How Will You Measure Your Life Summary, Review, And Quotes

How will you measure your life summary by Clayton M. Christensen focuses on how one can live a fulfilled life and achieve happiness in their professional and personal life. It also discusses various theories and traps that people fall into and suffer significant losses.

Last update on 2023-06-14 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon

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Who Should You Read ‘How Will You Measure Your Life Summary,’ And Why?

Eight in ten employees in today’s world aren’t satisfied with their jobs.

Why do you think this happens? There are various factors behind this like economy, competition, etc.

But most of the time, this happens because people don’t set the right strategy for their careers. Again, this happens due to a lack of proper mindset.

People either give their 100 percent in their professional lives and fail terribly at relationships. Or they become good at relationships and keep struggling in building a sustainable career.

In this book, the author has discussed why balancing both the professional and the personal aspects of life is essential.

Buy this book on Amazon: Hardcover | Paperback | Audiobook

Who would I recommend this summary?

• Anyone who has been struggling to spend quality time with their family. 
• Anyone who isn’t achieving success in his career despite putting a hell lot of effort.
• Entrepreneurs who often fall into the marginal-thinking traps and end up paying way more.

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How Will You Measure Your Life Summary (PDF)

In this summary, I’ll share all the lessons that I learned.

So without further ado, let’s dive right in.

Lesson #1: Define Your Career Strategy

Most people navigate their lives without any plan. And no doubt, most people start building a career without any solid strategy in place.

Why having a strategy is important? A strategy helps you in clearing your head. And a clear head helps in accomplishing your goals smoothly.

Also read: Better Decisions Fewer Regrets (Summary)

The author has talked about so many theories in this book. 

But if I narrow them down, he mainly talks about Deliberate and Emergent strategies.

A deliberate strategy includes all those plans that you are fixated on.

For example, suppose you’re building a career in journalism. In that case, you must have a strategy about how you will achieve the milestones.

Or suppose you’re planning to wander in the realm of entrepreneurship.

In that case, you must have a strategy for performing ideation and executing those ideas.

But the reality is that things in the outer world don’t happen according to your plan.

For instance, if you are going from Point A to Point B in your life, there will be so many unpredictable factors that will force you to change your strategy. 

At that time, you’ll require an emergent strategy.

Well, most of the time, while building an emergent strategy, you’ll be trying to predict uncommon factors and have a different plan in your mind.

What will you do if things don’t work out your way?

What if another threat emerges?

What if some technology gets outdated? What if AI eats up your share of your job?

An emergent strategy allows some room for change in your deliberate strategy.

Some people never build a strategy.

There is no rule that you should make these strategies, though.

Most people still do fine in their careers without any strategy at all.

But still, I believe that it’s better to have a strategy than not have it at all.

Especially when you’re doing some business, it becomes vital to have a strategy.

Lesson #2: Find Your Motivation

What motivates you to get up in the morning? 

What are you passionate about?

What makes you happy?

What are those tasks that put you in the state of flow?

Many such questions can help you find what makes you happy.

The author stresses finding those things that make you blissful. Doing this would also save you from future regrets.

Would a person be happy if he pursues a career that he deep down doesn’t give a shit about? Obviously, not.

Imagine if Elon Musk didn’t know about his motivations. Do you think he would be as successful as he is now? I don’t think so.

Knowing your motivations helps you make proper career decisions. And you make sure that you don’t enter into a race that isn’t worth taking part in.

Lesson #3: Use Opportunities As They Appear But Prioritize And Align Them With Your Goals

Catch opportunities when they arise. Even a kid knows that. But do you know how to do that correctly?

Blindly following a piece of advice can be terrible at times.

For example, people hop onto an opportunity thinking that opportunity would bring them happiness and prosperity. And yes, they sometimes do.

But the question is:

Do those opportunities align with your goals?

If an opportunity doesn’t add value to your goals, it’s better to look for another. 

For instance, if there is an opportunity to increase your income. But your goals are different. Let’s say you want to be a minimalist and are satisfied with your current income.

In that case, you shouldn’t go for that opportunity. 

Instead, you should seek those opportunities that could help you become more minimalist.

Choosing the right opportunities is a matter of getting your priorities straight. Once you set the right priorities, you naturally select the right options for yourself.

Also read: Think Small by Owain Service and Rory Gallagher (Summary)

Lesson #4: Your Life Is Your Business

The author thinks of life as a business. And I think you should too.

Any business exists for the sole purpose of making profits by providing value to their target audience by satisfying a need of some sort.

Similarly, you have some needs in your life that you must satisfy. 

For instance, you need a sustainable career to make sure you’ve money rolling in. 

Also, you hate to suffer a loss of any sort in your life, just as the owners of any business do.

But not all businesses thrive. Likewise, not all people live a life they love or do a job that gives meaning to their lives.

Just as you need to learn the fundamentals of running a business, you must understand how to live a meaningful life.

Let’s talk more about managing the resources in your business, aka life.

Lesson #5: Manage Your Resources Properly

The quality of your life depends on how you manage a few crucial resources.

Mainly, these resources are:

1. Time 
2. Energy
3. Money

How you use your time decides how efficient you become. And I don’t need to tell you how important managing your time is, do I?

The same is the case with managing energy. You only have a limited amount of energy during the day. You could only do so much.

And that’s why you must use your energy wisely in doing those things that matter the most.

A business can’t survive unless it makes enough money to pay for its expenditures. And most of the time, it requires some initial investment.

Similarly, some things in your life, like your career, require an initial investment. It might be the investment of money or time.

Time is also money. So either way, you are paying the price. 

Put simply, if you fail to use these resources wisely, your life crashes down like a business in the loss.

Also read: How To Be More Productive In Life: Easy Actionable Guide (32 Hacks)

Lesson #6: Relationships Are As Meaningful As Your Career

Again, most people never use their resources to build a healthy, sustainable relationship. They focus too much on their profession, thinking they’ll somehow manage their relationship.

But they hardly do. 

Your life doesn’t end when you walk out of your office. It will help if you put conscious effort into building your relationships.

Building relationships is another tricky game with lots of dos and don’ts.

In this book, the author suggests that you give enough time to nurture your relationships.

Why it’s important? Simple, you have to live with the people you’re related to. You can’t just fire them, can you?

On the flip side, if you hate how your boss behaves, you can always hop on to another job and make peace with yourself. 

But you can’t just marry another woman if you don’t like your wife’s behavior. Relationships are a long-term thing, which is more of a reason why you should nurture them.

To build a successful career, you must work on improving those relationships.

In fact, those who successfully balance their relationships and career tend to be happier and more fulfilled in their lives.

There are so many things to talk about regarding relationships and careers. But let’s stick to the context of this book for now.

Lesson #7: Avoid The Marginal-Thinking Paradox

Most businesses fall into this trap. 

The author gives the example of Netflix and Blockbuster in this book: 

When Netflix was just a startup, Blockbuster ruled the video content market. The people who ran the Blockbuster had two choices then:

First, keep doing what they were doing.

Second, put additional money upfront and try to crush Netflix as it had just a tiny share of a vast market.

The catch was: Netflix was targeting a unique market segment. 

And the CEO and co-founders of Blockbuster saw Netflix as a small potato back then.

Why do you think Blockbuster kept selling DVDs even though Netflix was slowly disrupting the market by signing deals with brands like Sony and Disney?

That’s because Blockbuster fell into the trap of marginal thinking.

Let me explain marginal thinking further in simple words.

Suppose you have an online website with thousands of visitors. Now, the situation demands that you invest in reliable cloud hosting so that it becomes capable of handling more visitors. What would you do in that case? 

You could do one of the two things:

You could invest more and become ready for the future, or you could keep doing things the old way and pay the full cost in the future.

Also, sunk cost fallacy works behind the scenes. When you invest a significant amount of resources in something, you prefer to stick to that. You develop a bond with that thing. And why shouldn’t you? You have invested after all, right? Wrong.

The thing is: 

Sometimes, you need to invest upfront regardless of the sunk cost. Blockbuster didn’t invest in online streaming services, thinking of it as a marginal cost. Eventually, they ended up paying the full price or losing everything they had.

If only Blockbuster had found a way to stay out of this trap, they would have easily ruled over the video content for years. But what’s done is done.

What can you learn from all this?

Don’t get stuck to your old ways of doing something. If you realize that you need to invest in something new, like learning a new skill or buying another laptop for your work. Just do it.

Many people fail in their careers simply because they didn’t build that new skill to take their careers to the next level. They stay stuck, avoiding the additional cost involved in learning that skill. 

Consider the consequences of marginal thinking. 

Remember that marginal thinking happens when you have sunk costs. For example, a new startup doesn’t need to care about their old products; they build a new one according to market needs or demands.

The marginal thinking trap is one of the worst pitfalls. Because when you realize it, chances are you’ve already lost.

Additional reading: Netflix vs. Blockbuster case study

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The Key Takeaways From ‘How Will You Measure Your Life’

• Have a right and flexible career strategy.
• Find what motivates you.
• It’s hard to be happy if you don’t know what really makes you happy in the first place.
• Learn to use or manage your resources properly.
• Try not to suck at your relationships while trying to prosper in your career.
• Avoid marginal-thinking. 
• Try to imagine future consequences after saving the marginal cost.

Extra lessons you can learn on the Blinkist book summary app:

• Why motivation trumps money when it comes to job satisfaction.
• How intuition and empathy help you make your loved ones happy.
• Why you should raise your kids right.
• How compromising on integrity could create a slippery slope.

👉Start your Blinkist 7-days Risk-Free Trial

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How Will You Measure Your Life Quotes

Here are a few quotes that I liked in this book:

“There are no quick fixes for the fundamental problems of life.”

“It’s impossible to have a meaningful conversation about happiness without understanding what makes each of us tick.”

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How Will You Measure Your Life Review

Last update on 2023-06-14 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon

Pros

• Encourages the reader to focus both on relationship and career.
• Real-life examples and case studies are used by the authors.

Cons

• Might be complicated for a beginner.
• Suited for business people.

This book took me a significant time to finish. 

I’d say that if you are reading for the first time, don’t read this book. Why am I saying this? Because this book isn’t for beginners. 

The first part made me struggle a bit. I had to read the first half of this book 2-3 times to wrap my head around what the author was trying to say. Plus, the topic wasn’t getting clear. 

In some areas, the author dives into stories leaving the reader confused.

Sometimes the quotes made more sense than the actual content of the book.

Once you drag through the first part, things become simple. The second half isn’t that hard when compared to the first one. 

This book has mainly three sections:

The first part discusses why theories are powerful. Then later, the author talks about Motivation and Hygiene factors.

After that, the author talks about why relationships are as meaningful as our careers.

And in the last or the third part, the author talks about the marginal-thinking trap. I enjoyed the section where the author talked about how Blockbuster destroyed its own business by falling into the marginal-thinking trap. I could feel the screams of Blockbuster guys. 

I wished that Blockbuster was as successful as Netflix is today. 

I would give this book a rating of 6.9/10.

Buy this book on Amazon: Hardcover | Paperback | Audiobook

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It’s Your Turn Now

If you enjoyed reading How will you measure your life summary, share this with those who could benefit from it.

Now you tell me:

Have you ever fallen into the marginal-thinking trap?

Do you struggle to keep a balance between your job and your relationship?

Or do you have any further advice to give?

Let me know in the comments below. I’ll read your thoughts.