Happy Birthday, Steve: Fifteen Awesome Jobs Quotes ... As Free Verse

He would have been 60 today. And you bet he would have been looking for ways to change our lives. We remember perhaps the most iconic CEO of them all, Steve Jobs by recalling fifteen of his greatest quotes. And well, as so much of his prose was close to poetry, we put it down as free verse. Our way of saying “Happy Birthday, Steve. You did put a ding in our universe.”

Table of Contents

Death

Remembering that you are going to die
Is the best way…
To avoid the trap of thinking
That you have something to lose
You are already naked
There is no reason
Not to follow your heart.

Dots

You cannot 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…

Creativity

Creativity is just connecting things.
When you ask creative people how they did something
They feel a little guilty
Because they didn’t really do it
They just saw something
It seemed obvious to them after a while.

Settle…Don’t!

The only way to do great work
Is to love what you do
If you haven’t found it yet
Keep looking.
Don’t settle
As with all matters of the heart
You will know
When you find it

Innovation

I am as proud
Of the many of the things
That we haven’t done
As (I am of)
The things we have done.
Innovation is saying “no”
To a thousand things.

What matters…to me

Being the richest man
In the cemetry
Does not matter
To me.
Going to bed every night…
Saying we have done
Something wonderful
That’s what matters
To me.

If today were the last day

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.

Life

When you grow up
You tend to get told
That the world is the way it is
And your life
Is just to live
Inside the world.
Try not to bash into the walls
Too much.
Try to have a nice family,
Have fun,
Save a little money.

That’s a very limited life.

Life can be much broader
Once you discover
One simple fact:
Everything around you
That you call life
Was made up by people
That were no smarter
Than you.
And you can change it,
You can influence it,
You can build your things
That other people
Can use.

Millions

I was worth
About over a million dollars
When I was twenty three.
Over ten million dollars
When I was twenty four
Over a hundred million dollars
When I was twenty five.
It wasn’t that important
I never did it
For the money.

The Bargain

I would trade
All my technology
For an afternoon
With Socrates.

Design

People think:
It’s this veneer.
That designers are handed
This box and told
“Make it look good!”
That’s not what we think
Design is.
It is not just
What it looks like
And feels like.
Design is
How it works.

System, Innovation

The system
Is that there’s no system…
We have great processes
But that’s not what it’s about

Innovation comes from people meeting
Up in the hallways
Or calling each other
At 10:30 in the night
With a new idea.
Or because they have realised
Something that shoots holes
In how we have been thinking…
It’s ad hoc meetings
Of six people
Called by someone
Who thinks he has figured out
The coolest new thing ever
And who wants to know
What other people think
Of his idea.

The Voice Inside

Your time is limited
So don’t waste it
Living someone else’s life.
Don’t be trapped
By Dogma…
Don’t let the noise
Of other people’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.