Steve Jobs has become immortal upon his death. His wonderful creations, his passion and his uncanny drive- all have made him a superstar reigning in stratospheric heights.
Jobs showed an “unconventional” path to life. The urge to run by the heart, instead of the brain. Chase after what the heart desires, instead of conventional establishment. This is THE difference, the “Road Not Taken” approach of Jobs. In Job’s own words, “….Don’t be trapped by dogma-which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else in secondary.”
It takes radical determination, it takes hell of a courage to come out of comfort zone, come out of convention. It takes brimming tenacity of mind to pursue the inner-most urge and stick to it. You should be dead serious to stick to that hardcore urge. It’s like follow “What the Heart Says”, instead of what convention, or establishment tells you to. He was so radical, he made his own rules. He judged the world in binary terms. Products are “insanely great” or “shit”, one is facing death from cancer or “cured”, subordinates are geniuses or “bozos”, indispensable or no longer relevant. His outrageous comment about Microsoft, in the tele-documentary “Triumph of the Nerds”, was, “The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste……I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third-rate products”. This statement is quintessential Jobs: arrogant, frank, insightful and perhaps more than half right, though brutally overstated. One of NeXT executive commented, “Being around Steve is a reality distortion.” It is this Radical Mind that created the difference- in his own life and in his works.
His trademark is intensity, intuition-driven and radicalism. He had vision, he had the insight to exercise “think different” approach, which contributed to put Apple’s designs a head above the competition. He was intensely focused on his vision. In pursuing his heart’s urge, he was relentless. “….I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love….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.”
He had unconventional ideas. The thinking of death and get yourself done before you are gone-both are unconventional by western standards. The norm is to think of everything else other than death and get going as usual. The unusualness is evident in his behavior. He would park his Mercedes in handicapped spaces, didn’t put license plate on his car, offered stock options to his employees by backdating the option’s value.
He was visionary by the super-most standards. That’s how he became pioneer in his every endeavor. He is without a doubt top pioneer of computer generation. His uncanny creativity is obvious. He was the clear visionary to see technology to be designed and sold as consumer product, which was the revolutionary idea in early years of computers. His leadership in innovative products like Macintosh personal computer (the dominating Windows Operating System being modeled from Mac’s point-and-click system), computer animation (with Toy Story being the first fully computer-generated feature film by his company, Pixar) and series of wildly successful products of “simple elegance” like iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad and other gadgets. Very few human souls invoked such immense repercussion in contemporary world like Jobs did. This “alternative” philosophy, this alternative approach to life, this intensity of heart’s passion, this mountain-like determination to materialize one’s own vision- are the true legacies of Jobs.
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