How Will You Measure Your Life?

I'm currently reading a book by Clayton Christensen. Now if there are two people mentioned more than anyone else here at business school, they're Steve Jobs and Clayton Christensen. Anyway, yesterday I was reading about our personal strategy, and how we have two strategies: deliberate and emergent.

A deliberate strategy is what you want to do - what you plan on doing. An emergent strategy is what just ends up happening. The key is figuring out when you should turn an emergent strategy into your deliberate strategy. And our strategy, whether deliberate or emergent, is created through hundreds of daily decisions.

From his book: "To understand a company's strategy, look at what they actually do rather than what they say they do," and "We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs." Christensen says one of the problems professionals often have is that they prioritize the things that give quick returns - promotions, raises, bonuses - and neglect the things that require long-term work, but that won't show returns for decades, like raising children.

One of the worries of focusing on these short-term returns is that we use them to finance an ever-expanding lifestyle. As a result, we are then unable to cut back on work to focus on something at home - we're trapped. As one of my professors has said, you need to give yourself options. He also advised us to have "go to hell" money, the idea being that if you have a monetary cushion/you're not tied down to financial obligations, you don't have to remain stuck in a bad situation.

Something I've talked with Kristen about is that when we (hopefully) have money once I graduate and start a new job, we can't be seduced by the sudden influx of cash and start buying things. It's alluring even now, thinking about the money we may have in the future: "The first thing we're buying is a new washer!" or "I can't wait to buy a house that's all ours."

The most important thing to me in my life is my family - not my career or my material possessions (although some may question that when I talk about our huge, awesome TV - but hey, it was on sale!). Now it just remains for me to spend the next 30 years proving to my family that they really are my number one priority. After all, actions truly do speak louder than words.

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

I was totally just going to shower, and then read a friend's blog and was inspired to post something too (I haven't written since Christmas after all). It's 2:57 p.m. and I'm not dressed for the day yet. But hey - it's Saturday - don't worry about it.

So we're going to Minneapolis this summer. I don't think it's still quite real to me that I'm finally moving away from Utah - and not just away, but FAR away. 19 hours by car (according to Google). 25 hours from Portland (sorry Mom). I know it's only temporary, but if we end up really liking it, and getting a full-time offer after grad school, we could be there full time a year from now. Crazy!

It's amazing how quickly your life can change. The only thing truly constant in life is change, though. Our family may be headed off internationally sometime before school starts in the fall (and after the internship), so I filled out an application for a passport for Scarlett today. I pulled out my old passport along with the other documents in our fire safe, and saw a very young-looking missionary picture, taken more than a decade ago. It's hard to believe that I'm that same person who bawled like a baby when his entire family dropped him off at the local, one-gate airport to fly to England.

A lot has happened in 11 years. I bought a couple cars, filed my own taxes, bought my own insurance, graduated college, worked for four and a half years as a business professional, got married, purchased furniture, became a father, and now I'm back at school pursuing my MBA. I'm a real, live grownup, for all intents and purposes. But I still cry a little every time we have to leave my parents' driveway to make the trek back to Utah. I still crave the love and approval of my parents - I still want my dad to be proud of me. Sometimes I still lounge about the house in PJ's on a Saturday until 3 p.m., watching the last season of Burn Notice.

I'm still a kid, but I'm also an adult. I have a family to take care of, a daughter I want to raise to be a productive member of society, with chores to take care of and bills to pay. I have a calling and home teaching to think about, planning for temple nights and daddy-daughter dates to do, and a big move across country to prepare for. I always thought of 30 as old. Now it doesn't seem so old - but 20 seems really young:

I'm grateful for all of the changes in my life, but I'm also grateful for the things that haven't changed - that I hope never do. I hope I can always be a little bit silly, and not always take everything so seriously. I hope I can always have fun and be as happy as children are, while still taking care of the things that need to get done. Good goal, right?