Randy Pausch Lecture: Time Management

Carnegie Mellon University · 2.8M views · 2008 · 1:16:22

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Why Hacker News recommends it

HN commenters recommend it as a practical, memorable guide to prioritization, and some rewatch it every year.

What it is

Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch gives a lecture on time management at the University of Virginia in 2007. He covers practical habits such as tackling important tasks first and distinguishing important from urgent work.

Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 5 different months, 2009 to 2021.

What Hacker News said

Strong rec allardschip · 2012-07 · on “How to hack the beliefs that are holding you back”

Reminds me of Annette Benning in American Beauty: "I will sell this house today. I will sell this house today." Not starting on activities because you don't like them or you don't feel not comfortable will drag you down. You'll be thinking about it all day. I tell myself in the morning to the most unpleasant thing on my to do list first. Eat the hairy frog first! I learned from Randi Pausch. Worth watching every minute: [this video] -edit spelling

Strong rec will_pseudonym · 2020-12 · on “Writing well”

Absolutely. In that same vein, I've gotten a lot out of so many similar videos which are ostensibly about one thing, but to effectively use what they're teaching, you have to start learning/mastering something else entirely. "Indirect learning" is one way to put it, and a term I picked up from Randy Pausch's Last Lecture[0]. I've gained so much from watching that video, as well as his Time Management video[1]. So much so that I rewatch it about once a year, because every time you rewatch something, you're a different person in certain ways, and you often appreciate things much more the more you change and grow as a person. [0] [LINK] [1] [this video]

Recommends bluefish · 2009-01 · on “Do you set goals?”

Not goal related directly; I've found this lecture by the late professor Randy Pausch regarding time management to be very interesting. I'm not sure I agree with his hands-free phone + bike use tip, but I think his talk has a lot of good points. [this video]

Recommends screwperman · 2009-04 · on “Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?”

Just to put my advice in perspective: I'm an Indian who will possibly be attending (a pretty good) public university this year. I'm the typical HN/reddit geek: started programming when I was 9, know around 9 programming languages, quite some bit of theory, etc. etc. In school in India, I was bored all the time, got mediocre grades, and had donkeys for teachers. Here's what I feel you should do: 1. Challenge yourself So, you've got to choose from these kinds of activities: A: Activities that you enjoy doing B: Activities that *might* impress (say) the college admissions staff I mostly did stuff exclusive to type A; bad idea . Of course, never do anything that comes only within B. Find what co

Recommends will_pseudonym · 2021-01 · on “Time Management by Randy Pausch [pdf]”

"This is the most important slide in the entire talk. So, if you want to leave after this slide, I will not be offended, because it is all downhill from here." [this video] (Timestamped link of the "Time Management" talk by Randy Pausch, which is what the OP PDF is from) That part in the talk is about the "Eisenhower Matrix", popularized by Steven Covey in "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People", on the importance of prioritizing important, non-urgent tasks over urgent, unimportant tasks. You can read about it here as well, but I haven't seen it put as well as Randy Pausch did in his talk. [LINK] PS If you haven't seen his "Last Lecture", it's also fantastic. I watch it about once a year to re-

Cites imp · 2010-04 · on “Ask HN: Self improvement programs”

I would be wary of self improvement programs that charge money. I'm not sure what exactly you've looked into, but there's a lot of information out there for free or cheap. I've spent a decent amount of time reading self-improvement books/blogs, and for me the stuff that made the most impact were things that were tailored to the problems I was having at the time. Here's an overview of what I've read over the years that have helped me to some extent: I Can Do Anything if I Only Knew What it Was: [LINK] Paul Graham's Essays: [LINK] How to Win Friends and Influence People: [LINK] Four Hour Work Week: [LINK] Randy Pausch, Time Management: [this video] GTD: [LINK] Steve Pavlina: [LINK] 7 Habits of High

Cites willhinsa · 2014-08 · on “A Financial Model Comparing Car Ownership with UberX in Los Angeles”

You may not be losing wages, but you are losing time. I think that the 50% assumption in the model is wrong, too, but in the opposite direction. There are activities that many people can do while riding in a vehicle with no loss of quality, like reading. Randy Pausch - Time Management [this video]

Cites rasengan0 · 2021-12 · on “My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file (2020)”

Yay! Good to read validation after trying so many: wikis, org, TheBrain, Freemind, etc. It's like a return to the old .LOG in notepad trick. After a score, I'm came to the same conclusion as the article; plain text just works. I log in vim using ISO 8601 date stamped records in the log format of (priority - datetime stamp - keywords/tag - content) inspired by Randy Pausch [this video] others noticed too: [LINK] Sorting by date, priority or keyword keeps me on track and helps for quarterly summaries. A simple bash loop runs annually to give me a fresh 365 dashboard of days but inserts are a datetime stamp command - keywords autocompleted - then actual typing the meat of the task/content Because al