The 7 main take-aways from my reading of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
- Confidence (and doing the impossible) is sharable.
- Connect with feelings of the customer to understand their needs.
- Focus (by eliminating unimportant opportunities.)
- Impute desired qualities from the first interaction.
- Creativity comes from spontaneous/random discussions.
- Remembering that you will be dead soon — leaves what is truly important. Nothing to lose, already naked, no reason not to follow your heart.
- Technology is not enough, technology married with the humanities yields the result that makes our hearts sing.
TOP 5 Highlighted Items
“Jobs came to believe that he could impart that feeling of confidence to others and thus push them to do things they hadn’t thought possible.”
“Markkula wrote his principles in a one-page paper titled “The Apple Marketing Philosophy” that stressed three points. The first was empathy, an intimate connection with the feelings of the customer: “We will truly understand their needs better than any other company.” The second was focus: “In order to do a good job of those things that we decide to do, we must eliminate all of the unimportant opportunities.” The third and equally important principle, awkwardly named, was impute”
“Despite being a denizen of the digital world, or maybe because he knew all too well its isolating potential, Jobs was a strong believer in face-to-face meetings. “There’s a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat,” he said. “That’s crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘Wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.”
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
“It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough. We believe that it’s technology married with the humanities that yields us the result that makes our heart sing.”
Thanks for the post and for taking time to share your POV. I got some much needed inspiration from your condensed version. Focus, face time and freedom from fear/