Don't Be Like Steve

Here is some wonderful insight by John Lilly, investor, computer scientist, teacher, blogger, former CEO of Mozilla, and once-Apple scientist who worked with Steve Jobs:

The biggest message from Jobs’ life: Don’t try to be like Steve. Don’t try to be like anyone. Be yourself and work as hard as you can to bring wonderful things into the world. Figure out how you want to contribute and do that, in your own way, on your own terms, as hard as you can, as much as you can, as long as you can. His most lasting message, I hope, won’t be about technology or management or media or communications or even design. The work he did in those areas certainly matters and will continue to — impossible to ignore it. Still, I think it’s not the main thing, the essential thing. 

I hope the message that people really take, really internalize is that being yourself, as hard as you can, is the way to have important and lasting impact on our world. That might be in the context of technology. It might be in the context of technology, or the arts, or sports, or government, or social justice — or even in the context of your family and close friends.It almost doesn’t matter. The thing that matters most is to figure out what’s important to you, what’s core to you, and do that. Be that. And do it as well as you possibly can, every single day.

http://john.jubjubs.net/ Oct 09