Grade 11: How to live before you die by Steve Jobs, Questions Answers

  Answer the following questions.

a. What is the story about Steve Jobs’ birth?

Ans: Steve Jobs was born of a young unmarried college student who put him up for adoption as she could not bring him up independently. She strongly wanted him to be adopted by a highly educated couple, and everything was almost final for the adoption by a lawyer and his wife. However, they changed their mind at the last moment as they really wanted a girl. Therefore, another working-class couple from the waiting list adopted him although they had never graduated from college. At first, his biological mother refused to sign the final adoption paper, but she agreed later as the couple promised her to send him to college someday.

b. What does he mean when he says, “you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards”?

Ans: Steve Jobs says, “you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards”. He means to say that all the incidents in our life are like dots which have a connection with our achievements. They happen for something good in life. But we cannot find the connection between these incidents looking towards the future; instead, we should look back to the past to find the interrelation between them. So he asks the audience to have faith that the incidents happening in our life will somehow connect in the future once we reach our destination. The final destination depends on the struggles we did, the choices we made, the difficulties we faced, and all the occurrences we experienced in the past.

c. What happened when Steve Jobs turned 30?

Ans: Steve Jobs got fired from Apple Inc., the company he founded, when he turned 30. Two years earlier, they had hired John Sculley as CEO, who he thought was very talented, to run the company with him. For the first year, things went well but after that their visions of the future diverged, and they had a great disagreement over things. But the board of directors sided with the CEO, and Jobs was expelled from his own company.

d. Jobs contends that you need to love what you do in order to be great at it. Do you agree or disagree? Why?

Ans: Yes, I agree with Job’s assertion that we need to love what we do in order to be great at it. It is because to get perfection on something we need internal motivation to do it. Our love or interest towards something is a motivational force that pushes us to get involved in it passionately. As a result, we can master it effortlessly. Therefore, the only way to do great work is to love what we do.

e. Is death really life’s greatest invention?

Ans: Yes, death is really life’s greatest invention because it is life’s change agent that clears out the old to make way for the new. When a life ends, another life begins. Death actually creates an atmosphere for the creation of a new life, and it is the means of renovation for the world.

Reference to the context

a. Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow:

 "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course."

i. Who was the baby boy?

Ans: Steve Jobs was the baby boy. His biological mother was an unwed college student, and she put him up for adoption.

ii. What does 'do you want him?' mean?

Ans: It means an inquiry to the couple on the waiting list if they want the baby boy for adoption. Everything was all set for him to be adopted by a lawyer and his wife, but at the last moment, they changed their mind as they wanted a baby girl. So, the other couple from the waiting list got the given question if they wished to adopt him.

iii. Who does 'they' refer to?

Ans: "They" refers to the couple from the waiting list who later adopted the baby boy and became his parents.

b. Explain the following lines:

i. "You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever."

Ans: In these lines taken from Steve Jobs' speech delivered at Stanford University's 2005 commencement address, Jobs asks the audience to have faith in the gut, destiny, life, and karma. These things provide us the courage to accept failures and the power to keep going. When we have trust in our gut, the inner intuition, it helps us to make good decisions. Belief in destiny and life reduces the current stress, and trust in karma encourages us to be involved in good deeds. These things ultimately lead us to success. 

ii. "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."

Ans: In these lines taken from Steve Jobs' speech delivered at Stanford University's 2005 commencement address, Jobs refers to the inevitability of death and the uncertainty of life. He says that our time to live is limited, and we should not waste it following other's way of living. Instead, we should make ourselves happy by framing a meaningful life. Here, he enforces the significance of time and asks us to use it fruitfully. 

c. What does he mean by "don't settle"?

Ans: By "don't settle", he means to inspire the audience to look for the work they love. He asks them not to stay quiet and calm until and unless they find something they love to do. He assures that the efficiency of doing this kind of work gets better as the years pass. So, he asks the audience not to settle for anything but to find the work that makes them happy and get better at it. 

d. Which style of speech is used by the speaker to persuade the audience?

And: The speech with openness, humility, and conversational as well as semi-formal style is used by the speaker to persuade the audience. He adopts a tripartite structure and uses autobiographical narratives to convey his messages of resilience and personal integrity. 

 

e. It is not easy to motivate others. How do you think Steve Jobs' speech is so inspiring?

Ans: It is not an easy task to motivate others; however, Steve Jobs' speech is so inspiring to people due to some techniques that he uses in it. Firstly, he narrates autobiographical anecdotes to convey his messages where the audience can easily trust him because these are the ones that he has deducted from his own experiences. Secondly, he reveals his past failures and accomplishments in a humble way by using the notion of openness and humility, which is really inspiring. And lastly, he uses a conversational and semi-formal style where he simplifies his ideas by directly addressing the audience. Therefore, Steve Jobs' speech is so inspiring to people. 

f. Why do you think Steve Jobs used the personal narrative storytelling technique in his speech? What influence does it have on the audiences?

Ans: Steve Jobs used the personal narrative storytelling technique in his speech to establish himself as a suitable speaker to motivate the audiences through his messages of resilience and personal integrity. The influence it has on audiences is that they can easily trust him because these are the ones that he has deducted from his own experiences, and they get inspired by them.

Reference beyond the text

a. One of Steve Jobs' mottos was: 'Think differently. Can this make a person succeed in life? What challenges are there in thinking differently?

Ans: Yes, "thinking differently", in the sense of thinking out of the box and approaching the solutions to problems with positive thinking and creativity, can make a person succeed in life. However, there are several challenges in thinking differently. Some of them are:

>One might face humiliation and public criticism.

>May lack different kinds of support from others.

>May have to face unnecessary obstructions, etc.

b. What does the slogan "Stay hungry; stay foolish" mean to you?

Ans: For me, "stay hungry, stay foolish" connotes an insight that we should never stop learning but instead keep trying new things. We should be courageous and never be afraid to learn new things or do the things we love. While doing these things, we might appear foolish to the people, but we should still go with it. 

c. What does it mean to be a visionary? What makes Steve Jobs different from a fortune teller?

Ans: To be a visionary means the act of planning or thinking about the future with imagination or wisdom. A fortune teller is a person who is supposedly able to predict a person's future by different methods; however, these predictions rarely come true. The qualities of a visionary makes Steve Jobs different from a fortune teller because he never predicted his future; rather, he planned it and succeeded eventually.