Steve Jobs speech

'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.

Narayan Murthy Uvacha

Speech delivered at New York University

Learning from experience: Some lessons I have learned from my life and career

After some thought, I have decided to share with you some of my life

lessons. I learned these lessons in the context of my early career

struggles, a life lived under the influence of sometimes unplanned events

which were the crucibles that tempered my character and reshaped my future.

I would like first to share some of these key life events with you, in the

hope that these may help you understand my struggles and how chance events

and unplanned encounters with influential persons shaped my life and career.

Later, I will share the deeper life lessons that I have learned. My

sincere hope is that this sharing will help you see your own trials and

tribulations for the hidden blessings they can be.

The first event occurred when I was a graduate student in Control Theory at

IIT, Kanpur in India. At breakfast on a bright Sunday morning in 1968, I

had a chance encounter with a famous computer scientist on sabbatical from a

well-known US university. He was discussing exciting new developments in the

field of computer science with a large group of students and how such

developments would alter our future. He was articulate, passionate and

quite convincing. I was hooked. I went straight from breakfast to the

library, read four or five papers he had suggested, and left the library

determined to study computer science. Friends, when I look back today at

that pivotal meeting, I marvel at how one role model can alter, for the

better, the future of a young student. This experience taught me that

valuable advice can sometimes come from an unexpected source, and chance

events can sometimes open new doors.

The next event that left an indelible mark on me occurred in 1974. The

location: Nis, a border town between former Yugoslavia, now Serbia, and

Bulgaria. I was hitchhiking from Paris back to Mysore, India, my home town.

By the time a kind driver dropped me at Nis railway station at 9pm on a

Saturday night, the restaurant was closed. So was the bank the next morning,

and I could not eat because I had no local money. I slept on the railway

platform until 8.30 pm in the night when the Sofia Express pulled in. The

only passengers in my compartment were a girl and a boy. I struck a

conversation in French with the young girl. She talked about the travails of

living in an iron curtain country, until we were roughly interrupted by some

policemen who, I later gathered, were summoned by the young man who thought

we were criticizing the communist government of Bulgaria. The girl was led

away; my backpack and sleeping bag were confiscated. I was dragged along

the platform into a small eight-by-eight-foot room with a cold stone floor

and a hole in one corner by way of toilet facilities. I was held in that

bitterly cold room without food or water for more than 72 hours. I had lost

all hope of ever seeing the outside world again, when the door opened. I was

again dragged out unceremoniously, locked up in the guard's compartment on a

departing freight train and told that I would be released 20 hours later

upon reaching Istanbul. The guard's final words still ring in my ears -

"You are from a friendly country called India and that is why we are letting

you go!"

The journey to Istanbul was lonely, and I was starving. This long, lonely,

cold journey forced me to deeply rethink my convictions about Communism.

Early on a dark Thursday morning, after being hungry for 108 hours, I was

purged of any last vestiges of affinity for the Left. I concluded that

entrepreneurship, resulting in large scale job creation, was the only viable

mechanism for eradicating poverty in societies.

Deep in my heart, I always thank the Bulgarian guards for transforming me

from a confused leftist into a determined, compassionate capitalist!

Inevitably, this sequence of events led to the eventual founding of Infosys

in 1981.

While these first two events were rather fortuitous, the next two, both

concerning the Infosys journey, were more planned and profoundly influenced

my career trajectory.

On a chilly Saturday morning in winter 1990, five of the seven founders of

Infosys met in our small office in a leafy Bangalore suburb. The decision

at hand was the possible sale of Infosys for the enticing sum of $1 million.

After nine years of toil in the then business-unfriendly India, we were

quite happy at the prospect of seeing at least some money. I let my younger

colleagues talk about their future plans. Discussions about the travails of

our journey thus far and our future challenges went on for about four hours.

I had not yet spoken a word.

Finally, it was my turn. I spoke about our journey from a small Mumbai

apartment in 1981 that had been beset with many challenges, but also of how

I believed we were at the darkest hour before the dawn. I then took an

audacious step. If they were all bent upon selling the company, I said, I

would buy out all my colleagues, though I did not have a cent in my pocket.

There was a stunned silence in the room. My colleagues wondered aloud about

my foolhardiness. But I remained silent. However, after an hour of my

arguments, my colleagues changed their minds to my way of thinking. I urged

them that if we wanted to create a great company, we should be optimistic

and confident. They have more than lived up to their promise of that day. In

the seventeen years since that day, Infosys has grown to revenues in excess

of $3 billion, a net income of more than $800 million and a market

capitalization of more than $28 billion, 28,000 times richer than the offer

of $1 million on that day. In the process, Infosys has created more than

70,000 well-paying jobs, 2000-plus dollar millionaires and 20,000-plus Rupee

millionaires.

A final story: On a hot summer morning in 1995, a Fortune-10 corporation had

sequestered all their Indian software vendors including Infosys in different

rooms at the Taj Residency hotel in Bangalore so that the vendors could not

communicate with one another. This customer's propensity for tough

negotiations was well-known. Our team was very nervous. First of all, with

revenues of only around $5 million, we were minnows compared to the

customer. Second, this customer contributed fully 25 percent of our

revenues. The loss of this business would potentially devastate our

recently-listed company. Third, the customer's negotiation style was very

aggressive. The customer team would go from room to room, get the best terms

out of each vendor and then pit one vendor against the other. This went on

for several rounds. Our various arguments why a fair price - one that

allowed us to invest in good people, R and D, infrastructure, technology and

training - was actually in their interest failed to cut any ice with the

customer. By 5 pm on the last day, we had to make a decision right on the

spot whether to accept the customer's terms or to walk out.

All eyes were on me as I mulled over the decision. I closed my eyes, and

reflected upon our journey until then. Through many a tough call, we had

always thought about the long-term interests of Infosys. I communicated

clearly to the customer team that we could not accept their terms, since it

could well lead us to letting them down later. But I promised a smooth,

professional transition to a vendor of the customer's choice. This was a

turning point for Infosys.

Subsequently, we created a Risk Mitigation Council which ensured that we

would never again depend too much on any one client, technology, country,

application area or key employee. The crisis was a blessing in disguise.

Today, Infosys has a sound de-risking strategy that has stabilized its

revenues and profits.

I want to share with you, next, the life lessons these events have taught

me. I will begin with the importance of learning from experience. It is less

important, I believe, where you start. It is more important how and what you

learn. If the quality of the learning is high, the development gradient is

steep, and, given time, you can find yourself in a previously unattainable

place. I believe the Infosys story is living proof of this.

Learning from experience, however, can be complicated. It can be much more

difficult to learn from success than from failure. If we fail, we think

carefully about the precise cause. Success can indiscriminately reinforce

all our prior actions.

A second theme concerns the power of chance events. As I think across a wide

variety of settings in my life, I am struck by the incredible role played by

the interplay of chance events with intentional choices. While the turning

points themselves are indeed often fortuitous, how we respond to them is

anything but so. It is this very quality of how we respond systematically to

chance events that is crucial.

Of course, the mindset one works with is also quite critical. As recent work

by the psychologist, Carol Dweck, has shown, it matters greatly whether one

believes in ability as inherent or that it can be developed. Put simply, the

former view, a fixed mind set, creates a tendency to avoid challenges, to

ignore useful negative feedback and leads such people to plateau early and

not achieve their full potential. The latter view, a growth mind set, leads

to a tendency to embrace challenges, to learn from criticism and such people

reach ever higher levels of achievement (Krakovsky, 2007: page 48).

The fourth theme is a cornerstone of the Indian spiritual tradition:

self-knowledge. Indeed, the highest form of knowledge, it is said, is

self-knowledge. I believe this greater awareness and knowledge of oneself is

what ultimately helps develop a more grounded belief in oneself, courage,

determination, and, above all, humility, all qualities which enable one to

wear one's success with dignity and grace.

Based on my life experiences, I can assert that it is this belief in

learning from experience, a growth mind-set, the power of chance events, and

self-reflection that have helped me grow to the present. Back in the 1960's,

the odds of my being in front of you today would have been zero. Yet here I

stand before you! With every successive step, the odds kept changing in my

favor, and it is these life lessons that made all the difference.

My young friends, I would like to end with some words of advice. Do you

believe that your future is pre-ordained, and is already set? Or, do you

believe that your future is yet to be written and that it will depend upon

the sometimes fortuitous events? Do you believe that these events can

provide turning points to which you will respond with your energy and

enthusiasm? Do you believe that you will learn from these events and that

you will reflect on your setbacks? Do you believe that you will examine your

successes with even greater care? I hope you believe that the future will be

shaped by several turning points with great learning opportunities. In

fact, this is the path I have walked to much advantage.

A final word: when, one day, you have made your mark on the world, remember

that, in the ultimate analysis, we are all mere temporary custodians of the

wealth we generate, whether it be financial, intellectual, or emotional. The

best use of all your wealth is to share it with those less fortunate.

I believe that we have all at some time eaten the fruit from trees that we

did not plant. In the fullness of time, when it is our turn to give, it

behooves us in turn to plant gardens that we may never eat the fruit of,

which will largely benefit generations to come. I believe this is our sacred

responsibility, one that I hope you will shoulder in time.

Thank you for your patience. Go forth and embrace your future with open

arms, and pursue enthusiastically your own life journey of discovery!