From passing out on LSD in his college dorm, traveling as a hippie in India at the age of 17 to capitalizing on the whole computer industry, This man envisioned the future, he is the reason for that smartphone in your pocket, for that laptop on your lap and the trillion-dollar hardware industry thriving today.
“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” — Steve Jobs
The impulsive and rebellious nature with a prickly personality, he was born not to follow orders, getting suspended from high school for pranks, and firing the directors of Apple just because they did not work his way, led him to live a furious life. His life cannot be defined in a few sentences and seems like a work of fiction when looked at, driving his Porsche at 200 miles an hour, bribing police officers, firing out employees after their first day, soaked up in drugs during meetings, and ruling like a dictator in Apple. Yet all of these acts are negligible compared to the mindful intuition of his, applying the controlled and integrated apple ecosystem to magically thinking about a laptop made of aluminum that fits in an envelope when the best people had seen were boxy pieces of plastic.
Still, you would have remained broken when he called your precious work bull crap with declaring you a jerk, with your work in the trash can, then returning the next month with the similar idea with his name and a patent on it, or giving your team deadline that is humanly impossible to stick to but somehow motivating you all by throwing parties in his large mansion in Palo Alto, and again magically completing the project under that deadline. This was his underrated but complicated reality distortion field, caused by LSD abuse but ironically an essential skill in today’s world of distractions. His reality distortion field caused him to focus so intensely and believe what he thought as it will or already happened. He would dismiss an idea only to focus and integrate that into Apple's product lineup that he considered himself the innovator distorting his reality that no one ever gave him that idea. Sounds creepy? Yet Steve wasn’t the only visionary with a reality distortion field.
Vision
His obsession with minute details and perfection was the reason for apple’s unique identity, the logic to spend 1 million dollars on the glass walls of the apple store in NYC!!! which could have been done in mere thousands, would have blown any investor away, but that’s why Apple has the highest traffic in their stores than any competitor in the market.
He was the in-charge, if not he would fight you till your death to take the seat. His influence and heritage gave him power which he never dismissed. When he was demoted as just the director, he would take control of the management in any way possible, he never let others use his whiteboard marker, and when others planned to outrun him in meetings he would have his charisma retake control. Once the CFO of Apple who was to officially head the meeting decided to intentionally be 5 minutes late so that as the last one to enter, he will control the meeting. Steve, as predicted, started the meeting without the CFO and didn’t even let him enter as he was considered late.
Personal life and family
All of this aside, his personal life was messed up. His blunt and cruel nature mixed with his reality distortion field made him a sucker. When his girlfriend was pregnant, he denied being the parent of the baby, abandoning both of them in the end. When faced in court, he declared his girlfriend to be a whore and said that he never slept with her. As the effect of his reality distortion field faded, he realized his mistake and took the responsibility for the child when she grew up, but that turned out to be too late.
Health
Steve had a rebellious view on health, regarding most of the medical practices as scams. Since childhood, he read numerous books on health and nutrition that although being controversial had a deep impact on his thinking. He used to keep week-long fasts to detox his body along with following fruit only, salad only, and vegan diets. While handling the extreme politics and stress at Apple and Pixar, he developed numerous kidney stones and eventually got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The advanced medical team at Stanford advised him to undergo surgery, which he furiously denied and ended up performing detoxes and natural remedies on his already deteriorating health. A year later he received a liver transplant as the disease had spread and completely damaged his liver. Jobs scummed to his illnesses in 2011 with his last words “Oh Wow Oh Wow” and leaving behind the legacy that would last forever.
His extreme nature and the will to change the world had sparked incredible innovation that in the end did change the world. Yet it clearly shows that this success came at the price of his personal life, family, and the numerous employees whose careers were destroyed in the process. Apple would have been just like HP or Microsoft without the vision of Jobs and even today the company’s legacy follows in his footsteps.
“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
Book "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson
Comments