Siri's Creator on Working Towards a Goal | Apple SIri/Viv Creator Adam Cheyer

Adam, thanks so much for joining us here today. How are you doing?

I'm great, thank you. Really happy to be here.

Excellent. So you've been an entrepreneur for pretty much all your life. I was reading a story about how at the age of 10 you started to conceive of toys that you saw on TV because you weren't able to get them for Christmas, but you did get a gift. Go ahead and explain that story to our—

Well, that I don't know how relevant, but, you know, when I started out My mom, she only allowed me to watch 1 hour of TV a week. So, a little bit different than my son. I hope he's listening. But I got my fill of commercials, and I saw all these things that I wanted. And I said, Ma, can you buy me this toy or that toy? And she's like, nope, but here's some cardboard. She got all these cardboards from dry cleaners, the type that go inside shirts. And that was my material. This was before computers were very popular. So I built just about everything possible out of cardboard. Rube Goldberg machines and what have you. But I think what, for me, it was really about creation and that you can create anything you can imagine. And then when computers and software came around, it was like, wow, now I can really create anything. I've seen the virtual reality companies out out here and they're just creating unbelievable things.

And you've helped create some of the technologies that we use every day, such as Siri. You helped envision causes.org. Has there been a means that you've been able to sort of, like, focus on each of these things as you go through your life and you work on one goal and then on to the next? How does that work for you?

Yeah. So I actually haven't— I wasn't really an entrepreneur until later. in life. But there's something that I'd like to communicate about one of the tools that I use. People say, well, how do you do what you do? How do you decide what to do next? And so, this is something that I've done pretty much all my life since I was 18, and I just want to share this with you. Maybe it's useful to you. So, it's a tool that I call verbally stated goals. Verbally stated goals. So, what this means is I first started out in life And I realized that what's the most precious thing that we have? It's life itself. And it's every minute that we have is precious. And the one mandatory thing we have is to make the most out of it. So, with that kind of moral imperative to do a lot in life, the key is at each point in time, you have to figure out what is it that you should be doing? And work on that. So, in my life, what I've done is you come to these moments when you're frustrated or you're bored or you just don't know, you're not happy in your life. And a lot of people get anxious about this. I actually welcome those moments. And that means it's mandatory that you make a change. And so, when that happens, I focus on the core emotion that I'm feeling. Is it frustration? Is it a desire? Is it a need? And I'll give you some examples that led to things like Siri and Change.org and others. But once I get the core emotion of what's important to me at that moment, I formalize it into a mission statement, words, and which— and then I tell everyone that I meet, This is what I'm doing, right? And so that's what a verbally stated goal is. So that's kind of how I've lived my life. Pretty much everything I do from, you know, Siri and other things, you know, finding the love of my life, being able to afford a house and a child, trying to figure out where should I go in my career, what do I want to become, all of these big, deep questions, this is the process I use. So, step 1, realize you're not happy with something and you have to make a change because otherwise you're wasting that precious moment, that precious time. Step 2, form it into words. And every word matters. And I'll give you some examples of this. But every word matters and you want it to be a mission statement, something you can evaluate and something that you can clearly tell to someone else that you're— what it is you're doing. And know when you've achieved it. And then you have to tell everyone you meet, this is what I'm doing now. Even if you're not sure how you're going to get there, you're like, this is what I'm doing. And what does that do? It actually produces 2 things for you. Number one, it commits you to that goal. You're like, oh my gosh, I just told 100 people at this Christmas party I'm doing this thing. Next year I'm going to see them again. They're going to go, hey, how'd that thing come out? I better get working on that. So the more people you tell, the more committed— and you tell and you tell and you tell— you start to believe this is really something I'm going to do. And then the second thing is the more people you tell, the more people will actually help you. They'll be like, I know this guy or this girl who can— who's working on something like that, or you should go read this book or see this movie or whatever it is. And so those 2 things of committing you And then people helping you really has kind of been the process that I've used for my entrepreneurship, but just about every facet of my life since I was 18. The woman who introduced me, I forget her name, I'm sorry, says, I'm 18 years old and I want to travel and see the world. I've taken time off just to go see a new perspective. And I said, you know, one of the chapters of my life In fact, my first verbally stated goal was foreign perspective. I had grown up on the East Coast, never really been anywhere, and my grandfather spoke 7 or 8 languages, could walk down the street, and I'm like, man, I wish I had a little bit of that in me. That's something I want. I wish I— now, how do I achieve it? I don't know. I just graduated school, but I want foreign perspective. It's a goal. And people helped me and I achieved things and I ended up working in France for 4 years and traveling in Europe and it was so important to my development, my growth. So that's an example of a verbally stated goal and how I applied it in my life.

Now you were able to elucidate a very clear process for how the verbally stated goal works. Was this a process that was introduced to you when you were 18? Did you kind of stumble onto yourself? Has it been refined over time? What's— how is that?

So I think when I was 18 was the moment I realized that life is precious because I had a friend. We're all in high school and I don't know if you guys remember that far. It's probably like 2, 3 years for some of you, but you're like, man, I can't wait to get out of this hellhole. I want to get to college. College is going to be great. Then I'm going to be happy. Or you're in college. I can't wait to get to the working world. And I'm like, it just struck me when I was 18 that I'm going, you're missing it. You're not present in the moment. You're 17, you're 18 years old. High school is not all perfect, but you will never have this moment again. You have to fully squeeze every joy out of this moment. And that's where that beginning, that life is precious and being able to to really appreciate it fully. And if you're not happy, if there's something blocking it, you've got to change. So I understood that at 18. I didn't understand verbally stated goals until a little bit later, until about 21, when I made this idea of foreign perspective. That's something I want. And I started talking about that as a phrase and telling people. And then, as I went through life, I just would come to these moments. I was in France for 4 years. I loved it. But I was kind of bored. I didn't know what to do next. I was like, ah, where do I go from here? And then I said, well, let me try to find that next goal. And so I think it's, it's a tool that kind of grew. But it's been pretty constant ever since. So pretty much since 18, 21 till now, I always have one or more verbally stated goals that I'm working on.

And do you have a sense when you've completely achieved that verbally stated goal, or does the goal sort of become more persistent and get added on to additional goals?

Yeah, that's a great, great question. So for me, you know, I think of life kind of like your book, right? You're the author. You don't— you're not the complete author, but you're part of it. And for me, in a good story, a good career, a good life, it's like a book. And so you need 2 things. You need chapters and 'Cause, you know, a book with one chapter, it's a little much. You need— and each chapter should kind of stand alone and be, you know, have its own story. But you also need themes. In a book, you want to have longer, purposeful, you know, trends and stories and things that you're working on over time. So, I guess I'd answer your question saying, for me, the verbally stated goals are the titles of the chapters that I'm working on. And they usually are pretty defined. For me, it usually comes around kind of like 4 or 5 years, just happens to be the rhythm that by then I get kind of frustrated or something else, I need something else or I'm a different person by then. But I do have themes that go through my entire career, far, you know, across many, many chapters. And to me, that gives purpose and meaning to my life. Because someone says, well, what are you about? I can say, here are the things that I've been pursuing for my whole life, for my whole career. And I will probably continue to pursue those for my whole career. And later on, I can tell you what some of those were for me. But for me, the verbally stated goal is usually very immediate, very present, and there's something you have to do, have to get out of you to succeed. And it usually lasts for a couple years. But it's important to have longer-term themes as well.