The Last Lecture

by Randy Pausch

“How many men are on the football field at a time?” he asked us. Eleven on a team, we answered. So that makes twenty-two. “And how many people are touching the football at any given time?” One of them. “Right!” he said. “So we’re going to work on what those other twenty-one guys are doing.”

“When you’re screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they’ve given up on you.”

The brick walls are there for a reason. They’re not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.

Leaving the doctor’s office, I thought about what I’d said to Jai in the water park in the afterglow of the speed slide. “Even if the scan results are bad tomorrow,” I had told her, “I just want you to know that it feels great to be alive, and to be here today, alive with you. Whatever news we get about the scans, I’m not going to die when we hear it. I won’t die the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that. So today, right now, well this is a wonderful day. And I want you to know how much I’m enjoying it.” I thought about that, and about Jai’s smile. I knew then. That’s the way the rest of my life would need to be lived.

Time is all you have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think.

Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won’t make us happier.

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. That comes from Seneca, the Roman philosopher who was born in 5 B.C. It’ll be worth repeating for another two thousand years, at least.

E XPERIENCE IS what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.

All You Have to Do Is Ask

“Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.” (This is now known as “Brooks Law.”)