This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "How Will You Measure Your Life?" by Clayton M. Christensen. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
Like this article? Sign up for a free trial here .
What are the key ideas in Clayton Christensen’s How Will You Measure Your Life? How can you use economic theories to find your purpose? How do you measure your life successfully?
Clayton Christensen’s How Will You Measure Your Life is filled with helpful advice for improving your relationships, becoming a better parent, and finding happiness in your career. In particular, Christensen explores economic theories and discusses how you can use them in your life.
Keep reading to find out more about Clayton Christensen’s How Will You Measure Your Life.
Clayton Christensen and How Will You Measure Your Life?
Clayton Christensen’s How Will You Measure Your Life shows how economic theories that help businesses succeed can also help individuals make better life decisions. He presents theories and business case studies that show you pitfalls to avoid, and also how to be happy and successful in your career and personal life.
Typical self-help books on how to succeed and be happy are based mostly on anecdotes and on routines that worked for the authors, but that may or may not work for you. In contrast, Clayton Christensen’s How Will You Measure Your Life focuses on theories. We know theories work: They’re tested, proven, and can be universally applied. A theory is a statement of cause and effect. Economic theories show the impact on a business of doing certain things; they predict what will happen in the future and what steps managers might take. They can do the same for your personal life.
Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, uses business theories to explain:
- How to be successful and happy in your career
- How to build relationships with your partner, children, other family members, and close friends that are a lifelong source of happiness
- How to live with integrity
(Shortform note: Read our summary of The Innovator’s Dilemma here.)
Christensen began exploring these questions after finding that many of his former Harvard Business School classmates had struggled in their personal lives and often didn’t enjoy their work, despite significant professional accomplishments. One, Jeffrey Skilling of Enron, ended up in jail.
Clayton Christensen’s How Will You Measure Your Life defines a path to both professional and personal success. It’s intended to help you find fulfillment by understanding what’s most important to you, and ultimately answering the question of how you’ll measure your life.
Applying Theories to Life
Making good decisions in business and life requires understanding what actions cause what outcomes. The business theories explained in this book will help you see cause and effect. Each chapter highlights a business theory and applies it to a personal challenge.
Operating without a theory is like navigating at sea without directional instruments—you’re relying on the currents (outside forces) and chance. However, good theories point you in the direction of good decisions. From there, it’s up to you. Theories tell you how to think about key decisions, not what to think.
Finding Happiness in Your Career
So, how do you measure your life? Christensen offers many ways of doing this, including finding happiness in your career.
A key decision in life is choosing your job or career, but many people choose them for the wrong reasons. They end up unhappy and resigned to the belief that doing what you love isn’t a realistic option. But you don’t have to settle—the key to finding happiness in your career is creating a strategy for where you want to go and how to get there. A successful strategy involves three components:
- Determining priorities based on what truly motivates you
- Balancing plans with opportunities and challenges
- Allocating your resources
Understand What Motivates You
When you feel unhappy and stuck in your career or life, it’s usually because what you’re doing isn’t what really motivates you. Many people think incentives are the key to being satisfied at work, and they opt for jobs on the basis of the incentives they offer. But incentives don’t make people happy in their jobs.
Theory of motivation: Incentives (also known as hygiene factors), like compensation, job security, status, work environment, manager practices, and company policies, will leave you dissatisfied with your job if they’re not adequately addressed. But improved hygiene factors won’t make you happy (just less dissatisfied). What makes you happy are motivators, such as challenging work, responsibility, learning, the chance to grow, and the chance to make a meaningful contribution.
Application: When seeking a job or career that will make you happy, look beyond whether a job meets basic hygiene factors and ask whether it meets motivational criteria.
Focus on the factors that really matter to you—those that make you love coming to work each day—and the hygiene factors, after a certain point, will take care of themselves.
Balance Plans With Opportunities
After you understand what motivates you, the second strategy piece is balancing your plans with unexpected opportunities that come up. Both companies and individuals must know how to do this in order to thrive.
Theory: Once formulated, every strategy continues to evolve in response to options that develop. There are two types of options:
1) Anticipated opportunities: These are opportunities you identify and choose to pursue as a deliberate strategy.
2) Unanticipated opportunities: These are a combination of problems and opportunities you run into while implementing your deliberate plan. When these unexpected things come up, you must decide whether to stick with the plan, adjust it, or replace it with one of the new options.
Application: To decide when to pursue an option or to stay the course with your deliberate strategy, ask yourself: What assumptions have to be correct for this course of action to succeed? (Often plans are based on assumptions that are incorrect.)
Align Resources With Priorities
Resource allocation is the third component of strategy. Keeping resources in alignment with strategy is a challenge for companies as well as individuals.
Theory: Many interests and priorities compete for resources. Where you spend your resources, intentionally or unintentionally, is your real strategy. It’s the accumulation of your daily decisions and actions. Follow the flow of your resources to determine whether you’re on track for where you say you want to go, or whether an unintended strategy has taken over.
Application: Your personal resources include your energy, time, talent, and wealth. You apply them to various enterprises in your life: your relationship with your spouse, parenting, relationships with others, succeeding in your career, health and personal interests, and contributing to your community. Much unhappiness stems from prioritizing short-term goals, such as a bonus, promotion, or upscale lifestyle, rather than long-term objectives, such as a good marriage and raising children to be good people.
Finding Happiness in Your Relationships
Many people over-invest in their careers at the expense of their family and relationships. However, your career, by itself, won’t bring you happiness and fulfillment. Your career priorities are just part of a larger set of priorities, including your spouse, children, friends, faith, health, and so on. Like your career, your relationships need consistent attention.
———End of Preview———
Like what you just read? Read the rest of the world's best book summary and analysis of Clayton M. Christensen's "How Will You Measure Your Life?" at Shortform .
Here's what you'll find in our full How Will You Measure Your Life? summary :
- How economic theories that help businesses succeed can also help individuals make better life decisions
- How to build a career that makes you happy
- How to deepen your relationships with your spouse and children
