Do what you
love
'You've got to find what you
love,' Jobs says
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.
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.
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.
| Authors Details:
This is the text of the Commencement address
by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation
Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005. |
|
