Brief Thoughts on Becoming Steve Jobs

I finally finished reading Becoming Steve Jobs cover to cover. Recently, the internet has been buzzing with sensational snippets about Tim Cook donating part of his liver to Jobs and Jobs trying to set Cook up on blind dates with his parents — too vulgar to ignore, so I'll write my own brief review.

Unlike Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs, which focuses more on what Jobs did and tells his life story in a legendary, dramatic way, this book pays more attention to why. Why Jobs did what he did, and how he gradually evolved from a young hothead into a successful entrepreneur. Jobs himself also placed great importance on Why — you can see this comparing Jobs' iPhone launch with Cook's Apple Watch launch. Discussions about why are more to my taste anyway.

This book brings Jobs down from his pedestal. It covers his early success at the start of Apple and the influence of external mentors on him. After being forced out, at NeXT, Jobs fully expressed his idealism and values, but things didn't go as planned. At Pixar, which he stumbled into, Jobs was a complete outsider — he learned compromise and letting go, and to fight his own idealism. When he eventually returned to Apple, moves that seemed like strokes of genius — using Think Different to unite employees, the quadrant diagram to clarify products, influencing the company through core management — were all deeply connected to his earlier lessons.

After finishing the book, I also gained a deeper understanding of the title. It's not about teaching us how to become Steve Jobs, but about how Steve Jobs became Steve Jobs. The takeaway for me is that people need to keep making mistakes and learning from them. Jobs became who he was because he experienced mistakes that others hadn't and learned lessons others hadn't. Life requires embracing challenges. Staying in your psychological comfort zone is like a frog in slowly boiling water — no windfall will fall from the sky.

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