The Secret of Steve Jobs' Success

I had posted quite a few articles regarding Steve Jobs and Apple Inc. and the lessons we can learn from them. Being a fan of Apple products and a girl who marvels at how amazing Steve Jobs dogged focus and vision are, it isn’t rare that I would think about the lessons I’ve learned from the life of this remarkable man.

But while I can ramble to high heavens about how marvelous he is, it’s nothing more than the kind of idolatry that people have for entertainment celebrities and other such “idols,” if I do not just take the learnings that I’ve gleaned from his life and apply it to my own.

There are five lessons from Steve Jobs that I really long to apply in my own life:

• Have a Vision for your life.
• Attack setbacks with Determination.
• Grab an opportunity when it presents itself.
• Attack challenges with excellence.
• Focus.

On Vision

Without an underlying vision or personal paradigm to go back to when things go rough, a person is like a “ship without a rudder” that will be tossed out to sea. What exactly are you made of? What are you made for? Are you a writer? Are you a computer programmer? An artist?

Your talents, your passions and your interests determine what you could be when you walk through life. But more important than all those is, “What do you do these things for?”

Steve Jobs demonstrated determining the vision for [the former] Apple Computer, Inc. (now Apple, Inc.) by setting the vision that his company will cater to the personal computing industry, as opposed to catering to the corporate computing industry, which was the vogue at the time.

Even when Steve Jobs was derailed by getting kicked off his own company for a time, when he got back to Apple, Inc., he succeeded in steering the company back to its original paradigm.

On Determination

On the point of attacking setbacks with determination, it should be anyone’s first reaction to duress and trials. Though I am not a huge success in this region, I am learning that it is wiser to be determined when these mishaps happen our way instead of accepting defeat. One will never win in life unless he or she is determined to rise back up from where he fell.

Steve Jobs formed another company, NeXT Computer. Though it was definitely no Apple Computer, Inc., it was a way for Steve to keep evolving in terms of refining the computer that he wanted his engineers to produce.

On Grabbing Opportunity When It Presents Itself

Steve Jobs was the kind of guy who didn’t let an opportunity pass him by. When Apple Computer, Inc. bought NeXT in 1996, Steve Jobs took the challenge in working to turn around the sorry state of Apple. By then, the popularity of an Apple Computer was already nonexistent, and they were headed for bankruptcy. Because of his shrewd decisions, he was able to turn Apple Computer around from its sorry state into the industry icon that it is again.

In the late 1970s, when the first Apple Computer was created, it was a wooden box, the kind only a hobbyist could love. It was created by Steve Jobs’ best friend Steve Wozniak. Steve Jobs saw what be the computer that every household could use, and as the gears in his head turned and the doors of opportunity opened for them, Apple Computer carved a niche for itself because it positioned itself for the personal computer market, with a sexy computer that the public snapped up because of its innovative design. Woz (Steve Wozniak) didn’t exactly see the potential in his own machine; but Steve Jobs did, and it turned them into multimillionaires.

Both incidents demonstrated how shrewd Jobs could be. Jobs used the NeXT buyout by Apple to turn things around in the then-dying company. He also turned a hobbyist’s passion into the multibillion industry that it is today.

The lesson in this story is: when you see potential in something, or an opportunity presents itself and you see yourself succeeding in it, grab the opportunity, make use of that potential, and you can change the course of your life, and even make a dent on history.

On Attacking Challenges With Excellence

With everything that Jobs did, he did it “with love,” which was what he claimed to be the secret of his success, when he gave a speech at Stanford’s 2005 graduation.

It is love for something that would make you persevere at working on it, in spite of challenges. You become excellent at doing what you do not by forcing yourself, but by loving what you do.

Jobs does not stop at a mediocre product precisely because he demands near-perfection. Because he loves what he does and does not want to settle for a haphazard roll-out of his machines.

On Focus

Steve Jobs knew that he loved doing what he did, so even if he got kicked out of Apple Computer, Inc., he did not allow himself to stagnate in defeat. According to his Stanford speech, he realized he really still loved what he did, that is why instead of dropping off into obscurity, he decided to found NeXT Computer and Pixar Animation Studios (bought from Lucasfilm, Ltd., formerly just the graphics division of Lucasfilm). Because he was focused on delivering great computers, even great animation, he was able to catapult Pixar into fame. And even though NeXT never made it into the mainstream, Jobs used that period in his life to develop part of the great Operating System that Macs have now: OS X.

These outline the kind of dogged focus that Steve Jobs had for excellence in the things he loved.

But the most important illustration of Steve’s focus were those incidents wherein he had booted out quite a few projects from Apple simply because they do not fit his vision, were superfluous, which he knew won’t sell, and built the company around a streamlined product line.

Notice that the Macbook line only holds one form factor, while the Macbook Pro models’ difference from each other lay only on their innards and screen size? Jobs knew what he wanted to build his company around; he did not bother to create multiple models, too many product lines, and focused on what he knew would sell.

The addition of the Macbook Air was a response to the clamor of the Mac enthusiast community, but it still kept on with the form factor of the other current Macs. Even if it may seem that uniformity may create a “vanilla” phenomenon, Steve bucked the current industry trend of diversity and streamlined Apple’s product lines on what became highly desirable and sellable items.
Steve Jobs’ True Secret

But the true secret to Steve’s excellence did not come from formulas or whatever life lessons. It actually came from one simple thing:


Steve Jobs loved the things that he did.


:) Kind of echoes 1 Corinthians 13. :)