The Last Lecture — Part 1 (Summary of the book)
Hey!
Here, I am with another summary. This one is about The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. In this book, the author has some life lessons to share while he was aware of his health complications.
He was diagnosed with terminal cancer and he knew about how much time he had to live his life.
This is a tradition in Carnegie Mellon, where, the professors are asked to consider their demise and ruminate on what matters to them the most!
Randy, on the other hand, knew that it is his demise was real and shared a lot of wisdom about how to live your life and achieve dreams.
The better part of the book talks about his childhood, his parents, learnings from his parents, how they were to him, and how they coached him for what's there ahead of him in his life. He talks about how he is adjusting his life, now, that he has few months to live, spending time with his kids, wife. And doing what matters the most without being in denial about his condition.
He talks about how he met his wife Jai and talks about the issues he had and how he was almost on the verge of not marrying Jai 😅. But things turned around when he asked his parents what do those things mean. Eventually, as we see, they both get married and were living a good life until reality struck him.
He talks about his football coach, Coach Graham, about how he made him think like a leader, a mentor whose words he never forgot later in his life and used them when he became a professor.
Some part, towards the end, he talks about some bits and pieces of wisdom through examples, I would be listing them down below, as I feel those are the key takeaways from the book. It would help you to analyze and experiment with them with your own life and check if they fit your needs/goals.
He adds up little stories behind them to make a point. Adding those stories are out of the scope of this blog 😅, but let's jot down the learnings. Let’s begin!
- Manage time, like money:
Manage time as you would manage your money. Give it to those who care for you, who you care for, who you benefit from. Time is not in abundance for everyone. So spend it wisely because each of us has only so much of it. - Break big problems into small ToDos:
Breaking bigger issues into small chunks helps to focus on the task at hand and get the most out of the time you put into it. - Ask yourself: Are you spending time on things/people that matter?
Everyone has goals and interests, but ask yourself when you spend time on it, that, is it really worth your time to pursue it?
When you spend time with someone and the other person doesn’t value it, ask yourself, is it really worthy to get back to that person who doesn't value your time at all?
No? — Move on,
Yes? — Don’t leave their side. - Develop a good filing system:
This is more of being efficient advice rather than a life lesson. Being so efficient about the things in your life that you have control over it. Be it money, time, or people. Choose and plan wisely! - Rethink the telephone:
Use the telephone for your own benefit, don’t let it use yourself. It's a tool for you to call for help, find information when needed. Not to be bombarded with endless scrolls and feed poison to your brain. - Delegate:
If any task is saving more than the hourly value of your time, then do it yourself. Otherwise, delegate it to someone and pay for their time from your pockets. By doing this, you would get time to do things that matter to you and are much more rewarding to you for the time spent on them.
For example, People who work out, finding, and researching the best diets online. Ask yourself, if you can delegate this to a professional dietician and save you a ton of time.
Delegate as much as possible! - Take a time out:
We all need breaks from time to time. We are human, not a machine to work endlessly. Take time off, away from all the chaos, because chaos ain’t going anywhere. Recharge yourself and see the refreshed and energetic mind do wonders.
For me, taking some time off from solving CS problems helps me come up with a solution for bugs that I face. I have recently experienced so much of it, that I call my early morning coding routine as 4 AM superpower. (Well, my team engineering manager did)😂. - Dream Big!:
It all begins with a thought! Winners are made in the mind first, then in training and routines. Strive to be above average. Raise your bar! Even if that means shifting your circle of people? just do it. Know this — Nobody really cares about you except yourself, your spouse/partner, and your parents!
Give yourself permission to dream big, even if that means getting up early or hustling with sleepless nights, just go for it. Efforts never go waste! - Think long term rather than short term:
Always think long term, be earnest rather than hip. Whatever you do, take time to think how you see this thing flourish 20–30 years down the line.
Is the view worth it?
Yes — Hustle outta hell for it.
No — Move on! - Raise the white flag:
There is no sense in fighting with someone over anything. It is just a time waste for you and for the other party too. Raise a white flag by finding a common truce and move on with it. If not, just ignore and move on. Remember, fights are not worth your time! - Make deals:
If you gonna do something for someone, make a deal for it. Either get paid for your time, get a favor for it to be able to use it in the future. Or just say, that you will recall this favor when the time comes. Respect everyone’s time and ask for respect for your time too. - Don’t complain, just work harder:
If we take out 1/10th of energy that goes into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, we would be surprised by how well things can work out!
Be a terrific non-complainer. Don’t lose your innate peace for something. Just accept the problem and work harder for solving it. - Treat the disease, not the symptom:
If there is a problem, that has resulted from a previous problem, focus on solving the root cause, not the by-product effects of the root cause.
For example, You have too much credit card debt? Don’t lookout to make more money by working extra, using extra weekends, etc. Look at your spending habits and fix them. Take control of how you spend your money.
Yes, fix the disease, not treating the symptom. - Don’t obsess over what people think
Damn, I loved this piece. The time we spend thinking about what others think of us, if we use that time for our use, we would be much more efficient. As someone who lives in India, I don’t need to talk about this plague more, we all see it every day 😂. Let’s just fix it. Yeah?
Well, that was all about time management techniques and living your life in general, there’s more to this. But the blog post is getting longer. Reader’s interest and length of the post are inversely proportional!
Hence, I am stopping here, Part 2 of this will cover the remaining knowledge!
See you in the next one! Peace ☮️
