Lessons from the Life of Steve Jobs

In the last couple of years, I’ve really become interested in reading biographies. At first, this was purely for enjoyment, and mostly it still is. Reading biographies helps me to broaden my reading from the typical psychological and religious kinds of books that I most often gravitate toward to a different kind of book. Last January, though, I started to think of biographies in a different way when I attended a seminar sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum concerning first person accounts of the Holocaust of World War II. I started to think about the psychology of personality, and when it is that we really know a person. I started to study the ideas of Dan McAdams, a psychologist of personality at Northwestern University who argues that it is impossible to really know a person until you understand their narrative, their perception of identity typically couched in stories, and best understood through a personal relationship. McAdams has inspired me to pursue my interests in really understanding people of significance in depth. When I told a friend about this the other day, she said that this is because I like to “find out what’s wrong with people.” It’s interesting how people often perceive psychologists. The reality is that I like to find out what’s right with people, and adapt their best ideas to living well. That’s what I’d like to do here with Steve Jobs, reflecting on Walter Isaacson’s brilliant biography that I recently finished.

Many people probably are familiar with some of Steve Jobs’ problems. As far as I can tell, Jobs was an “all-or-nothing thinker,” often perceiving work and people either as “brilliant” or “shit.” He neglected some of his children. He made a lot of enemies. However, as in every person’s life, there is good to find as well, and in Jobs’ life, there is a lot of good to think about.

First, Steve Jobs had a very inquisitive and engaged mind, known to be largely independent of outside influence. He rebelled in school, often in admirable ways. As he said once, he “knew the school was at fault for trying to make me memorize stupid stuff rather than stimulating me.” He was forward thinking, preferring not to ask customers what they wanted, but rather focusing on figuring out what wanted before they even knew that’s what they wanted. As Jobs said, “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” He preferred working on problems of substance and playing with new ideas with people directly, often on long walks (like other great thinkers like Darwin and Einstein), an interesting paradox given the technology that he created. For instance, Jobs once remarked:

“There’s a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat. . . That’s crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘Wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.”

This became the philosophy behind the new Pixar and Apple buildings that Jobs helped to design. That is, Jobs wanted individuals to bump into each other as often as possible to have creative discussions (to the point where he would limit the number of bathrooms in a building).

Another interesting element of Jobs’ approach was his reliance on intuition, rather than intellect. Reflecting on a trip to India when he was young, Jobs remarked:

“Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. . . If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things – that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more.”

Obviously, this is a very Buddhist, Zen way of life, something that strongly influenced Jobs. You can see this in the simplicity of many of the Apple products he helped to create.

More than anything, though, I was struck by Jobs’ motivation. Jobs once reflected:

“The older I get, the more I see how motivations matter. . . If you don’t love something, you’re not going to go the extra mile, work the extra weekend, challenge the status quo.”

His focus was extraordinary and challenging. He said:

“We all have a short period of time on this earth. We probably only have the opportunity to do a few things really great.”

This became the philosophy of Apple, which seeks to develop only a few products, but to make them “insanely great,” another of Jobs’ key phrases. As the new Apple CEO, Tim Cook, put it, “That allow[ed] him to focus on a few things and say no to many things. Few people are really good at that.”

Interestingly, some of this motivation came from Jobs’ appreciation for death, something he acquired early on in his life when several family members died. In fact, Jobs always believed he would die young. Reflecting on this, Jobs remarked in his famous commencement address at Stanford University in 2005:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

In the end, Jobs created “insanely great” products (and this comes from someone who doesn’t own a single Apple product). However, one of Jobs’ favorite maxims, which probably motivated him more than any other, concerns the intrinsic value of the process. As he stated, “the journey is the reward.”