The entrepreneur's nightstand
Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA
President and CEO, Society of Physician Entrepreneurs, another lousy golfer, terrible cook, friction fixer
Sir William Osler has this to say at the end of the 1906 edition of Aequanimitas:
A liberal education may be had at a very slight cost of time and money. Well filled though the day be with appointed tasks, to make the best possible use of your one or your ten talents, rest not satisfied with this professional training, but try to get the education, if not of a scholar, at least of a gentleman. Before going to sleep read for a half an hour, and in the morning have a book open on your dressing table. You will be surprised to find how much can be accomplished in the course of a year. I have put down a list of ten books which you may make close friends. There are many others; studied carefully in your student days these will help in the inner education of which I speak.
1. Old and New Testament
2. Shakespeare
3. Mantaigne
4. Plutarch's Lives
5. Marcus Aurelius
6. Epictetus
7. Religio Medici
8. Don Quixote
9. Emerson
10. Oliver Wendell Holmes-Breakfast-Table Series.
This year, New York TImes writer David Brooks published The Road to Character. where he differentiates between the resume virtues and eulogy virtues and uses the stories of several famous people to make his point.
Entrepreneurs, at some point, need to abandon their obsession with vanity numbers and come to grips with what Brooks calls Adam II-to do good. He notes,
Adam II wants to love intimately, to sacrifice self in the service of others, to live in obedience to some transcendant truth, to have a cohesive inner soul that honors creation and one's own possibilities
Leaving behind your fingerprints can happen at many levels-on people, on customers, on businesses, on your community or on your country.
There are many examples and stories of people in business who have taken the journey. You should make friends with them and keep them on your nightstand. Better yet, have people read about what you left behind.
Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs
Profesora y Escritora. "Me apasionan ambas profesiones"
9 年It causes immense pleasure to read articles that you share those more technical and professional issues or like this that especially helps to know to do something to benefit others is not an incompatible absurd in our world increasingly contradictory with the species human.