Steve Jobs Words of Wisdom - 1955-2011 (Tribute)

RIP Steve Jobs. Your legacy will live on...

Sharing with ya'll some of his inspirational words of wisdom that touches me. What a humble man he is. Hope it touches yours too...: )

 

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. — Steve Jobs, speaking at Stanford University's commencement, June 2005

On Creativity & Ideas

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.

Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.

On Business

I was worth about over a million dollars when I was 23 and over 10 million dollars when I was 24 and over a hundred million dollars when I was 25, and it wasn't that important because I never did it for the money. (PBS documentary Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires, 1996)

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me...Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me. (On the success of Bill Gates and Microsoft, The Wall Street Journal, summer 1993)

Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.

On Products

There's nothing that makes my day more than getting an email from some random person in the universe who just bought an iPad and tells me the story about how it's the coolest product they've ever brought home in their lives. That's what keeps me going. It's what kept me five years ago, it's what kept me going 10 years ago when the doors were almost closed. And it's what will keep me going five years from now whatever happens. (2010)

On Living Life

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. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. (1995)

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.

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 other's 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 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 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.

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.

Have an Inspired Friday to ya'll...

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