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5 Career Lessons from Steve Jobs

What they don't teach you in school

(Read time: 2 minutes)

Hello and welcome to another edition of Prequel: the free weekly newsletter for parents like you who want their kids to succeed. We give you weekly insights on how your children can get ahead in school and in life.  


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We’ve got lots to tell you, so let’s dive right in. Here’s what you’ll get today:

💡 Career lessons from Steve Jobs
⚡️ 2 Short lessons
🚀 3 tools to boost your family’s productivity

💡 Valuable Things Kids Don’t Learn In School

5 pieces of career advice from Steve Jobs:

1. “Be a yardstick of quality.”

Never let others’ expectations of you be higher than your own expectations of yourself.

Steve Jobs had unapologetically high standards of himself — and this is what made it possible for him to have high standards for his employees.

You can’t expect the best from others unless you expect the best of yourself.

2. You aren’t a career. You are a rainbow.

Steve Jobs said, “Think of your life as a rainbow arcing across the horizon of this world. You appear, have a chance to blaze in the sky, then you disappear.”

This was the speech Steve Jobs gave to the graduating seniors at Palo Alto High School in 1996. His words ring true for any young people today.

Don’t define yourself by the career you choose.

Define yourself by the impact you leave on the world. Blaze brightly.

3. To build something great, you must be willing to make a lot of mistakes.

Steve Jobs said, “Things get more refined as you make mistakes. I’ve had a chance to make a lot of mistakes.”

When you see mistakes as the process of refining your ideas, you’ll be less likely to let them get you down.

Building something great requires failing again and again and again. This is how you learn.

4. Don’t care about being right. Care about being excellent.

In an email to his mentor, Andy Grove, Steve Jobs demonstrated his willingness to be wrong.

He said, "I have many faults, but one of them is not ingratitude…Therefore, I have changed my position 180 degrees.”

We can’t always be right. As long as we’re willing to listen to others, we don’t have to be.

5. “Make what you love your work.”

Steve Jobs says that the reward is not the outcome, but the journey.

If you’re only chasing success, you won’t be satisfied with your life.

Chase what you love. Make your passion your work. Pour your love into what you do. Create something that shifts the world a little bit closer to how you believe it ought to be.

For more wisdom on entrepreneurship and life directly from Steve Jobs himself, check out the free digital book Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in His Own Words, here.

⚡️ 2 Short Lessons

  1. 3 proven exercises to boost your kid’s confidence (link)

  2. A reminder that young entrepreneurs are capable of changing the world (link)

🚀 3 Tools To Boost Your Family’s Productivity

  1. PikoFill out job applications in seconds using AI

  2. Voila AI-powered personal assistant for enhancing productivity

  3. Better An AI coach to guide you to your best life

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Until next time,
Ivy
CEO Prequel, Beta Camp, Apollo
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