After Reading Steve Jobs

Over the past month or so, I spent 14 hours in total reading Steve Jobs, and I feel I've gotten a fairly thorough picture of the man.

Steve Jobs is a famous figure, so there's no reason I shouldn't know him. In fact, I knew who he was: the Jobs of Apple, a successful businessman. What's so special about that? That was all I had in my head about Jobs in the past, and nothing beyond it.

I've also been an Apple user for many years. But because of my age, by the time I started using Apple products, Jobs had been gone for years. So using Apple products wasn't what drove me to read his biography. The real reason is that besides his weighty position in the PC and phone industries, Jobs also has a special place among minimalists.

In Goodbye, Things, Fumio Sasaki mentions many times that Jobs was a minimalist and that Apple's product design carries the spirit of minimalism. That's what made me curious about Jobs, because it made me feel he might not be a traditional businessman at all.

When I actually read Steve Jobs, I found that all I'd ever known about him was his name. That surprise of finding someone completely unfamiliar beyond his name pulled me into the book, like making a new friend.

Sure enough, Jobs was no traditional businessman. According to the book, he was practically a madman, so stubborn it bordered on crazy. Everything in the world could be sorted into either insanely great or garbage.

He was given up by his birth parents at birth and adopted by his adoptive parents. When he learned he wasn't their biological child, Jobs felt a piece of himself was missing. Like everyone, he had his own growing pains, and he even traveled to India in search of enlightenment.

But I don't want to say much more about the rest of Jobs. I'd like to answer the question I had before reading the book: as for the minimalism in Jobs, what did I take away?

Was Jobs a minimalist?

Judging by the simplest outward signs, Jobs really was a minimalist, because he had very few things at home. What I remember most vividly are the several photos in the book of Jobs sitting on the floor, talking with people and working.

If you ask what I learned from Jobs, it's that I think minimalism may have been a key to Jobs's success