Learner's Delight: Life lessons from Steve Jobs

This post is about the man who taught us to 'Stay hungry. Stay foolish.' A college dropout who went on to build the world's most valuable brand, a man who was kicked out of the company he started, but never gave up his passion, a perfectionist who had an incredible taste for design and a man who believed that he could change the world, and he did. He is none other than the one and only creative genius Steve Jobs.

Here are the life lessons from Steve Jobs :

Your time is limited

“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. 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 is secondary.”

Yes indeed! But most of you are busy postponing things which you ought to do today to 'tomorrow'. 'Tomorrow' is for losers. 'Now' is for the game changers. Winners are always driven by the thought of doing more in less time. They travel that extra mile, they put in that extra effort and they work those extra hours because they truly value time.

The genius of marketing

“To me marketing is about values. This is a very complicated world. It's a very noisy world. And we're not going to get people to remember much about us. No company is! And so we've to be very clear on what we want them to know about us.”

We all know that Steve Jobs was a marketing genius. But he always gave importance to building world class products first. He believed that marketing is all about building trust in people about your products and brand. Also, it is equally important to sustain that trust in people by constantly providing quality products. Besides products and services try to build your own personal brand, market yourself effectively so that you will be able to sell your skills for best prices!

Denial to accept rejection

“I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”

If you choose not to accept any other result except success, then you shall always succeed. Failure is not an option. What you think as failure may not be the actual failure, but your inability to learn from your failure is the actual failure. If Steve Jobs gave up his career after he was forced out of apple we would not have had many of the apple products that we use today!

Making perfection a habit

“We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and everyone should be really excellent because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we've all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.”

This world is filled with mediocre products and services. But life is too short to accept mediocrity. You should continuously strive to excel at what you do in order get noticed. You must possess what I call the 'Superior quality'. Marginally superior is also not acceptable. You have to be far more superior to your competitors and try to set standards. Go and get addicted to the habit of perfection. Period.

The power of focus

“That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

Ideas are the products of a focused mind. But, you cannot focus if your mind is pre occupied with all sorts of distractions. The best way to drive away distractions is by eliminating the excess around you. Surround yourself with people and things that add value to your life and trim away all the junk. When you do this you automatically drive your brain to focus on things that matter the most.

Have a great purpose

“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.”

Robin Sharma says “When your vision becomes your mission, your business will become a movement." Not only Steve Jobs but also many of the successful people never had money as their primary motive. They had a larger than life vision and they worked tirelessly for the fulfilment of that vision. They were mocked, ridiculed and ignored, but they never gave up their vision.

Being Passionate

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and 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 will know when you find it. And like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.”

Creativity and innovation are the results of a passionate mind. A passionate mind is dominated by the thoughts of making the products or services exceptional. You can think freely and creatively only when you do the things which excite you, the things which you love to do and the things which you are passionate about.