Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement address
In approximately two hours, Apple will host a product release event. Randomly, I thought of Steve Jobs, who passed away ten years ago. I reminisced about his iconic introduction of the iPhone in 2007, and most importantly, his commencement speech at Stanford in 2005.
I supposed most people have seen the speech already, but when I watched it again today for the n'th time, I was surprised to discover that while it has a reasonable number of views, it's nowhere close to being among the most popular videos on YouTube. (For context, Despacito has 50x more views.)
This is the video that I have seen the most times on YouTube, and it's the one I'd recommend to literally anyone. For readers without VPNs in China, I'll summarize briefly.
- You can only connect the dots looking backwards. We must trust that our dots will connect, even if we find that what we're doing has no hope of any applications in the near future. In Mr. Jobs' case, he gave the example of a calligraphy class he audited at Reed College, and how what he learned there formed the basis of font designs for the Macintosh many years later.
- Keep looking for what you love. Don't settle. Passion for what we do is the only way we'll do great work.
- Seize the day before you're old. Almost everything fades away in the face of death, until only the truly important things remain. Don't be trapped by the results of other people's thinking, and don't live a life that merely reflects others' expectations.
As I suspected, my summary doesn't come close to doing the speech justice. If you haven't seen it before, stop what you're doing now and go watch it.
Mr. Jobs famously ended his speech with four words of advice: Stay hungry. Stay foolish.
His words are as true today as they were over a decade ago when I heard them for the first time. Stay hungry. Stay foolish. Words to live by.