Guy Kawasaki Dishes it Out!!!

Personally I don't know much about this Apple IT mogul who apparently had an epiphany when in his own words "saw what a Macintosh could do, the clouds parted and the angels started singing. For four years I evangelized Macintosh to software and hardware developers and led the charge against world-wide domination by IBM." I do remember for a time during my San Francisco days that whenever I walked into a bookstore I saw his smiling mug just oozing so much dripping positivity on the cover of his at that time best-seller titled "Selling the Dream!" Anyway, when I picked up his most recent book titled "Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition", I found so much juicy material inside that I immediately decided that a good portion of the contents was going up on my blog. The following comes from a transcript of one of his commencement speeches given to outgoing college graduates.

1) LIVE OFF YOUR PARENTS AS LONG AS POSSIBLE!
I was a diligent Oriental in high school and college. I took college-level classes in high school and earned college credits. I rushed through college in three and a half years. I never travelled or took time off because I thought it wouldn’t prepare me for work and it would delay my graduation.
Frankly, I blew it.
You are going to work the rest of your lives, so don’t be in a rush to start. Stretch out your college education. Now is the time to suck life into your lungs-before you have a mortgage, kids and car payments. Take whole semesters off to travel overseas. Take jobs and internships that pay less money or no money. Investigate your passions on your parents’ nickel. Or dime, or quarter, or dollar. Your goal should be to extend college to at least six years. Delay, as long as possible, the inevitable entry into the workplace and a lifetime of servitude to bozos who know less than you do but make more money. Your parents and grandparents worked very hard to get you and your grandparents to this point. Do not deprive them of the pleasure of supporting you.

2) PURSUE JOY, NOT HAPPINESS!
This is probably the hardest lesson to learn. It probably seems to you that the goal in life is to be happy. Now maybe you have to sacrifice and study and work hard, but by and large, happiness should be predictable. Nice house, nice car. Nice material things. Take my word for it, happiness is temporary and fleeting. Joy, by contrast, is unpredictable and intense. It comes from pursuing interests and passions that do not obviously result in happiness. Pursuing joy, not happiness, will translate into one thing over the next few years for you: Study what you love. This may also not be popular with parents. When I went to college, I was “marketing driven.” It’s also an Oriental thing. I looked at the fields that had the greatest opportunities and prepared myself for them. This was brain-dead. There are so many ways to make a living in the world, it doesn’t matter that you’ve taken all the right courses. I don’t think one person on the original Macintosh team had a classic computer science degree. Parents, you have a responsibility in this area. Don’t force your kids to follow in your footsteps or to live your dreams. My father was a senator in Hawaii. His dream was to be a lawyer, but he only had a high school education. He wanted me to be a lawyer. For him, I went to law school. For me, I quit after two weeks. I view this as a terrific validation of my inherent intelligence.

3) CHALLENGE THE KNOWN AND EMBRACE THE UNKNOWN.
One of the biggest mistakes you can make in life is to accept the known and resist the unknown. You should, in fact, do exactly the opposite: Challenge the known and embrace the unknown.
Let me tell you a short story about ice. In the late 1800s, there was a thriving ice industry in the Northeast. Companies would cut blocks of ice from frozen lakes and ponds and sell them around the world. The largest single shipment was 200 tons that was shipped to India. Only 100 tons got there unmelted, but this was enough to make a profit.
Ice harvesters, however, were put out of business by ice factories. It was no longer necessary to cut and ship ice, because companies could make it in any city during any season.
Ice factories were put out of business by refrigerator companies. If it was convenient to make ice at a manufacturing plant, imagine how much better it was to make ice and create cold storage in everyone’s home.
You would think that the ice harvesters would see the advantages of ice making and adopt this technology. However, all they could think of was the known: better saws, better storage, better transportation.
Then you think that the ice makers would see the advantages of refrigerators and adopt this technology. The truth is that the ice harvesters couldn’t embrace the unknown and jump their curve, to the next curve. Challenge the known and embrace the unknown, or you’ll be like the ice harvesters and ice makers.

4)LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE, PLAY A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT, & PLAY NONCONTACT SPORTS.
Learn a foreign language. I studied Latin in high school because I thought it would help me increase my vocabulary. It did, but trust me when I tell you it’s very difficult to have a conversation in Latin today other than at the Vatican. And despite all my efforts, the pope has yet to call for my advice. Latin has proven to be valuable, but a live language would be nice, too.
Learn to play a musical instrument. My only connection to music today is that I was named after Guy Lombardo. Trust me: It’s better than being named after Guy’s brother, Carmen. Playing a musical instrument could be with me now and stay with me forever. Instead I have to buy CDs at Tower.
I played football. I loved football. Football is macho. I was a middle linebacker-arguably one of the most macho positions in a macho game. But you should also learn to play a sport like hockey, basketball, or tennis. That is, a sport you can play when you’re over the hill.
When you’re fifty, it will be as difficult to get twenty-two guys together in a stadium to play football as it is to have a conversation in Latin, but all the people who wore cute white tennis outfits can still play tennis. And all the macho football players are sitting around watching television and drinking beer.

5) CONTINUE TO LEARN.
Learning is a process, not an event. I thought learning would be over when I got my degree. It’s not true. You should never stop learning. Indeed, it gets easier to learn once you’re out of school, because it’s easier to see why you need to learn. You’re learning in a structured, dedicated environment right now. On your parents’ nickel. But don’t confuse school and learning. You can go to school and not learn a thing. You can also learn a tremendous amount without school.

6) LEARN TO LIKE YOURSELF, OR CHANGE YOURSELF UNTIL YOU CAN LIKE YOURSELF.
I know a forty-year-old woman who was a drug addict. She is a mother of three. She traced the start of drug addiction to smoking dope in high school. I’m not going to lecture about not taking drugs. Hey, I smoked dope in high school. Unlike Bill Clinton, I inhaled. Also unlike Bill Clinton, I exhaled. This woman told me that she started taking drugs because she hated herself when she was sober. She did not like drugs-she hated herself. Drugs were not the cause, though she thought they were the solution. She turned her life around only after she realized that she was in a downward spiral. Fix your problem. Fix your life. Then you won’t need to take drugs. Drugs are neither the solution nor the problem. Frankly, smoking, drugs, alcohol-and using and IBM PC-are signs of stupidity. End of discussion.

7. DON'T GET MARRIED TOO SOON.
I got married when I was thirty-two. That’s about the right age. Until you’re about that age, you may not know who you are. You also may not know whom you’re marrying. I don’t know one person who got married too late. I know many people who got married too young. If you decide to get married, just keep in mind that you need to accept the person for what he or she is right now.

8. PLAY TO WIN, AND WIN TO PLAY.
Playing to win is one of the finest things you can do. It enables you to fulfill your potential. It enables you to improve the world and, conveniently, develop high expectations for everyone else, too. And what if you lose? Just make sure you lose while trying something grand. Avinash Dixit, an economics professor at Princeton, and Barry Nalebuff, and economics and management professor at the Yale School of Organization and Management, say it this way: “If you are going to fail, you might as well fail at a difficult task. Failure causes others to downgrade their expectations of you in the future. The seriousness of this problem depends on what you attempt.” In its purest form, winning becomes a means, not an end, to improve yourself and your competition. Winning is also a means to play again. The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the unlived life is not worth examining. The rewards of winning-money, power, satisfaction, and self-confidence-should not be squandered. Thus, in addition to playing to win, you have a second, more important obligation: to compete again to the depth and breadth and height that your soul can reach. Ultimately, your greatest competition is yourself.

9. OBEY THE ABSOLUTES.
Playing to win, however, does not mean playing dirty. As you grow older and older, you will find that things change from absolute to relative. When you were very young, it was absolutely wrong to lie, cheat, or steal. As you get older, and particularly when you enter the workforce, you will be tempted to think in relative terms. “I made more money.” “I have a nicer car.” “I went on a better vacation.” Worse, “I didn’t cheat as much on my taxes as my partner.” “I just have a few drinks. I don’t take cocaine.” “I don’t pad my expense reports as much as others.” This is completely wrong. Preserve and obey the absolutes as much as you can. If you ever lie, cheat, or steal, you will have to remember whom you lied to, how you cheated, and what you stole. There are absolutely absolute rights and wrongs.

10) ENJOY YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS BEFORE THEY ARE GONE.
This is the most important hindsight. It doesn’t need much explanation. I’ll just repeat it: Enjoy your family and friends before they are gone. Nothing-not money, power, or fame-can replace your family and friends or bring them back once they are gone. Our greatest joy has been our baby, and I predict that children will bring you the greatest joy in your lives-especially if they graduate from college in four years.

SOURCE: "Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition" ISBN:978-1-59184-223-1 Pages 449-455