Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
JACK’S TAKE
If you could see my copy of this book, you’d see that it’s got about 50 tiny post-it notes sticking out of the top - it’s one of those books that I just keep going back to. Why? Because Steve Jobs has got so much to teach us. Was he perfect? No. But did he do things because it was deeply aligned to his mission, his passion, his values? Yes.
What it's about
On stage at the iPhone’s launch event in San Francisco Jobs had made it. He’d turned around Apple in the 90s, launching the iMac, iTunes and the iPod – now in 2007 he was sharing something revolutionary with the world.
We could study Jobs and all his successes in the 2000s, but it wouldn’t help us much. To learn from this complicated man, we have to travel back into the part of his life that is just as roundabout and messy as the rest of ours.
Walter Isaacson was given rare access to Steve Jobs and did an amazing job of sharing how and why Steve Jobs went on to achieve what he did. It’s not just a story of success, but also one of hardship, failure and bouncing back. You’ll read stories of how he would belittle people, but then how he would inspire them. He was a complex person - not someone I think I’d get along with - but someone I have certainly learnt from.
KEY IDEAS
① Paint the back of fences. Steve was building a fence with his father who stopped and said: “You've got to make the back - the part nobody will ever see - just as beautiful as the front. Because you will know it's there.”.
② Allow serendipity to unfold. When Jobs first went to university, he felt like his course was both a waste of time and of his parents’ money. He dropped off his course, but he didn’t leave the university. He stayed at his friend’s house and wrangled a deal with the university that let him drop in on any class that he wanted. One of those classes is the now infamous calligraphy course that would lead to the beautiful displays and fonts that we now associate with Apple.
③ Real artists finish their work. Before the 1984 Macintosh shipped, the team were beset by delays – many of them brought on by Jobs and his perfectionist tendencies, because for him, they weren’t creating a competitor for IBM, they were creating art. But what did he do? Well, he strongly valued execution and famously said, “real artists ship”.
④ Question everything. Despite his colleagues’ advice, he stripped back the design for the 1984 Macintosh, removing most of the functionality that the main computer buyer, the hobbyist, loved. His instincts were: normal people won’t buy this machine until we simplify it. Values.
“The people who think they are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
MAYBE SKIP IF
You don’t have time and you want quick solutions. This book will inspire you if you read between the lines.
WHO THIS IS FOR
You don’t need another self help book, but real-life-messy examples on how someone has been there and done it.
You want to learn from someone who was not perfect (at all!).
EXPLORE MORE OF OUR RECOMMENDED BOOKS
