Randy Pausch was a lector at Carnegie Mellon University CS department, who was best known for his lectures. Randy was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was told that he had from three to six months to live, so he opted to give lectures while he was still alive, which would later be included in his book “The Last Lecture”. In one of his lectures, Pausch talks about time management and effective ways to save time, and ways to know whether you’re saving time. The first and foremost which I found was the most important thing he said, was to get your priorities straight, never put off what you HAVE to do for later. Randy introduced a two by two graph which each had two types of priorities, due now, due later and have to do, do not have to do, this table allowed you to easily monitor what you had to do and for when you had to do it. The second important thing Pausch said was that each person should understand the importance of time, and that managing time takes understanding the importance of time. When a person understands the importance of time, they know that every minute counts, the more they see that they are time deprived, the more they learn how to manage their time well so as to increase the effectiveness of what time they have, to cut down on any excess time expenditure or to use their free time when otherwise they would have wasted it. For example, using the time allotted during breaks to study, maximizing time they otherwise would have wasted, starting assignments early and trying to finish them before their deadline. Another thing that was important is to always organize, to cut down on fruitless time expenditure spent on remembering or trying to find the things which you needed, calling your employees/co-workers/etc. ahead of time, to inform them of what had to be done, who had to do what, and when it was due, Randy emphasized precision regarding this matter, because people are more inclined to follow through once they know the details. Another thing was to never be afraid to seek help, to not be afraid to delegate a task for which you have no time for to someone else, but to always be sure to leave the most difficult task for yourself. Another thing was that sleep is always necessary no matter how much you must do, because if you lose sleep, everything you will be doing will be jeopardized. And finally, that time is more precious than money, that it is easy to gain back money, but impossible to buy back time, so you should not be afraid to spend money to save time.
5 Things I liked about the lecture
1) the speeding ticket incident
2) Randy’s assistant’s organizing style
3) “if you can dream it, you can do it!”
4) No checking email while on vacation policy
5) hanging up on yourself to avoid talking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Pausch
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Randy_Pausch
”The Last Lecture” the book
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0