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The Other Lecture
By Brick | February 13, 2008
Randy Pausch is a well known and admired educator in computer science circles. In September of 2006, Professor Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was told he had between three to six months of decent health left. Later that month, he gave a rather inspiring lecture at Carnegie Mellon University entitled Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. Ironically, the talk was part of what used to known as the Last Lecture Series: If you had one last lecture to give before you died, what would it be? This talk has come to be known as Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture:
I’ll let you watch it for yourself. And when you are done, ask yourself, isn’t achieving your childhood dreams not the very definition of fulfillment?
Remember brick walls let us show our dedication. They are there to separate us from the people who don’t really want to achieve their childhood dreams. Don’t bail. The best of the gold’s at the bottom of barrels of crap.
Source: Randy Pausch Last Lecture
While that lecture has become quite popular on the Internet, and in and of itself extremely relevant to the spirit of The 4-Hour Workweek, Pausch also gave another lecture that is worth mentioning here, especially considering the time management kick I have been on lately. The lecture is actually on the topic of effective time management. It was originally given back in 1998, but Pausch was asked to give it again (post cancer diagnosis) late last year. A lecture on time management from someone with probably not that much longer to live has a certain credibility:
Besides nailing the concepts of “time is money”, the Pareto principle, and planning & prioritizing, what I really like about this lecture are some of the absolutely practical tips (I’ll mention a few here, but you can really just watch the lecture for yourself!) he provides:
- Develop strategies to minimize the time spent on Telephone calls: consider using a speaker phone and/or a head set. Have, or insist on, an agenda for phone calls. Stand while you are on the phone. Batch phone calls to just before lunch or at the end of day - that way people you are talking with have a motivation to get off the phone.
- Email: batch the processing of email to a limited number of times each day. Process your inbox to zero. File, but never delete email.
- Journal you Time: It is hard to impossible to manage your time if you do not track where it is spent. At a minimum, track how much time you spend watching television. Consider getting rid of your television.
- When you delegate, be specific and empower that person to complete the job without further intervention from yourself.
- If you find yourself procrastinating, ask yourself why you are putting it off. Sometimes, all you have to do is ask someone else for help.
- When you have small children, exchange money for time at every opportunity.
As Pausch points out, unlike money, we can never get our time back.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Topics: Time Management, Videos |
February 15th, 2008 at 1:15 am
Wow, Brick, that’s a great post. Thanks for sharing Randy’s story and work with me.
A blog I like a lot that isn’t really about time management, exactly, but was so inspirational to me I actually created another category for it (the “Growth” part of my blog’s title) and it was instrumental in my blog’s name and what I’ll be doing at 5:30 AM tomorrow morning.
For about 20 minutes.
I can’t recommend this highly enough: RossTraining.com by Ross Enamait. Few if anyone in the online fitness community commands greater respect, offers more help to more people, or is such a nice guy. Really. He just looks scary.
He always has great motivational stories, a tremendous attitude, will answer his email, puts his body and effort where his cursor is, and will be a new father yet again soon.
So whether you want to get in shape like me (want to, as opposed to “am”) or whether you just like reading the odd good story or watching a tear-jerker motivational video (like this one I got from Ross), I urge you to run to site, navigate to the blog, and get the feed.
So you know, the post I promised I’d write about Life Sutra will be published tomorrow at 5:41 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
Also, as a housekeeping matter, your Copyright statement is out of date. Nick Georgakis, a great guy and PHP programmer from Greece, has a one-line bit of code you can put in your template so you never have to change it or have it behind the current date again… itself a time-saving productivity hack!
February 15th, 2008 at 3:21 am
This is only tangentially related on the subjects of Getting Things Done / time management and especially human mortality. Marc Orchant, founder of Office Zealot GTD® Zone, passed away due to a heart attack.
I said not long ago I’d added you as one of the few people in the Productivity category of my recommended favourite sites… Marc was one of the others and really was part of the key people whose work inspired me to get organized so I wouldn’t let people down by not keeping my commitments again.
People like him and Randy and yourself, believe it or not, are inspirational and educational treasures who help more people than you’ll ever be aware. Mostly, live well so you can help your beautiful children. You’re aware of them.
February 15th, 2008 at 8:19 am
@Christoph: That is unfortunate news regarding Marc Orchant. You touch on a very important point. While I, and I am sure most, wish to be “successful”, I would argue that success, in any measure, comes from providing value to others. It has been my privilege if I have provided some value to you via this site.
With respect to perhaps peripherally related websites: this is one of the reasons I decided to expand the scope of Life Sutra beyond the 4-Hour Workweek. In the end, what I liked most about Ferriss’ book was his questioning a fundamental assumption and way of being. Any questioning of this sort provides the potential for transformation. I have seen people literally transformed in all senses of the word after engaging in a commitment to some form of physical fitness.
FYI, I work out every weekday morning at 6am and play ice hockey twice a week!
February 17th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Great, inspiring videos. FYI - the second one doesn’t seem to be available any more.
February 17th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Correction - it’s working again
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:37 pm
[…] listening to the wonderful YouTube videos shown on Brick’s Life Sutra blog, I realized that tasks should not only be listed, but you need to determine WHY you are doing those […]