Randy Pausch on Time Management

I just finished watching a lecture on Time Management by Randy Pausch. For those of you that don’t know, Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon who died at the age of 48 of pancreatic cancer. Before he died, he spent his time  giving a last lecture or two as part of his legacy for teaching his children as they grew up in his absence.

There are parts in this video that I feel like Pausch was sharing something important on the screen that was left out of the video. One such item is the books he recommends at the end of his talk: The One Minute Manager and 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I have read both but I’m less a fan of 7 Habits.

To find out about these books I had to find the powerpoint slides that Randy used, which fortunately are available for download here; http://www.cs.virginia.edu/robins/TM_slides.html.

Some notes I took away from this first (of what will be many) viewings of this video:

• “Time is all we have. You may one day find you have less than you think.”
• A list of 100 things you want to achieve in life.
  • If you’re not doing one of the 100 things, you’d better have a good reason.
• If has no agenda, then don’t attend.
• Stand when you are on the phone or in a meeting.
• Use a headset whenever possible – a “real two-fer”
• Find your creative time. Spend it alone. Defend it ruthlessly
• Find your dead time to do things when you aren’t at your best.
• Make a plan you’re not afraid to change of what you’ll do daily, weekly, bi-annually
• You always have time to sleep, eat, and exercize.
• Never break a promise, but always renegotiate.
• Focus on important tasks that aren’t urgent before urgent tasks that are unimportant.
• Sort to do lists by priority, not by deadline.
• keep a time log for 1-14 days; in particular count the # of hours spent watching TV
• Delegate 
  • with as much specificity as possible: Due Thursday 3:22 pm on my desk.
  • and assign a reward (and/or penalty) for not completing it.
  • objectives, not procedures – let smarter people figure out how to do it
  • but do the ugliest job yourself
  • but be careful not to under-delegate (which is common)
• Exchange money for time whenever possible (especially when you have kids)
• Reading email on vacation is not a vacation.
• OK to nag someone who doesn’t respond to email within 48 hours.

Randy Pausch on Time Management

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