What a sad deal. Steve Jobs of Apple fame just died, and the world just lost an incredible innovator. With that said, I wanted to post a speech he gave that was incredibly inspirational. I will also be writing this post on my trusty Mac.
Steve Jobs outlines the mental tools or philosophies of his life, that he thought would help these students. He gave three stories that described exactly what he thought was important. Anyone from any industry and walk of life can be inspired by these concepts and lessons.
The first story is about connecting the dots. Or basically, building snowmobiles. You take everything that you have learned in your past, analyze and synthesize, and build a better idea/product/service/strategy/tactic. Jobs dropped out of college, but took a calligraphy in his final days at that college. Low and behold, he was fascinated with calligraphy and was able to draw upon that class and experience years later when he and his partners created the Mac computer. That bit of knowledge and experience, was like the skies of his ‘snow mobile’ called the Mac computer. He connected the dots of his past to create something new. Quote from speech:
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
The second story is about love and loss. He talks about finding your passion or love, and recognize how valuable that is. And he talks about how valuable failure or loss can be. It forces you to re-evaluate your love affair with your subject, and it also forces you to re-invent yourself and the process. Steve goes into the story about him being let go by Apple at age 30, or to be fired by the company you started. But then talks about the rebuilding process after that incident. That he went on to find other companies that were immensely successful, went on to find his wife, and then years later was brought back on to work at Apple–which was faltering at the time. When Jobs came back to Apple, he breathed new life and direction into the company, and lead a come back of all comebacks.
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
The final story is about death. Something this industry deals with in the war, and a reality that Jobs was certainly dealing with at the time of this speech. His view on death as a ‘change agent’, is awesome.
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Don’t be trapped by dogma……have the courage to follow your heart and intuition….your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Incredible words to live by, and an incredible view about something all of us will face one day. And Steve lived these words until he died. Steve also reminds me of Boyd when it comes to idea creation and battling dogma, and having the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
I really liked the last bit of his speech. It is important to note, because this is what he felt summed up all of his thoughts on life and death, and what will get you through. It is also the back story to the title of this post.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Good stuff, and Steve Jobs is quite the man. Transcripts for the speech here. –Matt
