Randy Pausch Lecture Summary

Who is Randy Pausch?

CMU Professor and lecturer, who was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2007.

Known for being:

+ a pioneer in virtual reality
+ human-computer interaction researcher
+ co-founder of Carnegie Mellon's
+ creator of the Alice software project.

7 points that I liked in his talk + conclusion

• there's no point in working if you're not having fun. You should love every second, maximize fun part -- it's the goal. (not maximizing productivity as I thought)


• opportunity cost + scheduling yourself
  When you choose to do something, it's not just spending time on that, it's paying with the time you could've spent on other things otherwise. So you pay with not doing another thing.
  
  When you want to help someone, first ask how much work should be done to know if you can help or not.
  
  No interruptions - especially from notifications (may take a lot of time to get back to work mentally).
  
  make-up class instead of gaps!!
  
  breaking things into small steps!!
  
  Have a separate alone time that you should defend + get enough sleep.
  


• time journaling: each 15-30 mins keep track of what you're doing and analyze the data to improve.


• Covey's four-quadrant ToDo. Diving tasks to 4 groups based on if they are important or not and due soon or not.
1. Important and Due Soon
2. Important Not Due Soon
3. Unimportant Due Soon
4. Unimportant Not Due Soon
NOT DOING things that are Unimportant and Due Soon before Important ones.


• Delegate (whole pack of specific task, responsibility, specific deadline and penalty) but do the dirties job yourself.


• Thank you notes for people to show that you appreciate (bonus: positive thinking and good mood). Treat people well, with dignity and respect.


• get feedback - very valuable!

Conclusion:
Turns out my To-do lists were very very wrong :) Tendency to do what's Due Soon (no matter important or not) and not breaking tasks into small pieces overall makes my time management weak.

I will use Covey's four-quadrant ToDo and devote some time on planning and breaking into pieces to make sure I do important things first. Then see if I can delegate something and ask for help. Also, time journal and thank you notes.

Thank you, Professor Khaled! For giving truly informative video as an assignment! Otherwise I wouldn't find time to seek for a good video on time-management and would certainly not watch an hour long video that I do need, haha :D