“The Last Lecture” and time management

Here on the job seeker blog, we do a lot of talking. A. Lot. Of. Talking. We do it in an effort to give our readers all the tools, information and resources that we can so they can be total rock stars, whether they are on a job interview or on the clock.

But even the best talkers have to stop and listen once in a while. And we do a lot of reading here, too. I thought it would be cool if we shared some of those books from time to time.

I just read the book “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch. (The book was transcribed by Jeffrey Zaslow, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal.) Pausch is a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Professor Pausch was in the national media spotlight earlier this year because of his “last lecture.”  Many colleges and universities have adapted a “Last Lecture Series” in which professors are invited to give hypothetical final lectures. For Randy Pausch, the finality of his lecture was unfortunately not a hypothetical matter. Pausch is terminally ill with has pancreatic cancer, and his cancer is resisting treatment.

Instead of retreating from the world, Professor Pausch shared his incredibly optimism and gratitude with his students. That “last lecture,” which Pausch says is ultimately for his children, was captured on video and shown around the world. (It can be seen at www.thelastlecture.com.)  And now, the lecture is in book form.

In addition to the incredible story of Professor Pausch and his life and career, I wanted to share some of his advice about how we view our careers, and about our work/life balance. He has some great comments on this, including these ideas on time management:

• No sweating the small stuff. Pausch talks about cautioning his students not to get hung up on irrelevant details. As Pausch says, “Time must be explicitly managed, like money.” 
• Have a plan. In order to have the flexibility and agility many careers require today, Pausch says you have to have a solid plan in place to begin with, so the change is organized change. He says that a plan “helps us break life into small steps.” 
• Evaluate. Pausch urges people to ask themselves, “Are you spending time on the right things?” He talks about a newspaper clipping he had kept where a woman was protesting jackhammers at a local construction site. Her protest was motivated by fear that the jackhammers would harm her unborn baby. The catch? Ironically, the photograph showed the pregnant mother – with a cigarette in hand. His message: Sometimes we spend time and energy on the wrong problem. 
• Be organized. Pausch, who was a highly organized person, shares several funny anecdotes about his wife, who was not nearly as organized. He believes being organized on the front end is better than saying, “I know it was blue and I know I was eating something when I had it.” 
• Free yourself from the phone. Pausch says collectively, we spend a lot of time on the phone and on hold. Rather than being a slave to the phone, use a speakerphone or hands-free phone when possible so your hands are free to do something else. He also recommends keeping calls short and concise, and has a brilliant idea regarding telemarketers: Hang up on them midsentence! 
• Delegate. Many of us are reluctant to delegate work to others, but Pausch encourages it and says it is never too early to groom people for responsibility. In most cases, your co-workers or employees will come through. 
• Disconnect. Our work culture has made it increasingly hard to completely disconnect during a vacation. One of our recent CareerBuilder.com surveys had responses from workers who called into the office or checked their e-mail while they were on vacation. But Pausch says it is vitally important to really, truly get away.

As Pausch reminds us, “Time is all you have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think.”

For more information on Randy Pausch, visit his web page. You may also want to check out the webpages for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (www.pancan.org) and the Lustgarten Foundation (www.lustgarten.org), two organizations involved in research and fundraising for pancreatic cancer.