You can't connect the dots looking forward, only backwards

Steve Jobs dropped out of college after just one semester. But instead of going home, he crashed with friends while dropping in on classes that seemed interesting to him.

One of the classes he enjoyed in this period was a calligraphy course.

In his commencement speech at Stanford, Jobs explained how the decision to take that class eventually changed computers:

“If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do…you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.”(emphasis mine)

But connecting the dots doesn’t always look like this. Some people take a skill and apply it directly to their future projects, while others use the lessons they learn along the way to guide them toward their life’s work. Here are some examples of each.

Philip K Dick

Philip K Dick (aka PKD) was one of the greatest science fiction authors ever, and his novel “Ubik” is widely considered his best.

The book has all of the characteristics you find in any PKD story — paranoia, questions on the nature of reality, and typical sci-fi themes like telepathy, God, and time.

What sets Ubik apart is that each chapter opens with advertising copy.

That sounds strange in a novel, but it does a great job of making you a part of the world. Think about how some movies you watch have commercials for products that don’t exist in the real world. It helps you feel what it’s like in the story’s world — what’s possible and what’s not.

Here’s an example from Ubik:

It’s a funny yet effective tool that makes the novel memorable, but where did PKD get the idea for this? His experience writing radio ads.

PKD likely wasn’t thrilled writing ad copy instead of science fiction, but that period served as a gateway into writing full-time, and becoming one of the 20th century’s most prolific authors began with this radio “sales patter”.

Richard Feynman

Richard Feynman was a renowned physicist, but curiosity like his is hard to confine to just one subject. He proved that when he spent an entire summer at Caltech’s biology lab doing research, although his entire formal education was in physics.

Unfortunately, his experiments were incomplete. However, according to Feynman, his experiments were not a waste:

“I learned a lot of things in biology, and I gained a lot of experience. I got better at pronouncing the words, knowing what not to include in a paper or a seminar, and detecting a weak technique in an experiment.”

He couldn’t have known it going into the research, but it was obvious looking back: studying biology for a summer made Richard Feynman a better physicist.

Stephen Hillenburg

In Steve Jobs's speech, he mentions following your heart “even when it leads you off the well-worn path”.

Stephen Hillenburg is proof of what that can look like.

In college, he studied marine biology and worked as a fry cook during the summer. After he graduated, he took a job at The Ocean Institute where he was tasked with teaching children about the ocean.

Knowing his passion for art, the director of the institute asked him to create a comic book teaching kids about tide pool ecology. The result was “The Intertidal Zone”, something Hillenburg would revisit many years later.

But this little project, as well as various statues are artwork he created while at the institute, made Hillenburg realize that his future was in the arts, not animation.

On his visit to Cal Arts, it only took one meeting with the animation professor to convince him to enroll and dedicate the next few years to creating animate shorts.

Eventually, his shorts caught the attention of Joe Murray, the creator of the cartoon Rocko’s Modern Life. After some talks, Hillenburg joined the show as a director.

The show was successful, and this success gave Hillenburg the confidence to begin to plan future projects.

In his downtime, he tried to think of a show he could create after Rocko’s Modern Life was finished. While he couldn’t think of any good ideas, his peers urged him to further develop his comic book The Intertidal Zone into an animated show.

After some reworking of characters and the world, Spongebob Squarepants was born.

What’s beautiful about Hillenburg’s path is how he was able to combine his interests and experiences.

He combined his passion for marine biology, work-related projects, directing experience, and even his summer job as a fry cook to create one of the greatest cartoons of all time.

Stephen Hillenburg looked back at his “dots” and decided they were all worth connecting.

It echoes the famous philosophy of Jerry Seinfeld: “Everything is material”.

That should be true for everyone. So much is said about staying in the same industry forever so your “career capital” doesn’t go to waste. But remember the inventiveness of Steve Jobs or Stephen Hillenburg.

A straight line may be the quickest way to get from one point to another, but it isn’t always the best way. Embrace each curve in your journey — after all, why let all of your hard work go to waste?

This isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned Steve Jobs’ speech and it will not be the last. It’s that good, and it is some of the best 15 minutes of writing/speech you’ll find. If you haven’t already, please check it out here.

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