The Last Lecture
"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.” —Randy Pausch When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, was asked to give a last 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, of seizing every moment (because “time is all you have... and you may find one day that you have less than you think”). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living. In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come. You can watch The Last Lecture on YouTube.
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- Most of this is solved by: todo list in one file. One list. Use markdown. Try Obsidian. Read Randy Pausch last lecture. Look at his todo list. Copy that. Use a calendar if it is time sensitive. Look at your todo list often. Want to be fancy? Have an inbox file that is also a list. Your backlog is stuff that moves down to priorities other than 1. Try the Covey quadrants for your task priorities. Don’t over complicate this.
You can make an art form out of procrastinating on real tasks to create the most perfect todo system ever. We got LLMs now. It can query your text file, categorize, etc.
- I love looking at books in people's photos. Here's what I found in yours. I hope you don't mind!
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Bad Blood by John Carreyrou - A detailed account of the Theranos scandal.
The Founders by Jimmy Soni - Explores the early days of PayPal and its impact on Silicon Valley.
Shoe Dog by Phil Knight - Memoir by the founder of Nike.
Measure What Matters by John Doerr - A book about OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) and organizational success.
Business Adventures by John Brooks - Classic tales of corporate life, highly recommended by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
Becoming by Michelle Obama - The former First Lady's personal memoir.
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch - Inspirational reflections on life and achieving dreams.
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson - A comprehensive biography of Apple's co-founder.
Chaos Monkeys by Antonio García Martínez - A look into the wild side of Silicon Valley.
Facebook: The Inside Story by Steven Levy - A deep dive into the social media giant's history and controversies.
Skunk Works by Ben R. Rich - Stories of innovation from Lockheed Martin’s legendary division.
Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke - How to make decisions under uncertainty.
Superforecasting by Philip Tetlock and Dan M. Gardner - Insights into better prediction and decision-making.
Educated by Tara Westover - A memoir about resilience and education.
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain - A raw look at the life of a chef.
Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin - A biography of the physicist behind the atomic bomb.
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant - Wisdom on wealth and happiness.
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I've read Naval's book, but not the others. Are there any in particular you really enjoyed?
- "The last lecture" by Randy Pausch - there is a book, but also a talk you can watch online.
If you've never seen it, I highly recommend to watch it.
Not giving any spoilers, but as a father, the ending of the talk made me shed a tear.
- It's been probably a decade or more since I read it, but I remember it having a similar effect on me at the time. I don't remember what specifically in there had that effect anymore though, so I'm probably due for a reread.
If I remember correctly, it was about Tolstoy's struggle to find meaning in his life, even after having a wife, several kids, and finding lots of success with his writing and a large house. He experiments with and discusses quite a few philosophies in a fairly frank manner before circling back around to Christianity, and does his best to make a case for it based on logic and comparing with his past experiences.
But even for people who aren't religious (I'm not really that religious myself) and don't want to be, I think they'll still relate to his struggle to find meaning and find some useful and thought provoking ideas in there.
I do agree that more (most?) people should read it. I even gifted a copy of it to a good friend at the time.
Other books where I had a similar experience from reading them include Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell, and The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.
In particular Siddhartha had a lot of similarities to A Confession, in subject matter and structure, although it's told as a third person narrative and not as a personal account.
What were some of the takeaways you got from reading it?
- His talk on "Inventing on Principle" and Randy Pausch's "The Last Lecture" are two videos I recommend every student to watch.
- How is it that no one has yet suggested Randy Pausch’s famous “Last Lecture”? (Carnegie Mellon University) It is not a series, but it’s the culmination of a life’s work by an incredible person lost too early.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo
The last life lessons you wish to pass to your children...
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