Note: The Bookrat email is a spin-off from Anthony Pompliano's Pomp Letter. You will receive all future book summaries here, while still receiving Pomp's finance, economics, and bitcoin commentary on The Pomp Letter. Our goal is to separate the two types of content to make it easier to consume.

How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen

I read one book per week. Last week’s book was How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen. Highly recommend reading it. If you are interested in the individual highlights that I made in the physical book, you can read those here. Hope you enjoy these notes every Wednesday morning.

Book’s main argument:

Clayton Christensen was widely believed to be the world's foremost expert on innovation and technology disruption. After beating a cancer diagnosis, Christensen began to openly share his thoughts on how to create a life of happiness that was filled with meaning. Many of Clayton's answers were derived by applying his ground-breaking business insights to his personal life. This book not only helps you think more deeply about how you live your life, but it is filled with practical tips that will have you re-reading the book on an annual basis.

5 Big Ideas:

💡 Idea #1 — You have to be intentional about living a life of happiness. Christensen used to speak to his business students about this idea on the last day of classes. He would give them three simple questions to guide the conversation:

"I write the theories we have studied along the top of the chalkboard. Then I write three simple questions beside those theories: How can I be sure that (a) I will be successful and happy in my career? (b) my relationships with my spouse, my children, and my extended family and close friends become an enduring source of happiness?, and c) I live a life of integrity—and stay out of jail?"

Happiness ultimately comes from pure love and enjoyment in what you do, who you hang out with, and the activities you participate in. You can't fake the enjoyment. It has to be authentic and real. Christensen shares this sentiment through a quote from Steve Jobs:

“The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.” — Steve Jobs

Don't let other people determine what you do with your time and with your life. This is a common trap in the modern world.

"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."

💡 Idea #2 — Many people have the courage to dream, but lack the discipline to act. Your actions ultimately determine where you will go in your life. Christensen writes:

"You can talk all you want about having a strategy for your life, understanding motivation, and balancing aspirations with unanticipated opportunities. But ultimately, this means nothing if you do not align those with where you actually expend your time, money, and energy."

It is easy to fall into the trap of short-term thinking when it comes to time allocation.

"The danger for high-achieving people is that they’ll unconsciously allocate their resources to activities that yield the most immediate, tangible accomplishments."

Your time is the true referee of your priorities. You can fool a lot of people, but you can't fool your calendar.

"You’ll often see the same sobering pattern when looking at the personal lives of many ambitious people. Though they may believe that their family is deeply important to them, they actually allocate fewer and fewer resources to the things they would say matter most."

"With every moment of your time, every decision about how you spend your energy and your money, you are making a statement about what really matters to you."

💡 Idea #3 — We all have a job to be done. Christensen had identified that products are purchased from companies because consumers were hiring the product to do a specific job. That same understanding led him to realize that each of us has a job to be done in our personal relationships. He writes:

"Through my research on innovation for the past two decades, my colleagues and I have developed a theory about this approach to marketing and product development, which we call “the job to be done.” The insight behind this way of thinking is that what causes us to buy a product or service is that we actually hire products to do jobs for us."

You can apply this insight to your personal life. For example, Christensen talks about understanding the job your spouse needs you to do. He explains:

"One of the most important jobs you’ll ever be hired to do is to be a spouse. Getting this right, I believe, is critical to sustaining a happy marriage."

"It’s easy for any of us to make assumptions about what our spouse might want, rather than work hard to understand the job to be done in our spouse’s life."

If you subscribe to this point of view, Christensen hammers home the point by reminding us that we must do the job we are needed for if we want those around us to be happy.

"It’s natural to want the people you love to be happy. What can often be difficult is understanding what your role is in that. Thinking about your relationships from the perspective of the job to be done is the best way to understand what’s important to the people who mean the most to you."

💡 Idea #4 — Don't outsource the care of your children. We live in a world where everyone is obsessed with productivity. There are various services only a few button clicks away. Be very careful about the trade-off when you do this. Christensen explains:

"As a general rule, in prosperous societies we have been outsourcing more and more of the work that, a generation ago, was done “internally” in the home."

One of the biggest risks in outsourcing the care of your children is the inability for you to help shape their values. He writes:

"There is something far more important at risk when we outsource too much of our lives: our values."

"If you find yourself heading down a path of outsourcing more and more of your role as a parent, you will lose more and more of the precious opportunities to help your kids develop their values—which may be the most important capability of all."

"Children need to do more than learn new skills. The theory of capabilities suggests they need to be challenged. They need to solve hard problems. They need to develop values."

💡 Idea #5 — The purpose of your life may be the single most important decision you make. It will serve as the guide for the decisions you make and the person you aspire to be. Christensen writes:

"The type of person you want to become—what the purpose of your life is—is too important to leave to chance. It needs to be deliberately conceived, chosen, and managed."

We all serve many roles in our life, but purpose can cut across each of them. This is something you must figure out if you want to get serious about living a life of happiness and meaning. He explains:

"As I have gone through life as a father, a husband, an executive, an entrepreneur, a citizen, and an academic, the knowledge of purpose that I have derived has been critical."

"If you take the time to figure out your purpose in life, I promise that you will look back on it as the most important thing you will have ever learned."

Memorable quotes:

Self-esteem comes from achieving something important when it’s hard to do.
Resources are what he uses to do it, processes are how he does it, and priorities are why he does it.
There are no easy answers to life’s challenges.
How we allocate our resources—our time, talent, and energies—is how we determine the actual strategy of our lives.
If you want to help other people, be a manager.
“We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs.” — Gloria Steinem
A strategy is nothing but good intentions unless it’s effectively implemented.
“The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.” — Thomas Jefferson
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.
The relationships you have with family and close friends are going to be the most important sources of happiness in your life.
Capital that seeks growth before profits is bad capital.
Your family and friends rarely shout the loudest to demand your attention.

Pomp’s Takeaways:

This is a popular book for a reason. Clayton Christensen is able to boil the complex topics of happiness and meaning into digestible frameworks that will inspire you to make positive changes in your life.

My first big takeaway was the idea of a "job to be done" as a spouse. It is so easy for us to simply do the things that we believe will make our significant others happy, but the odds of success drastically increase if we were to first ask them what they needed. This allows you to get the answers to the test before you take the test — who doesn't want that ability! If our personal relationships can be improved by merely asking "what do you need from me right now?," then sign me up.

My second big takeaway was the avoidance of outsourcing the care of your children. My wife and I have discussed this in the past and decided that we wanted our children with us as much as possible. Frankly, I thought we were being selfish when we made this decision, but now I see an unintended benefit that Christensen points out — we are able to shape our daughter in ways that would be difficult if we were not present. Although there are areas I probably need to improve as a father, this one made me feel proud to have made a (unintended!) decision I am proud of.

My third big takeaway was the idea of a deliberate strategy and an emergent strategy. So many times we get fixated on pursuing a single strategy, that we forget to look for alternatives along the way. We call it discipline. We call it focus. We call it determination. But sometimes we should call it stupidity. A deliberate strategy was once an emergent strategy, so it is important to have the decision-making skills to know when to stick to the plan compared to when to listen to what the market is telling us.

My fourth big takeaway was how similar our personal lives and building a successful business can be. Usually people are told that the two are separate, but Christensen makes a strong case for business insights that can be applied to the betterment of our life. The one that stuck with me was around the motivation drivers. He highlighted that compensation is usually not the highest motivator for employees of a company, which is aligned with the idea that humans are seeking happiness and meaning over money in their personal lives as well.

My fifth and final takeaway was how essential a strong purpose can be in your life. It provides clarity to what you are trying to accomplish. It helps you determine who you want to be. And it provides a framework to quickly make decisions on how you spend your time, who you hang out with, what activities you participate in, and which things you avoid in your life. I didn't have a clear, easy-to-articulate purpose before reading the book, but now I am going to spend a few weeks putting one together. Hopefully you will join me.

As I mentioned, last week’s book was How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen. Highly recommend reading it. If you are interested in the individual highlights that I made in the physical book, you can read those here. Hope you enjoy these notes every Wednesday morning. Reply to this email with your thoughts, including what you agreed or disagreed with. I will respond to as many emails as I can.

-Pomp