"Be studious, hungry, humble, and foolish"

"Be studious, hungry, humble, and foolish" Author: Yu Shaowei/Translated by: fortune Chinese Version

-- Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs' speech at the Stanford University Graduation Ceremony Steve Jobs talked about three experiences in his life in his speech at Stanford University in June this year, these three experiences not only aroused great repercussions among Stanford university graduates, but also in technical counterparts in Silicon Valley and other places. I read it again this weekend, and I think it is particularly enlightening. In particular, the Whole Earth Catalog mentioned that as a magazine, it is a kind of spirit and temperament. "Be studious, hungry, humble, and foolish" We are honored to join you in the graduation ceremony of the world's best university. I have not graduated from college. To be honest, this is my first time so close to the graduation ceremony. Today, I want to tell you three stories of my own. I will tell you three stories without talking about anything or making sense. The first story is about the relationship between points. I dropped out of Reed College after six months of read-only, and then I attended the school. after about a year and a half, I completely left. So why did I drop out of school? This should start before I was born. My mother was a young unmarried graduate student. She decided to give me to someone else for adoption. She wanted to adopt me very much because she had a college degree, so she arranged everything. When I was born, I handed it to a lawyer and a couple for adoption. I did not expect the couple to decide to adopt a girl in the middle of my life. In this way, my adoptive parents waited in a queue on the register at the time. In the middle of the night, they received a call: "We have a baby boy. Do you have a baby boy ?" "Of course." They answered. However, my mother later found that my adoptive mother was not a college graduate, and my adoptive father did not even graduate from a middle school, so she refused to sign the final adoption document. However, she had a soft heart in a few months, because my adoptive parents promised to send me to college in the future. 17 years later, I really 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 whether my college can help me understand what I want to do. At this time, I will spend the money my parents have saved for a lifetime. So I decided to drop out of school and believed that I would prove right in the future. When I made this decision, I had a strong heart, but now, in retrospect, this is one of the best decisions I have ever made. From the moment I drop out of school, I can no longer choose the required courses that I have no interest in and start to attend interesting classes. Those days are not romantic at all. I have no dormitory and can only sleep on the floor of my friend's room. I will refund the cola bottle and use the deposit of the five cents to buy the food. Every Sunday night I walk seven miles to the hel-corizna chapel at the end of the city to enjoy a good meal once a week. I like this. Many of the things I 've done with curiosity and intuition prove invaluable. Let me give you an example: At that time, the primary school had the best calligraphy class in China. All the announcements on campus and the words on each drawer label are beautifully written. At that time, I had dropped out of school and didn't have to attend classes normally. So I decided to choose a calligraphy class and learn how to write words well. I learned how to adjust the spacing of the printed font with and without a hyphen according to different combinations of letters and how to adjust the layout. This course is amazing because it has both historical value and artistic accomplishments. This science cannot be done, and I think it is amazing. 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, it suddenly came to my eyes. 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 it weren't for Windows that copied the Macintosh, the personal computer might not have these fonts and font sizes. If I did not leave school, I would never have chosen this calligraphy course. My PC may not have these beautiful la S. Of course, I cannot see the relationship between it and the future from this point in college. Looking back ten years later, the relationship between the two is very clear. You cannot see the future from the current point. You can only look back at the relationship between them. Therefore, believe that these points will be connected together sooner or later. You must trust something-intuition, home, life, karma, and so on. This has never lost my hopes, and has completely changed my life. My 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 (wozon, one of Apple's founders) started apple in my parents' garage. We worked very hard. Ten years later, Apple developed from the garage into a large enterprise with 2 billion yuan of assets and 4,000 employees. At that time, we just launched our best product, the Macintosh computer, which was 9th years old and I was just 30 years old. 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. I feel that I have lost my face to the Old-generation entrepreneurs-because I threw away the baton I had handed in to myself. I went to see David Packard, one of the founders of Hewlett-Packard, and Bob Noyce, one of Intel's creators ), I want to say sorry for making things so bad. This failure is so exciting that I even want to escape from Silicon Valley. However, gradually, I began to have an idea that I still love what I did in the past. These storms at Apple did not change this point at all. Although I was rejected, I still love my career deeply. 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 Toy Story, the world's first computer-produced cartoon, 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. Laurene 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. Just like any kind of wonderful thing, it will last forever. So keep searching until you find what you like. Never give up halfway. My third story is related to death. When I was 17 years old, I read the following message: "If you treat every day as the last day of your life, one day you will get what you want ." I remembered this sentence. Since then, 33 years have passed. Every morning, I asked myself in the mirror: "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. The most important way for me to make a major decision in my life is to remember that life may end at any time. Because almost all things-all desires out of oneself, all dignity, all fear of embarrassment and failure-will not exist at the moment of death, there are only things that really matter. Remember that you will die at any time. This is the best way I know to prevent problems. You have nothing to do with. Why don't you follow your own feelings. 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. The doctor suggested that I go back and arrange everything. In fact, this implies "Preparing for the incident ". That is to say, you should finish the things you want to talk to your children over the next decade in the last few months. That is to say, you should make everything right and try not to bother your family. That is to say, tell us goodbye. During that whole day, my mind never left the diagnosis. 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. With this experience, now I can talk more about death with you, rather than simply talking about death on paper, that is, no one wants to die. Those who want to enter heaven do not want to enter again after death. 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 change of life. The old cannot go, and the new cannot come. Now, you are new, but in the near future, you will gradually become old and be eliminated. Sorry, it is too much to say, but it is absolutely true. You have limited time, so it is a waste of time not to live as others wish. Don't be predicate. It is live based on what others imagine. 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, and others are secondary. When I was young, I had a very good publication called The Whole Earth Catalog. This is one of the best books of my generation, and the Founder is Stewart Brand ), I live in the city of Menlo Park, not far from here. He made his publications lively in a poetic language. At the end of 1960s, there was no personal computer or desktop printing system, relying entirely on typewriters, scissors, and the Polaroid camera (Polaroid ). It is like a kind of paper Google, but has been around for 35 years earlier than Google. This publication is so perfect that it has a complete set of reading methods and an extraordinary idea. Stuart and his colleagues made several issues of the global overview. When they finally failed, they made the final issue. That is the middle of 1970s, and I am your age. The back cover of the last phase is a photo of a village path in the early morning, a path where adventurous people are waiting for a ride. The picture shows that you are eager to learn, humble, and foolish. That was their farewell speech before the publication. Be curious and be wise. This is what I always want to do. Now, as you graduate from college and start a new life, I also hope you can learn well, be humble, and be foolish. Thank you.