Steve Jobs the former CEO of the tech giant, Apple came up with a famous quote which goes like “Stay hungry, Stay foolish”. Jobs who is considered to be the Thomas Edison of this generation delivered these words on a commencement speech at Stanford University. His speech didn’t comprise of some huge formal English words or sentences. It was just simply about three important stories of his life.
He titled his first story to be about ‘connecting the dots’. Steve dropped out of the Reed college just after 6 months and remained a drop out for at least 18 months. He was an adopted child and he saw his foster parents spending every penny they earned to pay the college fees and all that for the subjects he wasn’t even interested in. he trusted his instincts and believed that it would all be OK at the end. He mentioned that it as very scary in the beginning, but it was one of the best decisions he had ever made. He started looking for classes that interested him and let go of the classes that weren’t interesting. It wasn’t easy for him at all. The reed college at that time had the best calligraphy classes. He took a class for calligraphy since he had dropped out of the normal classes. He learned all about serif and sans serif typefaces. He knew it might not be helpful for him in the future but that didn’t stop him from learning. It all came back 10 years later when he was designing the first Macintosh computer and he designed all he learned in the calligraphy class into the computer and it made the first computer with beautiful typography. That’s how you look back and connect all the dots in your life.
The second story is labelled as ‘love and loss’. He says he was very very lucky to have found something he really liked doing. He and Steve Wozniak started a company (Apple) in his parent’s garage when he was 20 years old. It became a 2 billion-dollar company in 10 years. And ironically he had fallout from his own company since his views were different from the board of directors. He was devastated and depressed. But he didn’t give up. In the next 5 years, he created another company called NeXT and another named Pixar. Apple ironically bought NeXT and Steve joined his old company again.
The third story is about ‘death’. He sadly mentioned that he was diagnosed with cancer a year ago. No one wants to die, not even the people who know they will be going to heaven would want to die to get there. But he taught his audience that he had once read a quote that went like “live as if you were to die tomorrow”. He followed this quote all throughout his life. Facing his cancer was the closest he had ever been to death. He then ended this story of his life with the words that still influence and motivate millions of us.
“Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish!!!!”
