Who Moved My Cheese

Who Moved My Cheese By Spencer JOHNSON

By Franck TOURTOIS.

A short comment for a little book. It reads in an hour. Tops.

Little but useful.

Not useful because you will discover many new things; you should not learn great lessons in its pages. Rather, you should come to realize during your reading that this book is about you. Me. Any of us.

By telling the story of 2 mice and 2 little people who live in a maze and whose ultimate goal is to find Cheese in order to be fulfilled (literally for the mice and even figuratively for the little people), Dr Johnson shows us how we think and reacts. How we sniff change, how we rush to adopt it, how we complain and freeze because of it, how we consciously can adapt over time.

The story told before and after the parable of mice and little people tends to show that all of us are one of the mice or of the little people. But I think we are all 4 of them. It all depends on the situation. What is clear is that we, as humans, have a tendency to overthink and overcomplicate issues. But we can use our brains to adapt to change smartly.

Because what the parable shows is that nobody is entitled to any thing for ever and that change is bound to happen.

The lesson we all need to take from this is that since change will happen you need to anticipate it, monitor it and adapt to it quickly. To really change you have to enjoy changing by picturing yourself changing and always be ready for this never-ending cycle.

Lessons for work, of course: it’s hopeless to expect your work will forever be the same, even if you work in national railways…

But it also applies to your personal life: you won’t probably be good at raising your kids if you don’t change over time: your interaction with them should be different whether they are 2 or 25 years old!

And I believe it applies to us as a whole, as a society: I believe it is useless to resist the winds of change, whether about new technology and AI or to the flow of refugees who knock at the door of Europe…