Steve Jobs- "Find What You Love"
This was a speech made by steve jobs CEO of Apple inc., as Commencement address at Stanford University. I loved it.. Hope you would love too...
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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.
"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."
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 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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Narayana Murthy, Chief Mentor (Infosys)
NEEDED, A VALUE SYSTEM WHERE PEOPLE ACCEPT MODEST SACRIFICES FOR COMMONGOOD
As it is said in the Vedas: Man can live individually, but can survive onlycollectively. Hence, our challenge is to form a progressive community bybalancing the interests of the individual and that of the society. To meetthis we need to develop a value system where people accept modestsacrifices for the common good.
A value system is the protocol for behaviour that enhances the trust,confidence and commitment of members of the community. It goes beyond thedomain of legality - It is about decent and desirable behaviour. Further,it includes putting the community interests ahead of your own. Thus, ourcollective survival and progress is predicated on sound values.
There are two pillars of the cultural value system - loyalty to family andloyalty to community. One should not be in isolation to the other, because,successful societies are those which combine both harmoniously. It is inthis context that I will discuss the role of Western values in contemporaryIndian society
As an Indian, I am proud to be part of a culture, which has deep-rootedfamily values. We have tremendous loyalty to the family. For instance,parents make enormous sacrifices for their children. They support themuntil they can stand on their own feet. On the other side, childrenconsider it their duty to take care of aged parents. We believe: "Mathrudevo bhava, pithru devo bhava" (Mother is God and Father is God). Further,brothers and sisters sacrifice for each other. In fact, the eldest brotheror sister is respected by all the other siblings.As for marriage, it is held to be a sacred union - husband and wife arebonded, most often, for life. In joint families, the entire family workstowards the welfare of the family. There is so much love and affection inour family life. This is the essence of Indian values and one of our keystrengths.Our families act as a critical support mechanism for us.
In fact, thecredit to the success of Infosys goes, as much to the founders as to theirfamilies, for supporting them through the tough times. Unfortunately, ourattitude towards family life is not reflected in our attitude towardscommunity behaviour. From littering the streets to corruption to breakingof contractual obligations, we are apathetic towards the common good.
The primary difference between the West and us is that, there, people havea much better societal orientation. In the West - the US, Canada, Europe,Australia, New Zealand - individuals understand that they have to beresponsible towards their community.
They care more for the society than we do. Further, they generallysacrifice more for the society than us. Quality of life is enhanced becauseof this. This is where we need to learn form the West.Consider some of the lessons that we Indians can learn from the West:
* Respect for the public good - In the West, there is respect for thepublic good. For instance, parks free of litter, clean streets, publictoilets free of graffiti - all these are instances of care for thepublicgood.On the contrary, in India, we keep our houses clean and water our gardenseveryday but, when we go to a park, we do not think twice before litteringthe place.
* Attitude to corruption - This is because of the individual's responsiblebehaviour towards the community as a whole. On the contrary, in India,corruption, tax evasion, cheating and bribery have eaten into our vitals.For instance, contractors bribe officials, and construct low-quality roadsand bridges. Corruption, as we see in India, is another example of puttingthe interest of oneself, and at best that of one's family, above that ofthe society.
Society is relatively corruption free in the West. It is very difficult tobribe a police officer into avoiding a speeding ticket. The result is thatsociety loses in the form of substandard defense equipment andinfrastructure, and low-quality recruitment, just to name a fewimpediments. Unfortunately, this behaviour is condoned by almost everyone.
* Public apathy - Apathy in solving community matters has held us back frommaking progress, which is otherwise within our reach. We see seriousproblems around us but do not try to solve them. We behave as if theproblems do not exist or are somebody else's. On the other hand, in theWest, people solve societal problems proactively.
There are several examples of our apathetic attitude.
(i) For instance, all of us are aware of the problem of drought in India.More than 40 years ago, Dr KL Rao - an irrigation expert, suggestedcreation of a water grid connecting all the rivers in North and SouthIndia, to solve this problem. Unfortunately, nothing has been doneaboutthis.
(ii) The story of power shortage in Bangalore is another instance. In 1983,it was decided to build a thermal power plant to meet Bangalore'spowerrequirements. Unfortunately, we have still not started it.
(iii) The Milan subway in Bombay is in a deplorable state for the past 40years, and no action has been taken.
To quote another example, considering the constant travel required in thesoftware industry; five years ago, I had suggested a 240-page passport.This would eliminate frequent visits to the passport office. In fact, weare ready to pay for it. However, I am yet to hear from the ministry ofexternal affairs on this. We, Indians, would do well to remember ThomasHunter's words: Idleness travels very slowly, and poverty soon overtakesit.
What could be the reason for this? We were ruled by foreigners for overthousand years. Thus, we have always believed that public issues belongedto some foreign ruler and that we have no role in solving them. Moreover,we have lost the will to proactively solve our own problems and have gotused to just executing someone else's orders.
Borrowing Aristotle's words: "We are what we repeatedly do." Thus, havingdone this over the years, the decision-makers in our society are nottrained for solving problems. Our decision-makers look to somebody else totake decisions. Unfortunately, there is nobody to look up to, and this isthe tragedy.
Our intellectual arrogance has also not helped our society. I havetravelled extensively, and in my experience, have not come across anothersociety where people are as contemptuous of better societies as we are,with as little progress as we have achieved. Remember that arrogance breedshypocrisy.
No other society gloats so much about the past as we do, with as littlecurrent accomplishment. Friends, this is not a new phenomenon, but at leasta thousand years old. For instance, Al Barouni, the famous Arabic logicianand traveller of the 10th century, who spent about 30 years in India from997 AD to around 1027 AD, referred to this trait of Indians.
According to him, during his visit, most Indian pundits considered it belowtheir dignity even to hold arguments with him. In fact, on a few occasionswhen a pundit was willing to listen to him, and found his arguments to bevery sound, he invariably asked Barouni: which Indian pundit taught thesesmart things!
The most important attribute of a progressive society is respect for otherswho have accomplished more than they themselves have, and learn from them.Contrary to this, our leaders make us believe that other societies do notknow anything!
At the same time, everyday, in the newspapers, you will find numerousclaims from our leaders that ours is the greatest nation. This has to stop.These people would do well to remember Thomas Carlyle's words: "Thegreatest of faults is to be conscious of none."
If we have to progress, we have to change this attitude, listen to peoplewho have performed better than us, learn from them and perform better thanthem. Infosys is a good example of such an attitude.We continue to rationalise our failures. No other society has mastered thisart as well as we have. Obviously, this is an excuse to justify ourincompetence, corruption, and apathy. This attitude has to change. As SirJosiah Stamp has said: "It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but wecannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities."
Another interesting attribute, which we Indians can learn from the West, istheir accountability. Irrespective of your position, in the West, you areheld accountable for what you do. However, in India, the more 'important'you are, the less answerable you are.
For instance, a senior politician once declared that he 'forget' to filehis tax returns for 10 consecutive years - and he got away with it. Toquote another instance, there are over 100 loss-making public sector unitsin India. Nevertheless, I have not seen action taken for bad performanceagainst top managers in these organisations.
In the West, each person is proud about his or her labour that raiseshonest sweat. On the other hand, in India, we tend to overlook thesignificance of those who are not in professional jobs. We have a mindsetthat reveres only supposedly intellectual work. For instance, I have seenmany engineers, fresh from college, who only want to do cutting-edge workand not work that is of relevance to business and the country.
However, be it an organisation or society, there are different peopleperforming different roles. For success, all these people are required todischarge their duties. This includes everyone from the CEO to the personwho serves tea - every role is important. Hence, we need a mindset thatreveres everyone who puts in honest work.
Indians become intimate even without being friendly. They ask favors ofstrangers without any hesitation. For instance, the other day, while I wastravelling from Bangalore to Mantralayam, I met a fellow traveller on thetrain. Hardly five minutes into the conversation, he requested me to speakto his MD about removing him from the bottom 10 per cent list in hiscompany, earmarked for disciplinary action.
I was reminded of what Rudyard Kipling once said: A westerner can befriendly without being intimate while an easterner tends to be intimatewithout being friendly.
Yet another lesson to be learnt from the West, is about theirprofessionalism in dealings. The common good being more important thanpersonal equations, people do not let personal relations interfere withtheir professional dealings. For instance, they don't hesitate to chastisea colleague, even if he is a personal friend, for incompetent work.
In India, I have seen that we tend to view even work interactions from apersonal perspective. Further, we are the most 'thin-skinned' society inthe world - we see insults where none is meant. This may be because we werenot free for most of the last thousand years.
Further, we seem to extend this lack of professionalism to our sense ofpunctuality. We do not seem to respect the other person's time. The IndianStandard Time somehow seems to be always running late. Moreover, deadlinesare typically not met. How many public projects are completed on time?
The disheartening aspect is that we have accepted this as the norm ratherthan an exception. Meritocracy by definition means that we cannot letpersonal prejudices affect our evaluation of an individual's performance.As we increasingly start to benchmark ourselves with global standards, wehave to embrace meritocracy.
In the West, right from a very young age, parents teach their children tobe independent in thinking. Thus, they grow up to be strong, confidentindividuals. In India, we still suffer from feudal thinking. I have seenpeople, who are otherwise bright, refusing to show independence andpreferring to be told what to do by their boss. We need to overcome thisattitude if we have to succeed globally.
The Western value system teaches respect to contractual obligation. In theWest, contractual obligations are seldom dishonoured. This is important -enforceablity of legal rights and contracts is the most important factor inthe enhancement of credibility of our people and nation.In India, we consider our marriage vows as sacred. We are willing tosacrifice in order to respect our marriage vows. However, we do not extendthis to the public domain. For instance, India had an unfavourable contractwith Enron. Instead of punishing the people responsible for negotiatingthis, we reneged on the contract - this was much before we came to knowabout the illegal activities at Enron.
To quote another instance, I had given recommendations to several studentsfor the national scholarship for higher studies in US universities. Most ofthem did not return to India even though contractually they were obliged tospend five years after their degree in India.In fact, according to a professor at a reputed US university, the maximumdefault rate for student loans is among Indians - all of these studentspass out in flying colours and land lucrative jobs, yet they refuse to payback their loans. Thus, their action has made it difficult for the studentsafter them, from India, to obtain loans.
Further, we Indians do not display intellectual honesty. For example, ourpolitical leaders use mobile phones to tell journalists on the other sidethat they do not believe in technology! If we want our youngsters toprogress, such hypocrisy must be stopped.We are all aware of our rights as citizens. Nevertheless, we often fail toacknowledge the duty that accompanies every right. To borrow DwightEisenhower's words: "People that values its privileges above its principlessoon loses both."
Our duty is towards the community as a whole, as much as it is towards ourfamilies. We have to remember that fundamental social problems grow out ofa lack of commitment to the common good. To quote Henry Beecher: Culture isthat which helps us to work for the betterment of all.
Hence, friends, I do believe that we can make our society even better byassimilating these Western values into our own culture - we will bestronger for it. Most of our behaviour comes from greed, lack ofself-confidence, lack of confidence in the nation, and lack of respect forthe society.
To borrow Gandhi's words: There is enough in this world for everyone'sneed, but not enough for everyone's greed. Let us work towards a societywhere we would do unto others what we would have others do unto us. Let usall be responsible citizens who make our country a great place to live.
In the words of Winston Churchill, "Responsibility is the price ofgreatness." We have to extend our family values beyond the boundaries ofour home. Let us work towards maximum welfare of the maximum people -"Samasta janaanaam sukhino bhavantu".
Finally, let us of this generation, conduct ourselves as great citizensrather than just good people so that we can serve as good examples for ouryounger generation.
Thank you
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Two great speeches.... I hope an Indian graduate needs both....
posted by karthik thangaraj @ 3:50 AM
1 comments
