Your Time Is Limited

Change Your Life: [Pursue Your [Passion] will Move Men Beyond Themselves]

Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, sold something more than computers and gadgets. He sold emotion and passion. When he first presented the iPad to the world, he repeatedly said, “It’s just so amazing to hold.” There was obviously a genuine love for the product, a real passion for what his company had created.

Once, Jobs was fired from the company he started, and he considered leaving Silicon Valley forever. However, he realized that, though he had been rejected, he still loved what he did, and he started over – this time with NeXT and Pixar, with the latter becoming a tremendous success.

Even if we have no aspiration to become the next high-tech megastar, we can all learn from the way Steve Jobs lived his life. In 2005, when he delivered the commencement speech at Stanford University, he shared some invaluable advice with the young graduates: “You time is limited, so don’t spend it living someone else’s life… have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”

Pursuing your passions may or may not lead to material or public success; however, regardless of external success, life is short, and finding small ways to express your inner, authentic voice at work, at home, or with your friends is perhaps the most important thing you can do for yourself and the world.

Lord, Give Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)

Here's to the Crazy Ones, the Unreasonable People

When Steve Jobs launched Apple’s iconic “Think Different” marketing campaign in 1997, it was clearly a reflection of his own philosophy and ideals. He praised “the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.” Nobody would disagree that Jobs himself personified this category, along with the famous individuals who were featured in Apple’s ads, such as Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King Jr., Sir Richard Branson, John Lennon, Thomas Edison, Ted Turner, Mahatma Gandhi, Amelia Earhart, Martha Graham, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Pablo Picasso.

By their nature, radical innovators tend to be contrarians, heretics, revolutionaries. They are forever discontent with the status quo. They are people who challenge conventional thinking, who show no respect for rules, or precedent, or popular opinion, and who never accept “can’t be done.” They dare to defy the deepest-held dogmas, dispute the most established industry practices, and trash the proudest of institutional legacies. Where everyone else seems content to “zig,” they feel compelled to “zag” – to swim against the mainstream, contradict prevailing wisdom, break the accepted patterns, slaughter the sacred cows, question the unquestionable, fix things that “ain’t broke,” turn the seemingly impossible into the possible, and, well… to simply “think different.”

Innovators are not satisfied just playing the game. They have an irresistible itch to rethink it, to change it, to improve it. Or to invent an entirely new game. They are, as George Bernard Shaw once explained, unreasonable people. Shaw argued that “the reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” Rather than conform to the existing patterns of the world, innovators can intuitively see what is wrong with those patterns – where others cannot – and they instinctively want to put them right, or to replace them with their own patterns. They quite literally want to change the world.

In a 1994 interview conducted by the Silicon Valley Historical Association, Steve Jobs said the following: “When you grow up, you tend to get told the world is the way it is, and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much… That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that it – everything around you that you call ‘life’… you can change it, you can influence it… you can mould it. That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just going to live in it, verses embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

Jobs summed it up very well. Innovators don’t just accept that “the world is the way it is.” They are always driven to reshape it into the way they envision it could be. Innovators behave exactly as those “Think Different” ads said they do: “They invent. They imagine… They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward. Maybe they have to be crazy… Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Lord, Give Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)

Nurture Creativity: Have Crazy Idea, Don't Give Up!

Fred Smith, founder of FedEx

“I think there are two keys to being creatively productive.

One is not being daunted by one’s fear of failure, the second is sheer perseverance”

(Mary-Claire King)

“It’s so crazy, it might just work,” said Fred Smith optimistically. He was an undergraduate at Yale University in 1965. As part of the coursework, he wrote an economics paper exploring the process of transportation of goods in the United States. Fred Smith wrote “crazy” idea on paper how a company carrying small, essential items by plane could be a much better business. He, however, did not go into details about how to actually run such a company.

As expected, his professor gave the paper a grade of “C”. Just like Smith’s professor, other people thought that the idea was indeed deserving a “C”. Some even thought that it was “crazy”. It was, but not for Fred Smith. Therefore, Smith held on to the crazy idea despite what others thought of it. He believes in his idea. To cut the story short, in 1971, the company was launched. It is called FedEx Express. Throughout the years, will all the challenges and failures, Smith never give up. “Today,” wrote Abhash Kumar, in YouStory.com, “FedEx is a global giant with operations in more than 220 countries and territories and an annual revenue of US $45 billion.”

What I learned from Fred Smith’s story is this: Logic will dictate that we stay away from crazy ideas. True, but the crazy ones are dared to go beyond what is “logical” and what is “safe”. They were the ones who have ventured out of the boundaries of the norm. Highly creative people are basically crazy. And once they believe in the idea, they will never give up. Remember Steve Jobs’ famously quote: “the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.” Are you crazy enough? Do you have “crazy” idea that you believe in despite people’s negative criticisms about it? Do you want to change the world? Then, stay on. Don’t give up.

Many ideas deemed as crazy at first may just turn out to be very creative and innovative. “Nearly all creative ideas can sound crazy when first presented,” write Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari. He continues, “Most people don’t have creative imaginations, so most people don’t get what the creative is saying. And people tend to be fearful of things they don’t understand.” Here is the fact: Not all crazy ideas have worked out – but most do. Add that crazy idea to perseverance and believe. Remember, some will just laugh at your idea. Don’t give up. If it is a worthy idea, make it work despite how silly it may sounds.

Have crazy idea. Don’t give up.

God, Give Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)

Nurture Creativity: Be Crazy, Think Differently

After watching Computer History Museum channel interview Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs: The Authorized Biography, I instantly mesmerized by Steve Jobs’ personalities. I then watched BBC’s Steve Jobs Documentary: Billion Dollar Hippy and Discovery Channel’s iGenius: How Steve Jobs Changed the World on Youtube. After that, I went to Popular Bookstore to get any books on Steve and I found a very great book offer of Jay Elliot’s The Steve Jobs Way: iLeadership for a New Generation for RM15 only! Usually it’s RM85.90. Wow! Awesome!

When I or anyone think of intuitive leadership, innovative thinker, visionary, and world changing creative-idea guy, one cannot not think of Steve Jobs and his company Apple. Have you heard it famous “Think Different” campaign before? Not long after some conflicts and leadership problems in his own founded company, Steve Jobs returned to Apple. When he returned, the iconic “The Crazy Ones” commercial was aired as part of the larger “Think Different” campaign. What was less known at the time was that Steve Jobs write the commercial himself. He wanted to revive the company and inspired not only its customers but its employees as well. The version of “The Crazy Ones” that Steve himself narrates didn’t aired until after his dead. If you already watch the commercial, you will remember this legendary speech:

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Mind you, there’s a fine line between creativity and insanity. I don’t mean (I think Steve Jobs also don’t mean) clinical insanity – there’s nothing good about that. But when I say “Be Crazy, Think Differently” I mean a kind of functional craziness that should inhabit our creativity. That wacky and insane-sounding concepts of ideas are what I’m talking about. Be crazy. Remember, not all crazy ideas will worked out. Sometimes crazy ideas has to come at the right time. But what is sure is that the world need “The Crazy Ones” – are you the one?

Be crazy, think differently

Lord, Give Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)