First, about faith: firmly believe
"You have to firmly believe that what you are experiencing now will be connected in your future life. It is this belief that keeps me from losing hope, and it makes my life different. "
It is an honor to attend the graduation ceremony with you today. Stanford University is one of the best universities in the world, and I have never got a college diploma. To tell the truth, in my life, today may be the closest day for me to graduate from college. I want to tell you three stories in my life. It's no big deal, just three stories.
The first story is about how to connect the dots in life.
I dropped out of Reed University after six months, but after eighteen months-before I really decided to drop out, I often went to school. Why did I drop out of school?
The story has to start when I was born. My biological mother is a young unmarried college graduate. She decided to let others adopt me, and she very much hoped that I would be adopted by college graduates. So when I was born, she made all the preparations so that I could be adopted by a lawyer and his wife. But she didn't expect that when I was born, the lawyer and his wife suddenly decided to have a girl. So my adoptive parents (who are still on my biological parents' watch list) suddenly received a phone call in the middle of the night: "We have an unexpected baby boy here now. Do you want it? " They replied, "Of course!" But my biological mother later found out that my adoptive mother never went to college and my adoptive father never even went to high school. She refused to sign the adoption contract. She didn't agree until a few months later when my adoptive parents promised that I would go to college.
At seventeen, I really went to college. But I foolishly chose a school that was almost as expensive as Stanford University. My adoptive parents are both workers, and they spent almost all their savings on my tuition. After six months, I can't see its value. I don't know what I want to do, and I don't know what kind of answer the university can help me find, but I almost spent my adoptive parents' life savings. So I decided to drop out of school, which I think is the right decision. There is no denying that I was really scared at that time, but in retrospect, it was really the best decision of my life. At the moment when I decided to drop out of school, I was finally able to take courses that looked interesting, instead of taking courses that were not interesting.
But not very romantic. As there is no dormitory to live in, I can only sleep on the floor of my friend's room; In order to have enough money to fill my stomach, I went to pick up a 5-cent coke bottle to sell; On Sunday night, I will walk seven miles across the city to Hare Krishna Abbey, just for one meal-the only good meal this week. But I like it. What I did by curiosity and intuition turned out to be an extremely valuable experience in BenQ. Let me give you a few examples:
At that time, Reed University provided the best calligraphy education in America. Every poster and label on every drawer in the whole campus is beautifully handwritten. Now that I have dropped out of school, I don't have to go to those formal classes, so I chose a calligraphy class and wanted to learn how to write beautiful handwriting. In this class, I learned all kinds of serif and sans serif fonts, how to change the spacing between different font combinations, and how to make beautiful layouts. It is a delicacy full of beauty, history and art that science can never capture. I think it's interesting.
At that time, I never thought that this knowledge would be of any practical value to my life; But eight years later, when we designed the first Macintosh, all these things came in handy. I designed them all into the Mac, which is the first computer that can print beautiful layouts. If I hadn't taken this course in college, Mac wouldn't have provided all kinds of fonts and equidistant fonts. Since Windows copied the Mac, all personal computers have these things. If I hadn't dropped out of school, I wouldn't have taken calligraphy classes, and today's personal computers probably wouldn't have excellent typesetting functions. Of course, when I was in college, I couldn't have the foresight to string together all the bits and pieces in my life; But looking back after 10 years, the trajectory of life becomes very clear.
Once again, you can't connect the dots of life with foresight. Only when you look back will you find the connection between these points. Therefore, you must firmly believe that what you are experiencing now will be connected in your future life. You must believe in something, your intuition, destiny, life, karma ... it is this belief that keeps me from losing hope and makes my life different.
Second, about success: persistence.
"Great works will only get more and more fragrant in the brewing of years. Don't stop looking until you finally get something. "
My second story is about love and loss.
I am lucky to know what I liked to do when I was young. When I was 20 years old, Woz and I started Apple Computer Company in my parents' garage. We worked hard, and it only took 10 years. Apple computer, which started with a garage and two young people, has now expanded into a company with 4,000 employees and a value of 2 billion dollars. The year before last, we just launched our best product, Macintosh, and I just turned 30. Then, I was fired. How can a person be fired from a company he founded? This is because, with the growth of Apple, we invited a guy who thinks he is very capable to manage the company with me. In the first year or so, he did a good job, but later, we disagreed about the future prospects of the company, so there was a contradiction between us. I was kicked out because the board of directors of the company was on his side. I was 30 years old. Losing the center of gravity throughout my adult life is devastating.
I really don't know what to do in the next few months. I feel that I have failed my predecessors in the business world, and I have lost the baton passed to me. I found David Packard (note: David Packard, one of the founders of Pratt & Whitney) and bob noyce (note: bob noyce, one of the founders of Intel), and I apologized to them because I screwed up. I became a well-known loser, and I even thought about escaping from Silicon Valley. But the dawn gradually appeared, and I still liked what I had done, so I decided to start over.
It turns out that being fired from Apple was the best thing that ever happened to me, even though I didn't realize it at the time. The heaviness of success was replaced by the lightness of phoenix nirvana, and I entered the most innovative period in my life as a free man.
In the NeXT five years, I started a company called Next, and then I started a company called Pixar, and I met Lawrence, a beautiful girl who later became my wife. Pixar made the world's first fully computer-animated film Toy Story, and now this company is one of the most successful animation production companies in the world. Later, after a series of events, Apple bought NeXT, so I returned to Apple. The technology we developed at NeXT is the core driving force of Apple's revival. Lawrence and I also have a happy family.
I'm pretty sure that none of this would have happened to me if I hadn't been fired from Apple. Good medicine is always bitter for patients. Life is sometimes like a brick hitting your head, but don't lose heart. Loving what I do is the only reason that has always supported me to keep moving forward. You have to find out what you love most, whether it's work or lover. Work will occupy a considerable part of your life, and only doing what you think is significant can bring you real satisfaction. The only way to do a great job is to love it. If you haven't found such a job yet, keep looking. Don't be complacent. When everything is in your mind, you will know when you can find it. Like any great romantic relationship, great works will only get more and more fragrant in the brewing of years. So don't stop looking until you finally get something. Do not stop.
Third, about choice: firmness.
"Don't bring wealth, fame and fortune, death, follow your heart and intuition, and don't waste time in other people's lives. Reminding myself that I am about to be buried is my first choice tool when facing major choices. "
My third story is about death.
/kloc-when I was 0/7 years old, I read a proverb, which seemed to say, "If you treat every day as your last, you will find that one day everything is under control." This sentence has had a profound impact on me since the day I read it. For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today is the end of my life, will I still do what I should do today?" When the answer was no for several days in a row, I knew it was time to make a change.
In the face of major choices in life, reminding myself that I am going to be buried is my most important tool.
Because everything-honor, reputation, fear of embarrassment and failure-will disappear in the face of death, leaving only what is really important. Of all the methods I know, reminding myself that I am going to die is the best way to avoid the above thoughts. When you come and go naked, there is no reason not to listen to your inner voice.
I was diagnosed with cancer about a year ago. At 7: 30 in the morning, I had an examination, and the scan clearly showed that there was a tumor in my pancreas. I don't even know what a pancreas is. The doctor told me that it is almost certainly an incurable disease and can live for three to six months at most. The doctor advised me to go home and arrange everything properly, which is the standard language of doctors for dying patients. This means that you have to finish what you will say to your children in the next 10 years in a few months; This means that you should arrange everything properly and reduce the burden on your family behind you as much as possible; This means it's time to say goodbye to everyone.
I've been thinking about the diagnosis all day That night, I had a biopsy. The doctor put an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach, into my intestine, put a probe into my pancreas and took out a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife was there. Later, she told me that doctors screamed when they looked at the tissue under the microscope, because it was a very rare pancreatic cancer that could be treated by hand. I had an operation and now I have recovered.
This is the closest I have ever been to death, and I hope that in the next few decades, there will be no experience closer to death than this one. After passing by death, death is just a useful but purely intellectual concept to me. I can tell you with more certainty: no one wants to die; Even those who want to go to heaven want to get in alive. Death is the destination of everyone's life, and no one is an exception. Life is like this, because death is probably the best thing in life. It is the medium of life change, sending away the old and making way for the new generation. Now you are still a new generation, but in the near future you will be old and sent off the stage of life. I'm sorry to be so dramatic, but this is life.
Your time is limited, don't waste it in other people's lives. Don't be bound by rules, or you will live with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other people's opinions drown out your inner voice. Above all, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They may already know what kind of person you want to be. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was a great magazine called Global Catalogue, which was regarded as the Bible by my generation. The founder of this magazine is Stuart Brand. He lives in Menlo Park, not far from here. He filled the magazine with poetry. That was in the late 1960s, before personal computers and desktop publishing systems appeared, so the only publishing tools were typewriters, scissors and Polaroid cameras. This magazine is a bit like Google printed on paper, but that was 35 years before Google appeared. It is full of ideal colors, and the content is very useful tools and great insights.
Stuart and his team made several issues of the Global Catalogue, and when it was dying, they published the last issue. It was in the mid-1970s, when I was your age. On the back cover of the last issue, there was a picture of a country road in the early morning. If you like go on road trip, you will often meet that kind of path. There is a line at the bottom of the photo: stay hungry and stay stupid. This is their farewell speech, and I always use it to encourage myself. Now, when you graduate and start a new life, I hope you can do the same:
If you are hungry, you are humble.
Thank you all.