Academic

Clayton Christensen was asked by the Class of 2010 at HBS to get personal, and his essay, "How Will You Measure Your Life?" is the result. Lots of wisdom in this short piece. Two quick hits, the first in a section entitled, "Allocate Your Resources": 

When people who have a high need for achievement?and that includes all Harvard Business School graduates?have an extra half hour of time or an extra ounce of energy, they?ll unconsciously allocate it to activities that yield the most tangible accomplishments. And our careers provide the most concrete evidence that we?re moving forward. You ship a product, finish a design, complete a presentation, close a sale, teach a class, publish a paper, get paid, get promoted. In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesn?t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It?s really not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, ?I raised a good son or a good daughter.? You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis, it doesn?t seem as if things are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers?even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.

The second is in a section entitled "Remember the Importance of Humility":

It?s crucial to take a sense of humility into the world. By the time you make it to a top graduate school, almost all your learning has come from people who are smarter and more experienced than you: parents, teachers, bosses. But once you?ve finished at Harvard Business School or any other top academic institution, the vast majority of people you?ll interact with on a day-to-day basis may not be smarter than you. And if your attitude is that only smarter people have something to teach you, your learning opportunities will be very limited. But if you have a humble eagerness to learn something from everybody, your learning opportunities will be unlimited. Generally, you can be humble only if you feel really good about yourself?and you want to help those around you feel really good about themselves, too. When we see people acting in an abusive, arrogant, or demeaning manner toward others, their behavior almost always is a symptom of their lack of self-esteem. They need to put someone else down to feel good about themselves.