Live Life, Accept Death
“If today were the last day of my life . . .”
Chrisann Brennan, Jobs’ first girlfriend and Lisa’s mother, recalled their many conversations about time passing:
He told me many times that he would die in his early forties; then one day, when we were in our early forties, he changed the prediction to his mid-forties. When he had become a billionaire but hadn’t died by his mid-forties, I remember him repeating, “I am living on borrowed time,” as if the still-young shaman was angling to carve out a bit more future for himself. 1
Jobs’ acute awareness of time was a key to his productivity. He knew he didn’t have time to waste, so he didn’t. He instead threw himself into every project, focusing on the end result, and refused to be distracted: He focused.
Part of his life’s philosophy, drawn from his Buddhist teachings, was to simplify all aspects of his life. In terms of his business accomplishments, it meant he focused on the few products he felt were truly transformative; less, he always felt, was more. That’s why, when he returned to Apple, he drastically cut product lines across the board. He knew it was better to dazzle customers with brilliant products than baffle them with a confusing selection of too many similar products.
Jobs lived each day accordingly, always looking far down the road to journey’s end:
I think people could choose to do things if they wanted to, but we’re all going to be dead soon. That’s my point of view. Somebody once told me, “Live each day as if it would be your last, and one day you’ll certainly be right.” I do that. You never know when you’re going to go, but you are going to go pretty soon. If you’re going to leave anything behind, it’s going to be your kids, a few friends, and your work. So that’s what I tend to worry about.2
All Work
Work formed the largest part of Jobs’ life, even at an early age. It was his nature, and he relentlessly drove himself in pursuit of his dreams to create great consumer electronic products.
During his first iteration at Apple, when programmers would work late into the night, they were surprised to see Jobs walking in and out of offices to see what was going on.
During his second iteration at NeXT and Pixar, he again threw himself into his work and recalled how incredibly tired he was when he finally came home at the end of a long workday.
The third iteration came when he triumphantly returned to Apple as CEO and, in quick succession, brought out one amazing product after another: the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007, and the iPad in 2010. Bringing Apple back to its former glory was, he found, a daunting challenge.
Only Time
By that time, he was married and had three children with his wife, Laurene, plus one from a former relationship, and he was stretched too thin, which took a drastic toll on the time he could spend with his family. They had to be satisfied with what they got, not what they wanted.
The time equation was further complicated by an overriding demon that trumped everything—his failing health, which toward the end was so debilitating that he could only look at, but not eat, specially prepared sushi and soba, which he loved.
Though he was able to hide the severity of his illness from his own employees, Jobs could not expect the media to afford him the same respect. Specifically, in a piece for the New York Times, Joe Nocera complained about Jobs’ lack of transparency on health issues.
Nocera soon received an unexpected phone call: Jobs himself called to give him a taste of his own medicine. “This is Steve Jobs. You think I’m an arrogant **** who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong.”3
The facts: Jobs got a life-saving liver transplant in 2009, in Tennessee. But by late 2010, his weight dropped so drastically that he could no longer sugarcoat the truth. One look at him and anyone could see his health was steadily deteriorating. And by the summer of 2011, he knew it was time to pass the baton to Tim Cook, the chief operating officer whom he had been grooming for the CEO position.
It was now Cook’s responsibility to see that Apple’s projects reached fruition.
In a rare interview given by Steve Jobs’ daughter Erin in the year her father died, she shed light on just how the scarcity of his time had an impact on her life. As Erin told her father’s official biographer, she dealt with his absence philosophically. “Sometimes I wish I had more of his attention, but I know the work he’s doing is very important and I think it’s really cool, so I’m fine. I don’t really need more attention.”4
She didn’t need more of his attention, but, like any daughter, she would gladly have accepted it. Resigned to the inevitable, she gracefully accepted what she could get. So, too, did her father, who loved his work and his family with the certain knowledge that he was indeed living on borrowed time, just as he had foreseen back when he was in his early twenties.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.
—Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress”
Time is priceless because it cannot be replaced. So strive to live each day to your fullest potential.