From Strength to Strength by Arthur C. Brooks

Author:Arthur C. Brooks [Brooks, Arthur C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Measuring your life

Earlier in this book I mentioned a question I ask my students to get their attention: How many Thanksgivings do you have left? The truth is that it gets my attention as well. If I follow suit with my parents, it’s something like eight. (We Brookses die fairly young.) The point isn’t to depress anybody. It is to remind us that in denominating time in memorable, scarce events, we have a much better sense of its scarcity. Thus, we use it more wisely. This is the same idea as saying we should live each day as if it were our last.

If we followed this insight, we would probably sort out our workaholism and success addiction problems. The cognitive error that feeds them is the idea that our time is limitless, so the marginal decision—what to do with the next hour—is not very important in the broad scheme of things. We come face-to-face with this error when time is up and it’s too late.

This is what business management consultants might call a “systematic measurement error.” And in that spirit, I have adopted the work of a business expert for an exercise to help me solve it in my life. The expert is the late Clayton Christensen, a longtime professor at the Harvard Business School, where I serve on the faculty. Christensen died a few months after I arrived at Harvard, but his legacy looms large at HBS, in no small part because of his famous book, How Will You Measure Your Life?[51]

Christensen analyzes a good life well lived in the same way he would assess a company, and the book is well worth reading in its entirety. However, one section provided me with the material for a three-part exercise for avoiding the snares of workaholism and success addiction, while investing in the relationships that bring true satisfaction.

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