Adonis Diaries

Don’t waste it living someone else life: Steve Jobs

Note: I am updating older posts for the new followers. Somehow, these 6,700 articles need to be upgraded and updated. This post was published in 2011.

“Your time is limited”: Steve Jobs on TED

“Your time is limited: Don’t waste it living someone else life.

Your time is limited: Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.

Your time is limited: 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.”

This is a portion of Steve talk to TED (Technology, Education, and Development company that extend licenses for local and other country entrepreneurs to diffusing the talks of speakers (famous and less famous) registered twice a year at paid events).

I have read most of these inspiring slogans.  That Steve adopted them is great relief and a catalyst for the visionaries.

Users of Ipod and Iphone must be implicitly sending silent prayers to Steve in the coming weeks:  How many of us could dream of such a luxury?

If the natural parents of Steve (see biographical note) had decided to raise him, would Steve finish a university degree? Most probably, yes.  It is tradition for Near-East Mediterranean Sea families to see to it that their children graduate from universities.  Would Steve be a success story? Why not.  Would it be “this kind of success story”?

Did the adoptive family of Jobs done a good job? They let Steve try all kinds of electronic gadgets… Steve was so lucky: He managed to survive the critical first five years, be adopted, be fed adequately, be raised in the land of opportunities…

Streams of scientists, researchers, discoverers preceded Steve and set the foundation in digital communication and computing…

For how long Steve and his vision will last on front page? How long till it is relegated to virtual has been? Who is the next visionary to monopolize front page?

Someone wrote: “For us in Palo Alto, Steve Jobs was 15 minutes walk away…”  How many dared walk toward Steve’s direction?

Your time is limited.

Do you have a vision? Can you sustain pressure and enjoy working under pressure? If not, select another vision that requires as much work, but less stupid pressures that ruin your joy for life.

Do not worry, someone else will pick up your first vision and run with it: You have contributed to the implementation of the vision, given that you published in details your daydream project, regardless if many would deny you the essential contribution.

Work hard, not mindlessly, but mindlessly hard as you identified your strongest passions, which converge toward your dream of “What work makes me happiest?”

And the cycle closes in: Spirit, virtual vision, daydream detailed project, applied matters, trends, spirit…

Most people never cross the phase of attempting to publish their daydream project.  Why?  They don’t want to be humiliated by a few of the community pointing their fingers saying: “The fool. He can’t even earn a living…” We are surviving life!

Many blame Steve for not paying close attention to the sweatshop factories overseas, manufacturing the gadgets…

My nephew William told me that Steve was a super programmer: When Steve worked at Atari, he was paid $650 for every redundant ship he could remove from the design.  The design got so anorexic that the company paid Steve $5,000 bonus.  It turned out that Steve Wozniak was the one helping him out in Atari and Wozniak was the programmer for the first Apple computer. Any feedback?

Biographical Note: Steve was born in Feb. 24, 1955 from an American lady (Joanne Simpson) and the Syrian Abdul Fattah Jandaly.  They got married two years after Steve’s birth. In the mean time, the Jobs family had adopted Steve. In 1967, at age 12, Steve was admitted to a summer training with Hewlett-Packard: He called directly William Hewlett.

Steve graduated from Homestead high school (Cupertino) in 1972. He could not suffer university formal learning and worked with Atari (electronic games) from 1974 to 76.

In July 1976, Jobs and Steve Wozniak launched Apple 1, for $666.  Why this number 666?

Steve  married Loren Powell in 1991 and has three children.  The fourth child is from Chrissa Brennan. Steve died of cancer in the pancreas.