Further Reading

For more on purpose, Simon Sinek’s Start With Why is an excellent place to begin. Simon gives example after example of the importance of identifying a purpose as businesses and as people. Start With Why is a great book on changing your thinking and getting you on the right path for the rest of your life (and business). This is easily one of the most impactful books that I have ever read.

Another purpose-filled book is Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art. The book describes the struggles that all of us face against what he calls “resistance”. In any art, creativity, or work, we face this beast of an enemy and are forced to overcome resistance in order to fulfill our purpose, which is to create. I’ve given this book away countless times. It’s an extraordinary read, and people always tell me how much they love it.

This book is heavily influenced by Stoic philosophy. For more on Stoicism, The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday is a collection of 365 mini-lessons from the great Stoic philosophers. Each day, you read a single page about a belief, idea, or question to ask yourself and reflect upon. It’s a great book to come back to daily, and will help you develop some great mental models, a few of which you’ve seen in this chapter to deal with the ups and downs of life.

In light of the importance of reflecting and meditating on your thoughts, it may be helpful to see some examples of this done. Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations have yet to go out of style, and they won’t go out of style any time soon. Reading this book in conjunction with The Daily Stoic, you will find plenty of connections to be made.

For those interested in product design and development models, a great book about change is The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. The idea is to build a product quickly, measure its performance, learn enough to improve it, and at one point, either decide to pivot or persevere with the current idea. Pivoting is a big deal: it’s almost entirely changing the business model, but the Lean Startup method requires startups to pivot when they truly need to. You’ll discover quickly in the course of this startup cult-classic that change is your friend.