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Lesson #2: Don’t Settle

Article Overview: “The only way to do great work is to love what you do,” says Jobs. “If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”

Lesson #2: Don’t Settle

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do,” says Jobs. “If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”

Jobs knows how lucky he is to have discovered his passion in life at an early age. With his father a machinist by trade who had a natural talent for using his hands, Jobs was encouraged to learn how to build things as a young boy. He recalls when he was five years old and his father sectioned off a piece of his workbench, saying, “Steve, this is your workbench now.” Since that time, Jobs has always been fascinated by learning how to construct things, take things apart and put them back together again. While his father had little knowledge of electronics, Jobs was able to learn the rudiments. “It gave a tremendous level of self-confidence, that through exploration and learning one could understand seemingly very complex things in one’s environment,” he says.

Jobs considers the passion he has for his work one of the most important factors behind his immense success. Together with Wozniak, Jobs created Apple with a vision of changing the world. Jobs and his team dreamed of revolutionizing the world of personal computing and devoted themselves wholeheartedly to realizing that dream. It was that dream and the passion behind it that has kept the company rebounding time and time again. And it was his passion alone that made him stay in the computer industry despite being fired from his own company when he was 30. He never gave up because he never wanted to spend his life doing anything else.

Jobs likens the passion he and his staff have for computers to that which artists typically feel for their work. Speaking of the time dedicated to the creation of the Macintosh, Jobs recalls, “The feelings and the passion that people put into it were completely indistinguishable from a poet or a painter…People put a lot of love into these products.”

Despite being worth $4.4 billion, Jobs said he never once chose his career path for the money. “I was worth about over a million dollars when I was twenty-three and over ten million dollars when I was twenty-four, and over a hundred million dollars when I was twenty-five and it wasn't that important because I never did it for the money,” he says. “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful, that's what matters to me.”

Jobs is now living his dream life. Instead of retiring into the lap of luxury, he continues to work on a daily basis, to experiment and to innovate. He admits that the only thing that keeps him coming to work every day is his passion. “We used to dream about this stuff. Now, we get to build it,” he says. “It's pretty neat.”

To other entrepreneurs who are struggling to find their way and stay motivated, Jobs has this advice: “The only way to do great work is to love what you do…As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.”

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Article Tags: apple, career path, computer industry, feelings, immense success, important factors, little knowledge, machinist, macintosh, money, natural talent, passion, personal computing, poet, rudiments, self confidence, time jobs, workbench, wozniak



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