Apple Computer founder Steve Jobs: Tell me three stories

In the global science and technology field, I have only one idol. He is not Bill Gates, but Steve Jobs. If Gates makes Microsoft a legend, Steve Jobs himself is a legend. He created an Apple Computer and led the computer fashion trend. He created Pixar and moved the entertainment industry. He created an iPod and influenced the lifestyle of more than one generation. It can even be said that without him, there is no new song recommendation in the upper-left corner of my blog, because those new songs were all heard in the car after I downloaded them to the iPod.

Just two days ago, one of my business school colleagues sent me a speech from Steve Jobs at the Stanford University graduation ceremony last year. She said in the email that if you haven't seen this speech, you should check it because it should not be missed. I agree with her statement. I don't think you should miss it either.

　　The following is an excerpt from the original speech.

I am very honored to attend your graduation ceremony today. I have never graduated from college, so today is the last time I graduated from the graduation ceremony. Today, I just want to tell you three real stories in my life. That's all. There is no long story. It's just three stories.

　　The first story is about concatenating points.

At the age of seventeen, I went to college. At that time, I was naive. I chose a school that was almost as expensive as Stanford University. when the adoptive parents paid me all their savings, I paid for my college tuition. After six months of reading, I can't see the significance of going to school. I don't know what I want to do in my life, or I'm sure my college can help me understand what I want to do. So I decided to drop out of school. When I made this decision, I still had some encouragement in my mind. But now, looking back, it is one of the best decisions I have ever made. From the moment I drop out of school, I can choose other required courses that I don't have any interest in. Instead, I start to attend some more interesting courses.

At that time, my school had the best calligraphy class in China. All the announcements on campus and the words on each drawer label are beautifully written. After dropping out of school, I don't need to take classes normally. So I decided to choose a calligraphy class and learn how to write good words.

At that time, I did not expect calligraphy to have any practical value in my future life. However, ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, the calligraphy we had learned suddenly appeared to me. So we designed all these things into the computer. This is the first computer with such a beautiful text layout. If I hadn't chosen such a course in college by accident, the Macintosh computer would never have such a variety of printed fonts or properly arranged spacing. If I hadn't left school, I wouldn't have chosen that calligraphy course. Of course, in college, it is impossible for me to extend the current point into a line. But now I look back and see that line is very clear.

You cannot connect the line to the future from the current point. Only when you look back can you find that these past points have actually drawn that line. Therefore, believe that each point will be connected together sooner or later.

　　The second story is about good and evil and gains and losses.

Fortunately, I found out what I liked when I was very young. At the age of 20, Woz started apple in my parents' garage. We worked very hard. Ten years later, Apple developed from the garage into a large company with a market value of $2 billion and more than 4000 employees. In the year before that, we launched our Macintosh computer. At that time, I just got started. But I was fired later. How can you be fired by your own company? As apple grows, we hire someone I think is very talented to manage the company with me. In the past year or so, everything went smoothly. However, our views on the future of the company began to disagree, and finally we looked at it. At this moment, the board of directors stood on his side, so when I was 30 years old, I left the company, and the incident went through the storm. I lost my whole life in my adulthood, which made me fail.

For several months, I really don't know what to do. This failure is so exciting that I even want to escape from Silicon Valley. But gradually, I began to have an idea-I still love what I did in the past. These storms at Apple did not change this point at all. So I decided to start from scratch.

Although I didn't realize it at the time, it turns out that being fired by Apple is the best thing I 've ever encountered. Although the prospects are unknown, the soft feeling from the beginning replaces the feeling of success. This led me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

In the next five years, I started a company named next and a company named Pixar. I also fell in love with a great woman and married her. Pixar launched the world's first computer-produced cartoon "Toy Story", which is now the world's most successful animation production room. After Apple bought next, I went back to Apple. The technology we developed at next became the core of Apple's re-emergence. Laulunna and I have also established a happy family.

I am sure that this would never happen if I was not fired by Apple. This is a bitter medicine, but I think bitter medicine is good for disease. Sometimes life will give you a good start, but don't lose heart. I firmly believe that the only force that makes me go forward is that I love what I do. Therefore, you must know what you like. This is the case when you select a lover, and the same is true when you choose a job. Work will be a part of life. The only way to truly satisfy yourself is to do what you think is meaningful. The only way to do meaningful work is to love your work. If you haven't found out what you like, keep searching and don't rush to make decisions. Just like what you want to do with your feelings, once you find what you like, you will be told.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17 years old, I read the following sentence: "If you treat every day as the last day of your life, one day your assumptions will become a reality ." I remember this sentence. Since then, 33 years have passed. Every morning, I look into the mirror and ask myself: "If today is the last day of my life, will I continue to do what I want to do today?" If my answer for many days is "no", I know that I should have changed.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. At half past seven that morning, I had a scan and the results clearly showed that I had a tumor on the pancreas, but I didn't even know what the pancreas was! The doctor told me that it was almost possible to diagnose a malignant tumor that could not be cured, and I could survive 3 to 6 months at most.

I thought about the diagnostic results all day. At night, I had a tissue slice examination, and they passed an endoscope through my throat into the intestines and took some cell tissue on the tumor of the pancreas with a needle. At that time, I used anesthesia, and my wife, who was with me, told me that after seeing cells in the microscope, the doctor cried, it turns out to be a rare malignant tumor that can be cured by surgery. I have an operation, and now it's okay.

This is the closest time between me and death, and I hope it will be the most recent in the next few decades. Now, with this experience, I can talk to you more about death: no one wants to die. Even those who want to enter heaven will not be willing to die in heaven. However, death is our shared destination, and no one can get rid of it. We are doomed to die, because death is probably the best invention of life. It promotes the new generation of life. Now, you are new, but in the near future, you will gradually become old and be eliminated.

You have limited time, so it is a waste of time not to live as others wish. Do not let the noise of others' opinions overwhelm your own voices. The most important thing is to have the courage to follow your own feelings and intuition. In any case, the feeling and intuition have long known what kind of person you want to be. Nothing else matters.