The core theme revolves around three pivotal life experiences – dropping out of college, being fired from Apple, and facing a cancer diagnosis – which collectively taught the speaker the importance of trusting one's intuition, pursuing passion, and embracing mortality to live a meaningful life.
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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 dropin for another 18
months or so before I really quit. So
why' 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. She only relented 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 workingclass
parents' savings were being spent on my
college tuition. After 6 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 and
friends rooms. I returned coke bottles
for the 5-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.
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 handcalliggraphed.
handcalliggraphed.
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 sand serif type faces, 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.
fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any
practical application in my life. But 10
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 type faces or proportionally
spaced fonts. And since Windows just
copied the Mac, it's likely that no
personal computer would have them. [Music]
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. W 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 4,000 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?
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 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 Noise 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, 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 5 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
at Next is at the heart of Apple's
current renaissance. And Loren 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'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, 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 3 to 6
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 and tell your kids everything
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 live 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 doctor
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 thankfully I'm fine now. [Applause]
This was the closest I've been to facing
death, and I hope it's 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'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
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 Stuart Brand not far from
here in Menllo Park. And he brought it
to life with his poetic touch. This was
in the late60s 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,
overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
notions.
Stuart 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.
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 a new,
I wish that for you. Stay hungry. Stay
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