What is life? Search for the meaning of life using business strategy

In this article we will tell you what to do if you do not feel satisfaction in life. Or if your dream does not allow you to make ends meet.

What is life? What is your plan for the next 5 years? And at 10? If you are like me, the answer will be something like this: "I have no idea." But such questions make you feel inferior. As if it is assumed that you should always know what to expect from the future.
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In an excellent book, How to Measure Your Life? ^★ Clayton Christensen writes that many of his students at Harvard Business School feel as if they should always be ready to answer the question “What is life?”.

Starting from high school, they think that in order to succeed they need to have a fundamental concept that describes exactly what they want to do in life. The basis of this belief is a deep-rooted thought: it’s worth deviating from your own plan only if everything goes awful.

Christensen draws attention to the irony associated with such ideas: these students do not understand that most of the enterprises, where everything is thought out to the smallest detail, do not even know what they will become.

As many as 93% of all companies discard their original strategy due to its unprofitability.

Professor Amar Bhide in his work “Starting and Evolving a New Business” ^★ demonstrated that 93% of all enterprises that finally achieved success should have discarded their original strategy, which turned out to be unprofitable. In other words, the success of the companies was dictated not by the correctness of their initial line of conduct, but by the availability of money after the failure, which allowed them to drastically change the scope of activities and try a different approach.

Most firms have 2 forms of strategy: deliberate and spontaneous.

• The prepared is entered in the business plan , in the PowerPoint presentation, in the list of goals. And it has to be changed in 93% of cases.
• Elemental occurs in the process of movement. For example, when your little nephew ignores a gift ... but LOVES in shiny wrapping paper. The study of heart medicine ... ends with the creation of Viagra. It includes what is impossible to foresee.

Your life is an eternal balance of deliberation and unpredictability - plans and unexpected happy accidents.

So, how do you know when to follow a chosen course, and when to change direction?

If a prearranged plan allows you to pay bills and satisfies you, stick with it. Pay less attention to randomness and double your efforts as you move along the current path.

If you have found in your career a path that provides the conditions and incentives necessary for a normal life, then a thoughtful approach is worth it. Your tasks should be clear, and you should feel that their implementation is well worth the effort. Instead of adapting to unexpected opportunities, you should focus your mind on finding the best ways to achieve your goals.

But what if you do not feel satisfied? Or if your dream does not allow you to make ends meet and maintain the desired standard of living? What to do when you really don't understand, "What is life?"

Christensen says that this is the case of those 93% of companies. They had to experiment, looking for a new field of activity.

You need to constantly try something new to understand: perhaps the shiny wrapping paper is really better than the present.

But if you have not reached the desired level in your chosen career , then, like companies looking for your way, you will have to move on to a spontaneous plan. In other words, if you are in such circumstances, experiment. Use the lessons learned from each attempt. And then quickly corrected. Stay on this course until your strategy succeeds.
But what you really should not do is sit in one place.

Thinking is what is least needed. To present opportunities lead attempts and experiments.

Very rarely does it make sense to sit in an ivory tower and ponder the problem, expecting the answer to arise in the head itself. A strategy almost always appears as a result of combining deliberate actions and unexpected opportunities. It is important not to sit still, but to try something new until you understand where your talents, interests and priorities begin to justify themselves. The moment when you determine what really suits you, and will be the best to move from a spontaneous strategy to a deliberate one.

PS We recommend another article on the topic - Achieve more, reducing the number of commitments .

Translated by Vyacheslav Davidenko, founder of MBA Consult