Jobs: Three stories in my life

This article is a speech by Jobs at the Stanford University graduation ceremony.

Today, I want to tell you three stories in my life. It’s not a big event, just three short stories.

The first story is about stringing up the bits and pieces of life.

I left school at Reed University for six months, but I still left as an auditor for 18 months. Why should I drop out of school?

The story begins before I was born. My biological mother was a young unmarried mother. At that time, she was still a graduate student at a university, so she decided to give me to others for adoption. She insisted that I should be adopted by a couple who had studied at a university, so when I was born, she was ready for me to be adopted by a lawyer and his wife. But at the last minute, the couple changed their mind and decided to adopt a girl.

The other couple on the waiting list, my adoptive parents, got a call at midnight one day: "There is an uninvited baby boy. Do you want to adopt?" They replied: "Of course I think." Afterwards, my biological mother discovered that my foster mother did not graduate from college at all, and my adoptive father did not even graduate from high school, so she refused to sign the final adoption file. Until a few months later, my adoptive parents promised to When I was sent to the university, her attitude changed.

After 17 years, I was really in college. But because of my ignorance, I chose a university that was as expensive as Stanford. My parents were working class and they all gave me all the money to support my studies. After 6 months, I found myself completely unaware of what it would be like to read this. At that time, my life was aimless, and I didn't know how the university could help me. In order to study, I spent my life's savings, so I decided to drop out. I believe that there must be a road ahead of the car. I was very scared when I made this decision, but now I look back, this is one of the most correct decisions I have made in my life. From the moment I dropped out of school, I no longer have to go to the compulsory courses that I have no interest in. I started to listen to subjects that seemed to be more interesting.

This thing is not romantic at all. Because I don't have my own dormitory, I can only sleep on the floor of my friend's room; the deposit of the Coke bottle is 5 cents. I will return the bottle and use the deposit to buy it. On every Sunday night, I will walk 7 Miles through the city, to a big meal at the HareKrishna Church, I like the food there. What I did with curiosity and intuition proved that most of them were extremely precious experiences.

Let me give you an example: At that time, Reed University provided the best calligraphy education in the United States. Every poster on the entire campus, the labels on each drawer, are beautiful handwriting. Since I had already dropped out of school, I didn't have to go to those regular courses, so I chose a calligraphy class and wanted to learn how to write beautiful words. In this class, I learned about various serifs and sans serif fonts, how to change the word spacing between different font combinations, and how to make beautiful layouts. It is a subtlety of beauty, history and art that science can never capture. I find this too interesting.

At the time, I didn't even think about the practical value of this knowledge in my life; but 10 years later, when we designed the first Macintosh computer, these things came in handy. I designed them all into the Mac, the first computer that can be used to print out good-looking layouts. If I didn't attend this course at the university, the Mac wouldn't offer a variety of fonts and equally spaced fonts.

Since the Windows system copied the Mac, all personal computers have these things. If I don't drop out of school, I won't go to the calligraphy class, and today's personal computer probably won't have excellent layout features. Of course, when I was in college, it was impossible to have a foresight to string together the bits and pieces of life; but after 10 years, I looked back and the trajectory of life became very clear.

Once again, you can't connect the dots of life with anticipation; only when you look back, you will find the connection between these bits and pieces. So, you have to be convinced that what you are going through now will be connected in your future life. You have to believe in something, your intuition, your destiny, your life, your karma... It is this belief that makes me not lose hope, it makes my life different.

My second story is about love and loss.

I am fortunate to know what I love to do when I am young. When I was 20, I started Apple Computer with Watts in my parents' garage. We worked hard and it took only 10 years for Apple to expand from two guys in the garage to a company with 4,000 employees worth $2 billion. In the year before, we just launched our best Macintosh computer, which I just passed. Then I was fired.

How can a person be dismissed by the company he founded? Let's just say, with the growth of Apple, we invited a guy who thought it was very capable to manage this company with me. In the first year or so, he did a good job, but later, we have a bright future for the company. There was a disagreement, and there was a contradiction between us. Since the company's board of directors stood on his side, when I was 30, I was kicked out of the game. I lost the focus that has been running through my entire adult life, and the blow is devastating.

In the first few months, I really don't know what to do. I feel that I have let the predecessors of the business community down, I lost the baton that came to my hand. I met David Packard and Bob Noyce, and I apologized to them because I screwed things up. I became a well-known loser, and I even thought about fleeing Shibuya. But the dawn is coming out, I still like what I have done. Everything that happened on Apple Computer didn't change me at all, no bits at all. Although abandoned, my enthusiasm does not change. I decided to start over.

I didn't see it at the time, but it turned out that being driven by Apple was the best thing I have ever experienced in my life. The weight of success was replaced by the lightness of the phoenix nirvana, and everything was no longer certain. I entered the most creative period of my life with the body of freedom.

In the next five years, I started a company called NeXT, followed by a company called Pixar, and I met the wonderful girl who became my wife. Pixar produced the world's first full-computer animated film, Toy Story, which is now one of the most successful animation companies in the world. Later, after a series of events, Apple bought NeXT, so I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is driving the core of Apple's revival. Lawrence and I also have a happy family.

I am very sure that if it is not fired by Apple, it will not happen to me. For patients, good medicine is always bitter. Life is sometimes like a brick to your head, but don't lose confidence. Devotion to the work I do is the only reason I have always supported my continued progress. You have to find out your favorite, to work like this, and to your lover. Work will occupy a considerable part of your life, and you will be able to bring you real satisfaction by doing what you think is extraordinary.

The only way to do a great job is to love the job. If you haven't found such a job yet, then continue to find it. Don't settle for the status quo, when everything is in your heart, you will know when you can find it. Like any great romantic relationship, great work will only become more and more fragrant in the years of brewing. So, don't stop your search before you get it. Don't stop.

My third story is about death.

At the age of 17, I read a maxim that seemed to be: "If you treat each day as the last day of your life, you will find out on a certain day that everything is under control." From the date I read it, it has had a profound impact on me. For the past 33 years, I have asked myself in the mirror every morning: "If today is the end of my life, am I willing to do what I should have done today?" When the answer is negated for many days I know that the time has come to make a change.

Remind yourself that entering the country is the most important tool when I face a major decision in my life.

Because everything - the expectations of the outside world, all the glory, the fear of confrontation and failure - will vanish in the face of death, leaving only what is really important. Among the various methods I know, reminding myself that I am going to die is the best way to avoid falling into fear of losing this trap. People come in a red way and walk in a red way. There is no reason not to obey your inner voice.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I did a check at 7:30 in the morning and the scan clearly showed a tumor in my pancreas. I didn't even know what the pancreas was. The doctor told me that it is almost certain that this is an incurable disease, and at most it can live for three to six months. The doctor suggested that I go home and arrange everything properly. This is the standard term for doctors on dying patients. This means that you have to say what you want to say to your children in the next 10 years in a few months; this means you have to put everything in place to minimize the burden on your family behind you; It means that the time to say goodbye to everyone is here.

I think about the diagnosis all day long. A biopsy was done that night. The doctor put an endoscope into my throat, passed through my stomach into the intestine, inserted the probe into the pancreas, and removed several cells from the tumor. I had a sedative, but my wife was there. She later told me that when the doctors observed the tissue under the microscope, they all cried because it was a very rare pancreas that could be treated surgically. Dirty cancer. I have undergone surgery and I am now recovering.

This is the closest I have to death. I hope that in the next few decades, there will be no more death experience than this one. After experiencing this experience with death, death is only an effective judgment tool for me, and compared to a purely rational concept, I can tell you more with the following facts: no one I want to die; even those who want to go to heaven hope to live in. Death is the end of life for each of us, no one can be an exception.

This is the case with life, because death is probably the best creation of life. It is the medium of life change, sending away the old man and giving way to the new generation. Now you are still a new generation, but in the near future you will gradually grow old and be sent out of the stage of life. I am sorry to say that it is so dramatic, but life is like this.

Your time is limited, so don't waste time in someone else's life. Don't be bound by the rules, or you will live in the results of others' thinking. Don't let the noise from the opinions of others overwhelm your inner voice. Most importantly, to have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they may already know what kind of person you really want to be. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was a great magazine called Global Catalogue, which was regarded as a standard by our generation. The magazine's founder is a guy named Stewart Brand, who lives in MenloPark, not far from here. He made this magazine poetic. That was in the late 1960s, personal computers, desktop publishing systems have not appeared, so the publishing tools are only typewriters, scissors and Polaroid cameras. This magazine is a bit like Google on paper, but it was 35 years before Google appeared; it is full of ideal colors, the content is very useful tools and great insights.

Stewart and his team made several "Global Catalogues", and they finished the final issue when it was almost finished. It was in the mid-1970s, I was at your current age. On the back cover of the last issue, there is a photo of the early morning country road. If you like to take a car adventure, you will often encounter the kind of path. There is a row of words below the photo: there is something wrong, the wisdom is unknown. This is the farewell message of their suspension. There are not enough things, and the wisdom is unknown. I always do it myself. Now, when you graduate and start a new life, I will give you this sentence.

There are not enough things, and the wisdom is unknown.