Time Management
Video from Carnegie Mellon University.
Background
Randy Pausch taught computer science at the University of Virginia for nearly a decade before moving to Carnegie Mellon, and for years he gave a practical talk on time management to students and faculty. Two months after his famous Last Lecture at Carnegie Mellon, he came back to Charlottesville to give it one more time, on November 27, 2007, in Old Cabell Hall. By his friend Gabe Robins’s count, a capacity crowd of about 900 people watched live and hundreds more were turned away.
That August, scans had found about a dozen tumors in Pausch’s liver, and his doctors told him he had three to six months of good health left. The lecture is not about that. It’s a pragmatic hour on goals, to-do lists, delegation, and procrastination, from a man who knew better than anyone in the room what an hour was worth. He died in July 2008.
A volunteer, Friederike Sophie Brand, transcribed the whole hour, and Gabe Robins keeps her transcript on his University of Virginia page.
Read the full transcript (PDF, UVA) →
From the lecture
He opened by naming the circumstances:
I’m going to talk today on the topic of time management. The circumstances are, as you probably know, a little bit unusual. I think at this point I’m an authority to talk about what to do with limited time.
On time as money:
Americans are very, very bad at dealing with time as a commodity. We’re really good at dealing with money as a commodity.
On why it matters:
It sounds a little clichéd and tried, but being successful does not make you manage your time well. Managing your time well makes you successful.
On goals:
A lot of people focus on doing things right. I think it’s very dangerous to focus on doing things right. I think it’s much more important to do the right things. If you do the right things adequately, that’s much more important than doing the wrong things beautifully. Doesn’t matter how well you polish the underside of the banister.
His favorite question for any to-do list:
So ask, why am I doing this, what is the goal, why will I succeed at doing it, and here’s my favorite: What will happen if I don’t do it? The best thing in the world is when I have something on my To Do list and I just go: Hmm, no. No one has ever come and taken me to jail.
On getting started:
If you’ve got a bunch of things to do, do the ugliest thing first. There’s an old saying: “If you have to eat a frog, don’t spend a lot of time looking at it first, and if you have to eat three of them, don’t start with the small one.”
And the ending:
If you have changed things, then you’ll probably have a lot more time to spend with the ones you love. And that’s important. Time is all we have. And you may find one day you have less than you think.
© 2007 Randy Pausch. Short excerpts quoted for commentary, from the transcript hosted on the University of Virginia’s computer science site.
Go to the source
Watch the full lecture →
Carnegie Mellon’s official recording. In Randy’s words: “Roughly an hour; the first eight minutes are introductions I don’t deserve.”
Slides and transcript at UVA →
Gabe Robins’s page of Randy’s lectures, with the slides and a full transcript
The Last Lecture →
The talk Randy gave at Carnegie Mellon two months earlier
More on Randy in Inspirations →
His best quotes, interviews, and where to learn more