Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

YouTube is a wonderful thing. A few years ago there would be no way I'd ever have been able to watch a complete lecture given at a US university. So, like millions of other people who have watched it on YouTube, I'd have missed this lecture (below) by Randy Pausch, who died of cancer last week.

When he gave the lecture, he knew he had a few months left to live and he gives some sound advice for how to live your life, including the following:

• You can't get there on your own. You need people to help you
• Tell the truth
• Be earnest ("I'll take an earnest person over a hip person every day, 'cause hip is short term, earnest is long term")
• Apologise when you screw up
• Focus on others, not yourself
• Brick walls are there to let us show our dedication - [they're there to separate us from those who don't want the thing on the other side of the wall as badly as you do]
• When people give you feedback, cherish it and use it
• Be good at something, it makes you valuable
• Find the best in everybody, even if you have to wait a long time for them to show it

Right now the points from this list that most resonate with me are:

Tell the truth
Professionally and in my personal life, I've increasingly come to wish that everybody would just stick to the truth. Things would be so much simpler and people, projects, companies would get in much less trouble if we really tried to tell the truth. Or, if you really can't tell the truth for some reason, just say nothing at all.

Focus on others
I'll admit it, this is not a strong point for me. I've recently been reminding myself on a regular basis that I've got to put more effort into this one.

Be good at something, it makes you valuable
Luckily for me I know I'm good at something. I'm good at documentation. Bid deal you might think, and maybe a year a go I was thinking that too. And, okay, it's not curing cancer or reversing global warming, but it's not nothing. I think it's something valuable, so it's worth trying to do it really well.

Find the best in everybody
I sometimes feel like I work in a very negative environment, where people take every opportunity to find fault in other people. And it's a very infectious thing. I admit to giving in to this bad habit. This is another thing I'm determined to work on. Maybe it just takes a few people to buck the trend and create an infectious habit of pointing out the good in people.

Here's the lecture: