How Will You Measure Your Life?

Key Takeaways

Under Consideration — to be added.

Interconnections

Under Consideration — to be added.

Highlights

• Compensation is a hygiene factor. You need to get it right. But all you can aspire to is that employees will not be mad at each other and the company because of compensation.
• it can make the difference between dreading or being excited to go to work every day.
• But after it was finished, I rarely saw the children in it. The truth was that having the house wasn’t what really motivated them. It was the building of it, and how they felt about their own contribution, that they found satisfying. I had thought the destination was what was important, but it turned out it was the journey.
• “Which of these assumptions need to prove true in order for us to realistically expect that these numbers will materialize?”
• Everything related to strategy inside a company is only intent until it gets to the resource allocation stage. A company’s vision, plans, and opportunities—and all of its threats and problems—all want priority, vying against one another to become the actual strategy the company implements.
• Many companies’ decision-making systems are designed to steer investments to initiatives that offer the most tangible and immediate returns, so companies often favor these and shortchange investments in initiatives that are crucial to their long-term strategies.
  • This is exactly why Amazon ignores short term metrics.
• Tags: orange
• “We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs.”
• The problem is, lifestyle demands can quickly lock in place the personal resource allocation process. “I can’t devote less time to my job because I won’t get that promotion—and I need that promotion …”
• SO FAR, WE have focused on how to use the strategy process to find fulfillment in your career. I started out by discussing what truly motivates all of us—in effect, the priorities that will lead us to experience happiness in what we do at work. I then showed you how to balance a deliberate plan for finding a career that delivers you those motivations, alongside the unexpected opportunities that will always arise along the way. And finally, we talked about allocating our resources in a manner that is consistent with all these concepts. Get the three parts of the strategy process right, and you’ll be
  • Summarized steps.
• Work can bring you a sense of fulfillment—but it pales in comparison to the enduring happiness you can find in the intimate relationships that you cultivate with your family and close friends.
• Schools that have designed their curriculum so that students feel success every day see rates of dropping out and absenteeism fall to nearly zero. When structured to do the job of success, students eagerly master difficult material—because in doing so, they are getting the job done.
• We project what we want and assume that it’s also what our spouse wants. Scott probably wished he had helping hands to get through his tough day at work, so that’s what he offered Barbara when he got home. It’s so easy to mean well but get it wrong. A husband may be convinced that he is the selfless one, and also convinced that his wife is being self-centered because she doesn’t even notice everything he is giving her—and vice versa. This is exactly the interaction between the customers and the marketers of so many companies, too.
• Has my child developed the skill to develop better skills? The knowledge to develop deeper knowledge? The experience to learn from his experiences?
• Many parents are making the same mistake, flooding their children with resources—knowledge, skills, and experiences. And just as with Dell, each of the decisions to do so seems to make sense. We want our kids to get ahead, and believe that the opportunities and experiences we have provided for them will help them do exactly that. But the nature of these activities—experiences in which they’re not deeply engaged and that don’t really challenge them to do hard things—denies our children the opportunity to develop
• the processes they’ll need to succeed in the future.
• By sheltering children from the problems that arise in life, we have inadvertently denied this generation the ability to develop the processes and priorities it needs to succeed.
• They helped me to learn that I should solve my own problems whenever possible; they gave me the confidence that I could solve my own problems; and they helped me experience pride in that achievement.
• children will learn when they are ready to learn, not when we’re ready to teach them.”
• Allowing your children to get away with lazy or disrespectful behavior a few times will begin the process of making it your family’s culture. So will telling them that you’re proud of them when they work hard to solve a problem.
• “If you need a machine and don’t buy it, then you will ultimately find that you have paid for it and don’t have it.”
• When I have my interview with God, our conversation will focus on the individuals whose self-esteem I was able to strengthen, whose faith I was able to reinforce, and whose discomfort I was able to assuage—a doer of good, regardless of what assignment I had. These are the metrics that matter in measuring my life.