Steve Jobs was such a good writer, and not bad at speaking either! His Stanford commencement speech is the stuff of legend at this point. The original has 46M views on YouTube. As of this writing, the new remastered version has 20k in about 24 hours.
I used to listen to this speech a lot. At least a hundred of those 46M views are mine.
I first started listening to it when I was working for the State of Indiana. I had to park a half mile from the office, so I’d have a long walk every morning and every afternoon to listen to something. This was a time of podcasts, but not of iPhones, so whatever was on my iPod was whatever I had.
I spent a lot of time listening to this speech, walking back and forth down Maryland and Washington Streets, sometimes through the Convention Center, sometimes around the Circle Centre Mall.
I’d hear these words about knowing it was time to do something else with your life when you wake up too many mornings in a row uninterested and unprepared for the day. I had a lot of those days. Eventually, I quit.
Then five or six years later I ended up in a similar pattern. This time in Connecticut walking back and forth across the green every morning and evening. iPhones were a thing, so I’d stream the talk from YouTube and just put my phone in my pocket (on, of course, draining the battery the whole time).
After about 90 days of that I quit. I had too many days in a row waking up not wanting to do whatever it was I knew I was going to muddle through that day.
Turns out, I am highly unemployable. I just do not like working “at a job.” Some people like and want a job. Good! I do not want one. At least not the same thing every day, at the same place, with the same people. I require more control over my day.
All this to say, this speech rattled around in my mind a lot. While I don’t agree or align much with the whole “follow your passion” motive, I have increasingly aligned with Jobs’ notion of lifespan and time well spent.
It’s a thoughtful speech, one that AI could never conceive of today. Maybe it will tomorrow, but it’s hard for me to imagine that. This is what comes of true focus and mastery on a topic. And one I’m glad he delivered.
