How Will You Measure Your Life? Summary
5 min read ⌚
Finding Fulfillment Using Lessons From Some of the World’s Greatest Businesses
A great career, deep happiness, great relationships – you can have it all!
You just need to learn how to get it.
That is where we come into play.
Who Should Read “How Will You Measure Your Life?” and Why?
“How Will You Measure Your Life” is a book about motivation, that will teach readers the right ways to motivate others, and will show them the path to both professionally successful life and a genuinely happy one.
We recommend it to all readers who want to learn the secrets to motivation, and who want to strengthen the relationships with their loved ones.
About Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth and Karen Dillon
Clayton M. Christensen is a Professor at the Harvard Business School and a critically acclaimed author.
James Allworth is a Baker Scholar at the Harvard Business School.
Karen Dillon is a former editor of the Harvard Business Review and an investigative journalist.
“How Will You Measure Your Life? Summary”
If we ask you now what would you need to feel happier at work, what would you say?
Some extra cash?
More admiration from your coworkers?
Most probably, your answer will lie somewhere along these lines.
However, the tangible things will not be the ones that will actually make you happy, although you intuitively believe they will.
Just look around you. How many professionally successful people you can see, that are extremely unhappy?
The success in the workplace and the money in the bank will not ensure good family relationships and peaceful sleep at night.
However, although it is evident that the material incentives have nothing to do with happiness, workplaces keep using unhealthy approaches to ensuring productivity.
Many theories explain how people get motivated.
The incentive theory, for example, advocates that the more people are paid, the better their performance will be.
However, let’s think about NGO’s for a minute. The people that work there accomplish life-changing tasks, and yet they get paid very little.
Then, there is the hygiene-motivation theory, which advocates that conditions at work, job security and company policies are those that ensure good productivity and high motivation.
However, even if the conditions are excellent, if the work does not leave space for progress and promotion, employees will not get motivated.
So, what is the answer to ensuring job satisfaction?
Job satisfaction can be accomplished if the previously mentioned hygiene factors get mixed and balanced with motivation factors such as personal growth, recognition, and sense of responsibility.
So, it is crucial that a job be both intellectually stimulating and offers an excellent working environment.
Another thing you should accomplish a balance in is your career strategy.
Career strategies can be deliberate or emergent. The deliberate strategy is usually built on anticipated opportunities, which are those opportunities that we consciously choose to use.
However, things do not always go according to plan, so deliberate strategies are not always a success.
That is when emergent strategies come into play – they are built around unanticipated opportunities and get created during the implementation process of a particular deliberate, anticipated strategy.
As you can see these strategies are complementary, so creating a balance between them is the only way you can make sure you can use any opportunity that comes your way.
You need to be both flexible and calculating when you are looking for your direction.
Furthermore, two more variables can help you on your way to having a satisfactory job.
In life and work, in order to be prosperous and peaceful, you need to understand the minds and needs of other people.
In order to do this hard task, you have to use your intuition and empathy.
Learning how to use your intuition and empathy to come to truthful judgments about a situation will not only help you in your professional life but your personal life as well.
No matter how important you work is to you, you should never forget the importance of your family, and your ultimate life goal: being a good parent that will lead his or her children on the right path.
You want to be a role model for your children, and the best way to do it is to have integrity.
Integrity requires of you to be constantly self-aware of every little choice you make in life.
Even the exceptions you consider to be a one-time thing may become the beginning of your irresponsible habits.
So, always keep your actions in check. Be a good example for your environment, and your environment will follow.
Key Lessons from “How Will You Measure Your Life?”
1. You Have to Tend to Your Relationships
2. Your Family Life is a Job As Well
3. Do Not Become a Marginal Thinker
You Have to Tend to Your Relationships
To have good relationships with people, you need to put an effort. They require constant attention, and are easily breakable, even if it comes to our closest family.
So, do not forget to set some time apart to spend with your family.
Your work may give you instant gratification, but it is of no worth when you have no one to spend the money you earn with.
Your Family Life is a Job As Well
The best way you can go about improving your relationships is treating them as a job. If you do, you will actually put in the effort and work on them so that they will thrive.
Do Not Become a Marginal Thinker
Another relationship you need to look after is the one you have to yourself.
The best way you can be kind to yourself is always to protect your values and integrity, and make sure you can rest peacefully at night.
Do not do things that you may be sorry for in the future.
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“How Will You Measure Your Life? Quotes”
It's easier to hold your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold them 98 percent of the time. Click To Tweet Intimate, loving, and enduring relationships with our family and close friends will be among the sources of the deepest joy in our lives. Click To Tweet If you defer investing your time and energy until you see that you need to, chances are it will already be too late. Click To Tweet I had thought the destination was what was important, but it turned out it was the journey. Click To Tweet In order to really find happiness, you need to continue looking for opportunities that you believe are meaningful, in which you will be able to learn new things, to succeed and be given more and more responsibility to shoulder. Click To Tweet
Our Critical Review
This book tells you something you will not hear a lot in this fast-paced world: work less and spend some time with your family.
It is a statement we all should hear: it is about time we go back to being human.
