We just came across this blog by Collin West, who, along with three fellow students, is attempting to cross the Arctic Ocean to raise environmental awareness. He and his team have just encountered an arctic hurricane — otherwise known as an “arcticane” — which has given him a bit of time to reflect. From his latest blog post, up on BusinessWeek:

As a form of advice, I suggest everyone do some accounting on their personal support system, especially this business-focused reader base. It is all too easy to skip birthdays, dinners, and dates to stay late at work or pursue that next promotion. Ten years later you may look around and see no one at your side. It takes paying into the system by supporting others; building true, thoughtful friendships; and genuinely caring to have a strong support network. And when … Read More »

Inc has just posted a review and discussion of How Will You Measure Your Life? and the concepts in the book:

“Typically, the way you calculate profitability, investments that pay off tomorrow go to the bottom line and are much more tangible than investments that pay off 10 years from now,” he says, before noting that this pursuit of short-term achievement distorts the lives of people as well as companies.

Head over to Inc to read the full post.

Skip Prichard, CEO of Ingram, has just interviewed the three authors on How Will You Measure Your Life?; from the interview:

And that’s the value of theory. Good, causal theory allows us to look out into the future with incredible acuity.

There’s an example I love to share of mankind’s first attempts to fly. When our early aviators looked at the world’s “best practice” fliers—birds—they saw two things almost all these had in common: wings and feathers. So, they strapped on wings and feathers, climbed to the top of cathedral spires, jumped off and flapped hard. It rarely worked out well.

You see, wings and feathers were correlated with flight. But they didn’t cause flight.

Head over to Skip’s blog to read the full interview.

The Blaze has just posted an interview with James on the topic of the book. From the interview:

In a recent interview with Allworth, the book’s co-author, The Blaze had the opportunity to ask a multitude of questions about what all of this really means. Allworth, a former student of Christensen’s at Harvard Business School, reiterated the fact that the book meshes together tested business theory with practical life results. The overwhelming premise, of course, is to address the problems that busy and successful individuals face.

Head on over to the Blaze website to see the full article.

The Daily Herald has just posted a review of How Will You Measure Your Life?. From the article:

This book, however, seems different. Part of the reason is Christensen’s measured, conversational tone. It is as though one were in the company of a trusted friend or counselor suggesting that the “theory of capabilities” means your children will prosper if given challenges and hard problems to solve, or that outsourcing too many of your family’s activities and too much of their instruction to others may impoverish the “company.”

Head over to the Daily Herald to read the full review.

The Financial Times has just posted its top book picks for 2012 — and they’ve included How Will You Measure Your Life:

Christensen has turned a legendary 2010 address to Harvard Business School students – and decades of experience as one of the world’s best-known management professors – into an engaging book that applies his customary rigour to career and life dilemmas. It is self-help (despite the authors’ protestations to the contrary) but with a strong pedigree, a big heart and a lofty goal: to give businesspeople the tools to stay happy, fulfilled – and out of jail.

Head on over to the FT website to see the review and read the FT’s full list.

Amazon has just released a list of the best books of the year. And How Will You Measure Your Life? is listed!

The Examiner has the full story, including links through to the Amazon listings.

Chuck Jaffe Interviews James AllworthChuck Jaffe, senior columnist for MoneyWatch, just interviewed James for his MoneyLife show. Interested in listening? It’s available right here.

The Guardian has a post on How Will You Measure Your Life?, and it looks like it has been written by someone who is generally quite skeptical of the business genre. From the article:

You might – like me – be distrustful of the modern trend for seeking life guidance from business experts. (I note that the co-founder of LinkedIn, the social networking service that pesters me to join it daily, has written a book on “the Silicon Valley approach to building a life” – but if I wanted his advice, I’d send him six unsolicited emails a week requesting it.) Yet to read Christensen’s new book, How Will You Measure Your Life?, is to be struck by the solidity of his wisdom. That basketball tale, it turns out, illustrates a powerful principle that really does apply in business and life.

Head … Read More »

The Economic Times has posted a Q&A entitled “Questions critical in business, also critical to lives”:

Just as there is no onesize-fits-all solution for the strategy that a company should use, there isn’t one for our lives, either. But what we can do is apply theory – statements about how the world works based on causality – to understand and predict what the result of our actions will be.

Head on over to the Economic Times to read the full article.