Randy Pausch is dying. In September 2006, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In August, 2007, he was told he likely had "three to six months" of good health left.
Below is the abridged version of Randy's "Last Lecture" (a tradition in academia) which he was invited to repeat for a wider audience through Oprah. The unabridged video of the lecture itself was conducted at CMU (Sep. 2007) and can be viewed here. If you find inspiration in Randy's lecture and would like a DVD (nominal cost to cover production, shipping and handling), Carnegie Mellon is accommodating requests here.
His attitude and outlook isn't sad... it's inspirational. I'd suggest an abridged version of the lecture might be good content for some of us to include in our weekly office meetings. Especially for my friends and customers in the real estate industry, the lessons learned that Randy is kind enough to share might help give new perspective to the challenges we face.
My takeaways:
- The purpose of barriers: to weed out the things we don't want bad enough. (I'm paraphrasing this one a bit.)
- "Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want."
- Decide now if you're "Tigger" or "Eeyore."
- Work and play well with others:
- Tell the truth
- If you screw up, learn to apologize.
- "I'm sorry,"
- "It was my fault,"
- "How do I make things right."
- No one is pure evil. If you wait long enough, they'll show you their good side.
- Show gratitude.
- Don't complain; just work harder.
