Jobs Never Settled. Why Do We?

There's one speech I've watched more than twenty times: Steve Jobs at Stanford in 2005. Whenever I lose focus, I go back to it. Fifteen minutes later, I'm back at work, because it doesn't just make me feel something. It makes me do something.

Like everyone else, I have my favourite YouTube 'influencers'. Jimmy Carr, Chris Williamson, Taki More. People worth listening to.

Last week I spent a couple of happy hours with each of them. Very successful people telling me how to be more successful. Good advice, most of it. Then I noticed the time, and that I hadn't done a single thing on my list.

That's the trick these clips play on us: feeling inspired feels like progress. It isn't.

Liking is not doing

Scroll through LinkedIn or Facebook (even TikTok for goodness sake) for half an hour. Count the posts promising to change how you work, how you sell, how you live. Then read the comments underneath. "So true." "Needed this today." "Great post." A thumbs up, a pair of clapping hands, and on to the next one.

None of that is action. It's comfort with a thumbs up attached. We get the warm feeling of agreeing with something brave without having to do anything brave ourselves.

I've done it myself, more often than I'd like to admit.

Why the comfort zone is so comfortable

The comfort zone isn't lazy. It's safe. Nothing in it can go wrong, because nothing in it is new.

Action is different. Action exposes you. The moment you actually do the thing, you can get it wrong, and someone might see.

Think about how we were brought up. School taught us to get things right. Right answers, ticks in the margin, pass the test. Wrong answers got the red pen. For the best part of twelve years, we were trained to avoid being wrong.

Then we wonder why, as adults running businesses, we'd rather research for another month than pick up the phone. Maybe that's what has been holding us back all along. Not a lack of ideas or ability. A lifetime of practice at avoiding the red pen.

Settling doesn't feel like settling

Nobody wakes up and decides to settle. It feels like being sensible. Being realistic. Waiting for the right time.

The danger isn't rock bottom. People at rock bottom have nothing to lose, and that makes them dangerous in the best sense. The danger is comfort: just enough to lose that you never take the shot.

In that Stanford speech, Jobs put it in four words: "Keep looking. Don't settle." He was talking about finding work you love. It applies just as well to the life you know you're capable of.

So what are we putting off?

Be honest. There's something. There always is.

The phone call to the client you know you should be talking to. The price rise you keep postponing. The post you've drafted three times and never published. The business idea you're still "researching". The conversation you've rehearsed in the car for a month.

Now the harder question. What's the fear behind it?

It's rarely the failure itself. It's being seen to fail. Looking foolish. Being told you were wrong. The red pen, forty years on.

One line from that compilation is worth keeping: "When it feels scary to jump, that is exactly when you jump." Fear isn't a stop sign. It's a signpost, and it points straight at the thing that matters.

Fifty years of getting it wrong

I'm 79. I've got more things wrong than many people reading this have attempted.

I started in sales calling on hair salons for Wella, with a journey plan, a diary and a car. I didn't have a reputation, so I borrowed theirs until I'd built my own. Almost every useful thing I learned on that journey, I learned by getting something wrong in front of someone and going back the following week.

Here's what nobody tells you. Nobody remembers your mistakes for as long as you do. Most people are far too busy worrying about their own.

You have nothing to lose

Later in the same speech, Jobs said that remembering you're going to die was the best way he knew to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. Pride, the fear of embarrassment, the fear of failure: in the face of death, he said, they simply fall away.

"You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

At my age, I don't need a commencement speech to remind me the clock is running. But you don't need to be 79 to take the point. Whatever you're protecting by waiting, it's worth far less than the time you're spending protecting it.

Go and do it

Jobs had a habit worth borrowing. Every morning for 33 years, he looked in the mirror and asked himself ... "if today were the last day of his life, he'd want to do what he was about to do. When the answer was no for too many days in a row, he knew something had to change".

Try it tomorrow morning. Then be honest about how many days in a row it's been.

Name the thing you're putting off. Name the fear behind it. Then do it anyway, today, before you've had time to talk yourself out of it.

And if this post made you nod along, please don't like it. Pick something from it that resonates. Then GO DO IT.