The Last Lecture

by Randy Pausch

engineering isn’t about perfect solutions; it’s about doing the best you can with limited resources.

“If you can dream it, you can do it.”

Have something to bring to the table, because that will make you more welcome.

It just proves that if you can find an opening, you can probably find a way to float through it.

You’ve got to get the fundamentals down, because otherwise the fancy stuff is not going to work.

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

You give them something they can’t do, they work hard until they find they can do it, and you just keep repeating the process.

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.

“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.”

People are more important than things.

Brick walls are there for a reason. They give us a chance to show how badly we want something.

Time must be explicitly managed, like money.

You can always change your plan, but only if you have one.

Ask yourself: Are you spending your time on the right things?

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

Luck is indeed where preparation meets opportunity.

I did think it’s always best to try to treat the disease first. Her symptoms were stress and anxiety. Her disease was the money she owed.

If nobody ever worried about what was in other people’s heads, we’d all be 33 percent more effective in our lives and on our jobs.

Meet people properly:

Find things you have in common:

Try for optimal meeting conditions:

Let everyone talk:

Check egos at the door:

Praise each other:

Phrase alternatives as questions: Instead of “I think we should do A, not B,” try “What if we did A, instead of B?”

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

It’s not how hard you hit. It’s how hard you get hit . . . and keep moving forward.

The person who failed often knows how to avoid future failures.

Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer.

That’s why I wanted to impress upon my students the importance of thinking about the end users of their creations. How could I make clear to them how important it was not to create technology that is frustrating?

“When we make something hard to use, people get upset. They become so angry that they want to destroy it. We don’t want to create things that people will want to destroy.”

Showing gratitude is one of the simplest yet most powerful things humans can do for each other.

My advice was more about helping them recognize that there are respectful, considerate things that can be done in life that will be appreciated by the recipient, and that only good things can result.

Proper apologies have three parts: 1) What I did was wrong. 2) I feel badly that I hurt you. 3) How do I make this better?