It had so much nuggets of wisdom for building product and growing a company, sometimes contradictory, sometimes philosophical. I would keep this on a shelf, and take out whenever I want any directional advice. It is not a book that increases your expertise on a certain area. It will be a book to get a little glimpse about how Scott thinks about the world.
The book contains such a wide range of topics. It has three big chunk. Endure, Optimize, Finish Line. All of the messy middle - Endure, Optimize - is extremely difficult, however in my personal opinion, finishing well is the most important. How would you determine anyone being successful or failed? Abraham Lincoln failed many consecutive years prior to him becoming the US president. Is it a middle or finish line? I'd say 'finishing well' is more important.
That said, I appreciated Scott shared the two examples of his family members about finish line. His grandfather, Stanley Kaplan, suffered from depression in his late age after he sold his tutoring company that he devoted himself for 50 years. His work gave him the identity. No work meant too much loss for him. On the other hand, his father, a very successful Orthopedic surgeon, decided to retire on his own term. He valued spending with grand-kids more than his medical work in his sixties. Starting something is hard, but ending it well is even harder.
This Messy Middle was actually our first book I chose for my book club, ABBA (Adobe Business Book Association). I enjoyed the session with the team thoroughly since everyone had a very different takeaways! We had a healthy lightweight dialogue. Creating this Book club was from my conscious efforts to improve my ability to share my thoughts, discuss, and debate. This was relatively safe environment to do that. It will continue! Every month.
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