How to Live Before You Die: Steve Jobs

 

The celebrated commencement speech of Steve Jobs at Stanford University to graduating students is perpetually refreshing and continues to inspire us. His three life stories are lessons shared to the readers about life and the attitude we should cultivate to the world outside.

 

ON CONNECTING DOTS

When he dropped out from Reeds College he really didn’t know what to do but later he dropped in to learn calligraphy.  However, he believes that his decision to drop out and later use of calligraphy skills to design the Apple Macintosh, the computer that revolutionized the entire computer industry, was not a coincidence alone. The typography in the Macintosh differentiates between Apple computers and the rest.

Steve Jobs truly believes that you can never connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. He believed that his gut feeling never let him down and brought about all the changes in his life.

LOVE AND LOSS

Steve Jobs emphasizes one of the most important lessons we should learn in our life and that is to find out what our passion is.  He says he is lucky to have found his at the age of 20.  He started Apple in a garage with Steve Wozniak which later turned into a billion-dollar company.

 

Even though he was fired from his own company at the age of 30 by the board of directors, his passion made him excel and he launched a company – NEXT and PIXAR. Pixar is today the most successful animation studio in the world.  Today NEXT is the cause of Apple’s rebirth.  Would all this have been possible had he not been fired? He also says how life will be a place for setbacks but during all those instances one must continue to follow one’s heart and that will churn out a wonderful future.  Since all through your life you will shell out the majority of your time at work, it is equally important to first find out what you love.

DEATH

Steve Jobs remembered a quote he had come across. It said “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right. He says in his speech, “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.”

Death is inevitable. One day it will come to everyone. When Steve Jobs was diagnosed with a tumor in his pancreas, the doctor believed it was not curable and advised him to be prepared for death. But later on, when he got some other diagnosis, the doctor found out that it was minor cancer that was completely curable with surgery. After the surgery, he was hail and hearty. The lesson he wants to convey is that your time on this planet is limited, so stop wasting it living someone else’s life. Stop believing in other’s opinions because it destroys your mental confidence completely. The most important things in life are to follow your heart and intuition. Once you find it out, everything else becomes secondary. as replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again”

 

Understanding the text

 

Answer the following questions.

 

a. What is the story about Steve Jobs’ birth?

 

The story about Steve Jobs' birth is that his biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student who decided to put him up for adoption. She felt very strongly that the adoptive parents should be college graduates. It was set that the child would be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. However, when the child was born the prospective parents declared they wanted a baby girl. Hence, the next couple who were on a waiting list got an unexpected opportunity to adopt him. However, Steve's biological mother later was reluctantly to sign the adoption paper on the discovery that neither the mother nor the father was a college graduate. They promised to send the child to a graduate college though and we have been told Steve dropped out of his college.

 

 

b. What does he mean when he says, “you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards”?

What does Steve Jobs actually means by this quote is a matter of interpretation. When you are connecting dots in the newspaper, for example, you can see the whole picture.  Montessori kids connect dots to write the alphabet. Are not they trying to create a whole picture of something? But in life, it's hardly the case. Our futures are not just much more complex, they are interdependent with various other factors. So, we can't be sure about which actions of us will give us what rewards. So in this quote, what Steve Jobs is trying to say is instead of worrying about the future rewards of your actions, just do what you love to do. You can't be sure about which action will generate maximum payoff, so just do the stuff you love. It will all make sense when you will look backward.

c. What happened when Steve Jobs turned 30?

 

When Steve Jobs turned 30 he was fired from the company Apple by its Board of Directors. He had started the company from his parent's garage with Woz that had grown to $2 billion employing 4000 employees in 10 years period. Thus, leaving the company he had founded was a loss of focus of his entire adult life and it was devastating.

 

 

d. Jobs contend that you need to love to do what you do in order to be great at it. Do you agree or disagree? Why?

 

I agree with Steve Jobs in this regard.

However, the statement sounds like a big problem, doesn't it?  Most people take a job out of necessity rather than being passionate about that line of work. When Steve Jobs discovered that he was passionate about design and technology, he stayed focused on that industry. Sometimes it takes time to decide what you are passionate about.  The sooner you discover what your passions are, the faster you will find job fulfillment. If you want to feel fulfilled in your current job, take on a project that you are passionate about on top of your daily duties.  Have a job that you absolutely despise?  I'm sure that has happened to all of us, but do not settle and keep your ear to close to the ground for other potential opportunities.

 

e. Is death really life’s greatest invention?

 

Any invention can be termed as the best or the greatest when all of those whom you target (i.e. your target group) uses it. Death is one such invention. Everyone uses it (i.e. everyone dies). No matter how much you try to avoid it or how much you run away from it or how much more you want to live, you have to die. You just can't escape it. Hence it's very likely the single best invention of life. For the living, it means that they need to think hard about what they are going to do to make their lives meaningful in a limited amount of time. It also means that the decks will be cleared on a regular basis so that new people and new ideas have a chance. It's like routine garbage collection to keep the streets and city clean. 

 

Reference to the context

 

a. Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.”

 

i. Who was the baby boy?

ii. What does ‘do you want him?’ mean?

iii. Who does ‘they’ refer to?

 

i. The baby boy referred to above was Steve Jobs.

 

ii. The phrase ‘do you want him’ means if they (the prospective adoptive parents on waiting list ) were interested to adopt Steve Jobs.

 

iii. ‘They’ refers to foster home/orphanage that had the exclusive authority to offer Steve Jobs for adoption to prospective parents.

 

 

b. Explain the following lines:

 

i. “You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.”

 

Steve says that you have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. The statement speaks of faith in the unseen. Everyone has a different name for it, but it speaks to you and you hear it, it's a universal truth. Listen to that voice and you'll never be wrong.

 

ii. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

 

Steve asks not to be carried away by other’s thoughts, opinions, or dogma. If you believe in them, you are trapped by their dogma which is living with 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. (passion) Your mind is your kingdom and yours alone to rule. Sensitivity is a virtue required to attain the highest levels of success. Keeping your mind free and to yourself to hear your creative and progressive thoughts is essential to succeed in the hard struggles of life. This is necessary because we have limited time in our physical world. One day, we are destined to die and forgotten.

 

 

c. What does he mean by “don’t settle”?

 

It means you will not accept something that is less than what you want. A very common Nepali expression is ‘thikkai cha” which I’m not very fond of it. The “thikkai cha’ mentality accepts something that is knowingly mediocre. Such an attitude should not appeal to as a standard way of doing things in life.

 

d. Which style of speech is used by the speaker to persuade the audience?

 

The speaker Jobs demonstrated the virtuous use of the rhetoric appeals in the development and presentation of one of the most persuasive commencement speeches in order to draw the students’ attention to the significant questions which can contribute to changing the person’s life.
The strategies used in developing the structure of the speech and the rhetorical strategies are closely connected.

 

 

e. It is not easy to motivate others. How do you think Steve Jobs’ speech is so inspiring?

 

Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, Inc., is known as one of the world-famous and successful entrepreneurs whose unique approaches to business and marketing provoked the great public’s interest. That is why Jobs’ speech on the importance of finding an interesting and loved work drew the attention and gained the recognition of the graduates during the Commencement Day at Stanford University in 2005.

The goal of Steve Jobs’ speech is to persuade the graduates to find the jobs that they can truly love because of their passion for the definite activities. Thus, Jobs is successful in achieving his goal because of his exclusive approach to structuring the speech and to blending the rhetoric appeals in order to discuss well-known concepts and ideas of love, loss, and death in a unique form that makes the speech inspiring.

f. Why do you think Steve Jobs used the personal narrative story telling technique in his speech? What influence does it have on the audiences?

 

Steve Jobs used a personal narrative storytelling technique in a very conversational tone to invoke an image of friendship with graduating students. This was a wise choice for his audience was composed of young people commencing graduation course. He used simple and traditional sentence structure with an opening introduction, three personal stories, and a conclusion in his 14.5 minutes speech. He used effective pauses before and particularly after every key point to allow the audience time to digest his points

 

 

 

Reference beyond the text

 

 

a. One of Steve Jobs mottos was: 'Think differently'. Can this make a person succeed in life? What challenges are there in thinking differently?

 

Apple founder and Chairman Steve Jobs taught us all many things about innovation which is the result of ‘think different. Think different strategy certainly makes a person succeed in life. Innovators always succeed in creating something to better the lives of humanity.

 

 

However, there are inherent challenges in thinking differently. Innovators (of new businesses, products, and processes) spend almost a significant part of their time trying to think differently compared to non-innovators. Generating new business ideas that make a positive financial impact takes time. If thinking differently can make such a positive difference, why don’t more people spend more time doing it? Adults find the task of thinking differently uncomfortable and some even find it exhausting. Thinking different is easier said than done. It can transform good ideas (and not-so-good ones) into great ones that might even disrupt the world. We have found that most people can actually do this reasonably well if they choose to put in the time and effort that’s required to think differently. Einstein said, ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge.’ Thinking differently allows us to use our imagination to explore all sorts of new possibilities.

 

 b. What does the slogan “Stay hungry; stay foolish” mean to you? 

It was Steve Jobs’ ending comment in the Stanford Commencement in 2005, and he told graduating students to stay hungry and stay foolish. What does this phrase mean? I understand this may also seem philosophical, but when studying English, often we not only study the words, but we also study what the meaning is, and what a phrase or writing may mean or imply.

Stay Hungry means never be satisfied, and always push yourself forward.
Stay foolish means do (or be willing to keep trying) the things people say cannot be done. Stay hungry can be interpreted as "stay eager", and stay foolish can be interpreted as "be ready to try new things" or "be ready to step out of your comfort zone". This phrase purposefully uses negative adjectives in a positive way. This is what gives this phrase its "punch." Taking a word, phrase, or situation and contrasting how it is normally used versus how it is used in a given case is a common rhetorical device.

Hungry here means "wanting something more", as in "He was hungry for a raise." Jobs is putting forward that being dissatisfied with what you have and wanting more is a good thing. Likewise, someone who is foolish acts without thinking and takes unnecessary risks. Jobs is saying that you should take stupid risks and throw caution to the wind. Taken together, Jobs is simply saying: "You only live once, so make it count and go after what you want no matter what." This quote is the farewell message placed on the back cover of the 1974 edition of The Whole Earth Catalog. Steve Jobs was a fan of the magazine. 

 c. What does it mean to be a visionary? What makes Steve Jobs different from a fortune-teller?

 

Steve Jobs wasn’t an engineer or a designer. But he was one of the greatest users of technology of all time, and that made all the difference to be a visionary.

Steve Jobs was considered a visionary legend because of his place in the history of computer design. Along with Wozniak, Jobs established the Apple computer company. We now see the computer as common because Job saw the transformative nature of the computer before many others. He was able to anticipate how the computer would and could drive the future.

Steve never took a no for an answer. He was famous for being extremely bold in his demands and for repeating the same question over and over until he would get an answer. People used to avoid direct confrontation with him because they knew that he was so convincing that they would be forced to agree on terms they didn't like.

Steve didn't care much about reality! He forced the engineers working with him to create products that were by any means impossible to produce before apple was there. Whether it’s the insanely slim Mac-book or the extremely sophisticated iPhone, it is Jobs’ vision and his denial of reality that inspired them.

 

Thus his vision, optimism, sincerity in his profession and resolve distinguishes him as a practical innovator rather than a fortune-teller.