I have been reminded this week, as certain things have started falling into place, of the commencement address that Steve Jobs gave at Stanford in 2005. The whole piece is well worth a watch. However, one story in particular stuck in my memory. He tells of how when he dropped out of college, he took a calligraphy course. Taking the course had no practical application, and he had no idea how it would be useful. Ten years later, when he was designing the first Mac, all that he had learnt in that class came back to him – meaning that the Mac had multiple typefaces and proportionally spaced fonts. He concludes:
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
His gut told him to do the calligraphy course, and he listened to it. Too often, we try to connect the dots going forward – if I do x, then it will lead to y. Sometimes, we just have to do what our gut tells us to do, for no other reason than that.
