Steve Jobs

This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
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.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
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.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
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.
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.
Thank you all very much.

Last night while monitoring the radar, I watched a series of videos of an interview of Jobs and Gates together.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5Z7eal4uXI



Interesting guys.

from the agcenter.com writer...
CHANGING OUR LIVES

It was a little eerie reading Steve Jobs obituary on a iPad Wednesday night. I didn't have to wait until the print edition of the NY Times was delivered the next day. It simply updated on my tablet along with all my magazines and other newspapers and books. All of my reading material can be found on one 1/4 inch device creating an easy and convenient storage device. The iPad didn't even come with instructions or a user manual. Anyone smart enough to read could figure out how to work it.

The iPad followed the iPhone, another device that has changed our lives -- the smart phone. Cowboys have never been friendly with computers. There is a gulf of misunderstanding and suspicion between life on the prairie and a digital world. The smart phone bridges that gap. Text messages allow immediate connectivity to anyone carrying a phone and land lines are becoming obsolete and unnecessary. The smart phone delivers multiple other benefits including GPS positioning, weather alerts and radar -- all valuable contributions to life on the range.

Steve Jobs didn't design these devices based upon consumer surveys to find out what they want. He designed the devices with a vision for what people need. He showed us the functionality and convenience then let us find out we could not live without them. They have become a fixture in many lives and changed from being a luxury to a necessity.

The future will connect these mobile devices in practical ways to every facet of our personal and business lives. Opening the iPad to a trade screen, day or night, and viewing the marketbook on cattle or corn futures might for some be a convenience but for others is a necessity. That is not in the future-- it is now. Steve Jobs didn't design the trading platform at the CME but he brought it to our lives 24/7.

Mobile devices and networks require design engineers. They put together the functionality. It is rare that the world sees someone who has the special unique ability to combine the talent of an engineer with the vision of how a device interfaces intuitively with our daily lives. Steve Jobs had that combination along with the obsessive and compulsive drive to "get it right" and he did.

"If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said, a faster horse." Henry Ford, often quoted by Steve Jobs.

This might not be as interesting as the Dalai Lama and such, but it is interesting to me. I do not know the guy who penned this but the most telling part is toward the end where Steve wants to leave a written record of who he was so that his kids could know him.


Note from Doug on the Death of Steve Jobs


http://www.visionforum.com/news/blogs/doug/

As a side note the ''vision forum'' website sort of creeps me out. I know someone that got caught up in the ''Quiver Full'' movement that promotes home schooling, patriarchy, etc. It ended up pretty ugly with eight kids , a divorce, and the ''patriarch'' doing six months in jail for not being able to keep up with child support payments. While much of what is promoted sounds wonderful there can be a very dark side to people who only see things in black and white.

What?



I am Black and white thinking and a home schooling Patriarch. Does that creep you out?

Keystone wrote:

What?



I am Black and white thinking and a home schooling Patriarch. Does that creep you out?

There are many kids home taught here in Nevada. There are ranches 30-50 miles from town or more and the vast majority of the home schooled kids are very bright and become highly successful. I have seen very few divorce's that work very well for anyone involved. One family that was home schooled has a Dr, a Lawyer and a business major. It is what your are taught at home that makes us what we are every time.

There can be good reasons for home schooling. Mind control is not one of them.

Is mind control better tought in larger groups by a third party or in terms of what is more socially acceptable?

I am terrified of the future, with what I deal with as the raw material being educated at our school. There is no ability to reason. There is no work ethic. There is no character, no problem solving skills. apparently their skill lies in being able to send a text message to someone sitting beside them and killing electronic images on a video screen.
The best kids I got are Mexican kids that are the first generation immigrants. Their parents can't speak a word of English, but the kids talk like an American, and translate to Mom and Dad at the conferences. They are achievers in class, and are respectful. Remind me of the kids I started with in 1990. They will be paying the taxes to support the anglo kids living in Mom's basement in 20 years.

In my home, people have names not the labels they were being tought in school.

I know people that home school, also people that choose to sent their kids to parochial schools. Hell our little school district is sandwiched between two much larger ones and there is a waiting list of kids that want to come to what is seen as a better learning environment. The particular ''movement'' I was talking about often uses home schooling to indoctrinate their kids into certain beliefs that include treating women as something less then your cows. They don't believe in family planning or ANY form of birth control. Most people don't keep their bulls in year around but the followers of this cult believe that God alone is in control of such matters and husbands the absolute authority. When I figured out what my friend had gotten involved in I spent a good deal of time researching the ''Quiver Full'' movement and there were some very scary stories surrounding this cult. All this is attempted to be covered up by a cloak of religious justification. At some point some women have the ''Oh shit what am I doing moment,'' unfortunately it sometimes comes after having double digit children. You wonder how many more see no way out because they have no way to support large numbers of children.

Religious beliefs home schooling, patriarchy, etc don't have a damn thing to do with causing any problem you have pointed out.



I AM working to indoctrinate into my children beliefs that I hold deeply which society beats down every day. My grandfather quit school at 14 to support his family. Now it is unacceptable for children to work, and they KNOW IT. Was my great grandfather a deadbeat because his children quit school to support their parents, brothers, and sisters? I doubt it ever entered my grandmothers mind that she was under the firm grasp of oppressive patriarchial control and deprived of intelligent family planning counseling. As far as I know, Pride and love were what drove the household not forced sacrifice, oppression, ...



What could the highly educated anticapitalist scum protesting "I deserve it" crowd do with the attitude of the pioneers? Better yet, would they even be there if a strong patriarchial pioneer type had taken them behind the barn and had a talk with them about proper attitude and the application of the abilities the lord bestowed upon them?





Religious beliefs home schooling, patriarchy, etc, is all about personal responsibility and what you have pointed out is a lack of personal responsibility.

I hope were are talking about semantics here Kent. There is a difference between trying to instill into your children those things often lacking in public schools (and society in general) and the other extreme end of the spectrum. One of the things I came across in researching this subject was a discussion by a Pastor on his experience with and the potential for abuse in an EXTREME patriarchal setting. One which includes such things as arranged weddings for daughters.

Over the years I have met women who were better with and more knowledgeable then their husbands when it came to cattle. To the point of BSing with the husband while the wife picked out bulls. I have also known women that were as good as or better hands then most men. My neighbors wife works as a loan officer in a bank and ropes most nights and is WAY better at it then most men. Then there are the wives that took over ranches when their husbands were disabled or deceased. Again we are talking about a belief system where none of these things would even be considered let alone possible.

These posts have gotten a little off topic, but interestingly, arranged marriages are much more successful than the current American methods. I was suprised when I heard this, but when I looked it up some years ago, the divorce rate for arranged marriages was less than 2% vs greater than 50% for Americans. The happiness/contentment scores of these marriages were also higher. I suspect these parents look for traits that will be conducive for long term marriage + I am sure that these societies place more importance on intact family units (whether matriarchal or patriarchal). Parents also probably don't get distracted by good looks, triple E's or whatever else gets in the way of good judgment, but look for sustainable traits.

Angus 62 wrote:

As a side note the ''vision forum'' website sort of creeps me out. I know someone that got caught up in the ''Quiver Full'' movement that promotes home schooling, patriarchy, etc. It ended up pretty ugly with eight kids , a divorce, and the ''patriarch'' doing six months in jail for not being able to keep up with child support payments. While much of what is promoted sounds wonderful there can be a very dark side to people who only see things in black and white.

your dialogue sounds like you are talking about public schools.

definitely a dark side to them.

lots of "patriarch's" there too not keeping up with child payments, having sex with kids.

your analogy is anecdotal based and doesn't' provide any real insight or provide any real contrast between the two systems as they both have the same problems.

for some reason, people hate choice or freedom and label it as dark.

Angus 62 wrote:

I hope were are talking about semantics here Kent. There is a difference between trying to instill into your children those things often lacking in public schools (and society in general) and the other extreme end of the spectrum. One of the things I came across in researching this subject was a discussion by a Pastor on his experience with and the potential for abuse in an EXTREME patriarchal setting. One which includes such things as arranged weddings for daughters.

Over the years I have met women who were better with and more knowledgeable then their husbands when it came to cattle. To the point of BSing with the husband while the wife picked out bulls. I have also known women that were as good as or better hands then most men. My neighbors wife works as a loan officer in a bank and ropes most nights and is WAY better at it then most men. Then there are the wives that took over ranches when their husbands were disabled or deceased. Again we are talking about a belief system where none of these things would even be considered let alone possible.

love the stats, std deviation, CV. can your wife start posting? her posts are probably better than yours and contain more knowledge and data analysis.

I guess I have found Larson.

Angus 62 wrote:

I hope were are talking about semantics here Kent. There is a difference between trying to instill into your children those things often lacking in public schools (and society in general) and the other extreme end of the spectrum. One of the things I came across in researching this subject was a discussion by a Pastor on his experience with and the potential for abuse in an EXTREME patriarchal setting. One which includes such things as arranged weddings for daughters.

Over the years I have met women who were better with and more knowledgeable then their husbands when it came to cattle. To the point of BSing with the husband while the wife picked out bulls. I have also known women that were as good as or better hands then most men. My neighbors wife works as a loan officer in a bank and ropes most nights and is WAY better at it then most men. Then there are the wives that took over ranches when their husbands were disabled or deceased. Again we are talking about a belief system where none of these things would even be considered let alone possible.

Steve Jobs' impact on your life cannot be underestimated. His innovations have likely touched nearly every aspect -- computers, movies, music and mobile. As a communications coach, I learned from Jobs that a presentation can, indeed, inspire. For entrepreneurs, Jobs' greatest legacy is the set of principles that drove his success.

Over the years, I've become a student of sorts of Jobs' career and life. Here's my take on the rules and values underpinning his success. Any of us can adopt them to unleash our "inner Steve Jobs."

1. Do what you love. Jobs once said, "People with passion can change the world for the better." Asked about the advice he would offer would-be entrepreneurs, he said, "I'd get a job as a busboy or something until I figured out what I was really passionate about." That's how much it meant to him. Passion is everything.

2. Put a dent in the universe. Jobs believed in the power of vision. He once asked then-Pepsi President, John Sculley, "Do you want to spend your life selling sugar water or do you want to change the world?" Don't lose sight of the big vision.

3. Make connections. Jobs once said creativity is connecting things. He meant that people with a broad set of life experiences can often see things that others miss. He took calligraphy classes that didn't have any practical use in his life -- until he built the Macintosh. Jobs traveled to India and Asia. He studied design and hospitality. Don't live in a bubble. Connect ideas from different fields.

4. Say no to 1,000 things. Jobs was as proud of what Apple chose not to do as he was of what Apple did. When he returned in Apple in 1997, he took a company with 350 products and reduced them to 10 products in a two-year period. Why? So he could put the "A-Team" on each product. What are you saying "no" to?

5. Create insanely different experiences. Jobs also sought innovation in the customer-service experience. When he first came up with the concept for the Apple Stores, he said they would be different because instead of just moving boxes, the stores would enrich lives. Everything about the experience you have when you walk into an Apple store is intended to enrich your life and to create an emotional connection between you and the Apple brand. What are you doing to enrich the lives of your customers?

6. Master the message. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can't communicate your ideas, it doesn't matter. Jobs was the world's greatest corporate storyteller. Instead of simply delivering a presentation like most people do, he informed, he educated, he inspired and he entertained, all in one presentation.

7. Sell dreams, not products. Jobs captured our imagination because he really understood his customer. He knew that tablets would not capture our imaginations if they were too complicated. The result? One button on the front of an iPad. It's so simple, a 2-year-old can use it. Your customers don't care about your product. They care about themselves, their hopes, their ambitions. Jobs taught us that if you help your customers reach their dreams, you'll win them over.

There's one story that I think sums up Jobs' career at Apple. An executive who had the job of reinventing the Disney Store once called up Jobs and asked for advice. His counsel? Dream bigger. I think that's the best advice he could leave us with. See genius in your craziness, believe in yourself, believe in your vision, and be constantly prepared to defend those ideas.

Carmine Gallo is a communications coach, a popular keynote speaker and author of several books including The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs and The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs. His latest is The Power of Foursquare (McGraw-Hill, 2011).