Always Learning
“We must always be ready to learn, even if we don’t know where we’re going to apply it, the future will take care of providing the necessary opportunities for its application.”
This is well illustrated in the famous speech given at Stanford in 2005 by Steve Jobs, part of which is transcribed here.
……. Steve Jobs describes the unexpected effect of his choice of calligraphy and typography as an optional subject in high school. Without this choice, he explains, he wouldn’t have had the aesthetic concerns that led him to choose typefaces and proportional spaces to use on computer screens. Without this study, computers would have taken much longer to acquire the elegant, legible graphics we know today. ………
And he concluded: we never know what knowledge is going to be used for, we only find out later. We can’t know how concepts will connect in the future, we can only understand it in retrospect. That’s why we have to believe that what we’ve learnt will be used in our future.
“Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. 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.”
Some famous quotes by Steve Jobs
“The only way to do a good job is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t despair. Just like in love, you’ll know when you’ve found it.”
“You’ll only do an excellent job if it’s the thing you love most.”
“Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”
“Get as close to your consumers as possible. So close that you can tell them what they want before they find out for themselves.”
“Be a benchmark for quality. People aren’t used to environments where excellence is expected.”
“That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be easier than complex; you have to work hard to get your thinking clear to make it simple.”
“Life is better when you’re laughing.”
