Randy Pausch’s time management video — watched by over a million people

In this hour-long talk on time management, Randy Pausch offers lots of pragmatic tips and  thought-provoking  questions on how we can manage our time better.

His message is especially poignant as he knew he had only a few months to live when he gave this talk.

In fact, when deciding whether to give this talk, he was making a significant time-management decision himself: 

Would all the time to prepare and deliver this talk represent  the best way he could be spending this limited time he had left?

He decided it would be time well spent giving this talk as a legacy gift.  I’m sure the one million people who have downloaded this video so far would agree.

Randy seemed such a nice guy. For some reason, hearing a time-management message from a really nice guy who knows this is his last chance to get an important message through before he has to go makes me feel almost duty-bound to apply at least some of his excellent ideas to my life!

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Here’s a summary of the key points of Randy’s talk:

  1.  “A lot of this is life advice. This is how to change the way you’re doing a lot of things and how you allocate your time so you will lead a happier, more wonderful life… The overall goal is fun.”
  2. “Being successful doesn’t make you manage your time well;
    it’s managing your time well that makes you successful.”
  3. A good question to ask ourselves:
    “This thing I am doing: why am I doing this?…What will happen if I don’t do it?”
  4. “It’s very dangerous to focus on ‘doing things right’. 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.”
  5. Draw up a list of  100 things to do in your life. Then ask yourself, “If I’m not working on those 100 things, why am I working on these other things?”
  6.  Remember the 80:20 rule. (to be continued)