"Don’t Settle" -- On Steve Jobs.

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Death at an early age is often viewed as tragic, but the recent death of Steve Jobs,  founder and CEO of Apple, Inc., has been widely publicized and widely mourned. There is much about his life and words that can cause all of us to think about how WE can be better innovators, entrepreneurs, educators or managers, and how we might have to overcome obstacles while we do so. Taken from many sources, here are some tidbits among many that I’ve found interesting as I look at myself — what I believe and what I do.

He was dyslectic – as was Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell and Henry Ford.

• "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. Everything else is secondary."
• "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. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences, or they have thought more about their experiences than other people."
• "Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected."

He was declared dead once, complete with obituary in 2008.  [B.H. Note —  Actually, so was I.]

• "Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed saying we’ve done something wonderful ... that matters to me."
•  "We don't get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we've all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it."
•  "I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do."

He was a college dropout.

• When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don't put in the time or energy to get there."
• "A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."
• "Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it."

Steve Jobs was adopted.  His birthmother agreed that he be adopted by his father, who was a high school dropout who became a machinist, and his mother who never graduated from college. [B.H. Note --  I’m an adopted father, and the birth mothers of both children knew much about my wife and I before they relinquished my children.]

• "My self-identity does not revolve around being a businessman, though I recognize that is what I do. I think of myself more as a person who builds neat things. I like building neat things. I like making tools that are useful to people. I like working with very bright people. I like interacting in the world of ideas, though somehow those ideas have to be tied to some physical reality. One of the things I like the most is dropping a new idea on a bunch of incredibly smart and talented people and then letting them work it out themselves. I like all of that very, very much."
• "Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and 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. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."

RIP, Steve Jobs.  "Don’t settle."