I wrote that (7.1.3.2) “right” in decision making determined afterward.

Regarding this way of thinking , Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is famous for his lecture at Stanford University’s 2005 graduation ceremony.

When he was a college student, he made a decision to quit college. Since he did not have to take credit to graduate, he took classes that were not required as he was interested. One of them is calligraphy, class about beauty of character. He told that the experience at this time was very useful in later making the Macintosh.

Here’s a summary of what he had to say about the matter: “You can not connect the dots towards the future, you can only look back and connect the past, so you have to act on believing that points will connect in some way in the future. Because it bring confidence to you. ” *9

He did not know beforehand that calligraphy is useful. If he did not learn calligraphy, he would not think that calligraphy was useful even at the timing of making a Macintosh. By learning before making a Macintosh, he was able to use the calligraphy knowledge for making a Macintosh.

Deciding what to learn is decision-making. We do not know in advance what is useful but only know afterword. We can not find the answer to what we want to learn outside, it is in you.

*9: You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. 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. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path and that will make all the difference.


This page is auto-translated from [/nishio/(7.1.3.3) we can only connect dots looking backwards](https://scrapbox.io/nishio/(7.1.3.3) we can only connect dots looking backwards) using DeepL. If you looks something interesting but the auto-translated English is not good enough to understand it, feel free to let me know at @nishio_en. I’m very happy to spread my thought to non-Japanese readers.