Ha! Interesting timing Kyle - I just finished the Steve Jobs biography yesterday. I liked that Obama quote too... about him being scared to piss people off. I highlighted a few of these actually (and a lot more!) I also thought it was a very good book about business strategy though. One of the important lessons I got from it was: "don't be afraid to cannibalize yourself.... because if the technology is there and you don't do it. Somebody else will". I probably don't have the quote perfect - but I thought that was a really good one.
23 Comments (page 1)
Interesting timing, indeed! That's a great point. It seems like sacrifice is required any time you want to leap ahead.
I think you should keep in mind that not everything Steve Jobs did differently helped cause his success. In fact, some of those things probably limited him. The benefits of using small words is clear - more people will understand what you're saying, which is good. But psychedelic drugs? Most of history's notable people never used psychoactive, and most people who use them will not go on to do great things. There's no connection. Or take the fact that he was a hypocrite - stealing ideas but getting mad when others did it. That's not a trait to admire. Steve Jobs wasn't perfect, and we need to keep enough emotional distance to recognize which of his traits should be emulated, and which shouldn't
Hi Odai, Up top I purposely said that the next Steve Jobs will NOT act like Steve Jobs. In #13 I wrote, "Again, these aren’t “lessons”… just interesting things about the man." My big takeaway is that things that look like rules usually aren't. If Jobs did so much despite his massive flaws, maybe we can too.
Fair enough. Admittedly, I skimmed the intro to get to the list - didn't get it on my first read. Thanks for your response!
Sure! I should make that point skimmable... it's an important one! That guy was a jerk in a lot of ways lol
Love this post Kyle! I've never been too into Steve Jobs, even though you can't help but see his name thrown about every which way. But this post was interesting . . . It wasn't just another "How to be Like Steve" post or some "Great Lessons We Can Learn from Apple" kinda thing. Just straight up here's-some-food-for-thought. I like it. It doesn't try to sway one way or the other. So with that said, I'm actually far more interested in the man than before. I didn't know most of the things you wrote. He definitely seems like a complex and contradictory figure -- the type that always makes for good reading. Plus, I dug all the quotes . . . he definitely put thought into his words, and I can appreciate that. Good shit man! Cheers!
Thanks Trevor! I'm glad the article came off like that. I think there's a huge problem that we can have with the "halo effect". We build these myths around certain people and then ignore the other sides of them. I think most people we end up talking about are contradictory. And that is something that we should try to lose. Consistency for it's own sake is dangerous. Emerson said that, "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," and I think he's right. It's losing the fear of being wrong or contradicting ourselves that let's us fear. (Or leaning into the fear, anyway.) Honored to have a great blogger like yourself in this neck o' the woods. Prost!
Heh... glad you posted this one 'warts and all'. I have to say that my OWN experienced with hallucinogenics was not as enlightening as it was for Steve; I yelled at my roomies to shut up, shut up and get me a pen and paper. I looked later on at the the 'key to the Universe' revelation I had while tripping: "A shoe is good to have on." Man. My English teacher mother would have been mortified not only that her son had tried hallucinogens in search of deeper meaning, but also that that deep meaning ends in a preposition. ;-) Loved the post Kyle. Keep Stepping, Kurt
Thank you Kurt! Keep that shoe on :)
Ironically, Steve Jobs was against wearing shoes... :)
Good stuff Kyle, thanks for the post. Many of my heroes come in the form of athletes, musicians and other artists so I have trouble putting a computer nerd on the same pedestal as Michael Jordan and Bob Dylan, but I think if any nerd deserves it its Steve Jobs. Like Jordan and Dylan, Jobs was an artist unlike most that came before and totally recreated their respective genres. Rock N Roll hasn't been the same since the opening chords of Like a Rolling Stone, the basketball court hasn't been the same since the Air Jordan dunk and technology hasn't been the same since the ipod and iphone. Who are we to say what art is or is not? And if that is true then who are we to say who is an artist and who is not? Something being coined a work of art can only be done by the artist who made it, not the consumer. Do you think Bob Dylan has an iphone or ipod? "All you can do is do what ya must, you do what you must do and... ya do it well"- Buckets of Rain, Bob Dylan
Thanks for commenting. I think it's great to have heroes that come from all sorts of other disciplines. I think it makes taking their lessons easier. The difference in activity makes the essential stuff pop out. We even (if sometimes unknowingly) use characters in movies or books as heroes. Or at least scenes of them. It's interesting how everybody needs a human to put their ideals on and wonder, "What would X do?" There is a story of Julius Casesar at 40, shortly becoming emperor, complaining about how he had not achieved as much as Alexander the Great. No matter what someone's ambition is, they need a hero to guide them (or at least an idea of one). Amen on the art! That's an interesting topic to do a deep dive into. I don't think that claiming "I am an artist!" makes you so. There is something else. There is a deep honesty that you have to share, too. That's the struggle for a lot of artists - they can be creating honest, bloody art and people might ignore it. Have you read Seth Godin's Linchpin? It's a great challenge to become an artist. I love that line! Do the thing you can't not do and get damn good at it... "It's alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" is my favorite song/poem ever "For them that must obey authority That they do not respect in any degree Who despise their jobs, their destinies Speak jealously of them that are free Cultivate their flowers to be Nothing more than something they invest in"
Thanks for the reply Kyle, I love the quote. There are several interviews where Bob Dylan has been asked why he keeps doing what he does. The endless tours, the albums, the writing, etc etc. He usually answers with something that I think basically means "because its my job and I'm happy to have it and do it, I enjoy it". He has no other reason to at this point. I agree on the Art and honesty as well. I heard Steve Blank say that Entrepreneurship isn't a job, career or even choice, its a calling. And I think being an artist is the same. Artists have something in them they need to get out. I think entrepreneurs have the same feeling. Both create things in their own image that were not their before. Do you consider yourself an artist? Thanks again!
nice one kyle... i thought the most important lesson that i learnt from steve was that: "if u don't have what u need demand and if u still don't get one then BUILD ONE"... looking forward for u r future posts... :)
amen! scratch your own itch!
Love your site, first time viewer. In 16. Run away, you could have also selected Bob Dylan's "She Belongs to Me Lyrics" - She’s got everything she needs She’s an artist, she don’t look back...
Great points, i had just finished his book and you have pointed out some quotes i have missed. None the less, they are so inspiring.
this post is very inspirational :) thanks for this post :) best of luck
Steve Jobs will be forgotten with time. Indeed, everybody having moved to Android tablets, he pretty much as been. All he did was a make a lot of incompatible Apple crap that now sits out rusting in the barn. Most of it can't even run a modern webbrowser, and a lot of it didn't even have ethernet cards. I have a lot of Apple crap people through away, and if it even still works, its unusable for anything. He didn't design the insides of the box. Woz did. And he didn't design the outside of the box. Frog Design did. He didn't innovate the interface, Xerox did. He didn't invent the mp3 player, empeg did. Nor the smart phone, Blackberry or someone else did. So what exactly did he do for the world? Sell snake oil sizzle and that was it, that evaporated from your products within six months of buying them. Jobs will be forgotten, save for a bunch of Apple rubbish buried in landfills, and some big huge alluminum yacht relic somewhere as a memory of his vanity. I mean, does anybody care about Jack Tramiel and the Commodore 64 any more? Exactly.... stories lost to the dust bin rubbish heap of history.
I think this post was really interesting,because steve jobs is one very inspirational person to the new generation like us....he always wanted to do something extraordinary like no one had done before...though m a bboy but m studying software enginnering...and to ae honest he inspire me to do better and better in what i do.....i always follow his saying that "what do we know and what have we learnt"...btw nice writing kyle :-)
Hey anyone can list off a bunch of "who-discovered-it-first" reasons. It's like saying that DARPA actually invented the internet and asking why google is famous. He found and exploited the potential of the previous inventions, and made them accessible for "the common man" to use.
"Sell snake oil sizzle" was Jobs expertise and that is what he will be remembered for.