The other day in this Daring Fireball post about the demise of the Apple G4 Cube, Gruber describes Steve Jobs as having “strong opinions loosely held.” He says it was one of Job’s truly extraordinary powers. It’s hard to argue with that.
But this isn’t about Jobs hagiography. Rather, it’s about the idea of having strong opinions loosely held. It is, it seems to me, a goal towards which we should all strive. On the one hand, you don’t want to be a namby pamby cipher with no convictions at all. On the other hand you don’t want to be one of those annoying people who won’t change their mind no matter the evidence.
The idea is to be strong in your opinions and to believe in them up until the moment you receive better information. That’s what Jobs did with the G4. He absolutely believed in it. sung its praises, and believed that Apple would sell millions of them. Then it became clear that the G4 wasn’t getting any traction and Jobs was able to pivot, admit he was wrong—at least about how popular it would be—and abandon the product.
I don’t know about the rest of you but I could use some of that myself. It can be really hard to abandon an opinion to which you’ve become attached but it’s worth cultivating the ability to do so. Too bad it’s not New Years; I could use it as my resolution.