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Stanford Report, June 14, 2005

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

This is the text of the Commencement address, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered 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, its 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 retuned 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 its 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 other's 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.

This is the text dad email me to read. After reading it, I do have some comments about the speeech he gave.

What he said is true. No doubt, doing things you love is really important as when you have passion for your work, you tend to do better, do the best out of it. But that concept isn’t really that ideal for the real world.
In this REAL and realistic world, sometimes you don’t have the choice to follow what your heart wants you to be. There are so many more factors that you need to take count.
Living for your dream can be a disaster to someone. Not everyone is as lucky as Steve Jobs to do what he loves what he likes.
For example, if someone wants to be an artist, paint whole day with little income. Cause that’s what he likes. But can you afford to pay for your family's expenses by your interest? Just because it’s your passion for art? The answer is obviously NO. Not everyone can be a successful artist, selling thousand and thousands of pounds for just a piece of art. I am not saying NO ONE was successful doing that, but the percentage is so small that not everyone is able to take that risk.

For me, being realistic much important and it the number 1 thing in your heart, then only it comes to your passion. But sometimes, passion coming first can be quite a important step towards a great and successful life. For example, everyone thinks that being a doctor will bring you great fortune. Well, I think thats true, cause at least till now I havent see a doctor that is dead shit poor. That means its practical cause MONEY plays a really important role in life. So that idea is a real & realistic idea.
Here comes the problem, you dont have any passion for your job, your patient. Then this career will just bring HELL to you. Being a doctor, passion plays a really important role. Being a doctor, you need to have the passion for your patient to be on-call, being awake middle of the night to save lifes. Without passion, how can you live such life? How are you going to be able to have a hectic & stressful life as a doctor?
In this case, passion comes first then being practical.
So it means, vary situation got to have vary kind of mind set. But the most important thing is TRUST & LISTEN TO THE INNER YOU and then think using your BRAIN. Dont follow your heart blindly and get yourself into trouble.
The saying of Just Follow Your Heart will only appear in the movies, in Neverland, in places where you have basically nothing to worry about. This happens mostly in the rich people family isnt it? Cause the rich kids has nothing to worry about cause there are tonns of money (which they think will never finsih) for them to spend. Without that worry, life is basically 'Great' for them, therefore they have the abilty the power to just 'Follow their heart'.

About the second story about Mr. Jobs being sacked from his own company and got him into another path to create a new company gives some idea about life too.
Life is just so unpredictable. Anything can just happen. Have anyone ever dream of US's World Trade Center would be attacked? The US's Military Headquaters Pentagon being attacked? Malaysia having tsunami & earthquake? Everything is in the hands of God. What can humans do is work things out whatever happens to you.
No one would expect someone who dropped out from a good college to be a multimillioon dollar companie's CEO?
Do not loose hope might be the right thing. Even when you've become bankcrupt, or even jailed, thats not the end of the world, unless you give up yourself. There will always a path in front of you. All you need to do is to go FIND it yourself. The process might be hard and tough. But when you found it & looked back at the journey you've been through, the obstacles you've encountered, its worth it. At that time, you wouldnt feel the pain you've go through, cause its all over & its those obstacles that changed & toughen the new you.

I personally felt that when I attended the QTB Camp in form 5. During the jungle tracking time, I felt like dying... I felt like turning back. But there isnt any way for you to turn back. There is only one way ahead taht is to continue the journey. During the whole journey there were so many obstacles needed to encounter. Do you have a choice to say no? NO. I encountered it & reached home safely.
After all that, thinknig back makes me understand the concept of life better. Life is a journey where there are many obstacles waiting for you to encounter. You learn from the obstacles, the failures, the pain then adapt yourself into it and make yourself sucessful from it.
Whats the bottom line? Dont loose hope. Everything has a cure for it. All you need is to be patient and alert of the oppourtunities around you.

From the third story, Live life as if you are going to die tomorrow.
I truely understand that concept in the QTB Camp. All this while I always thought that I am not afraid to die. Not until I nearly died. At that very moment, I just realised there are so many things in this world that I havent experience. Too many. I wouldnt be satisfied to die at such a young age.
I am not saying this because I am still young and lots to see. It goes same to the adults. The world is just a big place where no one will ever ever ever experience EVERY SINGLE LITTLE THING. If you are not a materialistic person but a sentimental person, its the same too.
You dont want to see the world, but you want to see your children growing up, going to school, entering adolescent, getting married, having your first grandchild etc.
There is so much more to do in life.
Live life as if you re going to die tomorrow. This is true to some extend. They were saying, “Ya, in that case, spend all your money on something since you will be dying soon”. That my friend is WRONG. It then comes to your senses too. Think before acting.
Not everything needs to be like what the saying goes.
Everything needs to go through your BRAIN, because we aren’t living in a fantasy world, where everything goes according to your liking.



The bottomline is, LIFE ISNT THAT NICE. Everything can happen, just believe in your heart, and then think... Think best for yourself, not others, cause life is too short to live up to others expectiation. And of course never ever loose hope. Try your best & there will always be a way for you. The way might be not the way you LOVE or expected, but it is still a path, a path you can walk and learn the best out of it.

I think this is the longest post i ever posted, and i LOVE it.. hehe...