'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEOof Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12,2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one ofthe finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college.Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a collegegraduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That'sit. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but thenstayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I reallyquit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young,unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up foradoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by collegegraduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by alawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at thelast minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were ona waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We havean unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." Mybiological mother later found out that my mother had never graduatedfrom college and that my father had never graduated from high school.She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a fewmonths later when my parents promised that I would someday go tocollege.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose acollege that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of myworking-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition.After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what Iwanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help mefigure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents hadsaved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that itwould all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but lookingback it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I droppedout I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me,and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on thefloor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits tobuy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sundaynight to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I lovedit. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity andintuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you oneexample:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphyinstruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, everylabel on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I haddropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided totake a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serifand san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space betweendifferent letter combinations, about what makes great typography great.It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that sciencecan't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in mylife. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintoshcomputer, 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 neverdropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have neverhad multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And sinceWindows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer wouldhave them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in onthis calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have thewonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible toconnect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it wasvery, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can onlyconnect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots willsomehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — yourgut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let medown, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and Istarted Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, andin 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a$2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released ourfinest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company youstarted? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was verytalented to run the company with me, and for the first year or sothings went well. But then our visions of the future began to divergeand eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board ofDirectors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out.What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it wasdevastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I hadlet the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had droppedthe baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard andBob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a verypublic failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley.But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did.The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had beenrejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired fromApple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. Theheaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being abeginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one ofthe most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, anothercompany named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who wouldbecome my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computeranimated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the mostsuccessful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn ofevents, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology wedeveloped at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. AndLaurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't beenfired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess thepatient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick.Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me goingwas that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And thatis as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is goingto fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be trulysatisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way todo great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keeplooking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll knowwhen you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets betterand better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it.Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you liveeach day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly beright." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "Iftoday were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am aboutto do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many daysin a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I'veever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Becausealmost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear ofembarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face ofdeath, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you aregoing to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking youhave something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason notto follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn'teven know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almostcertainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expectto live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to gohome and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare todie. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'dhave the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means tomake sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy aspossible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had abiopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through mystomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got afew cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there,told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctorsstarted crying because it turned out to be a very rare form ofpancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery andI'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its theclosest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I cannow say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was auseful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't wantto die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. Noone has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death isvery likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's changeagent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the newis you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually becomethe old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quitetrue.

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 otherpeople's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown outyour own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to followyour heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly wantto become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog,which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by afellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and hebrought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's,before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all madewith typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of likeGoogle in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it wasidealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog,and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It wasthe mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their finalissue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind youmight find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneathit were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewellmessage as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I havealways wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew,I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.