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The Last Lecture

The first time I heard about The Last Lecture was 6 or 7 months ago. And if you haven't heard about Randy Pausch and his Last Lecture, please take a few minutes to read about him on his website Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture website - it's worth your time.

The man was amazing and had an incredible outlook on life. At 46, Randy Pausch was in the prime of his life - he'd found and married the woman of his dreams and they had 3 beautiful children. He was an expert in his field of computer science and was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. And then he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer - a death sentence for most of those who are diagnosed with it.

Randy delivered his "Last Lecture" at Carnegie Mellon on September 18, 2007 and it was titled Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. If you haven't seen it and have an hour to spare, go the website above and you can watch it. You won't be disappointed. I won't be talking in depth about it here on my blog because I really can't do it justice. It's one of those things you just have to see it and experience it.

Sadly, Randy Pausch passed away on July 25, 2008.

On Joe's way home from school on Wednesday night, he stopped and bought me a copy of Randy Pausch's book, The Last Lecture. It was a quick read, finishing in less than 2 hours, and was one of the best I've ever read. Taken right from the flap of the book -

"A lot of professors give talks titled 'The Last Lecture'. Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave - 'Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams' - wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, seizing every moment (because 'time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think'). "

The book was amazing and I loved every single bit of it. Here are two short passages that really stood out to me -

"Take a time out. It's not a real vacation if you're reading email or calling in for your messages. When Jai and I went on our honeymoon, we wanted to be left alone. My boss, however, felt I needed to provide a way for people to contact me. So I came up with the perfect phone message.

'Hi, this is Randy. I waited until I was thirty-nine to get married, so my wife and I are going away for a month. I hope you don't have a problem with that, but my boss does. Apparently, I have to be reachable.'

I then gave the names of Jai's parents and the city where they live.

'If you call directory assistance, you can get their number. And then, if you can convince my new in-laws that your emergency merits interupting their only daughter's honeymoon, they have our number.'

We didn't get any calls.

Some of my time management tips are dead-on serious and some are a bit tongue-in-cheek. But I believe all of them are worth considering.

Time is all you have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think."

So very true.

And here's the second excerpt -

I got tenure a year earlier than people usually do. That seemed to impress other junior faculty members.

'Wow, you got tenure early,' they'd say to me. 'What was your secret?"

I said, 'It's pretty simple. Call me any Friday night in my office at ten o'clock and I'll tell you.' (Of course, this was before I had a family.)

A lot of people want a shortcut. I find the best shortcut is the long way, which is basically two words: work hard.

As I see it, if you work more hours than somebody else, during those hours you learn more about your craft. That can make you more efficient, more able, even happier. Hard work is like compounded interest in the bank. The rewards build faster.

The same is true in your life outside of your job. All my adult life I've felt drawn to ask long-married couples how they were able to stay together. All of them said the same thing: 'We worked hard at it.'"

I read the first passage to Joe last night on his way home from a dinner with colleagues. He chuckled because it's very rare that he takes vacation time and stays completely, 100% away from work.

Anyway, if you haven't seen Randy's lecture or read his book, I highly advise it. It's a thought provoking, heartfelt read that is now near the top of my favorite books list.