Steve Jobs Speech to Graduates 6/26/06

Steve Jobs delivered this speech to the graduates of Stanford
University this  week.  Drawing from some of the most pivotal points in
his life, Steve
> Jobs, chief executive officer and co-founder of Apple Computer and of
> Pixar Animation Studios, urged graduates to pursue their dreams and
> see the opportunities in life's setbacks -including death itself.)
>
> "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 5cents
> 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.
>
> 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." - Steve Jobs - June 2005
>