Randy Paush

Randy Paush was a professor who graduated with a PhD in CS from Carnegie Mellon University. He was one of Alice's developers, a language that simplifies coding programs and animations, among other things. He was an author, writing (or co-writing) 5 books and many articles.

In his speech about time management, he gave a lot of advice and talked about all kinds of stuff. From what he said, I really liked the section on delegation and procrastination. He mentioned that most people delegate tasks incorrectly, and end up micromanaging others when they should be trusting and having faith in their capabilities and authorities. He also said that you should do the ugliest job, to prove that you're willing to work hard and get your hands dirty. when working with others, you should treat people well, and the little section about the thank you notes were all points I enjoyed listening to. In addition to this, I think the points on procrastination were really important. I struggle with procrastinating a lot because I often don't want to start work if I know I'm not going to do it perfectly, and so I felt comforted when he said that he also procrastinates and that it's due to a psychological reason, and took his advice on fake deadlines and other things he said to heart.

Not only that but his ideas about opportunity cost, and learning to say no is something I liked as well. Its often difficult to reject people who we care about and we end up taking more than we can handle and sabotaging ourselves, so his reflection on how to refuse people and ensure the time we're spending is not wasted was very interesting to me. Also, I'm someone who usually detests plans, because they make me feel confined and I get stressed out when I end up not being able to follow them exactly, so found what he said about how plans always end up changing but we should still have an agenda for the day intriguing. Adding on to this, I thought his points about talking on the phone were really smart and it made me realise that there are probably lots of small little things that waste so much time in our everyday life.