06 October 2011

Life's Change Agent


I was never really into knowing the genius behind the gadgets I have. But today was different. Almost every page and website I visited today showed Steve Jobs picture. So I read some of the notes and captions to find out what all of it was about. 

"R.I.P. Steve Jobs." That caught my full attention. The last news I read about him was shocking, as he resigned from Apple, the company he founded. Now this!

The only Apple product I have is the 3rd gen iTouch, which is turning 3 this December. It's old but the new apps make it new every time. It can only be replaced with another Apple gadget.

So, I watched some of Steve Jobs' videos and interviews. Here are some of my favorite quotes from him:

From the Stanford Commencement Speech 2005:
You cannot connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards.                                                
It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. (on getting fired from Apple at 30)                                                
Sometimes life's gonna hit you in the face with a brick. Don't lose faith.                                                                        
The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do.
Don't settle.                                                                                                                                                                                                              
If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you'll most certainly be right.                                        
If today were the last day of my life, would I wanna do what I'm about to do today?                                                                                 
Almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment and 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.                                        
Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.
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 result 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.
 More quotations:
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.
The thing that drives me and my colleagues ... is that you see something very compelling to you, and you don't quite know how to get it, but you know, sometimes intuitively, it's within your grasp. And it's worth putting in years of your life to make it come into existence.

Money was never Steve Jobs' key motivator.