How Will You Measure Your Life? - Hardcover

by Clayton M. Christensen (Author), James Allworth (Author), Karen Dillon (Author)

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, offering a powerful business philosophy for 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 a book of lucid observations and penetrating insights for personal development, designed to help any reader--student or teacher, mid-career professional or retiree, parent or child--forge their own paths to fulfillment.

Applying the same world-renowned theories he used to predict disruption in business, Christensen provides powerful decision-making strategies to help you answer life's most important questions:

• Finding Happiness in Your Career: Go beyond the myth that incentives are the same as motivation to discover what truly makes you tick and find a job you will love.
• A Strategy for Your Life: Learn when to stick to a deliberate plan and when to embrace unexpected opportunities to create a life strategy that actually works.
• Deepening Personal Relationships: Understand why investing in your relationships with your spouse, children, and friends is the most important long-term investment you will ever make.
• Living with Integrity: See how the trap of marginal thinking can lead to compromising your values, and why it's easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than 98% of the time.

Front Jacket

In 2010 world-renowned innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen gave a powerful speech to the Harvard Business School's graduating class. Drawing upon his business research, he offered a series of guidelines for finding meaning and happiness in life. He used examples from his own experiences to explain how high achievers can all too often fall into traps that lead to unhappiness.

The speech was memorable not only because it was deeply revealing but also because it came at a time of intense personal reflection: Christensen had just overcome the same type of cancer that had taken his father's life. As Christensen struggled with the disease, the question How do you measure your life? became more urgent and poignant, and he began to share his insights more widely with family, friends, and students.

In this groundbreaking book, Christensen puts forth a series of questions: How can I be sure that I'll find satisfaction in my career? How can I be sure that my personalrelationships become enduring sources of happiness? How can I avoid compromising my integrity--and stay out of jail? Using lessons from some of the world's greatest businesses, he provides incredible insights into these challenging questions.

How Will You Measure Your Life? is full of inspiration and wisdom, and will help students, midcareer professionals, and parents alike forge their own paths to fulfillment.

--Harvard Business Review

Back Jacket

In 2010 world-renowned innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen gave a powerful speech to the Harvard Business School's graduating class. Drawing upon his business research, he offered a series of guidelines for finding meaning and happiness in life. He used examples from his own experiences to explain how high achievers can all too often fall into traps that lead to unhappiness.

The speech was memorable not only because it was deeply revealing but also because it came at a time of intense personal reflection: Christensen had just overcome the same type of cancer that had taken his father's life. As Christensen struggled with the disease, the question "How do you measure your life?" became more urgent and poignant, and he began to share his insights more widely with family, friends, and students.

In this groundbreaking book, Christensen puts forth a series of questions: How can I be sure that I'll find satisfaction in my career? How can I be sure that my personalrelationships become enduring sources of happiness? How can I avoid compromising my integrity--and stay out of jail? Using lessons from some of the world's greatest businesses, he provides incredible insights into these challenging questions.

How Will You Measure Your Life? is full of inspiration and wisdom, and will help students, midcareer professionals, and parents alike forge their own paths to fulfillment.