Carnegie Mellon University
12 HN recommenders · recommended in 19 months, 2008–2023
1:16:27 · 22M views · Dec 20, 2007
Randy Pausch's 2007 last lecture at Carnegie Mellon, given as he was dying of pancreatic cancer. He reflects on achieving childhood dreams, overcoming obstacles and helping others reach theirs.
Perennially recommended as an inspirational talk for people facing setbacks or choosing a direction, and a source of oft-quoted lines like the brick wall.
20 comments from Hacker News
Welcome to the law of Diminishing returns. Your choices fundamentally boils down to the following: -Take the blue pill. Stay in wonderland. Pick a technology, any technology. Drive yourself into it deeper. The rabbit hole goes much, much further, than you can imagine. -Take the red pill, and wake up: the rabbit hole goes the other way, too. On first basis, you have the ever-exploding number of scientific disciplines ( [LINK] ). Even further, society isn't merely a collection of engineers, and scientist: other people have all kind of different jobs. Furthermore, they are equally convinced, that their field of choice was the right one; and from their own perspective each one of them was right. Since you're HN, you might have a particular interest towards this field we call "business". Now, this is not what people around you -who are called "managers" btw- do. A good working definition for engineers is: Business is the ability to actualize a job that needs to be done, on which you're retroactively hired (or fired) by society as a whole. Or, as PG put it: doing stuff what people wants. Regardless of how you choose, a good partition of it is going to be soul-searching. There are 2 pieces of media I'd strongly recommend for that: -Randy Pausch Last Lecture [ this video ], and -wishcraft, which is a short book, available freely from [LINK] . On an ending note, I feel for you. Every time I've been down to this alley, I always always wished I'd have done it earlier. If anything, you shou
If you haven't watched this, it will change your life. Even if you have, it's one of the few youtube videos that is worth a re-watch. The book is just as good if not better. this video Spoiler: It is a former CS professor at Carnegie Mellon named Randy Pausch. He had terminal pancreatic cancer. This is a dying professor's last lecture. It is a father sharing life lessons for his kids when they are older to watch. Some relevant quotes: - “As you get older, you may find that 'enabling the dreams of others' thing is even more fun.” - “We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.” - “The key question to keep asking is, Are you spending your time on the right things? Because time is all you have. ” - “Showing gratitude is one of the simplest yet most powerful things humans can do for each other.” - “People are more important than things.”
This reminds me of Randy Pausch's method of getting someone to sit down for lunch. [1] "And he asked a question. And I was like, I’m sorry did you say you were Tom Furness? And he said yes. I said, then I would love to answer your question, but first, will you have lunch with me tomorrow? And there’s a lot in that little moment. There’s a lot of humility, but also asking a person where he can’t possibly say no." Although, admittedly, that's after you got them to say a few words to you and you're in front of a large group of people. [1] this video 19:40 Edit: For those who don't know, here's the setting of this talk: This talk is one in a series given at CMU called the "Last Lecture" series with the hypothetical setting of 'what if you had one last talk to give?'. Randy Pausch, a professor at CMU, didn't have to pretend. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and in August of 2007 (when he gave the talk) was told he had three to six months left to live. If you haven't seen it, watch the whole talk. It's really good.
Oh Boy! Life is a marathon, not a sprint. You are still young (revisit these words when you reach 32, 42, and 52). So, hear me out. You need to work on developing habits, habits of winning, winning every time, develop a process of learning and improving and trust the process. Ignore failures, you might look boring and unsuccessful to some people, but once your habits start to work, it can change your orbit. You’re not failing, boy. You are growing up and this is how life look like. If you read a lot of books/biographies, you will realize how some very successful people have had setbacks. Ignore these negative depressing whispers, and learn, read more. Most of us were in that spot before, do yourself a favor, and take some time to watch this talk "Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams", Randy Pausch this video
If you're looking for something different then check out The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. It's is an eye-opening book in a very nontraditional sense. You may remember Pausch as the computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon who was told that he had but a few months left to live (cancer). This book doesn't stray from its topic: "What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance?" If you're looking for motivation and an "out of the box" approach to analyzing daily life then this is it. Here's the book: [LINK] Here's the famous speech: this video