Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement Address: A Timeless Message for Graduates
Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement Address is one of the most influential commencement addresses in history, watched over 120 million times, and reproduced in media and school curricula around the world. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Steve’s commencement address at Stanford, we are sharing a newly enhanced version of the video below and on YouTube. It’s not an obvious candidate for a classic. A commencement address by a college dropout. It is a speech by a tech founder who scarcely mentions technology. The talk generated no small measure of anxiety for Steve. He did not know he wasn’t the students’ top choice for a speaker. They wanted comedian Jon Stewart, who had given a popular commencement address the year before. Arnold Schwarzenegger, movie star-turned-governor of California, was the third choice.
A Rare Glimpse into the Life of Steve Jobs
Back in 2005, Steve Jobs delivered the commencement address at Stanford University. It was a rare moment when the Apple co-founder spoke about himself. An intensely private man, Steve was not in the habit of talking about his personal journey-but he knew the occasion required it.
In the six months between the invitation from Stanford president John Hennessy and commencement, Steve sent himself notes, outlines, and drafts of ideas. As the date grew closer, the PR team at Apple began offering suggestions. He did not use them. Steve requested ideas from the four senior class co-presidents; they sent him thoughts and didn't hear back. He asked friends for advice.
Three Stories That Resonated
At Stanford, under the guise of great simplicity-“Today I want to tell you three stories from my life”-Steve touches on fundamental truths that make us human: love, death, fear, authenticity, hope.
Connecting the Dots: Trusting Your Intuition
Steve Jobs talked about many things - his adoption, why he dropped out of college, calligraphy and the motivational power of death. Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.
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He shared the story of dropping out of Reed College and taking a calligraphy class. Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college.
Jobs emphasized the importance of trusting that the dots will somehow connect in your future. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.
Love and Loss: Finding What You Love
Steve Jobs spoke about love and loss.
Confronting Mortality: The Best Invention of Life
Steve Jobs had been diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2003. He had surgery and told the students he hoped that that was the closest he would get to death for a few more decades.
He shared a quote that had resonated with him since he was 17: When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like, if you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right. It made an impression on me. And since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, if today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
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Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or 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.
He closed with this. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because 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. Right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. 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 results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' 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.
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