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today I want to tell you three stories
from my life that's it no big deal just
three stories
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the first story
is about connecting the dots
I dropped out of Reed College after the
first six months but then stayed around
as a drop-in for another 18 months or so
before I really quit
so why'd I drop out
it started before I was born
my biological mother was a young unwed
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've got an unexpected baby boy do you
want him they said of course
my biological mother found out later
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
that a few months later when my parents
promised that I would go to college
this was the start
in my life
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 parent
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 the
money my parents had saved their entire
life
so I decided to drop out and trust that
it would all work out okay
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 far
more 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 five
cent deposits to buy food with and I
would walk the seven miles across town
every Sunday night
to get one good meal a week at the Hari
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
read 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 Sans 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
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 it's likely that no
personal computer would have them
if I had never dropped out I would have
never dropped in on that 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 10 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
because believing that the dots will
connect down the road will give you the
confidence to follow your heart even
when it leads you off the well-worn path
and that will make all the difference
my second story
is about love and loss
I was lucky I found what I love to do
early in life was 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 two billion dollar company
with over four thousand employees we
just released our finest creation the
Macintosh a year earlier and I 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 and 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'd 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 Noyes
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'd been rejected but I was still in
love
and so I decided to start over
I didn't see it then
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
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 world's
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 and I returned to Apple and
the technology we developed it next is
at the heart of Apple's current
Renaissance and Lorraine 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
sometime life sometimes life's going to
hit 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 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
and 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 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've looked
in the mirror every morning and asked
myself if today were the last day of my
life what 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
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's 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's 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
drowned 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
stay hungry stay foolish