"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."
"Just over two centuries ago, in 1805, it took news of the Battle of Trafalgar over a fortnight to reach London from the Mediterranean. The fact that, in 2011, the speed with which the news of Steve Jobs's death circled the globe and reached millions could be measured in seconds is a profound testimony to the connective power of the new world that he helped to create." ~ Alastair Roberts
Now I realise why this news is so sad to me. You see, I watched that speech at a time when I didn't know what to do with my life and career. He's the one who inspired me to finally quit my job and do the "foolish" thing. It's not about the products he created, it's the person he was.
I just re-watched that speech and it was enough to make me realize I'm not foolish enough. Jobs lived more than many people who reach age 70 because of this foolishness.
What need have I to fear--so soon to die?
Let me work on, not watch and wait in dread:
What will it matter, when that I am dead
That they bore hate or love that near me lie?
'Tis but a lifetime, and the end is nigh
At best or worst. Let me lift up my head
And firmly, as with inner courage, tread
Mine own appointed way on mandates high.
Pain could but bring from all its evil store,
The close of pain: hate's venom could but kill;
Repulse, defeat, desertion, could no more,
Let me have lived my life, not cowered until
The unhindered and unchastened hour was here.
So soon--what is there now for me to fear?
When I heard that commencement speech he gave, I just got the idea that he sincerely meant everything that he said. In a way that someone would when they were talking to you one on one. He had lived everything that he talked about.
And that speech is a big reason that I have made the leap into doing something on my own.
Me, although it's my parents basement and not a garage. And I have the Gandhi poster framed, which I snagged when my school considered disposing those posters ...
Me. Right this moment, I'm in my parents house, where our little startup has moved (temporarily!) to create our MVP.
When I was a kid, my mother went back to college to finish the degree she'd abandoned when she got married. She decided to study computer science. This was my first exposure to boolean algebra, and made me want a computer. The Apple II was relatively new and visicalc was driving sales of it, and I wanted an Apple II so bad that I vowed that, if we couldn't afford one, by golly I was going to make one! I started learning electronics, I started learning circuit design, I followed a series of articles in Byte Magazine by Steve Ciarcia titled "build your own computer". I built my own computer. I laid out the PCB, and manufactured it, I stocked it, I designed a video card (using discrete chips, not one of the "video cards in a chip" choices that came out later.)
But pretty quickly, I realized that I needed to learn how to program it. I needed to learn assembly and to build an operating system, and so I put the computer hardware project on hold and started learning software.
When I went to college, I wanted to study EE (still in the hardware mode) but pretty soon ended up getting a job as a programmer for a small company. I liked the small company atmosphere, and that got me hooked on startups. So, I started my career (dropped out of college, like Steve) and worked for a bunch of startups so that I'd know what I needed to know before starting my own.
Along the way, I started dozens of small businesses. I read everything Guy Kawasaki published. I followed Apple news religiously, even in the days prior to the internet. I eventually was able to afford a Macintosh and have been using them for about 20 years now. I decided that design was important because I came to understand the Mac UI was designed. I read every crappy, money-grubbing, two-bit biography of Steve Jobs I could get my hands on.
I've never considered him to be a religious figure. I'm not a cultist. I don't worship him. In fact, as was recently revealed by Wozniak, Jobs was an admirer of Atlas Shrugged, as am I. Worship is the rejection of rationality, and rationality is what we both strived for.
As I work to build a brand new company now, having just filed the incorporation papers, I am conscious of the lessons Steve Jobs taught me.
They are not that you should make things pretty, or that marketing is more important than substance... quite the opposite.
Steve Jobs was a man of integrity. In this day and age, that is so very rare.
Apple is a company that has always done its best to do right by its customers, even when its customers didn't know what the right thing was. (Eg: nobody needed a GUI, a laser printer, built in networking, 72dpi, or 300+ dpi displays, the iPad, or a touch interface, or any of hundreds of other things that didn't exit on the market before Apple invented them.)
Steve Jobs has often been characterized as mean tempered, but I think that he is a kind person. All of the direct experiences I've had with him, he was vey kind. What other thing can it be than kindness that would drive someone to sacrifice nearly everything else in order to make a better experience for customers? The "missing" features on Apple products, especially in the 1.0 versions, are legion.
I think I'm feeling great pain right now, not because I'm an acolyte in the cult of mac, but because one of the few legitimate heroes of our age has died.
Steve Jobs was an unapologetic capitalist. He recognized that by making great products, he'd improve people's lives, and as a result, he'd improve his own.
He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003. The prognosis is not good there, and so he knew he had limited time left. At that point he was a multi-millionaire if not already a billionaire.
How did he spend the last 8 years of his life? Enjoying himself? No. He drove himself and Apple to build the next generation of the personal computer. The iPad is as significant as the Apple II.
When he was a kid, Steve Jobs gave us the personal computer. When he was dying, he gave us the next generation of computing.
I can think of nothing more heroic, than the positive impact on billions of people that will have...
... and what more could someone who is starting a company aspire to?
>> How did he spend the last 8 years of his life? Enjoying himself? No. He drove himself and Apple to build the next generation of the personal computer.
I believe it was in his commencement address that he said something to the effect of, there will be days when you look in the mirror and have to say, I don't want to work today. But you do anyway. But if there are enough of these days in a row, you know you need to make a change.
I've left two very well paying positions (one at a very reputable design company that designed some of the early Apple & NeXT products) in the past year because I did look in the mirror and realized they were not right for me.
You have to follow your passion, back it up with action, and everything else will fall into place.
My absolute favorite line of that entire speech is the very last, "Stay hungry. Stay foolish." I live by it and will continue to do so. What an iconic brilliant genius the world has lost.
To the very end. That's incredible and sad. I don't know him personally, but knowing his biography, the kind of person he was and the impact he has on my daily life, man... i feel like having lost a close relative. Sad... :( May he rest in peace, for he have inspired us.
This is terribly tragic and don't take anything I say after this as meaning anything other than that.
But the more I think about this the more I think this is somehow the way things were meant to be. I mean, as much as we wish it wasn't true people do get diminished by age. The dashing young actor loses a little when you see him as a 60 year old. Your memory of him gets altered in the smallest of ways.
Steve Jobs is now enshrined in the world's collective memory as the magic man in a black shirt and jeans. He'll always be that now. I'd certainly trade his legend for a few more years of his life but at the same time the world needs legendary figures.
Would it have been better if Abraham Lincoln had been around for two terms? Yes. But would he have inspired generations of Americans if he'd gotten mired down in the politics of reconstruction and been forced to act like "just another politician"? I doubt it.
So it's horribly sad that Steve Jobs died but the fact that he was amazing to the very end is what will make him a legend going forward.
There's something to be said for retiring at the right time, but no, I don't think Steve Jobs' legacy would have been robbed of anything if he'd lived to enjoy thirty years of comfortable retirement.
Even dashing young actors aren't diminished by age. If Sean Connery had died young he would have robbed us of some great roles. And if Paul Newman had died young he would have robbed us of some tasty salad dressing.
June 12th 2005 Stanford commencement speech
Text: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc