WISDOM OF STEVE JOBS

This is an edited text of the Commencent address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer for Standford University graduates on June 12, 2005.

“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish”

I dropped out of 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?.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. :

I was attending Reed College at that time which 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.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. 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 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.

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.

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.

GENIUS AND RIGHT BRAIN

An insight into a genius’ mind

Since the dawn of civilization, mankind have shrived to understand and increase the power of the mind. Geniuses like Mozart, Einstein and Da Vinci have amazed and baffled mankind. Are they simply blessed with divine talents or do they possess some secret knowledge?

The workings of the brain and how it processes information has always intrigued scientists and specialists. To gain an insight into that process, a group of specialists at a University in Japan invited the famous Japanese International Chess player Mr Yoshiharu Habu to conduct an interesting experiment.He is the undisputed champion of Shogi (a complex game which is the Japanese equivalent of chess),and a widely acclaimed genius and a top celebrity in Japan.

In this experiment, the specialists used an electroencephalograph, a special kind of equipment that monitors brainwave activity, which would indicate the part of the brain that is used when performing certain tasks and can be observed on a computer monitor. Usually, when playing the game of chess, a normal person would think with his left brain using logic to plan his next few moves. But in the case of Mr Habu, the specialists made an amazing discovery that showed other wise.

Mr Habu’s brainwave graph, on the contrary, showed that he had used his right brain most of the time before eventually switching to his left brain just before he made his move. Upon further investigations using the electroencephalograph, the specialists finally determined that Ms Habu had first used the right brain’s cognitive images and spatial orientation to think and plan, and subsequently switched to the left brain for logical linguistic confirmation before making his move on the chess board.

This important discovery led the specialists to carry out further studies and experimentation with a wider selection of gifted individuals, and the results were astounding. It has been shown that, as in Mr Habu’s case, the cognitive process for most gifted persons is in fact right brain oriented. They tend to utilize the right brain’s unique spatial awareness and mental images to think and create, while the normal person uses the left brain to process information in a logical and sequential manner.

Interestingly, Yoshiharu Habu’s remark seemed to concur with the findings, as he said, ” Most chess players’ vision seems to be darting around the chess board while studying the various moves…. but for me, I would just take a glance focusing on the center of the board, and all the possible moves would just materialize in my head where I plan my advances…. the accuracy is almost 100%.” Amazing indeed, these geniuses simply have the ability to think out of the box by utilizing the vast untapped potential of the right brain to combine with the skills of the left. Unfortunately, most of us go through life without even touching the immense power that is already in us!