Connecting Dots
Originally posted at: chenmark.com/weekly-thoughts
When we were 14 and took the opportunity to play at a random sports tournament in Palm Springs, we had no idea that would lead to being recruited to play college sports in the United States.? We just went because Palm Springs sure sounded nice and it was a chance to spend time with our teammates.?
When we were 15 and worked as a receptionist at a local spa, we took the job because it paid money, not because we thought it would give us a deep understanding of the value of front-line interaction with customers.?
When we were 20 and took a history class about financial booms and busts, we had no idea it would lead to a job offer and change our lives.? We signed up because it sounded interesting and it fit into our class schedule.??
When we were 21 and our first boss stressed the importance of “earning the right to take risk” in the context of portfolio management, we had no idea that concept would become critical to building our future business.? We were just trying to keep up and not look dumb in meetings.?
When we were 25 and learned about the efficient market hypothesis and spent time thinking about finding uncorrelated asset classes to maximize Sharpe ratios, we never thought it would lead to us developing conviction in the SMB space. ?It was just interesting work (that paid pretty well).?
It’s funny how things work out, and how one experience builds on another in unexpected ways.? We were reminded of this when we stumbled across Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address.?
Steve Jobs didn’t attend a prestigious college.? He actually didn’t even graduate college.? He dropped out of Oregon’s Reed College after only six months.? However, after dropping out, he continued to live on campus.? At the time, Reed College had an excellent calligraphy department.? Jobs explains:?
“Throughout the campus, every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.”
That’s nice Steve.? Great that you were really into… calligraphy.? How’s that going to pay the bills, Steve?!? To be fair, he did admit that the skill had zero practical application; it was the product of curiosity. It wasn’t “useful”.? Except, however, when it became incredibly useful:?? “10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. 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.”?
领英推荐
Of course, there are a lot of other factors that came together for Steve Jobs’ success with Apple.? It would have been successful without any background in calligraphy.? But, the random calligraphy sojourn did add to the magic.? Jobs reflects:?
“Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later… you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
A lot of high-achieving people these days only study “useful” things, do “productive” extra-curricular activities, and spend time “networking”.? There seems to be less and less time available for following curiosity and intuition, or, put another way, less of a focus on collecting dots.? That’s sad because it's?often how truly extraordinary things are built.? This week’s reading was a good reminder to not worry so much about the end game but to just enjoy the adventure, collect some dots, and trust that things work out.
Have a great week,
Your Chenmark Team