Stanford Report, June 14, 2005 '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. 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.
Stanford Report, June 14, 2005 '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. 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 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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