Speech by Stephen Jobs to Stanford University graduates.

Original author: Steve Jobs
  • Transfer
I am honored to be among you today, graduates of one of the best universities in the world. I myself have not received a higher education. In truth, today's event was for me the moment when I was most close to graduation. Today I will tell you three stories from my life. That's all. Only three stories.

The first is about the dots and lines between them.
I dropped out of Reed College after studying for only six months, but then I spent 18 months hanging around the university as a former student until I decided to leave completely. Why did I drop out then?

It all started before I was born. My biological mother was a young unmarried graduate student who decided to give me up for adoption. She knew very well that college graduates and people with higher education must adopt me, and everything was prepared so that right after birth I would be accepted into the family of one lawyer. However, when I was born, this couple suddenly realized that they wanted a girl. Therefore, in the house of my future parents, who were also waiting in line for adoption, a call rang in the middle of the night, and the voice of an employee from the agency asked: “We have an unexpected boy. Do you want to adopt him? ” “Of course,” they answered. But my biological mother, having learned that my future adoptive mother had not graduated from the university, and that her father did not even have a diploma of graduation, refused to sign the papers.

So, after 17 years, I went to college. But I humbly chose an educational institution, the study at which was almost as expensive as at Stanford University, so all the savings of my hardworking parents went to pay for my studies. After studying for 6 months, I never saw any benefit in this. I did not understand what to do with my life, and it was completely incomprehensible to me how the college would help me figure this out. At the same time, I spent the money that my parents accumulated over their entire lives. In the end, I decided to drop out of college in the expectation that everything would work out somehow. Then I was very scared, but now I understand that this was one of the best decisions in my life. From the moment I officially ceased to be a student, I could no longer attend courses that were unattractive to me and attend only those classes

Now, when I remember that time, it does not look romantic at all. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I had to sleep with friends on the floor. I handed over 5 cents cola bottles to buy food, and every Sunday I walked 7 miles to eat normally at least once a week in a Hare Krishna temple. And yet I liked it. Much of what I, thanks to my curiosity and intuition, learned during my “ex-student days”, later turned out to be priceless for me. Here is one example.

At that time, probably the best calligraphy training course in the country was taught at Reed College. Every announcement on campus, every sticker on a desk drawer was handwritten in beautiful handwriting. Since I was no longer a student and I did not need to take ordinary subjects, I decided to study calligraphy to write as well as people who made all these beautiful signs. I learned all about Serif and Sans Serif fonts, about the art of varying the distance between different letter combinations, and about what makes typography a work of art. All this was so exciting and filled with such aesthetic subtlety that I consider the study of calligraphy to be one of the most remarkable events in my life.

None of what I learned then, it would seem, could have had no practical consequences for me. But 10 years later, when we created the first Macintosh computer, all of this came in handy. We put all the wisdom I studied in our car. It was the first computer to speak calligraphy. If I hadn’t stumbled upon that course in college, Mac would never have had many different types of fonts and proportional scaling. And since Windows simply copies the Mac in this regard, it is possible that none of this would have happened on any personal computer. Of course, I could not draw a line between these two events, to connect the two points on the timeline when I was studying calligraphy in college. However, after some 10 years, this connection became completely obvious to me.

So, you cannot connect time points in advance; you can see the connection between them only by looking back. You just need to believe that the dots will somehow connect in the future. You can only believe in your abilities, destiny, life, karma ... Yes, at least in something. This approach has never failed me, and it is to him that I owe all the major events in my life.

The second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky: I found what I love pretty early. Woz (Steve Wozniak) and I created Apple in my parents ’garage when I was 20 years old. We worked hard, and after 10 years, Apple grew to the size of a corporation with a turnover of $ 2 billion and a staff of 4 thousand employees. When we released our most perfect work - the Macintosh computer, I turned 30 years old. And then ... I was fired. How can I be fired from the company that I founded? Well, that happens. When Apple began to grow, we hired a person whom I considered talented enough to manage the company with me, and in the first year things went very well. But then our vision of the future began to diverge more and more, and in the end we completely diverged. When there was a gap between us, the board took its side. So,

For several months, I simply did not know what to do. It seemed to me that I had let down the entire previous generation of entrepreneurs, that I had missed the baton given to me. I even met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and apologized for how bad it turned out. This was a public defeat, so I even thought of escaping from Silicon Valley. But gradually everything began to improve again, because I still loved what I was doing. What happened at Apple has not changed this feature of my life. And I decided to start all over again.

Although at that moment I did not understand this, but the dismissal from Apple was the best event that could happen to me then. The severity of success has been replaced by the ease of a new beginning - the ease of a person who is unsure of anything. This opened for me one of the most creative periods in my life.

Over the next 5 years, I founded a new company - Next, then another one - Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who became my wife. Pixar developed, created the first ever feature film using computer animation, Toy Story, and is today one of the most successful animation studios in the world. Paradoxically, Apple bought Next, and I returned to Apple, and the technologies that we created in Next formed the basis of today's revival of our company. In addition, Lauren and I have had a wonderful family all these years.

I'm just sure that none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. The medicine was bitter, but I think the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. At such moments, do not lose faith! I am convinced that the only thing that allowed me to move on was the love of what I do. You also need to find something that you can love. This is equally true for your work, and for your loved ones. Work will fill a significant part of your life, and the only way to feel satisfied is to do what you consider to be a really good job. And the only way to do a good job is to love what you do. If you have not found this, keep looking. Do not stop. As always with regard to our heart, you will recognize it when you find it. AND, like any true love story, it will become better and better over the years. So keep looking until you find it. Do not stop.

My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read one aphorism, which sounded something like this: "If you live every day as if it was your last day, someday you will most likely be right." It impressed me that for the next 33 years I look in the mirror every morning and ask myself: “If today was the last day of my life, would I want to do what I'm going to?” And if for many days in a row I answer “no”, then I understand: something needs to be changed.

The memory that I will die soon is one of the most important tools that I used to make major decisions in my life. Indeed, almost everything - external expectations, pride, fear of resentment or fear of defeat - all this disappears in the face of death, and only that which is truly important remains. Remembering that I am going to die is the best way I know of avoiding thoughts that you can lose something. You seem to be standing without clothes. Nothing prevents you from trusting your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. An X-ray was taken at 7.30 in the morning, and a tumor in the pancreas was clearly visible in the picture. I then did not even know what the "pancreas" is. Doctors said that this is almost certainly the type of cancer that is incurable, and I have to live from 3 to 6 months. My doctor advised me to go home and put my affairs in order, which is a code word for doctors instead of "prepare for death." This means: "Within a few months, try to tell your children everything that they were going to tell them over the next 10 years." This means: "Make sure that your family transfers the inevitable as easily as possible." This means: "It's time to say goodbye."

I lived with this diagnosis all day. Later in the evening I had a biopsy, during which an endoscope was pulled through my throat, through my stomach it went inside, a needle was inserted into my pancreas, and several cells were removed from the tumor. I was anesthetized, but my wife, who was nearby, then told me that the doctors standing at the microscope began to cry for joy: it turned out to be a very rare operable form of cancer. I had surgery, and now my condition is quite satisfactory.

Then I came closer to death than ever, and I hope this experience will remain my closest meeting with her for several more decades. Having gone through this, I can tell you about her with a slightly greater degree of certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept for me.

No one wants to die. Even people seeking to go to heaven are in no hurry to go there. Nevertheless, death awaits us all. No one has escaped her. This is as it should be, since death is perhaps the best invention of life. It serves as the main engine of change for life. She cleans everything old, making way for the new. Now the new is you, but one day, pretty soon, you yourself will become old, and you too will have to clear the way. Sorry for the drama, but it is.

Your time is limited, so do not waste it, living someone else's life. Do not fall under the power of dogma - it is the same as living under the direction of someone else. Don't let other people's noise drown out your own inner voice. And, most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They in some incomprehensible way already know who exactly you really want to become. Everything else is much less important.

During my youth there was an amazing book series called The Whole Earth Catalog. The volumes included in it became one of the main books for our generation. It was created by a man named Stewart Brand in Menlo Park, not far from here. It was in the late 60s, before personal computers and desktop publishing systems, so the books were made using typewriters, scissors and Polaroid cameras. It was a kind of paper-bound Google, 35 years before the real Google was created. There were a lot of romance and excellent ideas.

Stuart and his team made several issues of the Catalog, and when they felt that the series had exhausted itself, the final release came out. This happened in the mid-70s, and I was as old as you are now. On the cover of the book was a photograph of a morning country road, and below it were the words: “Stay hungry. Remain stupid. " This was their farewell message. Stay hungry. Stay stupid. I always wanted this for myself. And now, when you graduate from the university to start all over again, I wish you:

Stay hungry. Stay stupid.

Many thanks.
PS - I was very surprised when I did not find this wonderful performance on Habré. So very many have not read it yet.
The translation is taken from here .
The original speech is here .

Also popular now: