Underinvest in families - Clayton Christensen quote

Underinvest in families – Clayton Christensen quote

By Inspiware Staff Writer

Boston, MA | Updated 30 Mar, 2021

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“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.” – Clayton Christensen

In an excerpt from his book, The Prosperity Paradox, Clayton Christensen, the renowned author and management thinker writes about underinvestment in families on Linkedin:

Don’t reserve your best self only for your career

Your decisions about where and how you allocate your resources — time, energy, and talent — ultimately shape your life’s strategy. For me, there are many things that compete for these resources: I’m trying to have a rewarding relationship with my wife and five children, contribute to my community, succeed in my career, contribute to my church, and so on. And I have exactly the same problem that a corporation does. How much do I devote to each of these pursuits?

Allocation choices can make your life turn out to be very different from what you intended. Sometimes that’s good: Opportunities that you never planned for emerge. But if you make poor choices about how to invest your resources, the outcome can be bad. When people who have a high need for achievement have an extra half hour of time or an extra ounce of energy, they often 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, get paid or promoted. In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your friends and family typically doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. Kids, for instance, misbehave every day, and it’s not until 20 odd years later that you can say, “I raised a good kid.” 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.

Why do we Underinvest in Families?

At work, we all learn about resource allocation and capital budgeting. And when it comes to personal lives and relationships, we tend to underinvest in families and friends – the time, effort, focus, and attention. How do we do better? How do we make our personal side – which is probably the biggest project or life’s work – more successful?

Agree? Disagree? How do we balance our portfolio so to speak? How do we invest more in our families, friends, community and other endeavors that pay richer dividends in life and may, in turn, contribute to success at work? Please share your thoughts.