Why you don't need to change the world
While I was away in Poland recently, Professor Clay Christensen died. He was famous for developing the "disruption theory" that has been the playbook of tech companies for the last three decades. He's a giant in the industry I work in, and that's how I know him.
I was sitting in a small room – on the farm where I spent much of my childhood – reading the tributes coming through on social media. There I came across an article he wrote called, "How will you measure your life?" In it he remarks how interesting it was that with all the impact he had, all the millions of dollars he helped generate for companies, and all the accolades he received, how little it meant to him. Instead, what had the most meaning were the individual people he helped.
I’ve concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn’t dollars but the individual people whose lives I’ve touched. – Clay Christensen
After reading the article, I walked out of the room and into the small kitchen that hasn’t changed since I was a child. Sitting there, knitting, was my grandmother. She’s 93 years old and still going strong. She came to Canada to help my mom raise me because my mom, as an immigrant, couldn’t afford not to work and couldn’t afford day care either. I have so many memories with her — she is one of my favourite people on the planet.
By any socially accepted measures, my grandmother is a nobody. I would be surprised if more than 50 people knew about her, yet every single one of those people would be devastated if she died, and every single one of them would consider her one of the core people in their lives. More than any president, or tech entrepreneur, or artist.
As I sat there, watching her knit, I thought about how right Clay Christensen was. Steve Jobs changed the world more than my grandmother, but I'll be more devastated when she dies than when he did.
I need to think about this in my work and my own projects too. It's easy to prioritize having an impact on the world over having an impact on the people closest to us, especially for those of us who have a chip on our shoulders in feel we have something to prove.
I'm thankful for those moments feeling the peace and happiness of someone who hasn't changed the world, only a few lives, because it turns out that's all it takes.
Clay Christensen’s TED talk about how to measure your life