Asra Yousuf

Book by Clayton Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon.

This is part 3 of a 3-part series on the book “How Will You Measure Your Life”. Part 1. Part 2.

In the last section of the book, Christensen talks about living a life of integrity and purpose. Despite being the shortest section, the pieces of advice shared has had a lasting impact on me and are some of the principles I try to live life by. No one intentionally works their way through life with the goal of landing in jail or committing a crime. Then how is it that people stray off the “right” path and end up performing actions that they aren’t proud of. Christensen attributes it to “the trap of marginal thinking”

Full vs Marginal Thinking

100% of the time is easier than 98% of the time.

Life ends up being a series of decisions. Even the big decisions are ultimately a culmination of the tiny decisions we take everyday. When analyzing a decision, you can weigh it in terms of two factors: full cost and marginal cost. The full cost involves starting off with a blank slate, and building things ground up. The marginal cost involves leveraging what already exists and spending the minimal amount needed to get the job done. When we look at things short term, the marginal cost option always triumphs over the full cost option- why spend more if you can get the job done using a lot lesser resources?!

But in the long term, marginal thinking can end up being damaging. When Netflix entered the movie renting business with a different model, Blockbuster refused to change- the full cost of overhauling the business because of a new competitor did not feel justified. Blockbuster continued to do things the old way- making minor adjustments (aka marginal thinking) and ended up filing for bankruptcy.

Similarly with life, if we adopt marginal thinking to our everyday decisions, it becomes easy to justify doing something “just this once”. The marginal cost of smoking just once is negligible. But when you can justify it that once, you can do so the second time and then the third time, and before your realize it you are addicted. The full cost ends up being a lot higher versus having refused the first time. This is generally the manner in which debt accumulates, scams happens, crimes are committed. No one wakes up one fine day and decides to commit a fraud. Instead tiny decisions over a period of time can lead up to regrettable actions.

The only way to avoid the consequences of uncomfortable moral concessions in your life is to never start making them in the first place. When the first step down that path presents itself, turn around and walk the other way

Defining your Purpose

Questioning life’s purpose can be extremely daunting. We often perceive it as an answer that we need to seek, versus approaching it as something we define for ourselves- based on our priorities, and preferences. The ability to articulate one’s purpose makes a lot of decisions easy. By evaluating every decision against your life’s purpose, you can take a call based on whether it serves your purpose or not. Christensen proposes a 3 point framework to define your life’s purpose:

Likeness: Define the person you want to become. What are the values you want to hold strongly? List the things that you wish to prioritize in life- the relationships, career, personal goals.

Commitment: Once you have a rough sketch of the person that you aspire to be, then comes the difficult bit of making it a reality. And that’s where commitment comes in. Your actions need to reflect your intention. If being a kind and honest person was on your list, you need to take steps to emulate that person. Questioning and editing the likeness list is equally important, as you realize that you aspire different things than the ones you used to a few years back.

Metrics: Choose the metrics that you can use to track your progress. The metrics we often strive for is grades, promotions and awards. But in this case, rethink your metrics through the lenses of your likeness list. If helping others is on the list, a metric to measure it could be the number of people who’s life your impacted positively.

So, how will you measure your life?