'You've
got to find what you love,' Jobs says.
[This is the text of the Commencement address
by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of
Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12,
2005.]
Steve Jobs
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 bought 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 returned 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 others' 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.
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