Steve Jobs: how to live before you die.
Connecting the dots. Dropping out of college allowed him to “drop in” on calligraphy classes, which distilled down on the Mac fonts later on. Sometimes we may not understand the purpose and value of our current path in life, but looking back, it’s easy to see how those seemingly random series of events ended up impacting our lives.
“You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in the 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.”
Love and Loss. At the age of 30, after building a $2 billion company, Jobs was fired from his own company. After being fired from Apple, Jobs started a company called NEXT, and then Pixar. He also met his future wife during this period.
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 your 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.
Death
“Every day for the past thirty years, I have 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—almost all external expectations, pride, all fear of embarrassment and failure … just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important … 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 peoples’ thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own internal 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.
