TECHNOHOLIC
Note: This is an excerpt of an
incredibly inspiring speech by
Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple and
Pixar) delivered to graduates of
Stanford University 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, its 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 retuned 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 its 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.
[READ CAREFULLY]
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 other’s 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.