Moved the Cheese Who Moved

¶ … Moved the Cheese Who Moved My Cheese by Spenser Johnson is an allegory of the mice, Sniff and Scurry, and little people, Hem and Haw, who live in a maze and are looking for the cheese that has moved. Sniff quickly sniffs out change and Scurry scurries into action. Hem denies and resists change, because he fears something else will happen that is worse. Over time, Haw realizes that change can lead to something better. The four characters are desparate when finally finding the cheese.

Sniff and Scurry search for new cheese. Hem and Haw take the cheese for granted and do not notice that the amount is dwindling. When the cheese is gone, Hem does not want to look for more cheese. Haw waits with Hem for a while, then realizes he has to go look for more.

He leaves several notes on the wall with his new truths, such as: the more important your cheese is to you, the more you want to hold on to it; smell the cheese often so you know when it is getting old; movement in a new direction helps you find new cheese; and the quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you find new cheese. Haw finally finds his way to the new cheese.

Here he also finds Sniff and Scurry, who have been enjoying the new cheese for some time. Haw regrets that he did not look for the new cheese sooner and misses his friend Hem, who took himself too seriously. The parable is about the different ways that people react with change. Some people deal with it in advance. Others react to it quickly when it does occur. Some have difficult reacting at first, and then, out of necessity, make the changes necessary.

While others, never change at all and are left without any cheese or new opportunities. The character "Haw" stands for procrastination. He waits to the very end, actually beyond the very end, to act. Because of this, he is taking a chance that the cheese may already be gone, that he may not find the cheese in time to survive, or he may continue in his same situation his whole life without changing. This is the character I can relate to most.

I often wait until the last minute to study for a test or to do a paper. Pulling all nighters is common, when I have a test the next day. Then I go into the class exhausted. For papers, at the last minute, I have to hurry up and not only get the work done, but done well. This is difficult, and there is a good possibility that my work is late, I do not do the best that I can, and the quality suffers.

I need to be more like the character Sniff in the book, especially since I usually know in advance what papers and tests are due and when. This means developing and, more important, following a better time management system. I have half-heartedly tried this in the past, but only do it for a couple of days. I believe that it is important for me to find someone else who is in the same situation, and for the two of us to work together as a team.

We can motivate each other; we can also see it as a competitive venture where, for example, one of us has to buy the other dinner when not meeting the deadlines or there is a special reward for.