Steve Jobs: Find and stick to your favorite things

Find and stick to your favorite things

- Steve Jobs' speech at the Stanford University Graduation Ceremony

I was not aware of it at the time, but later discovered that being fired by Apple may be the best thing that happened in my life. The baggage of a successful person is gone, and some are just a relaxed feeling of a fledgling person. I am no longer so confident about all kinds of things. This made me go light and enter one of the most creative stages of my life.

Today, I am honored to be at your top university in the world and attend your graduation ceremony. I have not finished college. To be honest, today is the closest thing I have ever graduated from college in my life. Today I want to tell you three stories in my life, nothing more. Not a big deal, just three stories.

The first story is about connecting life together.

I dropped out after studying at Reed University for six months, but then I went to school as a student for about 18 months before I dropped out. So why should I drop out?

This is going to start before I was born. When my mother gave birth to me, she was still a young, unmarried graduate student, so she decided to let others adopt me. She very much hopes that the adopter is a college graduate and has done everything. I will be adopted by a lawyer and his wife when I am born. Unexpectedly, after I was born, the couple suddenly changed and said that they actually wanted a girl. So, my adoptive parents who were still on the waiting list received a call in the middle of the night and asked them: "We have an unmarried baby boy here. Do you want him?" They replied: "Of course." However, my biological mother later discovered that my foster mother had never been to college, and my adoptive father did not even finish reading in high school. She refused to sign an adoption contract. A few months later, my adoptive parents promised to let me go to college, and she gave in.

Seventeen years later, I really went to college. However, I am naive to choose a school whose tuition is almost as expensive as your Stanford. My parents are working-class people. They made up their savings and paid my tuition. After six months, I can't see the value of this money. I don't know what I want to do, I don't know how the university will help me find the answer, but I am wasting my parents' savings for the rest of my life. So I decided to drop out and firmly believe that this is the right decision. I was very scared at the time, but looking back now, that was one of the best decisions of my life. Once I drop out of school, I can't read the compulsory courses that I am not interested in, and start the courses that seem interesting.

However, this is not much romantic. I don't have a dormitory, I can only sleep on the floor of my friend's room. I collect the Coke bottle that someone else has finished, and I will buy it for 5 cents. On Sunday nights, I walk seven miles and cross the city to the Hare Krishna Temple to have a free meal. I like the food there. Later, I discovered that the experiences I experienced in following curiosity and intuition were invaluable.

Let me give you an example:

At that time, the calligraphy class at Reed University was probably the best in the country. Every poster on the campus, every label on the drawer, is all beautiful handwriting. Because I dropped out of school, I didn't have to go to the regular course, so I decided to go to the calligraphy class and learn how to write. I learned the serif and san serif fonts, learned how to adjust the spacing of the letter combinations, and learned how to make the best print layout. I am fascinated by the beauty, elegance and fine craftsmanship that science can't embody.

At that time, in my life, there was no hope that these things would actually be applied in the first line. But ten years later, when we designed the first Macintosh computer, it was completely different. We incorporated all of the things I learned at the time into the design of the Mac. It was the first computer to use a beautiful font. If I didn't go to that class at the time, the Mac would never have these colorful and pleasing fonts. Windows just copied the Mac purely, so we can say that except for the Mac, there is no PC that has these fonts. If I didn't drop out of school at the time, I wouldn't be able to go to this calligraphy class, so the personal computer might not have such a wonderful font. Of course, when I was in college, it was impossible to foresee the connection of these points. However, when I reviewed all of this in ten years, it was suddenly clear and clear.

Again, when you look ahead, it's impossible to connect these points together, only when you look back. So you must be convinced that these bits and pieces will be connected in some form in the future. You must be obsessed with something - your courage, your destiny, your life, your cause and effect, and so on. This idea has been tried and tested, and it is still the source of all the changes in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I am very lucky, because I have found what I love to do very early. When I was twenty, I and Woz founded Apple in my parents' garage. We worked hard. Ten years later, Apple has grown from a small group of two people in the garage to a large company with more than 4,000 employees and a value of $2 billion. At the time, our best product, the Macintosh, was only launched in a year, and I was just over thirty. Then I was fired. How can you be fired by a company you created by yourself? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone I thought was talented to manage the company with me. In the first year, everything went well. But then we had a disagreement about the future vision, and eventually we quarreled, when the board stood on his side. So, when I was 30, I was out of the game and went out in the eyes of the public. The pillar of my life has collapsed and this blow is devastating.

In the first few months, I really didn't know what to do. I feel that I have disappointed the previous generation of entrepreneurs, and I have removed the baton that they passed to me. I met David Pack and Bob Noyce and apologized to them for messing things up. My failure is well known, I even thought about fleeing Shibuya. However, I gradually figured out some things - I still love what I did, and Apple's Waterloo did not change this. I was fired, but I still love what I do. Therefore, I decided to make a comeback.

I was not aware of it at the time, but later discovered that being fired by Apple may be the best thing that happened in my life. The baggage of a successful person is gone, and some are just a relaxed feeling of a fledgling person. I am no longer so confident about all kinds of things. This made me go light and enter one of the most creative stages of my life.

In the next five years, I founded a company called NeXT and a company called Pixar, and fell in love with an extraordinary woman, who later became my wife. Pixar produced the world's first computer-generated animated film, Toy Story. Pixar is now the most successful animation studio in the world. After a series of karma, Apple acquired NeXT and I returned to Apple. The technology we developed at NeXT became the key to Apple's revival today. I also built a happy family with Laurence.

I am sure that if I am not fired by Apple, these things will not happen. This is a bitter medicine, but I think patients need it. Sometimes, life will use bricks to lick your head, but don't lose faith. I firmly believe that the only motivation for me to move forward is that I am doing what I love. You have to find what you love to do. Work is like this, love is also true. Your work will occupy a big part of your life. You can only truly be satisfied if you believe that you are doing great work. The premise of doing great work is that you love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking and don't stop. As long as it is something that you yearn for, you will find it. This is like any good love, and it will only get better as the years go by. So keep looking until you find, don't stop.

My third story is about death.

I read a sentence when I was seventeen. The general idea is: "If you have been to each day as the last day of your life, then one day you will be on the right track of life." This sentence left me. deep impression. From then on, every morning for 33 years, I will ask myself in the mirror: "If today is the last day of my life, will I want to do what I want to do today?" When the answer is "no", I know I need to make some changes.

Keeping in mind that I am dying is the most important means of helping me make major decisions in my life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all glory, all fear of embarrassment and failure - all of which are vulnerable to death, the rest is what really matters. Keeping in mind that you are dying is the best way I know, and it can help you avoid thinking traps that feel lost. When you are already in the dark, there is no reason not to follow your own voice.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I did a scan at 7:30 in the morning and clearly showed a tumor in my pancreas. I didn't even know what the pancreas was. The doctor told me that it is a cancer that cannot be cured. I can live for three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and settle down everything I have, which is the doctor's suggestion to the dying patient. That means saying what you said to your child in the next ten years will be finished in just a few months. That means putting everything in order to make your family's life as easy as possible. That means saying goodbye.

I took the medical certificate for a whole day. I did a live biopsy that night. The doctor put an endoscope from my throat, passed my stomach, then went into my intestines and put a The needle was inserted into my pancreas and several cells were taken on the tumor. I was anesthetized at the time, but my wife was there. Later, she told me that the doctor was ecstatic when observing these cells under the microscope, because it is an extremely rare pancreatic cancer that can be cured by surgery. I have had an operation and now I am cured.

That is the moment when I am closest to death. I hope this is also the closest I have to death in the next few decades. In the past, death was just a useful, but limited to the concept of knowledge. After living from the death line, I can now tell you more certainly:

No one wants to die. Even those who want to go to heaven will not use death as a means. But death is the common end of each of us, and no one can escape. Death should be like this. Because death is probably the best creation of life. Death is a factor that changes life, and it is new. Now, you are new, but soon you will gradually become old and then cleared. Sorry, this is too dramatic, but it is a fact.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it on repeating the lives of others. Don't be bound by dogma - it is the product of living in the minds of others. Don't let other people's opinions submerge your own inner voice. The most important thing is that you have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. In a way, they know what you want to be, and everything else is secondary.

When I was young, I had a wonderful book called Global Catalogue, which is one of the Bibles of our generation. It was founded by a man named Stewart Brand and was founded in Monroe Park not far from here. His poetic magic makes this book colorful. It was in the late 1960s, there was no personal computer and desktop publishing, so the book was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polarizers. It's a bit like Google in book form, thirty-five years before the birth of true Google: it's idealistic, full of dexterous methods and extraordinary ideas.

Stewart and his team published several editions of the Global Catalogue, and when it completed its mission, they published the final issue. It was in the middle of the 1970s, when I was as big as you are now. On the back cover of the last issue is a picture of an early morning country road, the kind of road that you will go if you like to explore. There is such a passage below the photo: If you are thirsty, you will be foolish. This is the farewell to their suspension. If you are thirsty, you will be foolish. This is my motto. Now, when you are about to graduate and start a new journey, I will share with you.

If you are thirsty, you will be foolish.

thank you all!