Steve Jobs Commencement speech at Stanford

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, 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, 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.

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 returned 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 it's 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 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.

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."

Ran-dums

Heard the Doritos inventor died today. I made a few jokes. Some funny; some corny. But after the jokes all I kept thinking about was if he liked the quirky/edgy Superbowl ads that Doritos did. isn't that weird? I wondered what he thought about them. Did he think they were too edgy? What would have been his idea of a great commercial? I wonder if Jay Leno will do something tonight that is touching about the Doritos maker or Doritos. I heard that when they cremated him that afterward the family then wiped his leftover dust on their shirt. Don't know if that's true, but I heard it.

I don't have a lot of time as I'm going out tonight to see Ralphie May. Great comedian. But I wanted to make sure I document a couple of things. I've already wasted too much time on Doritos so I'll attack the other thing with Jason Bourne like fervor.
I was on a plane last Thursday. About midway through the flight, I feel a wee bit of nausea. I asked the flight attendant if she could bring me some more water which she quickly does as I look like someone who's had their blood sucked out by Dracula (Pasty) only I was allergic to his spit (facial swelling).
Now I don't know if you know this, but on many of the regional flights they have quit carrying the Barf bags. My nausea has now elevated to a point that I care very much about this little fact. I am now negotiating internally about where to hurl. Will it "fit" in the seat back compartment? Can't I just vomit into my large mouth, swallow it and be fine? What about the lap of the old gentleman next to me? my laptop case? I do need a new one. but no. I look in the seat back compartment and lo and behold there is a barf bag. a puke parcel. a yawning in Technicolor receiver. you get the point.
I start to profusely sweat. like an Eskimo in a sauna. I can feel whatever I ate in the late 90's bubbling. My shirt is wet with perspiration. I can longer hold it. I have to puke aboard this 737.
I bring the bag to my face and hurl once. And it wasn't that kind of vomit that feels like you ate a bunch of stickers or grass burrs. It just tasted like sadness and despair.
all is better. Sweating stops.
I stay hovered above the bag. The old gentleman next to me starts to pat my back like I'm six. I'm sure if I would've had hair, he would have held it back for me. I think he would have said, "Now let it all out." or "it's going to be OK." like an old(er) Anthony Hopkins. What I definitely heard him say after that was, "Would you like for me to go get you a cold rag or something?"

Ally Grace's First day in the 1st Grade

Whoopee Cushion

I usually don't blog about pilots or stewardess' anymore for a couple of reasons. 1, it may be a luck thing which is odd since I don't believe in luck. And 2, the blogs about airline personnel can get pretty rude pretty quick. It’s similar to the old adage about no news is good news. If I don't blog about them it's usually because I've had some good experiences, but nobody wants to read a blog about how the really hot stewardess gave me two bottles of scotch for free and poured them while sitting on my lap laughing the whole time at every joke I made. Everybody (the hordes of thousands) want to read about the travel train-wrecks.
I don't want to disappoint you but this one is more of an obvious humorous observation.
Here goes:
My head flight attendant, Sally is so pale I would understand why she only works red eyes like the one I'm on. I mean she is so pale if you look real hard you can see her heart beating. Like Edward Cullen's aunt kind of pale. I raised my window shade so I could read some paperwork, and she made what sounded like a cat's hiss. Not to be too mean, but I think she may drink blood for sustenance. The 2nd flight attendant is Sue who is about 45 or so and is ridiculously cross eyed. Like so cross eyed that when she put on the air mask it looked like she was staring intensely at the center of it. There ought to be a couple of litmus tests one ought to take or a few questions a person should ask themselves before taking on a career that puts you in front of people every day. One question would be, “Am I so cross eyed that I could be an extra on an Optomologists commercial fixing such terrible ailments?”. Number 2 would be “If the areola on my breasts are the same width as a big gulp cup or let's say a deflated whoopee cushion, I probably shouldn't wear white shirts with thin bras. Oh and I'm really really cross eyed.”
Lastly I would be remiss if I didn't mention Pablo. Pablo has squinty eyes. Like there really may be something to this red eye thing. Anyway squinty eyed Pablo first caught my attention because he was scratching his forehead and crotch at the same time, like he was in a weird contest like the patting the head, rubbing the tummy thing we all used to do. Squinty eyed Pablo is about 55 and has a few things about him that I thought you would like to know about. You know each spring when you walk outside and see those giant black furry fuzzy catepillers on the sidewalk, just taking their sweet time to get across? Yeah well Pablo has those as eyebrows. Longest I’ve ever seen. I wanted to tell him during the flight, “I must photograph you. The world must know about your eyebrows.” I didn’t. I’m just writing about him. They were an inch at least from top to bottom, as wide as his eye socket, and they went two inches away from his brow. They also kinda flipped up at the end, like they were going to catch something falling off his forehead. Also he has a lisp. Most male flight attendants do. I fly so much I almoth do. Almoth. Thee what I mean? Anyway, Lisps either get worse with age, or Pablo hath a “Speath Impediment”.
Have a great Weekend! -_-

Less Teeth than Fangers

It’s Been a while. Did you Miss me? What did you do with your time in my absence? Hmm? By the way I’ve lost so much weight that I can imitate that guy from Silence of the Lambs by tucking the Junk and pushing the Man-Teats together. That’s good right? Also my chin doesn’t look like its pregnant with a litter of kittens, which is also a positive. Been traveling a bit more than I’ve done lately with the new company. That’s because what I’m selling, ain’t nobody buying. Bosses have been getting a little impatient I think. Need to land a biggun. Do any of you know of a biggun I can land? That’s sales talk for, “OH PLEASE GOD, SOMEBODY HELP ME LAND AN ACCOUNT! I DON’T WANNA SELL MY HOUSE BECAUSE I HAVEN’T MADE A SALE!”, only less needy.

Ok. Here’s something less depressing than me throwing away a perfectly good career:
Are you ready? Ok. Here goes:
• The thing you need to bear in mind when discussing the incredibly intricate psychological plotting in Black Swan is that I'll never see it.

• You know what makes me have to pee like a racehorse? Racehorse drinks. Just kidding. Four beers.

• Have you noticed that God only “copilots” vehicles that are barely running?

Until next time.

;)

tortuous interference

This is my small lil blog from Dallas Love airport.

Just saw (and heard) a black guy from Europe. Think he asked if Crumpets were served on board.
Just saw Amy Whinehouse.
Just saw an Italian check in to go to Amarillo. (He was speaking all "Italianish".
Just saw a lady from the trailer park with Double F sized boobies in a low cut blouse with a tatoo of a butterfly. Poor lil butterfly looked like he was being stretched in one of those medievil torture machines. Sadface.
Just saw a suspicious looking High Spanick. I think he's smuggling drugs or Illegal aliens in that backback. It's huge! (Yes. Both of them.)
Just saw a beautiful woman with what looked like a BB on her face. Turns out it's a piercing. ewww. Less beautiful now.
Just saw the cutest lil business man. like a four foot tall lawyer. Precious. Bet he's got a cute lil lisp when he tells you about "tortuous interference".
This just in: not Amy WhineHouse. Just a bag of Garbage with a tooth on it.

How close? Varicose.

If you see your friend Jack on the airplane you are boarding, don't tell him "Hi".
It makes the flight attendant very nervous.

I'm on a plane and I think I'm sitting next to the guy from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" (Jeff Spicoli). With each bump it's "Whoa." or "Wow." that and he wreaks of burnt rope. I'm waiting for the question, in a Keanu Reeves accent, "Dude, how serious do you think they are about that whole (he uses the bunny ear fingers) " no smoking" thing?" I'd tell him, "I think it's ok as long as you do it in the lavatory. You have to tamper with the smoke alarm first, then you are good to go, Brah."

I'm on my way to New York for a board meeting. I'm Excited as I am being pitched as "the upside". Better that I guess than being pitched as "the one thing that held us back".
For those of you wondering, the new job is going great. I'm getting the opportunity to work with several good friends while learning a lot of new things. I'm also able to work out now which is helping me lose some weight. (I used to have to butter my hips to sit in a Continental airline seat. Now I'm just mildly uncomfortable.) With the combination of a very stressful job and some rather nasty side effects from some medication I was put on a few months ago, I needed to make a few big decisions; breast reduction or Manzeer? Quit eating like I was getting paid ala Kobayashi or do more than mental exercises.
After leaving my former company I have lost about 40 lbs. gone down 4 comfortable pants sizes. (I was going to put 5 sizes but that one pair of pants makes me feel like a eunuch). I'm down three shirt sizes and I no longer look like a bald Meatloaf from Fight Club. I'm still making people laugh only now it's in person and not in a blog and it's not quite as self deprecating, as long as you don't count the pooping bit I did the other day because of the digestion of hundreds of grams of protein powder. Felt like I was giving birth. Awful. I may be the only person in Texas with Varicose veins on his poop shoot from pushing like an unwed mother with a wooden spoon in her mouth like that one episode of Little House on the Prairie.
Seen it? It was like she was pushing out the baby sideways. I'm going to go. Just wanted you to know I'm still alive and well.
I'm going to leave you with this one little nugget of wisdom inspired by current events: Calling Egyptians, who are alive, Mummies, is racist.
;)