Steve Wozniak’s Advice for Technical Prodigies

“The world needs inventors — great ones. You can be one. If you love what you do and are willing to do what it takes, it’s within your reach.”

Cover of iWozIn many ways, Steve Wozniak needs no introduction. Apple’s cofounder was only 26 years old when he single-handedly designed and developed the Apple 1 computer, the product that launched Apple and started the personal computer revolution. In iWoz (public library), Wozniak provides insight into his younger years, his career, and his personal philosophy on life. He also provides valuable advice for young adults who have aspirations of following in his footsteps.

Wozniak has always been a strong advocate for children and a big supporter of public education. “If I couldn’t have been an engineer,” he says in iWoz, “I would’ve been a teacher. I believed, truly believed, that education was important. I remember my father telling me way back then that it was education that would lift me up to where I wanted to go in life, that it could lift people up in values.” According to Wired, Wozniak did work for a time as a teacher in Los Gatos through an unconventional arrangement with the school system.

With the publication of iWoz, he makes another contribution to children by providing advice to those hoping to make a dent in the world — advice that primarily concerns how to go about inventing something new. It’s a must read for young adults and parents of children interested in science and technology.

I’d like to give advice, for what it’s worth, to kids out there who are like I was. Kids who feel they’re outside the norm. Kids who feel it in themselves to design things, invent things, engineer things. Change the way people do things.

My advice has to do with what you do when you find yourself sitting there with ideas in your head and a desire to build them. But you’re young. You have no money. All you have is the stuff in your brain. And you think it’s good stuff, those ideas you have in your brain. Those ideas are what drive you, they’re all you think about.

But there’s a big difference between just thinking about inventing something and doing it. So how do you do it? How do you actually set about changing the world?

Steve Wozniak
Steve Wozniak (Photograph: OnInnovation)

Believe in yourself

To invent anything new, Wozniak says that individuals need to believe in themselves and keep an open mind about just about everything.

First you need to believe in yourself. Don’t waver. There will be people — and I’m talking about the vast majority of people, practically everybody you’ll ever meet — who just think in black-and-white terms. Most people see things the way the media sees them or the way their friends see them, and they think if they’re right, everyone else is wrong. So a new idea — a revolutionary new product or product feature — won’t be understandable to most people because they see things so black and white. Maybe they don’t get it because they can’t imagine it, or maybe they don’t get it because someone else has already told them what’s useful or good, and what they heard doesn’t include your idea.

Don’t let these people bring you down. Remember that they’re just taking the point of view that matches whatever the popular cultural view of the moment is. They only know what they’re exposed to. It’s a type of prejudice, actually, a type of prejudice that is absolutely against the spirit of invention.

Wozniak at thirteen showing off his science-fair-winning Adder/Subtractor
Wozniak at thirteen showing off his science-fair-winning adder and subtractor

But the world isn’t black and white. It’s gray scale. As an inventor, you have to see things in gray scale. You need to be open. You can’t follow the crowd. Forget the crowd. And you need the kind of objectivity that makes you forget everything you’ve heard, clear the table, and do a factual study like a scientist would. You don’t want to jump to conclusions, take a position too quickly, and then search for as much material as you can to support your side. Who wants to waste time supporting a bad idea? It’s not worth it, that way of being stuck in your ego. You don’t want to just come up with any excuse to support your way.

Engineers have an easier time than most people seeing and accepting the gray-scale nature of the world. That’s because they already live in a gray-scale world, knowing what it is to have a hunch or a vision about what can be, even though it doesn’t exist yet. Plus, they’re able to calculate solutions that have partial values — in between all and none.

The only way to come up with something new — something world-changing — is to think outside the constraints everyone else has. You have to think outside of the artificial limits everyone else has already set. You have to live in the gray-scale world, not the black-and-white one, if you’re going to come up with something no one has thought of before.

Be an artist

Wozniak contends that inventors should view their projects in much the same way as artists view their paintings.

Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me — they’re shy and they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone — best outside of corporate environments, best where they can control an invention’s design without a lot of other people designing it for marketing or some other committee. I don’t believe anything really revolutionary has ever been invented by committee. Because the committee would never agree on it!

Why do I say engineers are like artists? Engineers often strive to do things more perfectly than even they think is possible. Every tiny part or line of code has to have a reason, and the approach has to be direct, short, and fast. We build upon and build upon and build upon, just like a painter would with colors on a paintbrush or a composer would with musical notes. And it’s this reach for perfection — this striving to put everything together so perfectly, in a way no one has done before — that makes an engineer or anyone else a true artist.

Steve Wozniak with Steve Jobs
Steve Wozniak with Steve Jobs

Work alone

To create new and original works, Wozniak advises individuals to work by themselves, even if it means working long hours in the evening after school or work.

If you’re that rare engineer who’s an inventor and also an artist, I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone.

When you’re working for a large, structured company, there’s much less leeway to turn clever ideas into revolutionary new products or product features by yourself. Money is, unfortunately, a god in our society, and those who finance your efforts are businesspeople with lots of experience at organizing contracts that define who owns what and what you do on your own.

But you probably have little business experience, know-how, or acumen, and it’ll be hard to protect your work or deal with all that corporate nonsense. I mean, those who provide the funding and tools and environment are often perceived as taking the credit for inventions. If you’re young inventor who wants to change the world, a corporate environment is the wrong place for you.

You’re going to be best able to design revolutionary products and features if you’re working on your own. Not on a committee. Not on a team. That means you’re probably going to have to do what I did. Do your projects as moonlighting, with limited money and limited resources. But man, it’ll be worth it in the end. It’ll be worth it if this is really, truly what you want to do — invent things. If you want to invent things that can change the world, and not just work at a corporation working on other people’s inventions, you’re going to have to work on your own projects.

When you’re working as your own boss, making decisions about what you’re going to build and how you’re going to go about it, making trade-offs as to features and qualities, it becomes a part of you. Like a child you love and want to support. You have huge motivation to create the best possible inventions — and you care about them with a passion you could never feel about an invention someone else ordered you to come up with.

Steve Wozniak
Steve Wozniak

Stay the course

It’s important to be persistent. Wozniak says that inventors need to trust themselves even in the face of overwhelming opposition.

It’s so easy to doubt yourself, and it’s especially easy to doubt yourself when what you’re working on is at odds with everyone in the world who thinks they know the right way to do things. Sometimes you can’t prove whether you’re right or wrong. Only time can tell that. But if you believe in your own power to objectively reason, that’s a key to happiness. And a key confidence. Another key I found to happiness was to realize that I didn’t have to disagree with someone and let it get all intense. If you believe in your own power to reason, you can just relax. You don’t have to feel the pressure to set out and convince anyone. So don’t sweat it! You have to trust your own designs, your own intuition, and your own understanding of what your invention needs to be.

I hope you’ll be as lucky as I am. The world needs inventors — great ones. You can be one. If you love what you do and are willing to do what it takes, it’s within your reach. And it’ll be worth every minute you spend alone at night, thinking and thinking about what it is you want to design or build. It’ll be worth it, I promise.

iWoz is required reading for anyone interested in technology. For young adults who have hopes and dreams of creating new technology, Wozniak’s timeless advice is invaluable. Complement with Ed Catmull’s wisdom on embracing failure and Linda Liukas’ advice on nurturing your child’s technical imagination.

Jan Brett on Drawing and What it Takes to be an Illustrator

“Instead of watching television, take just half an hour and create something. The feeling you get when you create something entirely new is very compelling.”

Author Jan BrettWith over 40 million books in print, Jan Brett is one of the most popular authors and illustrators in modern children’s literature. She’s also a treasure trove of advice for kids learning how to draw. In a variety of interviews, Brett shares timeless advice on how to get started in the competitive world of illustration. And in over twenty videos, she provides detailed instructions on how to draw the animals featured in her critically-acclaimed books.

According to an interview on TeachingBooks.net, Brett first knew that she wanted to be an illustrator when she was in kindergarten.

I knew that I wanted to be an illustrator since I was in kindergarten. I can remember the exact day. The art teacher usually came to our classroom once a week, but she was absent that day. Instead, our regular teacher gave us each a huge piece of paper and crayons, and we could do whatever we wanted. My family had been planning to go to the circus, but it was canceled at the last minute. I was very disappointed, so I decided I would draw the circus on my paper.

We had an hour to do this, which is a long time for a kindergartner, but I just was swept away by this project. I drew all the things I thought I would see at the circus. It was probably better than the real circus. I imagined the stuff I would eat, horses (I loved horses), ladies with feathers on their heads, and more.

When I finished, I just said, “Oh, this is what I want to be when I grow up.” When I was asked what do you want to be when you grow up, I would say, “I want to be an artist.” And they would say, “Why don’t you become a children’s book illustrator?” In those days it was the kind of job a woman would do. They would also suggest I become a teacher.

I love children because that’s a part of my life that was so happy, and I like to remember back to those days where everything is a discovery, and the world is so fresh. I loved being a child. If I do have a talent, it’s not so much being an artist, but it’s being able to remember back to that time.

Jan Brett's Drawings
Jan Brett loves drawing animals. (Illustration: Jan Brett)

Brett is an author and illustrator, which means that she has to come up with an idea for a story before she starts writing or drawing. Inspiration and creativity are different for everyone, of course. Brett finds that ideas for stories and characters can pop into her head virtually anywhere, at any time.

It’s very complicated because each book has its own path. When I go for a run, sometimes I’ll think of an idea. There’s something about all that oxygen when you’re running that makes you get good ideas. Sometimes before I go to sleep I’ll say, “I need the answer to this question.” Then I’ll sleep on it, and sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I’ve got the answer.

I have these ideas in my mind for a long time, and then they will come to me. Sometimes I’ll have an idea that will be in my mind for 10 years, like The Easter Egg. I didn’t have all the pieces together.

I ask children, ‘Have you ever seen a shooting star when you’re out at night? All of a sudden you see this giant meteor going by that is maybe green and blue, and it lights up the whole sky? Ideas are like that.’

Sometimes, I will pull an idea out of some other ideas that I’ve had, and it will just kind of evolve. Other times, boom! It will be like that shooting star. I’ll just get the whole idea at one time, and it will just be like an explosion in my head. Each one is really different.

Jan Brett drawing a moose
Jan Brett (Photograph: Pen Pals & Picture Books)

It may come as a surprise to younger readers, but drawing is an intricate, painstaking process for Brett. It typically takes her an entire year to create a single children’s book. She uses watercolors with very small brushes to illustrate all of her books. In an interview on the Scholastic website, she said that “it takes an hour for me to draw an inch,” and “I do spend a week on a double-page spread.”

The books take a year just to do the drawing. I will travel to a country to do the research and get ideas. Sometimes I don’t travel to do research, but mostly I do. It takes a long time, but do I ever get tired of it? Not really. The characters kind of grow and evolve.

I just love to draw. It’s very intense for me. The day will just go by like the snap of a finger. A lot of times I’ll draw or paint late into the night. When I am really concentrating, I kind of lose track of what I am doing.

I’ll go to bed, and the next morning I’ll look at my artwork and say, “Wow!” It kind of took on a life of its own and directed me rather than me making conscious decisions for the art. It’s almost like a force takes hold of me. I think it’s a human condition, this ability to story-tell either with words or with drawing. It’s just something that takes over and comes from your subconscious.

Artwork from the book Mossy
Artwork from Jan Brett’s children’s book Mossy

Brett frequently tours around the country to visit with children in schools and bookstores. She occasionally provides drawing lessons during her lectures, and according to the interview on TeachingBooks.net, she shares personal drawing advice with the children.

When I go to a school, I show them how to draw something. When I look at all their drawings at the end, each one will have so much individuality and pizzazz. I tell them how important it is that they have some way to use their creativity because it’s such a treasure that each person in the world has this little box of traits and talents and experiences that is totally different from anyone else’s.

I like to tell them about looking at their fingerprint, and how theirs is different from everybody else’s. It’s the same way when they draw a picture. I admire the way they’ll present the same image that I’m presenting, but they’ll put their own ideas into it.

For example, when they draw a lion, the mane might be totally fluffy, or a hedgehog will be pink or will have long eyelashes or will have big muscles in its legs. They just take things that they’re interested in or are part of a story that’s in their head, and put it into their drawings. I find that incredibly inspiring and hopeful about human beings.

Jan Brett with elephants
Jan Brett in Africa (Photograph: Jan Brett)

Brett provides additional drawing advice for children in the interviews, including another interview on BookPage:

  • “Give yourself time. Instead of watching television, take just half an hour and create something. The feeling you get when you create something entirely new is very compelling.”
  • “When I make a mistake in my pictures, I start a new picture or just erase. And some of the best things happen when I’m fixing a mistake.”
  • “It’s not as easy to write a story as you may think. The stories find me, I don’t find the stories.”
  • “I keep painting until I feel like I can hear the sounds, smell the smells, and feel how soft the fur of the animals is. Drawing is like tennis, or playing the piano, or playing basketball. The more you practice, the better you get. Anybody can learn how to draw.”
  • “Everybody has their own style. Figuring out what makes your style work is part of the process.”

For kids interested in improving their drawing skills, or just trying to draw some of the animals in Brett’s stories, Brett provides over twenty video drawing tutorials on her YouTube channel.

Children can watch Brett’s detailed videos to learn how to draw an elephant, a giraffe, a stork, a tiger, and much more. Complement with books by Jan Brett with drawing advice from other illustrators.