This book asks a question that's easy to put off when you're building something:
What are you doing all of this for?
Mitch Albom's conversations with his dying professor bring the answer back to relationships, love, and being present. Not particularly novel ideas. Still easy to forget when achievement becomes the thing organizing your life.
The Cost Doesn't Always Announce Itself
I've written about the things you trade to build a startup. Friendships. Relationships. Mental bandwidth. Plans that quietly stop being plans.
The uncomfortable part is that you don't always make those trades consciously. You just keep choosing work, one decision at a time.
Morrie's perspective makes me question the assumption underneath that: that there will be a better time to pay attention to everything else.
Will there?
Not Another Productivity Lesson
I don't want to turn this book into advice about resting so you can work harder later. That would miss it.
Relationships matter on their own. So does being there for the people you love. They don't need to make you a better founder to deserve your time.
I still care about building something that lasts. This book doesn't change that. It does make me question what success would mean if I neglected everything else to get there.
A book I'd recommend for perspective, not tactics. Especially when it's getting hard to tell the difference between what feels urgent and what actually matters.