Stanford
9 HN recommenders · recommended in 17 months, 2009–2023
15:05 · 49M views · Mar 8, 2008
Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford commencement address, told through three stories: connecting the dots, love and loss, and death. It includes the calligraphy class and the 'stay hungry, stay foolish' close.
HN returns to it for motivation and perspective, and quotes it constantly, especially the connect-the-dots and remembering-death passages.
20 comments from Hacker News
Came here to post this Larry Smith link :) Even though Jobs gets some hate on HN, these interviews/speeches have never failed to inspire me. If you don't ask, you don't get - [LINK] On a very formulaic life - [LINK] (I couldn't find one without the bad bg music) Stay hungry, stay foolish - this video I do realise, on some levels, he was not a good person, or atleast came off as an ass, but listening to these interviews and speeches, I feel I can relate to him and his struggles.
“…for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ’If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. 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.” - Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address this video
This was from the commencement speech he gave at Sanford (starts at about 9:10). Not originally his quite, he was paraphrasing something he heard. Great speech, very worth watching for those who haven’t seen it. this video
An oldie but a great speech (old HN discussion here: [LINK] ). For anyone who's interested, here are some other extraordinary commencement speeches: Steve Jobs: this video Bill Watterson: [LINK] David Foster Wallace: [LINK] There is a lot of good advice and numerous great sound-bytes from all of these; but one of my personal favorites comes from Bill Watterson, who makes a point that I feel often gets overlooked at HN in our relentless pursuit of success: Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential ― as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them. To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.
Mostly not blog posts, but for the last years I tend to revisit the same resources over and over again for inspiration: - "You and your research" by Hamming, and his video lectures which expand on topics in the original talk: [LINK] [LINK] - "On teaching mathematics" by V. I. Arnold: [LINK] - "Undergraduation" by Paul Graham [LINK] - "Learn and relearn your field", and many others in the same category, by Terrence Tao [LINK] - Steve Jobs Stanford commencement address: this video - All articles on programming by Peter Norvig: [LINK]