Managing Your Time

Randy Pausch was a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University until he died of complications arising from pancreatic cancer. While watching TED videos on YouTube this weekend, I stumbled upon his lecture (from 2008) on time management. It was presented to an audience at the University of Virginia, where Pausch was a professor throughout most of the '90s. I've included the video below, but be aware that it clocks in at just over an hour. I cannot, however, recommend it highly enough. I have a problem with time. Most people have a problem with time. We don't treat time as the precious commodity it is. We squander hours in a way that we would never squander dollars. Randy Pausch speaks wittily and wisely in this lecture about the need to determine for ourselves what is really important. Only when we can decide what is important can we begin to prioritize our lives, and when our lives are thus organized we will stop wasting so much of them on things that are patently not-important to us. I do not have pancreatic cancer, and I have a reasonable hope that I will be alive for many years to come. But I don't want to waste any of the years I have.  I'm taking Randy Pausch's advice to heart, and I suggest you do the same.