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How Will You Measure Your Life? (book review)

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How Will You Measure Your Life? (book review)

How Will You Measure Your Life? is about what investors call “out-of-sample tests”. If an idea works in more than one area then it probably will work again. 

Wisdom is an example. Proverbs 16:32, He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, And he who rules his spirit, than he who captures a city becomes, it’s not if you win or lose but how you play the game. 

Timeless. 

Clayton’s choice combines business ideas with personal goals in two areas: career and relationships. 

Measuring your career. There are legible aspects to a career: money, titles, promotions, and career paths. 

Clayton cautions not to over-index on the legible. Careers, he writes, offer a mix of “hygiene” and “motivation” factors. Money, health insurance, and perks are hygiene factors. These factors have capped advantages and diminishing returns. 

Non-legible, like motivation, interesting problems, and growth have an upside. This is the good stuff. Just because it’s hard to count doesn’t mean it’s not of value. In fact, it’s really valuable!  

And because it’s hard to count and valuable means people underrate it.

But there are legible things to count. How do you spend your time? Your money? Do these reflect your priorities, hopes, and dreams?

Through legible and not, the aim is intentionality. Are you intentional about the important? 

Who is this choice for? 

“Parents have their own job to be done, and it can overshadow the desire to help their children develop processes. They have a job of wanting to feel like a good parent: see all the opportunities I’m providing for my child. Or parents, often with their heart in the right place, project their own hopes and dreams onto their children.”

We don’t have to teach our kids to tie their shoes. With technology, fashion, and other people it doesn’t have to happen. But it does. 

Now apply that to everything. 

Helicopter or consultant parent provides a good contrast. It feels good to be a helicopter parent. “See all the opportunies…”. But helicopter parents are selfish parents. Their choices are first for them, not their kids. 

Instead, Christensen uses a short-term-pain long-term-gain model. Live verbs first. Experiences are expensive tuition but essential in the school of life. It’s the right choice for them. 

…

How Will You Measure Your Life? is a difficult book to report because the lessons are personal. For every, I never thought about it that way situation, someone else would have solved it years ago. 

I needed Christensen to write this book. 

It’s written by a man of faith. A Harvard professor. He’s a best-selling author. He developed a famous business theory. Anyone that knew him brings up how much they miss him, years later. 

I needed his permission. 

Permission to think about life, not hacks or hustle. For the important things, not the urgent things. You read it as a reminder of why we live and an admission that we need help to live better. 

It matters that it’s Clayton freakin’ Christensen. He lived well and we aim to. 

Give the Gift of Gift Giving

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Screenshot 2023-12-20 at 4.51.33 AM.png

Via Schwab: Read the article

It’s not a terrible list of nine ideas, but it is a superficial one. The problem is that each of the ideas has to do with money, which isn’t really what gift buying is about. 

#2, Set a budget. #4, Don’t go into debt to pay for gifts. #7, Don’t buy more online just to get free shipping. I violate #7 most years. 

Gift giving is really about connection. It’s about our relationships with other people and symbolizing them. Gifts are a proxy. They’re an artifact. They mark something intangible as tangible. 

Here’s what I would have written for Schwab. 

It’s that time of year again. Last year, at this time of year, Americans spent $1,600 dollars on holiday gifts. There are work parties, family parties, white elephant, and fireplace stockings to stuff. There are kids, parents, parent’s kids (those dang sibling gift exchanges) and more. 

It’s too much. 

It’s okay to say it’s too much. 

Because here’s the thing – it’s too much for them too. 

Here’s a two-step plan for making this year a great season. 

Step 1: Buy the gifts you’re excited for. Kids love presents. Dads love new socks. Teens love new hoodies. If you know the perfect gift for the perfect person – get it! That’s what this is all about. 

Step 2: Share your priorities. When our money goes to one thing it doesn’t go to another. It’s the “opportunity cost”. We mostly understand that when it’s said but we forget when it’s not. So spend your money intentionally. 

“Dear Mother-in-Law, here is some chocolate/coffee/flowers. We’re trying to spend a little less this year because we are saving up for a big family trip to Florida. We know the kids will love exploring the sand for shark’s teeth, soaking up the sunshine, and splashing in the waves.”

Instead of a vacation maybe it’s college or a new, more reliable, safer car for your spouse. Whatever it is, make sure it’s intentional. And make sure the gift receiver understands that it’s important. 

“It’s better to give then receive”. That’s advice you don’t understand until you’ve gotten older. Then it’s obvious. By not getting someone something you’ve let them become the giver rather than receiver. Your in-laws have “given” you a slice of tuition, vacation, or locomotion. They’ve connected. 

Some people won’t get it. But if you live intentionally and remove the frivolity from not just the gift-giving but the rest of your financial life, they’ll start to see it. 

Happy Holidays from all of us at Schwab. 

Happy Holidays. 

Goal Alignment

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How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen and How To Change by Katy Milkman are different books with the common theme of goal alignment.

Do short-term choices, options, and incentives align with long-term aims, hopes, and dreams?

Christensen writes in business terms, specifically innovation. Disruption theory notes that when incumbents serve their best customers they miss new opportunities. It’s a dilemma because the opportunities have worse short-term outcomes than “business as usual” – but possible long-term rewards.

Milkman writes in psychological terms. “Doing the right thing,” Katy conveys, “is often unsatisfying in the short-term.” Instead, bundle working out with watching Netflix. Get Starbucks at the airport. Do your taxes and then go out to eat.

Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.

These books exist for a reason: We are myopic!

But with reflection, intention, and design goals align.

You don’t need to ___ because you are already ___.

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“You have to be careful,” warns Clayton Christensen in How Will You Measure Your Life?

When things are going well with your friends and family. When your kids are doing well. When your spouse is happy. You have to be careful. 

“When it seems like everything at home is going well, you will be lulled into believing that you can put your investments in these relationships onto the back burner. That would be an enormous mistake.” 

I’m in good shape for forty-one. In December I ran a 1:37 half-marathon, impressing myself. 

But my neighbors say I don’t need to run because I’m already fit. 

The causality is backward. 

The Millionaire Next Door profiles people with large net worths and how they did it. They invested, worked smart and hard, and checked their expenses. They wore simple watches, drove older cars, and traveled simply. You don’t need to live so cheaply, their nosey neighbors might note, you’re already rich. 

Parts of How Will You Measure Your Life? are about the “dilemma” between short and long-term incentives. Measuring your life is a long-term game that needs long-term incentives. And “you don’t need to… because you are already…” is backward logic. 

You need to.

The Secret Path to JTBD

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One secret entrance to the job to be done is how people hack your product. There’s the way you built a thing – using supply-side innovation to scratch an itch or whatever. But then there is the demand-side innovation of what people really want. This manifests as hacks, like desire paths.

Peloton saw people hack their own social groups on Facebook and then built social tags within the app. 

Instagram saw people hack photos to show white backgrounds with text and build polls. 

Josh Wardle saw people share their Wordle scores and built the feature into the app.

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

There’s a cake icing tool called the “silicone icing spatula”. We bought this set, but any will do. Its “supply side innovation” is to ice baked goods. Its “demand side hack” is to scoop out jars. 

Neither sauce, mayonnaise, nor store-bought icing can resist the sliding edge of this device. Tall container? No problem. Do you buy the peanut butter that separates? The good stuff but hard stuff. It becomes easy with this spatula. 

🎁🎁🎁🎁🎁

Buy a set of these to give away for the holiday. Not only is it a thoughtful gift, but it’s also helpful and the colors stand out among the sea of black kitchen devices in the spatula drawer. 

The only way to get better at a thing is to do a thing. Practice active copywriting, think about business models, and notice the different aspects of jobs to be done in your life. Find ways people hack products. Notice unusual go-to-market strategies. Think about when the customer and consumer are different people. Consider how requests are different from actions. 

Kelly Baked (ham) Copywriting

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This Honey Baked Ham ad ran in December 2022.

The good. (1) Like the Ridge wallet, it shows contrast – but not of the products. We see the finished, polished, and plated, Honey Baked Ham.

Contrasted with the process. It’s not that your turkey, ham, or sides won’t look good but that it takes some serious effort – with tools you use once a year.

And techniques you use even less.

Buy a stick blender instead.

(2) Consumer spending is an example of median and average meanings. We average three thousand dollars a year eating out, but it’s not as simple as that number divided by 12 or 52. We only eat Domino’s Pizza with a deal. Similarly, during the holidays, customers are price insensitive.

Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger noticed this phenomenon in 1972 when they purchased See’s Candy. As Munger said, “I may see Wrigley’s gum alongside Glotz’s gum. I know about Wrigley but I don’t know anything about Glotz’s. If one is $.40 and the other is $.30, am I going to take something I don’t know and put it in my mouth?”

It was the same for See’s and for Honey Baked Ham where the pricing power comes from the holidays, food’s ‘intimacy’, and tradition. They never mention the price and they never should.

(3) Looking the part. When she started Haven’s Kitchen, Alison Cayne thought her cooking business was about food, but she found it was about appearance. Her cooking students (pre-Covid Cayne operated a cooking school in NYC) and sauce customers (the post-Covid pivot) wanted to appear competent.

The ‘job’ of a meal wasn’t filling bellies, it was filling expectations. Todd Snyder said that expectations drive his consumers too. You need to ‘look the part’ at the wedding, the interview, or the party.

Watch the ad. It’s not about the couple’s food, it’s about their appearance.

(4) What does Honey Baked Ham compete with? One part of JTBD is that products in the same category may not be competitors, like Snickers and Milky Way. Pizza, Chinese, and Honey Baked Ham are all Christmas dinner options, but the customers of one don’t consider the others.

Honey Baked’s competition is DIY – which is what this ad addresses!

The Bad. None!

The Interesting.

This ad is polished, like a Honey Baked Ham. At the end of 2022, ‘trending’ recipes were common. Hopefully, the Honey Baked Ham company avoids this and keeps bringing home the bacon with ads like the one above.

Problem Solving Perspective Shift

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A new point of view is worth forty IQ.

The mechanism might be framing. Look at the same situation from a different set of experiences, expertise, or mindset, and the possible solutions shift. 

The not us but them point of view. Peter Attia used to be a very angry man. In his podcast with Andrew Huberman, he doesn’t elaborate on how just that he had a “raging” fire inside. He’d be hardest on himself. 

Try this Attia’s therapist suggested when you make a mistake, record a voice note on your phone about what you would say to a friend if they made that same mistake. Bingo. Peter’s comments softened. He was kinder to a friend than he was to himself. The effects were immediate. What had been a (hurtful) lifelong trait was gone in a few weeks. 

The not us but it point of view. Clayton Christensen wrote, “We are here to explore not what we hope will happen to us but rather what the theories predict will happen to us, as a result of different decisions and actions.”

What does the theory predict? It’s a helpful abstraction in our personal lives because we err toward the fundamental attribution error. We dismiss luck in our successes and credit it in our failures. It’s never us. 

Theory removes that. Our ego stands on the sidelines as the theory moves up and down the playing field. 

The not us but an engineer. The best part about being a good engineer, teaches Mark Rober, is that it makes you a good anything. Engineers are another profession problem-solving example. 

That’s what Katy Milkman found too. As an engineering major, she complained to her fiancé about going to the gym. He suggested she pull a Watney and engineer the shit out of it. Milkman started with the basics, If/Then statements. If I go to the gym, she told herself. Then I get to listen to this audiobook or watch this television show. 

…

Framing works. It works for others. It works for us. 

Framing works. It’s easy. It’s free. 

Framing works because it forces new thoughts. I never thought of things that way.

Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over

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One way to think of the world is not good or bad but underrated or overrated. Switch from binary to fluid. 

Reading like a Bayesian is underrated. Jobs theory is underrated. Books are underrated. 

Think of Over/Underrated as a normal distribution. Only learning from books or never learning from books are bad. Each could “move up the curve”. 

Education, like financial literacy, as a solution is overrated.

Education is a “tight” solution. When my daughter was in elementary school she went to a speech therapist to work on her *th* sound. She had a cast to fix a broken arm. Her volleyball coach helps her with footwork. These are “tight” solutions that fit the larger set. 

Drunk driving advertisements like “drive sober or get pulled over” is another tight solution. 

But it’s wrong. It doesn’t fit the larger set of circumstances. 

A “wider” approach is to think not about drinking but about driving. 

The public could subsidize a ride-share happy hour. If people leave home without their car they can’t return home with it. Or, use the marketing money to pay for random rides. 

Another option is to change where bars are built. If it’s easy to walk or hard to park, people won’t drive.

Gamblers can “self exclude” themselves from casinos. Can insurance companies offer a drink driving equivalent? Let people save 5% while committing their sense of self?

…

Education is overrated because it’s linear, rigid, and two-dimensional. If X is good, do more of it. If X is good, the opposite is bad. 

Not necessarily. 

Related: using ambiguity aversion to hint at punishments.

Addendum: Because overrated and underrated are fluid and because times change, the overrated can become underrated.

Unreasonable Hospitality (book review)

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“How to Treat Other Human Beings” could be the subtitle to Will Guidara’s Unreasonable Hospitality. I loved this mix of stories, lessons, reflections, and mistakes. It felt honest. It read fast. I had a library copy but this is one of those put this on the shelf to page through later books.

Unreasonable Hospitality is going above and beyond to treat other human beings well. Take care of each other. Get out of your own head. Avoid your ego in favor of service.

It felt great to read, I’m still glowing.

And unreasonable hospitality is easy. It’s just three things.

First, a desire to do it. Your motivations may vary.

Second, a 95/5 mindset. Things cost money. It’s impossible to provide service without charging and even harder to be over-the-top. So the business model matters.

Guidara’s 95/5 approach is to watch ninety-five percent of the expenses like a hawk. At Eleven Madison Park this meant things like dishwasher racks to reduce breakage. While he managed the MoMA cafe it meant no fresh food an hour before closing time to reduce waste.

In his experiences at many restaurants, Guidara learned to manage costs. What could get cut? What couldn’t? What were the easy (and wrong) metrics? I pictured him like a wise carpenter. Rather than head to Lowe’s, he ripped a spare sheet of 3/4” plywood that was in the corner.

Now, what about that other five percent?

Third, the job to be done.

It’s about delight. Sometimes Guidara gave away the Tiffany champagne flutes to a newly engaged couple. Sometimes he fed the parking meters.

Sometimes it was complementary theater, sports, or concert tickets. Sometimes he served a classic New York City hot dog for a guest who hadn’t had one yet.

Sometimes it meant complementary cognac after dessert and with the arrival of the check. Sometimes it meant ten 100 Grand bars when a guest, preying on their hospitable reputation, asked for a million bucks. That guest loved it.

Why is this person here? What do they want? How can I serve them? What delights them?

–

Nothing about Unreasonable Hospitality is new.

But none of it is common.

The book is a chance to change that. With Guidara as a guide, anyone can put a little more hospitality into the world.

–

Note: Part of this book’s impact is its identification. We have plenty of posts about words: words mean competition, the new dictionary series, and words hiding value. Words are important because they identify something. They’re landmarks on our map of life.

In 2008, the story goes. A bunch of NBA players returned to their hotel after a night (and morning) of revelry, only to see Kobe going to the gym while they were headed to bed. Those players saw that and took their careers more seriously. Kobe’s actions were a landmark.

Will’s book is a landmark.

Copywriting Lulz

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“So it’s decided,” goes the commercial, “we’ll park even deeper into parking spaces so people think they’re open.” 

“Surprise.” Lolz.

Good copywriting, a subset of jobs theory, speaks in the customer’s language. And this commercial was not written from a rider’s perspective. It’s a driver’s perspective. 

Insurance is an interesting sale because people hesitate to consider premiums, claims, and losses. We’re ambiguity averse and that’s the whole enchilada with insurance. 

It wasn’t until the birth of the AFLAC duck in 1999, that insurance companies found humor as a path to awareness. Okay, customers thought, it’s not that serious, I can make a phone call. 

But it still had to be kinda serious.

During a rebrand, GEICO found customers saved about 23% and it only took about eight minutes on the phone. However, when they tested that messaging, customers thought it was too good to be true. Instead, “fifteen minutes to save fifteen percent” was born. 

Someone must answer the question: Why is this so cheap? That’s the customer language. 

Insurances sales (all sales!) start with a simple unintimidating prompt. It can’t be too juvenile, even the mayhem man wears a suit. Costs (higher or lower) must be part of a story: Bundle with us and we pass the overhead savings on to you.