The Last Lecture: 3 Takeaways
“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.”
― Randy Pausch
Randy Pausch, a renowned computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, faced a life-altering diagnosis in 2006: pancreatic cancer. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer In September of 2006. He had surgery to resect the cancer but a year later he was told it returned and he had 3-6 months to live.
At Carnegie Mellon, retiring professors are asked to give a “last lecture.” The theme is whatever matters most to the professor that they want to pass on. Paush was invited to give his lecture in September of 2007. He accepted the offer as an opportunity to show others what he had learn through his life and as a way to leave a lasting legacy for his kids who were 6, 3, and 1 at the time of his death.
Paush’s lecture went viral (seen here on YouTube) and it was subsequently turned into a best-selling book, The Last Lecture: Lessons in Living, months before his final breath.
Randy Paush died on July 25, 2008, at 47 years old.
3 Takeaways from The Last Lecture
1. Don't Complain. Just Work Harder.
Pausch put this piece of advice into action beautifully. He could have complained about the diagnosis and the prognosis but he realized he didn’t have control over it. So he worked hard to make the most out of his situation and ended up leaving an incredible lasting legacy.
“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.”
We complain about the weather, the traffic, the time of day, and plenty of other situations we not only have no control over but things we knew were going to happen. Complaining is often a loss of perspective. When we realize how fortunate we are we complain less but when we are on a hedonic treadmill to nowhere we’ve lost the ability to appreciate things. Pausch references a quadriplegic friend who maintained a positive outlook despite immense adversity and Jackie Robinson, a man whose life was threatened daily, who was spit on and cursed at regularly, and who had spikes dug into him during games and who also never complained.
Complaining won’t lead to happiness but working harder will.
2. Be the First Penguin
Paush was known to encourage failure from students in his class. At the end of the semester, he would give a student team a stuffed penguin called “The First Penguin” award. He surmised that when penguins have to go in the water to look for food, the water is where the predators are lurking. The first penguin in symbolizes “glorious failure” in Puash’s class. It’s a team who challenged themselves to think big although they failed in their pursuit.
Given a human being’s propensity to criticize (often to the benefit of only the criticizer), I imagine this acceptance of failure has long been a part of the world. Of course, failure has negative connotations but it’s the forgotten reason for successes. Change is uncomfortable and striving for goals is scary and often leaves you alone in your quest but it’s the reason I’m typing on a laptop, the reason we live in a democracy, and the reason for any exciting innovation in the headlines.
I enjoy teaching my kids about striving for failure. It’ll get harder as they get older (for them and for me), but I look forward to teaching them about the first penguin…..well, maybe the second penguin.
3. A Bad Apology is Worse Than No Apology.
Pausch describes himself as a “recovering jerk” and makes plenty of mentions to this throughout the book. With this combination of insight and jerk-ness, it’s no surprise that he has plenty of practice in apologizing. In The Last Lecture, he includes three parts for a proper apology.
“What I did was wrong.
I feel bad that I hurt you.
How do I make this better?”
An attempt at an apology that doesn’t contain a genuine desire to heal is worse than apologizing at all. As he puts it,
“A good apology is like an antibiotic, a bad apology is like rubbing salt in the wound.”
Great words advice to think about before the deathbed.
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