Scan barcode
cdjdhj's review against another edition
3.0
I had heard many good things about this book, but I personally found it to be disappointing. The author, the late Clayton M. Christensen, was a business professor at Harvard and in this book he shows how theories of business management apply to family life. Some of the business case studies he refers to were interesting. I agree that some theories of management may have application in other aspects of life besides business, but the whole idea of running a family more like a business fell flat for me.
kimball_hansen's review against another edition
5.0
5.5 stars at least. So dang good. Like my brother said in his review, this book along with [b:The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change|36072|The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Powerful Lessons in Personal Change|Stephen R. Covey|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1421842784s/36072.jpg|6277] and [b:How to Win Friends and Influence People|4865|How to Win Friends and Influence People|Dale Carnegie|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1442726934s/4865.jpg|2370171] make for a terrific Trifecta. It will help you in business as well as family life. I love that the author has worked in three different fields of work. I get overwhelmed and discouraged when I think I have to be at the same job (or even the same field of work) for 30 years then I can retire. I have many interests and want to work in many unrelated fields. I particularly enjoyed the business portions because it spoke directly to me about being unhappy with work and what are proper and improper motivations for work. I also enjoyed that he didn't brag about being a notorious Rhodes Scholar like dorky [a:Wes Moore|5156034|Wes Moore|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1339514888p2/5156034.jpg].
Notes:
A strategy is what you want to achieve and how you'll get there. The only way a strategy can get implemented is if you dedicate resources to it. Good intentions aren't enough. You're not implementing the strategy if you don't spend the time, talents, and money in a way that's consistent with your intentions. Strategy emerges from deliberate and unanticipated opportunities. You have to try things out.
If we're stuck in an unhappy career it is often a misunderstanding of what motivates us. True motivation is getting people to do something because they want to do it. This motivation continues in good as well as bad times.
Four components in work. These cause us to love our jobs:
*Challenging
*Responsibility
*Recognition
*Personal Growth
Satisfaction and dissatisfaction are separate, independent measures. You can love your job and hate it at the same time. That can be OK, believe it or not.
Two factors that play a role in our jobs: Hygiene factors and motivation factors.
Hygiene factors can cause you to be dissatisfied with work such as status, compensation, job security, work conditions, company policies. Like your own personal hygiene, as the name suggests, requires regular maintenance. You won't die if you don't take a shower but you'll be more satisfied. If the items I listed above are taken care of you will be more satisfied but they won't necessarily make you quit your job if one got bad all of a sudden. Only after a long period of neglect will you then need to decide to change your environment. On the other hand if you improve the hygiene of your work you wouldn't automatically love it, at best you just won't hate it. So essentially the hygiene factors should be primary, they are secondary. The real motivation comes if your job is challenging, gives you responsibility and recognition, and allows for personal growth.
Money isn't the root cause of professional unhappiness, but when it becomes a priority above others then it does.
Oftentimes it's hard to know what field of work one should go in. Many people think "I like working with people, so I guess that means I should be a social worker or nurse." The author suggest likewise. You can tailor your career to your interests (or was it tailor your interest to your career?) But in our example of helping people, every job in the world helps people, so use your passions for what you're in. It's not limited to just two lonely fields.
Happiness in careers are where you can find opportunities that are meaningful in which you'll be able to learn new things and be given more and more responsibility to shoulder. Questions to ask ourselves:
Is this job meaningful to me?
Is this job going to give me a chance to develop?
Am I going to learn new things?
Will I have an opportunity for recognition and achievement?
Am I going to be given responsibility.
We need to be careful because one can justify and answer yes to all those question if they are not thoughtful and thorough. These are the things that will truly motivate us. Once you get this right the more measurable aspects of your job will fade (such as money, benefits, work conditions, etc. and all the things we mentioned earlier).
How and where you allocate your resources can make your life turn out exactly as you hope or very different from what you intended. We have control over what we become in life.
The hot water that softens the carrot is the same water the hardens an egg. I think I read that analogy in another book.
You can't always study data to make decisions. Data is about the past. Sometimes you just have to make that decision. The author used the example of waiting till the end of your life to be a good parent because then you know what to do and have all the experience. You have to try while being in the moment.
Friends are an investment that require a lot of time. He mentioned the movie It's A Wonderful Life that I've never seen. I'll need to watch it now.
We should speak as many words to our children as possible in full adult conversation while they are young. I noticed one of my brothers always spoke to his kids like they were regular people instead of using baby talk. I thought it was pointless because the child couldn't understand all the words he was saying. I suppose I was wrong in that thought. Now that I think about it, it's stupid to dumb down our speech for kids. Maybe that hinders their development. I want to incorporate such eloquent speech with my future children.
The path to happiness is about finding someone who you want to make happy. IE don't look for a spouse that will make you happy. That is the age old fallacy. Find someone you want to make happy.
When sacrificing something for a while you deeply strengthen your commitment to it. This one needs to be treated carefully because it could topple the other way as a vice and you'd lose it. But it does reaffirm my Buddhist beliefs that All Life is Suffering and that "we shouldn't try to go through life as painlessly as possible" ([a:Vinnie Tortorich|1515703|Vinnie Tortorich|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]), or as JFK once said "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
Parents are outsourcing their work instead of having their kids do it. If other people raise your children who's children are they? I don't think this is a jab to working mothers or kids that go to daycare but rather if you aren't willing to let your kids fail and learn for themselves then what kind of kid are you raising? When doing work around the house make sure: 1) Work with the kids 2) Make it fun 3) Thank them. The author went on to cement how important consistency is in raising and disciplining kids. It irks me like no other when a parent isn't consistent in their discipline. Maybe I'm speaking too soon and it's harder than it looks but sometimes it seems that the parents get pushed around way too easily.
And speaking of failing, if you're not occasionally failing, you're not aiming high enough.
It's easier to keep the rules 100% of the time than it is 98%. Life is just one unending stream of extenuating circumstances. Decide what you stand for and then stand for it all the time.
Finding your purpose in life is asking yourself who do you want to become? We need to invest time in ourselves. What will help us become our best selves?
Notes:
A strategy is what you want to achieve and how you'll get there. The only way a strategy can get implemented is if you dedicate resources to it. Good intentions aren't enough. You're not implementing the strategy if you don't spend the time, talents, and money in a way that's consistent with your intentions. Strategy emerges from deliberate and unanticipated opportunities. You have to try things out.
If we're stuck in an unhappy career it is often a misunderstanding of what motivates us. True motivation is getting people to do something because they want to do it. This motivation continues in good as well as bad times.
Four components in work. These cause us to love our jobs:
*Challenging
*Responsibility
*Recognition
*Personal Growth
Satisfaction and dissatisfaction are separate, independent measures. You can love your job and hate it at the same time. That can be OK, believe it or not.
Two factors that play a role in our jobs: Hygiene factors and motivation factors.
Hygiene factors can cause you to be dissatisfied with work such as status, compensation, job security, work conditions, company policies. Like your own personal hygiene, as the name suggests, requires regular maintenance. You won't die if you don't take a shower but you'll be more satisfied. If the items I listed above are taken care of you will be more satisfied but they won't necessarily make you quit your job if one got bad all of a sudden. Only after a long period of neglect will you then need to decide to change your environment. On the other hand if you improve the hygiene of your work you wouldn't automatically love it, at best you just won't hate it. So essentially the hygiene factors should be primary, they are secondary. The real motivation comes if your job is challenging, gives you responsibility and recognition, and allows for personal growth.
Money isn't the root cause of professional unhappiness, but when it becomes a priority above others then it does.
Oftentimes it's hard to know what field of work one should go in. Many people think "I like working with people, so I guess that means I should be a social worker or nurse." The author suggest likewise. You can tailor your career to your interests (or was it tailor your interest to your career?) But in our example of helping people, every job in the world helps people, so use your passions for what you're in. It's not limited to just two lonely fields.
Happiness in careers are where you can find opportunities that are meaningful in which you'll be able to learn new things and be given more and more responsibility to shoulder. Questions to ask ourselves:
Is this job meaningful to me?
Is this job going to give me a chance to develop?
Am I going to learn new things?
Will I have an opportunity for recognition and achievement?
Am I going to be given responsibility.
We need to be careful because one can justify and answer yes to all those question if they are not thoughtful and thorough. These are the things that will truly motivate us. Once you get this right the more measurable aspects of your job will fade (such as money, benefits, work conditions, etc. and all the things we mentioned earlier).
How and where you allocate your resources can make your life turn out exactly as you hope or very different from what you intended. We have control over what we become in life.
The hot water that softens the carrot is the same water the hardens an egg. I think I read that analogy in another book.
You can't always study data to make decisions. Data is about the past. Sometimes you just have to make that decision. The author used the example of waiting till the end of your life to be a good parent because then you know what to do and have all the experience. You have to try while being in the moment.
Friends are an investment that require a lot of time. He mentioned the movie It's A Wonderful Life that I've never seen. I'll need to watch it now.
We should speak as many words to our children as possible in full adult conversation while they are young. I noticed one of my brothers always spoke to his kids like they were regular people instead of using baby talk. I thought it was pointless because the child couldn't understand all the words he was saying. I suppose I was wrong in that thought. Now that I think about it, it's stupid to dumb down our speech for kids. Maybe that hinders their development. I want to incorporate such eloquent speech with my future children.
The path to happiness is about finding someone who you want to make happy. IE don't look for a spouse that will make you happy. That is the age old fallacy. Find someone you want to make happy.
When sacrificing something for a while you deeply strengthen your commitment to it. This one needs to be treated carefully because it could topple the other way as a vice and you'd lose it. But it does reaffirm my Buddhist beliefs that All Life is Suffering and that "we shouldn't try to go through life as painlessly as possible" ([a:Vinnie Tortorich|1515703|Vinnie Tortorich|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]), or as JFK once said "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
Parents are outsourcing their work instead of having their kids do it. If other people raise your children who's children are they? I don't think this is a jab to working mothers or kids that go to daycare but rather if you aren't willing to let your kids fail and learn for themselves then what kind of kid are you raising? When doing work around the house make sure: 1) Work with the kids 2) Make it fun 3) Thank them. The author went on to cement how important consistency is in raising and disciplining kids. It irks me like no other when a parent isn't consistent in their discipline. Maybe I'm speaking too soon and it's harder than it looks but sometimes it seems that the parents get pushed around way too easily.
And speaking of failing, if you're not occasionally failing, you're not aiming high enough.
It's easier to keep the rules 100% of the time than it is 98%. Life is just one unending stream of extenuating circumstances. Decide what you stand for and then stand for it all the time.
Finding your purpose in life is asking yourself who do you want to become? We need to invest time in ourselves. What will help us become our best selves?
helloamywood's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
gezellig5681's review against another edition
4.0
A deeply personal business kind of book. It is true that the information was not necessarily new and sometimes obvious. Still, i often find that obvious stuff is easy to forget and reminding it to myself is useful. I liked the stories and the personal touch of the author. It also reinforced some of my beliefs. It's great feeling validated. I think it's a like-it-it-was-useful-or-f-it-it-was-useless kind of book. I liked it.
More...