I probably watched every Steve Jobs video there is in my early 20s. I’ve read the biographies by Walter Isaacson and Brent Schlender, and Steve Jobs in his own words, in Make Something Wonderful.
There are certain things that he was saying in his 20s, and then again in his 30s, 40s, and 50s. His work, really, was anchored to some ideals, some principles he likely turned to in moments of doubt or decision.
Following are some of his anchor points that I’ve narrowed down to:
1. Giving something back into the pool of human experience:
“I don’t grow my own food. I don’t make my own clothes. Everything I do depends on other members of our species. And the most satisfying thing in life is to put something back into that pool of human experience.”
2. Marrying technology with the liberal arts:
“It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough. It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing.”
3. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication:
“Simple can be harder than complex; you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”
4. Focus means saying No:
“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.”
5. Creativity comes from connecting dots:
“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.”
6. Reality is malleable:
“Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, influence it, build your own things that other people can use.”
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Hard work is a vector quantity; its direction is as important as the magnitude. And to give it direction, it’s imperative to have a set of core values, or anchor points in life.
What are yours?