Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

Steve Jobs Archive in Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish:

It’s not an obvious candidate for a classic. A commencement address by a college dropout. A talk aimed at 22-year-olds that warns “You will gradually become the old and be cleared away.” A text as shadowed by reality as soaring with inspiration: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

I was quite young the day the Stanford University put the original version of the Steve Jobs commencement Address 17 years ago –it has 46M views at the moment–. It was quite transformative and built the foundation on how I lived for a long period of my life. And it certainly was the way of how I looked at Work during those years.

While it is a wonderful speech, in my case without guidance was not that positive influence. The “Follow your passion” vibe and the “Don’t settle” advice seed the idea that whenever some job gets rough, it means it’s not your passion and you’re not where you’re supposed to be.

That happened to me at least, and had no better guidance to fix it in my youth.

Some lessons I learned the hard way:

• Do something you’re good at, you’ll eventually like it: It’s easier to enjoy something when you’re really good at it.
• If you didn’t find your passion at 30, probably you’ll never will. It’s better to stop chasing the idea of a perfect job that doesn’t feel like work and accept that maybe, not every job it’s going to be perfect all the time.
• Every job has rough times, those are where you build your character. Try to enjoy the victories, instead of thinking about escaping.
• Don’t look for meaning in a job. It may only provide –sometimes– just some satisfaction. For Steve Jobs may had been different, that doesn’t mean we all have to find the same fulfillment in a Job.

Sometimes you have to walk the path to learn something and some lessons are more expensive than others. This was a highly expensive lesson for me to learn, and I wanted to share that.

Our heroes may not be always right.