTube startup and poised at the brink of starting up a family with my wife, this book came at a great time. The central premise is that we need to pay attention to the process of decision-making in our business and personal spheres, not just our nominal end goals or whatever seems to be the most immediately rewarding way to invest our time and resources in the short-term. Learning how to replicate successful processes happens by "watching movies" (analyzing how implemented values and healthy processes led to a company's or individual's success at each separate decision along the way) rather than by "viewing shapshots" (looking at the current state of a successful company or individual and assuming that the same steps they took will result in similar success).
Christensen, a Harvard business professor who also happens to be a devout Mormon, has clearly thought about and rarefied his theories over and over again, refining his ideas like tumbled rocks and figuring out the optimally eloquent way to express them.
A smattering of my favorite nuggets:
– I want you to be able to experience that feeling – to wake up every morning thinking how lucky you are to be doing what you're doing.
– You can talk all you want about having a strategy for your life, understanding motivation, and balancing aspirations with unanticipated opportunities. But ultimately, this means nothing if you do not align those with where you actually expend your time, money, and energy.
– This means, almost paradoxically, that the time when it is most important to invest in building strong families and close friendships is when it appears, at the surface, an is if it's not necessary.
– Capital that seeks growth before profits is bad capital.
– Self-esteem – the sense that "I'm not afraid to confront this problem and I think I can solve it" – doesn't come from abundant resources. Rather, self-esteem comes from achieving something important when it's hard to do.
– As Henry Ford once put it, "If you need a machine and don't buy it, then you will ultimately find that you have paid for it and don't have it." Thinking on a marginal basis can be very, very dangerous.
– Decide what you stand for. And then stand for it all the time.
January 19, 2021
http://delsharm.blog.ir/1398/01/04/me...
این کتاب خیلی اتفاقی به دستم رسید. قبلاً نمیشناختمش. به دلیلی که در انتها خواهم گفت خریدمش. به جرأت میگویم یکی از بهترین کتابهایی است که در این موضوع (مدیریت شخصی، پیشرفت، موفقیت شغلی و موفقیت خانوادگی و تربیت) خواندهام. نویسنده استاد کسبوکار دانشگاه هاروارد است و اهل خانواده و خیلی مذهبی (در جوانی به عنوان مبلغ مسیحیت به کرهٔ جنوبی رفته است). او این کتاب را درست بعد از فرار از دست سرطان، همان سرطانی که پدرش را کشت، و بعد از دست و پنجه نرم کردن با از دست دادن قدرت تکلم حاصل از لختهای که در مغزش به وجود آمد به کمک دو تن از دانشجویانش نوشته است. به نظرم خوب است این دو سخنرانی او را که در مورد همین کتاب گفته است تماشا کنید:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvos4...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DwYc...
جالب آن است که نویسنده در اواخر دوران جوانی با ۴ فرزند شغلش را از دست میدهد و از ناچاری تصمیم به ادامهٔ تحصیل میگیرد.
بعداً که به یکی از دوستان کارمند گوگل کالیفرنیا در مورد این کتاب گفتم، گفت که کتاب قبلی این نویسنده، «دوراهی نوآوران»، یکی از پایههای فکری در رشد شرکت گوگل بوده است (کما این که کتاب «طرز تفکر» باعث تغییر روند شرکت مایکروسافت بعد از افول در دوران غیبت بیل گیتس شده بود).
حالا چرا کتاب را خریدم؟ رسمی است در کتابخانههای عمومی کالیفرنیا: مردم کتابهایی که به هر دلیل دیگر نمیخواهند به کتابخانه هدیه میدهند. کتابخانه کتابها را در کتابفروشیاش با قیمتی خیلی ارزان (یک تا ۳ دلار) میفروشد. هر سه ماه یکبار یک حراج بزرگ میگذارد: یک کیف کوچک خرید «هولفودز» به قیمت پنج دلار (به اندازهٔ ده تا سی کتاب بسته به اندازهٔ کتاب) و هر کس هر کتابی که دلش خواست در آن کیف میتواند بگذارد و خرید کند. البته این وسط بعضی دلالان کتاب دستدوم با دستگاههای بارکدخوان پایگاه دادهشان را بررسی میکنند و اگر به کتاب نیاز داشته باشند، با سرعتی عجیب آنها را میخرند و در عمل سود بسیار زیادی میکنند. مردم هم این وسط کتابهای زیادی میخرند. من هم تا حدی معتاد این فرهنگ کتاب دستدوم خیلی ارزان ش��م (اکثر کتابهایی که نه ماه اخیر خواندهام دستدوم ارزانقیمت خریداری شدهاند). کیفم پر نشده بود و چند کتاب از جمله همین کتاب را فقط به خاطر عنوان جذاب برداشتم. به نظر میآید برخی از مردم به محض خواندن کتابها آنها را دوباره به کتابخانه پس میدهند تا اینطوری کمکی هر چند اندک به کتابخانهها کرده باشند. برخی هم کتابها را به عنوان تزئین داخلی (دکور) میخرند.
https://www.menlopark.org/ImageReposi...
این کتاب خیلی اتفاقی به دستم رسید. قبلاً نمیشناختمش. به دلیلی که در انتها خواهم گفت خریدمش. به جرأت میگویم یکی از بهترین کتابهایی است که در این موضوع (مدیریت شخصی، پیشرفت، موفقیت شغلی و موفقیت خانوادگی و تربیت) خواندهام. نویسنده استاد کسبوکار دانشگاه هاروارد است و اهل خانواده و خیلی مذهبی (در جوانی به عنوان مبلغ مسیحیت به کرهٔ جنوبی رفته است). او این کتاب را درست بعد از فرار از دست سرطان، همان سرطانی که پدرش را کشت، و بعد از دست و پنجه نرم کردن با از دست دادن قدرت تکلم حاصل از لختهای که در مغزش به وجود آمد به کمک دو تن از دانشجویانش نوشته است. به نظرم خوب است این دو سخنرانی او را که در مورد همین کتاب گفته است تماشا کنید:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvos4...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DwYc...
جالب آن است که نویسنده در اواخر دوران جوانی با ۴ فرزند شغلش را از دست میدهد و از ناچاری تصمیم به ادامهٔ تحصیل میگیرد.
بعداً که به یکی از دوستان کارمند گوگل کالیفرنیا در مورد این کتاب گفتم، گفت که کتاب قبلی این نویسنده، «دوراهی نوآوران»، یکی از پایههای فکری در رشد شرکت گوگل بوده است (کما این که کتاب «طرز تفکر» باعث تغییر روند شرکت مایکروسافت بعد از افول در دوران غیبت بیل گیتس شده بود).
حالا چرا کتاب را خریدم؟ رسمی است در کتابخانههای عمومی کالیفرنیا: مردم کتابهایی که به هر دلیل دیگر نمیخواهند به کتابخانه هدیه میدهند. کتابخانه کتابها را در کتابفروشیاش با قیمتی خیلی ارزان (یک تا ۳ دلار) میفروشد. هر سه ماه یکبار یک حراج بزرگ میگذارد: یک کیف کوچک خرید «هولفودز» به قیمت پنج دلار (به اندازهٔ ده تا سی کتاب بسته به اندازهٔ کتاب) و هر کس هر کتابی که دلش خواست در آن کیف میتواند بگذارد و خرید کند. البته این وسط بعضی دلالان کتاب دستدوم با دستگاههای بارکدخوان پایگاه دادهشان را بررسی میکنند و اگر به کتاب نیاز داشته باشند، با سرعتی عجیب آنها را میخرند و در عمل سود بسیار زیادی میکنند. مردم هم این وسط کتابهای زیادی میخرند. من هم تا حدی معتاد این فرهنگ کتاب دستدوم خیلی ارزان ش��م (اکثر کتابهایی که نه ماه اخیر خواندهام دستدوم ارزانقیمت خریداری شدهاند). کیفم پر نشده بود و چند کتاب از جمله همین کتاب را فقط به خاطر عنوان جذاب برداشتم. به نظر میآید برخی از مردم به محض خواندن کتابها آنها را دوباره به کتابخانه پس میدهند تا اینطوری کمکی هر چند اندک به کتابخانهها کرده باشند. برخی هم کتابها را به عنوان تزئین داخلی (دکور) میخرند.
https://www.menlopark.org/ImageReposi...
June 27, 2020
This is one of the books that is going to shape the way I think from this point forward.
We culturally learn to measure ourselves through the success in our careers. We celebrate CEO's, athletes, celebrities, who have gathered enormous wealth and fame. We consider people in top positions in companies with a large sum of salaries as the successful ones. But often behind the facade of their success, they are dissatisfied with their career, have failing marriages, or severely dissatisfied with their personal life. Eventually many of them end up in jail for corruption, misconduct. So clearly, career as the measure for one's life is not accurate. This book attempts to answer then what it should be.
The author says that a healthy balance between one's satisfaction in both career and family and social life should be the measure for one's life. He draws a parallel between maintaining a healthy family and running a successful company. He lays down ways to maintaining relationship with a spouse, raising children, building a family culture that the children will carry their lifetime. It takes tremendous effort to do these right, and there is no shortcut. But happiness isn't cheap. One has to plan ahead on what direction they want to take their career or family towards, at the same time be open to surprises and willing to change direction. One interesting suggestion from the author is to decide early where one wants to see oneself in the future both in terms of family and career, find out the necessary "courses in the school of experience" to get there, and take those courses however hard they are.
It's a beautiful book for career-oriented people. Highly recommended.
We culturally learn to measure ourselves through the success in our careers. We celebrate CEO's, athletes, celebrities, who have gathered enormous wealth and fame. We consider people in top positions in companies with a large sum of salaries as the successful ones. But often behind the facade of their success, they are dissatisfied with their career, have failing marriages, or severely dissatisfied with their personal life. Eventually many of them end up in jail for corruption, misconduct. So clearly, career as the measure for one's life is not accurate. This book attempts to answer then what it should be.
The author says that a healthy balance between one's satisfaction in both career and family and social life should be the measure for one's life. He draws a parallel between maintaining a healthy family and running a successful company. He lays down ways to maintaining relationship with a spouse, raising children, building a family culture that the children will carry their lifetime. It takes tremendous effort to do these right, and there is no shortcut. But happiness isn't cheap. One has to plan ahead on what direction they want to take their career or family towards, at the same time be open to surprises and willing to change direction. One interesting suggestion from the author is to decide early where one wants to see oneself in the future both in terms of family and career, find out the necessary "courses in the school of experience" to get there, and take those courses however hard they are.
It's a beautiful book for career-oriented people. Highly recommended.
August 25, 2012
Greatly enjoyed this piece about not only finding meaning, but making meaning. I loved that Christensen talked about management as a service profession, because of the ways in which good management can help improve lives. So true:
Favorite quotations:
"the most powerful motivator isn’t money; it’s the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute, and be recognized. That’s why management, if practiced well, can be the noblest of occupations; no others offer as many ways to help people find those opportunities."
"If you’re not guided by a clear sense of purpose, you’re likely to fritter away your time and energy on obtaining the most tangible, short-term signs of achievement, not what’s really important to you."
"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."
"I promise my students that if they take the time to figure out their life purpose, they’ll look back on it as the most important thing they discovered at HBS. If they don’t figure it out, they will just sail off without a rudder and get buffeted in the very rough seas of life."
"The choice and successful pursuit of a profession is but one tool for achieving your purpose. But without a purpose, life can become hollow."
"Don’t worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people. This is my final recommendation: 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."
Favorite quotations:
"the most powerful motivator isn’t money; it’s the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute, and be recognized. That’s why management, if practiced well, can be the noblest of occupations; no others offer as many ways to help people find those opportunities."
"If you’re not guided by a clear sense of purpose, you’re likely to fritter away your time and energy on obtaining the most tangible, short-term signs of achievement, not what’s really important to you."
"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."
"I promise my students that if they take the time to figure out their life purpose, they’ll look back on it as the most important thing they discovered at HBS. If they don’t figure it out, they will just sail off without a rudder and get buffeted in the very rough seas of life."
"The choice and successful pursuit of a profession is but one tool for achieving your purpose. But without a purpose, life can become hollow."
"Don’t worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people. This is my final recommendation: 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."
September 11, 2016
One of the best books I have read in my life for sure. Case studies of "personal life failures" (colleagues jailed for inside trading, a friend who failed in marriages 3 times, parents failing to raise their children properly, etc) and the "company failures" were most interesting to me. Another best message of the book was to never give up to the "Just this once" thoughts and "Live with Integrity". When you die, what will you leave behind? What is your legacy? What will your family and friends remember you by? A busy mom that was never home? A cheating father? A fake friend that was absent when needed the most? Every action and choice leads you to "Who You Are". Live a life with integrity and leave a legacy of respect, positive impact and happy family and friends.
August 5, 2016
Recommended by a friend, this is a business-book babble of some 1% who wants to point out that all of his Harvard Business School alumni have TERRIBLE personal lives, and that maybe they should treat their personal lives as a long-term business proposition.
Let me tell you: If reframing your life as a ROI in affection toward your spouse, children, neighbors, family, and friends will make you pay more attention to them, that's probably a good thing. But it also is a kind intuitive thing that most of us do because we're not self-centered career-climbing robots.
Barf.
Let me tell you: If reframing your life as a ROI in affection toward your spouse, children, neighbors, family, and friends will make you pay more attention to them, that's probably a good thing. But it also is a kind intuitive thing that most of us do because we're not self-centered career-climbing robots.
Barf.
December 4, 2018
My newest favorite book! 🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩
FINDING HAPPINESS in your CAREER
* Just because you have feathers..
* What makes us tick
* The Balance of Calculation and Serendipity
FINDING HAPPINESS in your RELATIONSHIPS
* The Ticking Clock
* What Job Did You Hire That Milkshake For?
* Sailing Your kid on Theseus's Ship
* The Schools of Experience
* The Invisible Hand Inside Your Family
STAYING OUT of JAIL
* Just This Once...
FINDING HAPPINESS in your CAREER
* Just because you have feathers..
* What makes us tick
* The Balance of Calculation and Serendipity
FINDING HAPPINESS in your RELATIONSHIPS
* The Ticking Clock
* What Job Did You Hire That Milkshake For?
* Sailing Your kid on Theseus's Ship
* The Schools of Experience
* The Invisible Hand Inside Your Family
STAYING OUT of JAIL
* Just This Once...
March 9, 2014
Excellent, insightful book. Presents some business concepts that can be applied to the personal life.
One of my favorite books from now on.
One of my favorite books from now on.
January 7, 2020
''For many of us, as the years go by, we allow our dreams to be peeled away. We pick our jobs for the wrong reasons and then we settle for them. We begin to accept that it’s not realistic to do something we truly love for a living. Too many of us who start down the path of compromise will never make it back. Considering the fact that you’ll likely spend more of your waking hours at your job than in any other part of your life, it’s a compromise that will always eat away at you. But you need not resign yourself to this fate.''
I will read this book again. And again.
I feel like I've been pretty good at choosing a life-work balance that aligns with my priorities. I chose a career that provides high satisfaction and daily challenge but also allows me to put the needs of my family first. Still, as I plowed through Clayton Christensen's "How Will You Measure Your Life?" I found myself learning and considering and rethinking and evaluating and, eventually, realizing how fortunate (or maybe blessed?) I am to have fallen into my current career. Wittingly or not.
Still, there is more. As I read, I realized how young I am and how much more opportunity there is for growth, need to continue to recalibrate, to balance, to evaluate. It is so easy to lose sight of balance along the way as you climb the ladder of success, often to only find out that the ladder is against the wrong wall. So, I'll read it again.
Here's another great quote from the book on this point:
''The only way a strategy can get implemented is if we dedicate resources to it. Good intentions are not enough—you’re not implementing the strategy that you intend if you don’t spend your time, your money, and your talent in a way that is consistent with your intentions. In your life, there are going to be constant demands for your time and attention. How are you going to decide which of those demands gets resources? The trap many people fall into is to allocate their time to whoever screams loudest, and their talent to whatever offers them the fastest reward. That’s a dangerous way to build a strategy.''
Energy, my friends. You've got to devote energy to the strategy, to the goal, the thing...whatever it is. A great example of this is my better-half, Britt. I knew she liked to quilt when we married, but I didn't realize she was an artist, too. Maybe that's a distinction without a difference to you, but before I married I thought quilting was all squares and strings of yarn that the local Relief Society tied for newlyweds and disaster victims. I didn't realize that it had its nuances and distinctions, disputes and styles, just as any other art, whether its oil on canvas, photography, clay, or performance (and just as expensive, too. Don't ask me what we're going to do with all the fabric accumulating in her sewing room, because I don't know--and in the interest of marital bliss, I'm not going to ask. At least not seriously). And as an artist, it can consume and occupy large parts of Britt's brain for huge chunks of time. You see, she decided long ago that she wanted to be a master quilter, an artist, to create and to make, and she puts a lot of energy into accomplishing that goal. The result? She's been commissioned to create custom works of art, as well as has placed in national art competitions. She is making amazing progress in distinguishing herself as a creator and a master artist. She puts energy into her strategy, and she's constantly thinking about how to improve. It is inspiring.
This kind of leads to another great quote that I love:
''How you allocate your resources is where the rubber meets the road. Real strategy—in companies and in our lives—is created through hundreds of everyday decisions about where we spend our resources. As you’re living your life from day to day, how do you make sure you’re heading in the right direction? Watch where your resources flow. If they’re not supporting the strategy you’ve decided upon, then you’re not implementing that strategy at all.''
A great way to see how you're implementing your strategy, and how much energy you're putting into it, is an evaluation of where your resources are going. This isn't just where you spend your money, though that's a huge part of it, but how you spend your time. I think one way I see that manifest is in the kinds of things I see my children reflect from me. I learned early on in our family's history that while each of the girls is their own individual, they are also incredibly absorbant of what they see and hear Britt and I do--they mirror us, sometimes in uncanny fashion. I recall a moment of personal reflection and self-assessment initiated when I heard my daughter talking to her sister across the house and, without citing me, say almost the exact same thing I had said a dozen times. (On a lighter note, I also observe that the girls are as into Star Wars as they are into their dolls...maybe more so. The Force is with us, and we are one with the Force.) As I've watched them grow, I've seen them adopt interests that they see us spend time doing, whether it is in the outdoors, certain athletics, television shows, books, and even our bad habits. I see myself putting energy into something, and it is reflected all around me, often in the things my family does and does not care about.
Clayton has something to say on this, too:
''High-achievers focus a great deal on becoming the person they want to be at work—and far too little on the person they want to be at home. Investing our time and energy in raising wonderful children or deepening our love with our spouse often doesn’t return clear evidence of success for many years. What this leads us to is over-investing in our careers, and under-investing in our families—starving one of the most important parts of our life of the resources it needs to flourish.''
This is perhaps the most important part of what I took away from the book, though there are lessons throughout--nothing I do at work will matter if I don't balance it with what I do at home. So, I try to balance it. I hope to balance it.
So, it's a great book. And I'll read it again.
I will read this book again. And again.
I feel like I've been pretty good at choosing a life-work balance that aligns with my priorities. I chose a career that provides high satisfaction and daily challenge but also allows me to put the needs of my family first. Still, as I plowed through Clayton Christensen's "How Will You Measure Your Life?" I found myself learning and considering and rethinking and evaluating and, eventually, realizing how fortunate (or maybe blessed?) I am to have fallen into my current career. Wittingly or not.
Still, there is more. As I read, I realized how young I am and how much more opportunity there is for growth, need to continue to recalibrate, to balance, to evaluate. It is so easy to lose sight of balance along the way as you climb the ladder of success, often to only find out that the ladder is against the wrong wall. So, I'll read it again.
Here's another great quote from the book on this point:
''The only way a strategy can get implemented is if we dedicate resources to it. Good intentions are not enough—you’re not implementing the strategy that you intend if you don’t spend your time, your money, and your talent in a way that is consistent with your intentions. In your life, there are going to be constant demands for your time and attention. How are you going to decide which of those demands gets resources? The trap many people fall into is to allocate their time to whoever screams loudest, and their talent to whatever offers them the fastest reward. That’s a dangerous way to build a strategy.''
Energy, my friends. You've got to devote energy to the strategy, to the goal, the thing...whatever it is. A great example of this is my better-half, Britt. I knew she liked to quilt when we married, but I didn't realize she was an artist, too. Maybe that's a distinction without a difference to you, but before I married I thought quilting was all squares and strings of yarn that the local Relief Society tied for newlyweds and disaster victims. I didn't realize that it had its nuances and distinctions, disputes and styles, just as any other art, whether its oil on canvas, photography, clay, or performance (and just as expensive, too. Don't ask me what we're going to do with all the fabric accumulating in her sewing room, because I don't know--and in the interest of marital bliss, I'm not going to ask. At least not seriously). And as an artist, it can consume and occupy large parts of Britt's brain for huge chunks of time. You see, she decided long ago that she wanted to be a master quilter, an artist, to create and to make, and she puts a lot of energy into accomplishing that goal. The result? She's been commissioned to create custom works of art, as well as has placed in national art competitions. She is making amazing progress in distinguishing herself as a creator and a master artist. She puts energy into her strategy, and she's constantly thinking about how to improve. It is inspiring.
This kind of leads to another great quote that I love:
''How you allocate your resources is where the rubber meets the road. Real strategy—in companies and in our lives—is created through hundreds of everyday decisions about where we spend our resources. As you’re living your life from day to day, how do you make sure you’re heading in the right direction? Watch where your resources flow. If they’re not supporting the strategy you’ve decided upon, then you’re not implementing that strategy at all.''
A great way to see how you're implementing your strategy, and how much energy you're putting into it, is an evaluation of where your resources are going. This isn't just where you spend your money, though that's a huge part of it, but how you spend your time. I think one way I see that manifest is in the kinds of things I see my children reflect from me. I learned early on in our family's history that while each of the girls is their own individual, they are also incredibly absorbant of what they see and hear Britt and I do--they mirror us, sometimes in uncanny fashion. I recall a moment of personal reflection and self-assessment initiated when I heard my daughter talking to her sister across the house and, without citing me, say almost the exact same thing I had said a dozen times. (On a lighter note, I also observe that the girls are as into Star Wars as they are into their dolls...maybe more so. The Force is with us, and we are one with the Force.) As I've watched them grow, I've seen them adopt interests that they see us spend time doing, whether it is in the outdoors, certain athletics, television shows, books, and even our bad habits. I see myself putting energy into something, and it is reflected all around me, often in the things my family does and does not care about.
Clayton has something to say on this, too:
''High-achievers focus a great deal on becoming the person they want to be at work—and far too little on the person they want to be at home. Investing our time and energy in raising wonderful children or deepening our love with our spouse often doesn’t return clear evidence of success for many years. What this leads us to is over-investing in our careers, and under-investing in our families—starving one of the most important parts of our life of the resources it needs to flourish.''
This is perhaps the most important part of what I took away from the book, though there are lessons throughout--nothing I do at work will matter if I don't balance it with what I do at home. So, I try to balance it. I hope to balance it.
So, it's a great book. And I'll read it again.
June 25, 2022
This is Nonfiction/Business and it also talked a lot about family and faith (more towards the end.) This wasn't quite 4 stars for me but I liked how he anchored business principles to family and faith so I'll round up.
I like the way he dialed into what is important and how that answer is different for each person. Whatever that thing is, he highlights ways to self examine to see if one's daily choices are reflecting that thing.
I like the way he dialed into what is important and how that answer is different for each person. Whatever that thing is, he highlights ways to self examine to see if one's daily choices are reflecting that thing.
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