An interesting new book called How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon was recently featured in Forbes magazine. While we haven’t read the book yet, the Forbes article and video shared some interesting nuggets about living life to the fullest. Furthermore, Christensen’s article (of the same title as the book) in the Harvard Business Journal a few years ago gave even more insight into living a life that will leave you proud and fulfilled. Here are some of those insights from Christensen:
“Your decisions about allocating your personal time, energy, and talent ultimately shape your life’s strategy.”
“It’s easier to hold to one’s principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold to them 98 percent of the time…Decide now what you stand for. Stand for it all the time.”
“If you have a humble eagerness to learn something from everybody, your learning opportunities will be unlimited. Generally, you can be humble only if you feel really good about yourself—and you want to help those around you feel really good about themselves, too.”
“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”
The book and the discussion it stimulates helps focus us on our personal life choices, how we see our life’s purpose, and keeps us accountable for how we live. Are we allocating the most resources to the things we think matter the most? This is a great question to ask yourself on a daily basis.
