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.
Interpretation
The quote urges self-reflection on one's daily actions in relation to life's purpose.
Steve Jobs emphasizes the importance of evaluating one's daily choices against the backdrop of life's brevity. By asking himself if he would want to do what he has planned for the day, he reinforces the notion that if the answer is often 'no', it signals a need for change, prompting a proactive approach to living a fulfilling and meaningful life.
In practice
In a motivational speech on personal development.
Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just the color or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together.
It is piracy, not overt online music stores, which is our main competitor.
The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay.
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. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.
the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
Revolution does not insure progress. You may overturn thrones, but what proof that anything better will grow upon the soil?
The power of a movement lies in the fact that it can indeed change the habits of people. This change is not the result of force but of dedication, of moral persuasion.
I could never be a politician. But as uncomfortable as I would be doing so, I have no problem with Obama's long-planned 'change of heart.' This dude's made huge, measurable strides for gay rights, and if being coy about his plans for gay marriage for a few years was needed to get him elected, then so be it. LGBT persons will be better off, and federal same-sex marriage recognition will come sooner because of it.
The injury that ended my time in football turned out to be serendipitous. I tore my Achilles while training for a pending tryout with the New York Giants, and when it snapped, so did my career, basically. That's what led me to gain the confidence to get into the acting world on my own terms.
It's amazing how people can get so excited about a rocket to the moon and not give a damn about smog, oil leaks, the devastation of the environment with pesticides, hunger, disease. When the poor share some of the power that the affluent now monopolize, we will give a damn.
The women's movement and the result that I get to benefit from and my generation gets to benefit from is that we might be doing housework, but we might not be. And we get to choose, and we get to negotiate and work that out with our prospective husbands or with our husbands.
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