I have no doubt that the name of Steve Jobs will be remembered with these other great American entrepreneurs and innovators. He created so much. Inventions. Innovations. Shareholder Wealth. And Jobs. Many Jobs. He will be missed.
If you would like a little more insight about Steve Jobs I recommend his Commencement Address at Stanford University on June 12, 2005. There are valuable life lessons for anyone in his words.
Jobs was adopted. The original adoptive parents backed out of their offer to adopt him because they decided they wanted a girl. Another couple stepped up but neither were college graduates. In fact, his adopted father had not even graduated from college.
He went to Reed College but dropped out after six months because he thought he was wasting the lifetime savings of his working class parents. After he dropped out he just showed up at classes where his interest and curiosity took him. Here is how he described how that experience helped him connect the dots later in his career.
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.
He started Apple in his parents garage when he was 20 and had created a $2 billion company by the age of 30. Of course, ended up gettinww fired from the company he created. He started two other companies, NeXT and Pixar Studios, and ultimately ended back at Apple when it purchased NeXT. Of course, Pixar revolutionized the animated feature film industry. He also met his wife during this period.
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.
He talked about his illness and possible 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.
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.
Steve Jobs, thank you for having a strong inner voice and the courage to follow your heart and intuition. You will be missed. We need more Jobs.
To understand what Steve Jobs did after returning to Apple in 1997 see my blog post, "The Mall, Main Street and Wall Street."
No comments:
Post a Comment