# 1: Michelangelo in the Board Room
My Story behind the Passage
After finishing writing the Prologue of my blog this morning, I felt the immediate urge to move ahead and actually experiment with my first post. That meant I had to decide which book to choose first. I decided to use a story I had mentioned yesterday on the phone when trying to explain to my friend Tobi what I mean by “learning from startup books.” Instead of finding this passage now, another one jumped right at me when I opened the book. It is the one you read above. I immediately decided on using this one because it is so telling for what I want to convey with my blog.
This passage is most likely one that you would not read in any 5-minute summary of the Facebook story. It can be considered a minor detail hidden between two book covers that embrace 374 pages. This passage is not in the Introduction and not in the Conclusion — both of these are usually the chapters that “how to read a book in 30 minutes advocates” recommend you read to save time. But for me, this passage was mind-blowing. All big stories of change initiated by great leaders start with one thing: daily practice. And the practice described above about the writing habits of Zuckerberg is one of these elements that, in combination with other things, are more powerful — because of their pragmatic nature — than many “how to develop the mindset of a millionaire” self-help books.
My Learnings
“This book was held closely by Zuckerberg…” This tells me that this was not just some notebook for Zuckerberg. He had an almost intimate relation to what he wrote in the book. And this is why nothing can replace writing. If you write with passion and you follow the impulse of sketching the flow of thoughts immediately, your writing becomes a very personal treasure that you do not want to lose because it is a testimony of one specific moment that will not reoccur in this way.
“The Book of Change.” Zuckerberg gave the book a title. That might be considered silly and unnecessary. Why would you give your notebook a title? You are not going to sell it. To me, this practice of giving the book a name is a remarkable reflection of the awareness that Zuckerberg had concerning the meaning of the book and his personal vision. He could have called it “Book of technological disruption” or “Facebook of International Networking Revolution” or whatever. But, no, he pinned it down to one word: “Change.” After all, this is what startups and pioneers of any sector are after: making the world a different and ideally better place by contributing to change — no matter at which scale. And if you think of how difficult it often is to boil down complexity — let alone a business mission and vision — to one single word, this practice of precise naming is an indication of big picture thinking.
“In some sections, it became almost stream of consciousness.” Stream of consciousness sounds like a strange technical concept from a dictionary of literary terms. In fact, you do find it there. What it describes is simply what every person following his or her passion knows by heart: When you get into the state of flow in which you watch your hands and/thoughts do things without you being able to really explain how, this is what, in the case of authors, ends up as stream of consciousness writing. There are no conscious thoughts about structure, grammar, or conciseness. Sometimes the writing might not even make any sense to anyone reading it. Still, there is immediate value to the practice of getting into this flow because, exactly this seemingly irrational kind of writing usually reflects best what you really, really, want to express with your words. And this energy reaches the reader. Again, this is not limited to writing. In a figurative sense, stream of consciousness expression can also happen by voice recording or other means. What counts is the moment of catching and recording thoughts when they happen. They do not come back and if you wait until later to write them down, the vivacity of the moment is usually lost.
Reflection Questions
1) What strikes you about the passage?
2) Do you have a sketch book of some sort (it can also be an electronic journal)? Why/not?
3) Thinking back of goals that you wanted to achieve in the past — Did it make a difference whether you wrote them down somewhere instead of just thinking about them?