A trove of newly released emails from Steve Jobs shows how the late Apple cofounder prepared for one of his most memorable speeches.
Jobs addressed Stanford University graduates at the university’s commencement ceremony on June 12, 2005. Twenty years later, the Steve Jobs Archive published notes and emails he wrote to himself while drafting the speech, along with a high-definition recording of the commencement address.
His Stanford address became famous for its inspirational life lessons, which could apply to college graduates, entrepreneurs, or dropouts like himself. Jobs used his own stories to drive home his points. A recording of the speech published on YouTube in 2008 has 46 million views.
The published correspondence showed Jobs had been working on the speech for at least six months before delivering it.
His early ideas included points about diet, meditation, and encouraging students to focus on their “inner world.” Jobs was introduced to Zen Buddhism and meditation in the 1970s.
Jobs wrote down several anecdotes in emails to himself before settling on his final choices for the speech.
In a May 1 draft, Jobs wrote, “Try to always surround yourself with people smarter than you.” They can come from different walks of life. He pointed to a “terribly old” engineer he’d hired at Apple not long after it started, who was a “genius.” (The engineer was in his 40s at the time, while Jobs was 50 when he delivered the speech.)
Jobs ultimately chose three other personal stories. The first was about “connecting the dots,” the second covered “love and loss,” and the third was about death.
From the oldest email published, however, Jobs had his opener locked in.
“This is the closest I’ve ever come to graduating from college,” he wrote.
Jobs drew on an earlier commencement address and mused on parenting in his notes
The Stanford speech echoed Jobs’ commencement address almost 10 years earlier.
In 1996, Jobs spoke to the graduating class of Palo Alto High School. Both speeches discussed intuition, morality, and following one’s passions.
While the 1996 speech focused on the students, Jobs also thought about the parents in the crowd. Scribbled at the bottom of a printout of the speech, he jotted down some thoughts on parenting.
“They tell you that you will love your kids,” the handwritten notes read, “never mention that you will fall in love with them.”
He also wrote that “every injury or setback parents feel 10x” and that they will always see their children as they were at ages 5, 6, or 7.
The speech concluded by encouraging the high school students to live their lives with as few regrets as possible.
In the Stanford address, Jobs also implored the students to find what they love and live each day like it was their last, telling the story of his first bout of cancer. The Apple cofounder died of pancreatic cancer in 2011 at the age of 56. Once he devised an ending for the Stanford commencement, it stuck.
“‘Stay hungry. Stay foolish.’ And I have always wished that for myself,” he said.
Jobs stuck to the script — that he made a point to write himself down to his “thank you very much.”
