Yesterday, I was having lunch with a friend of mine, and the subject of my current state of unemployment came up. He then asked whether I had read Steve Jobs’ commencement address at Stanford from this past year. In replying no, he said that he would provide me with a copy, and, sure enough, he did. As he knows, and you, loyal reader, as well, I tend to be somewhat hard on myself. I push, and, inevitably, I sometimes get pushed back. This would be a fairly accurate description of my attempt at business school straight out of Columbia. And now, I push myself to find a new job, to get my foot in the door, to get back up and push again. But, alas, getting the proverbial foot in said door has been a trying task, one more difficult than I suspected. But, I keep looking, submitting the occasional résumé to a potential employer that’s offering a job that I’m qualified for, and typically never hearing a single word from them, ever.
Now, I’m not the biggest fan of Steve Jobs in the world. I think, along with many others, that he’s a bit of an egomaniac. However, he does deserve credit. He founded and currently runs two highly successful companies, Apple and Pixar. (I suppose you could claim he didn’t found Pixar, since he bought Lucasfilm’s computer animation division (if I recall correctly), but that’s just splitting hairs.) Pixar was just purchased by Disney for $7.4 billion, because Pixar has been doing Disney’s business better than Disney in recent years. Now Jobs is Disney’s largest shareholder. He’s also brought back Apple from the jaws of marginalization with the iPod and challenged the media conglomerates with his vision of how content should be disseminated. With all that in mind, I was eager to read his speech, to find what nuggets of wisdom lay within.
I’ll highlight the main points of his speech here that struck me, but I highly recommend reading the entire thing.
[Y]ou can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. 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.
I’ve had many people tell me this before, and I don’t doubt I’ll hear it again. But, for me at least, it’s advice that is good to hear over and over again. It’s very easy to think that much of what you’re doing is for naught; you must trust that your previous experiences will come back in unexpected ways.
Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith…You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part 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 all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.
I feel I’ve been hit with a half-dozen bricks over the past few years. But I think one of my strengths is that I can get knocked over by a brick, and get right back up again and keep going. I’m not one to stay idle, which is part of the reason why I really want to find work. Being inert is not in my nature (my need to get back into shape and lose weight notwithstanding).
Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. 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.
For me, this point is actually two. I am definitely not one to be “trapped by dogma,” but I do think that I could do a better job of extricating my inner voice in many situations. Not being assertive enough is one of my weaknesses, but one I try to work on as much as possible.
Upon reflecting on all this, I became curious as to what words of wisdom were spoken at my commencement last May. The only speech I could readily find was PresBo’s address. While much of it was either not uniquely interesting or addressing concerns facing Columbia as an academic institution, the very first paragraph stood out. Specifically…
We hope you have mastered the art of wasting time well. We know you have mastered the art of wasting time. Certainly, you have mastered the rituals of procrastination - the multi-colored pens, the carefully stacked pile of notes, the ever - sharpened pencils. But, hopefully, you can now distinguish between doing nothing when something could be done and doing nothing while creativity gets its act together inside our mind.
I will keep pursuing work, finding my entrance into the dreaded “real world,” confident in my belief that I am not just wasting time, but wasting it well.