At Steve Jobs’s funeral, Jony Ive told a story about Jobs’s bottomless perfectionism:
As I’m sure many of you know, Steve didn’t confine his sense of excellence to making products. When we traveled together, we would check in and I’d go up to my room. And I’d leave my bags very neatly by the door. And I wouldn’t unpack. And I would go and sit on the bed. I would go and sit on the bed next to the phone. And I would wait for the inevitable phone call: “Hey Jony, this hotel sucks. Let’s go.”
Luckily for us, Jobs channeled his personal unbalance into a company that tilted the world’s expectations of personal technology products. Jobs famously said that the world is a better place with Apple in it, which is true. But, as Ives noted later in his remarks, the effort took a toll on Jobs and those around him. It’s not always an easy way to live.
All of us would do better work if we were a little more naturally Jobsian. But most of us would also be less happy. One skill I’ve tried to cultivate at work is to constantly raise my own expectations, and to ask over and over again, “Why can’t this be better?”
Luckily for me, this takes effort, it doesn’t come naturally. I don’t have to live with a pathological design sensibility when I’m not at work, and neither do my friends and family. But there are other ways in which I’m unbalanced; over the years, I’ve tried to recognize them, and figure out how to use them to my advantage–instead of fighting it, to throw my weight against something in the world that needs to be shifted.
sabbatiblog 