Randy Pausch Summary

Born in 1960, Randy Pausch was a professor of computer science, design, and “human-computer interaction” at Carnegie Mellon University. While his academic career covered a myriad of prolific ventures, Pausch was most well known for the upbeat lectures he had given towards the ends of life after discovering that he had pancreatic cancer in 2006. On September 18, 2007, Pausch delivered a lecture titled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” where he discussed and presented life lessons designed to inspire and uplift those around him and later came to be referred to as “The Last Lecture.” While Pausch later died from pancreatic cancer-related complications on July 26, 2008 at the age of 47, his ‘last lecture’ continues to inspire people to this very day.

Five points I liked from his talk:

1) How to increase one's ability to manage their time more successfully in addition to the importance of time management, one thing that truly caught my attention–especially early on–was Pausch’s argument of time as the “only commodity that matters,” and more specifically, how weak team management is a systemic issue which can only be rectified when measuring time management from a long-term point of view.

2) The importance of creating and maintaining a plan that is not only rigid, but one that is fluid and capable of adapting to changes in one’s idea. Here, Pausch discusses how “you can always change your plan, but only once you have one” and the idea of quadrant to do-lists which juggles the importance of a task and the proximity of it’s deadline.

3) Scheduling yourself and his discussion of the importance of verbs and how “you do not find time for important things, you make it” in the discussion of opportunity costs was yet another interesting point.

4) The discussion of creative time and “defending it ruthlessly” and the value of identifying your “good and bad times.”

5) Interruptions and their nature as 6-9 minute periods with an additional 4-5 minute “recovery period” was very insightful through how it discusses the importance of decreasing the frequency and length of interruptions and how one can completely get rid of interruptions such as notifications and converting things such as phone calls into emails.