Collection
Status
Available
Call number
Publication
HarperCollins (2012), Edition: First Edition first Printing, 256 pages
Description
Business. Nonfiction. From the world's leading thinker on innovation and New York Times bestselling author of The Innovator's Dilemma, Clayton M. Christensen, comes an unconventional book of inspiration and wisdom for achieving a fulfilling life. Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma, notably the only business book that Apple's Steve Jobs said "deeply influenced" him, is widely recognized as one of the most significant business books ever published. Now, in the tradition of Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture and Anna Quindlen's A Short Guide to a Happy Life, Christensen's How Will You Measure Your Life is with a book of lucid observations and penetrating insights designed to help any reader�??student or teacher, mid-career professional or retiree, parent or child�??forge their own paths to fulfil… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member GShuk
Takes his business theories and tries to map them to life. Interesting but lacked direction. Overall this audio is short with a few good ideas that will make you think.
LibraryThing member Jeremy_Palmer
I enjoyed this book. I avoid this kind of book, but this was great. It made me think of some aspects of my life and job that I can improve. It helped me to understand how what I am doing now will influence my future. The business theories he discussed were quite interesting. I would like to know
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more about them. I can't remember much about them because they were not treated in depth, but I know that I want to learn more! Show Less
LibraryThing member jpsnow
Based on the lifelong learnings of the same thinker behind The Innovator's Dilemma, this work attempts to counterbalance most of the B-School curriculum with a thoughtful treatise on personal choices and ethics. I enjoyed how well Christeneon ties business strategy and economics to corporate
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culture and even family culture. For example, the lesson that "Companies focus too much on what they want to sell their customers, rather than what those customers really need," translates into a relationship lesson about figuring out what loved ones really need from you. There are similar lessons about the investment of time, process skills as a core capability, and effective culture. Show Less
LibraryThing member amylofgreen
A life changing book. Easy too read, hard to forget. Every page brings action items to improve one's life.
LibraryThing member bikesandbooks
From the author of the _Innovator's Dilemma_. The epilogue is the best part. this book also includes Christensen's essay about how strategic innovation was the key to Netflix's success as compared with and contrasted with Blockbuster Video's market decline. Although the book is not really about
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innovation or markets. Show Less
LibraryThing member GlennBell
The author is a religious man who is also a professor. He has encountered some health problems and came home from studies at Oxford to be with his dying father. He promotes family and integrity. I agree with some of his rather obvious concepts but overall this is a pretty useless book.
LibraryThing member Razinha
This book was not what I thought it would be. I've had Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma on my List to read for a while now, not yet finding the time to get to it and when I saw this title, I made that connection, but did not know Christensen's background. There may be a target audience for
The best thing about this book is that it is a simple, fast read (the start/stop dates do not reflect that - I kept diverting myself), and requires no additional thought. To save a reader time, here are two sentences to summarize...
- an old anecdotal proverb: No one ever said on his/her death bed "I wish I'd spent more time at the office."
- and a paraphrase of a Stephen Stills lyric: "I you can't have the job you love, find a way to love the job you have." (and keep looking for the dream job.)
How will I measure my life? Apart from the normal answers, I also have a sobering projection of how many books I have left to me to read: I am 57, read more than 100 books per year, and if optimistically live another 35+ years...I only have 3500 books left to me! I wasted one of those precious few on this.
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this book. I am not that audience. And I don't personally know anybody who is.The best thing about this book is that it is a simple, fast read (the start/stop dates do not reflect that - I kept diverting myself), and requires no additional thought. To save a reader time, here are two sentences to summarize...
- an old anecdotal proverb: No one ever said on his/her death bed "I wish I'd spent more time at the office."
- and a paraphrase of a Stephen Stills lyric: "I you can't have the job you love, find a way to love the job you have." (and keep looking for the dream job.)
How will I measure my life? Apart from the normal answers, I also have a sobering projection of how many books I have left to me to read: I am 57, read more than 100 books per year, and if optimistically live another 35+ years...I only have 3500 books left to me! I wasted one of those precious few on this.
Show Less
LibraryThing member publiusdb
''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
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.
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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.
Show Less
LibraryThing member RaggedyMe
Everyone should read this book. Regardless of life stage, it's insightful. How to achieve happiness is a skill we sometimes fail to teach.
Original publication date
2012
ISBN
0062102419 / 9780062102416
Similar in this library
Call number
CHR-001
Pages
256