Re-reading Who Moved My Cheese

I first read Who Moved My Cheese years ago. I finished it in an hour, filed it under “corporate motivational books,” and moved on. This year I picked it up again.

The story follows two mice and two little people who become accustomed to a supply of cheese. When it disappears, they respond differently. This time, I connected their attachment to it with my own investment in engineering skills.

I had spent years learning frameworks, remembering APIs, and writing complex code. Familiarity made me faster, and I built part of my identity as an engineer around that competence. Seeing AI make some of that work easier changes how I think about the time I put into learning it.

Haw spends time returning to the empty station before he starts searching elsewhere. I recognise the reluctance in that part of the story. Understanding that a familiar way of working is changing does not tell me what to do about my attachment to it.

I can use an AI tool and see what it produces. It takes longer to work out which parts of my old routine I still value, which parts I can let go of, and what I need to learn next. The book gives that hesitation a character I can recognise.

The mice keep checking their supply, while the little people grow used to finding it there. On my first reading, that seemed like an obvious lesson about paying attention.

Now I read it as a question about my own habits. When a task becomes familiar, it is easy to stop examining how I do it. I want to keep trying the tools that change that task while retaining enough understanding to judge their output.

I was less patient with Hem, the character who refuses to move, the first time I read the book. I have more sympathy for him now. I read his objection as a protest that he worked for something and should not have to give it up.

Years spent becoming good at a skill still count for something. I understand why someone would feel protective of that effort, even while recognising that the work around them has changed. But the maze doesn’t care what feels fair.

The book cannot tell me which engineering skills will matter most in the next few years. I still have to decide what to practise and what to delegate. Understanding the hesitation does not remove the need to adapt. Whatever comes next will be found in the maze, not at the empty station.