Randy Pausch time management lecture summary

- Who is Randy Pausch?

Answer: Randy Pausch was a professor of CS, human-computer interaction, and design at CMU.

- What was he known for?

Answer: He was known for his "Last Lecture", a lecture he gave after being diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and given only several months left to live, and his work in CS, namely creating the Alice educational software project, establishing the Entertainment Technology Center at CMU, and his work on virtual reality. The "Last Lecture" became very popular, and he co-authored a book of the same name, which became a NY Times best seller.

- 5 points that you liked in his talk.

Answer:

1. Being successful doesn't make you manage your time well, but managing your time well makes you successful.

2. Failing to plan is planning to fail.

3. If you have to eat a frog, don't spend a lot of time looking at it. If you have to eat three of them, don't start with the small one.

4. Don't change your system if your system is working, and do what works for you. Everybody has to find a system for themselves.

5. Learn to say no.

6. Find your creative time and defend it ruthlessly.

Honorable mention: To his point about screen space, I did not know that having more than one monitor is actually important. I thought of it more as a convenience rather than a necessity