Life Lessons

Recently I read a book named How will you measure your life by Clayton M Christensen. I have learnt some of the life lesson which I want to share. And I highly recommend this book as author has explained the concepts exteremly well with real examples from his personal and corporate life.

Lesson # 1 : True Motivators

What motivates us in our life? One can say that something which brings us happiness.?

If happiness is the measure of our motivation then the next question is how many times we find ourselves in unhappy careers or even unhappy lives

True motivation is getting people to do something because they want to do it e.g one likes to write a journal/blog or one likes to build mobile applications etc.

Then does it mean that If I do my type of work then I will be motivated at work? Let’s understand what elements are involved in making us happy.

Hygiene Factors : There are elements of work, if not done right, will cause us to be dissatisfied. They are things like status, compensation, job security, work conditions, company policies and supervisory practices. So bad hygiene causes dissatisfaction and you have to address and fix it to ensure that you are not dissatisfied in your work.

Next question, will hygiene factor lead to motivation. Answer is no because the opposite of Job dissatisfaction is not job satisfaction but rather an absence of job dissatisfaction.

Then what leads to motivation? Motivation factors include challenging work, recognition, responsibility, personal growth. It is much less about external stimulation and much more about what’s inside of you and inside of your work.

Motivation is about the feeling of accomplishment and of learning, of being a key player on a team that is achieving something meaningful?

Therefore if you get a job which is paying you good salary then that is considered hygiene factor and not the motivator.?And if you get motivators at work, you are going to love your job even if you are not making piles of money.?

Beyond a certain point, hygiene factors are?much more a by-product of being Happy with a job rather than the cause of it.

Lesson # 2?: Measure your Assumptions

How to find a career which is both motivating and satisfying the hygiene factors. This question is the most difficult one to answer. I am sure many of us would have tried various methods to find the right career/job for ourselves but in the end only few becomes successful in getting the job which takes the person to his/her peak.

Let’s understand the mental model behind finding the success in life.

To get there, all of us have a plan?which we start preparing sometimes as early as in our high school days. It is about the strategy which is based on deliberate planning and assumptions. E.g I want to open a stock trading business but what are the risks involved, how much capital I need to start the trading and once I start the business then how will I grow my business. We have to assume lot of things to start the business.

Let’s take another example. Suppose a person sets a goal of building assets worth $ 1 Million?in 10 years. And he plans to invest $50, 000 in the stock market every year.?Now he would have assumed that his money will grow by X% year over year. And he would have listed some risks on his investment.

But in reality :

Most of the time mistakes are made on critical assumptions, on which projections and decisions were made.

What if you have a tool to evaluate your assumption. And yes, there is one called Discovery Driven Planning which is a tool to check what assumptions need to turn true for your strategy to work. Think of a list with top assumptions as the ones which are most important but least certain and bottom assumptions are the ones which are most certain but less important.

Once you list your assumptions then you need a way to measure your success by testing the listed assumptions. If the assumptions turn out to be true only then you can say that your strategy for getting you a successful person, is working.

So always have a measuring criteria defined for testing your assumptions. This is the most important step , be it growing at your workplace or growing your business, frequent evaluation of your assumptions will keep you on track with your plan.?

And there is a definitely a high chance of some critical assumptions not turning out to be favourable after evaluation. Then we can change our strategy based on the unanticipated opportunities and it is called emergent plan. A plan which was not thought through during initial planning of growth but it emerged based on the various situations/challenges around us. E.g one plans to take up next role in their organisation and works towards it but after a year or two situation changes and opportunities are not there for next role. In this case, person should try different role by learning the required skills.

Now one may think that this is usually what anyone would do in case the initial plan of growth does not work for an individual and he/she will not stop trying. But the important difference to note here is about the validation of assumptions early which helps in utilising our resources (time, energy, money)?in a meaningful manner rather than trying with the original plan in a hope to get some success and end up exhausting your resources.

Hence the lesson for all us is to always set a target which can be measured and evaluated from time to time. Just going with assumptions may or may not give the required outcome.

Always build a way to test your assumptions.

Lesson # 3 : It is all about our resources : Time, Energy and Money

We require resources to execute our plans or strategy. And our resources (Time, Energy and Money) are always in demand. The challenge is where we should allocate our resources as they are limited.

E.g We can have a goal to excel in our career which means we are spending lot more time and energy to become successful professionally but it will have an impact on our personal relations, family and friends as we choose our limited resource (Time) to invest at our work place rather than blossoming our personal life.

Therefore we should understand our resources and the way we are using them for various growth opportunity. But we need to be aware what are we neglecting by not allocating our resources to personal relations, community building, serving nation etc.

Lesson # 4 :?Investing our resources to build relationships

If there is one thing which can act as a major source of happiness in our lives then it is our relationships, relationship with family and close friends.?

This can be explained with a theory of Good and Bad capital. Bad capital is the one which we invest in our original plan to grow our business, career etc and we invest almost all our resources (Time, Energy and Money) that there is nothing left out in case we want to correct the mistake or change strategy based on learning from failure of original plan. Similarly Good Capital is the one which we invest in a constrained manner based on the outcome of the execution of our plan. If the output is not there in original business plan then look for change in strategy and invest slowly rather than continuing with existing plan.

With this theory, you can visualise your relationships where you normally invest your initial years of life in building your career and would neglect your family members specially kids completely. Irrespective of the outcome in your professional lives, you will certainly fail to build good relationships with your kids and contribute very little in their development. If you are not developing those relationships while building your career then they won’t be there to support you while you navigate through your rough times.

Hence treat your relationship as a good capital where you take corrective actions in the early stage and invest your time to build good relationships with your family members and friends despite your work life.

Lesson # 5: Hiring for the right job makes us stick to something or someone

The theory of ”What job did you hire someone for” or “what job you are hired for” makes us stick to the offered service or to relationship with a person. For business, it is about knowing what their customers want and how do deliver the complete experience rather than just a product.?Similarly in relationship, it is always about knowing more than the needs of other person.?

Let’s take an example of husband-wife relationship , It is about knowing other person’s expectation from you rather than just performing your duties at home. Your wife would be expecting love, empathy and your time more than what you are doing to manage day to day work (kids school, food, paying bills/rents etc) at home.?

Another important aspect of sticking around is your sacrifice. Sacrificing your time and energy for some cause, job or relation will only?strengthen your bonding with that particular thing or a person and you will be more committed.

Lesson 6 :?Build a habit of doing it yourself

We must have heard about the term DIY ( Do it yourself). But why is it so important? Does it bring a sense of accomplishment?

We should build a habit of doing things ourselves. Whether it is assembling a bed or cleaning our garden. Try not to outsource this to someone else. Your kids will also grow up seeing you doing things yourself and feel pride when they will build/develop something.

There is a theory of capability which can explain the importance of DIY. It states that there are 3 capabilities in us (a) Resources (b) Processes (c) Priorities. Resources are what we use to do something, processes are how we do it and priorities are why we do it.?

E.g One can gain the knowledge to develop a mobile app, use the information of developing a mobile app to build one and finally build a career out of it knowing that building mobile app would be so much rewarding.

Hence we should always try to enhance our capabilities with right use of our resources, processes and priorities.

Thanks for the reading this article. Hope you have learnt something new today.