We have picked what we think are the best pieces of advice (quotes or sayings) from Steve Jobs, considered the greatest entrepreneur and visionary of our recent history, spoken from the heart and covering topics such as creativity, innovation, careers, personal life and business success. They are pieces of advice I always try to keep in mind.
-
Your work is going to take up most 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 matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And like any great relationship, it just keeps getting better as the years go by. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
-
Being the richest man in the cemetery isn’t what matters to me… going to bed every night knowing we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.
(See: What Steve Jobs and Bill Gates really thought of each other)
-
I’m as proud of the things we’ve done as of the things we haven’t done. Innovation is also about saying no to a thousand things.
-
Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened to me. The heaviness of success was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
-
When I was 17, I read a quote that said: “If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you’ll be right.” Since then, 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’m about to do today?” When the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, you know you need to change something.
-
I’m fully convinced that what separates successful entrepreneurs from unsuccessful ones is sheer perseverance.
-
You can’t connect the dots looking forward… you can only do it looking back. So you have to trust that the dots will connect in the future. You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
-
Remembering that you are going to die someday is the best way to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose by trying. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
-
Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they managed to do something, they feel a little guilty, because they didn’t really do it. They simply saw something, and after a while it seemed obvious to them.
(See: Steve Jobs’s Stanford commencement speech)
-
Be the standard of quality. Many people aren’t used to working in an environment where excellence is always the goal.
-
When you try to solve a problem, the first solutions that come up tend to be very complex. That’s where most people stop. But if you keep going, live with the problem and start peeling back the layers of the onion, you can arrive at simpler, more elegant solutions.
Further reading
- Jack Welch: 10 wise business lessons from the greatest executive of our time
- 10 pieces of life advice you’ll be grateful for once you’re past 30
Featured image: JD Lasica from Pleasanton, CA, US, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
.jpg){kind=link}