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The Last Lecture

Randy Pausch · 1 HN points · 5 HN comments
HN Books has aggregated all Hacker News stories and comments that mention "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch.
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Amazon Summary
A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy? When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave--"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"--wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living. In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come. "We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." --Randy Pausch
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Hacker News Stories and Comments

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While I think there are some merits to this approach, I think some caution is also needed.

There are numerous times where I've read a lot of material quickly, not really mastering it but making a mental note of where to find that later. It's easy enough to go back and look up facts, reference material, or techniques for solving a particular kind of problem later, you don't need that to change your life.

Another other problem is: it's hard to know what books will change your life. For me, Fermat's Enigma (https://www.amazon.com/Fermats-Enigma-Greatest-Mathematical-...) and The Last Lecture (https://www.amazon.com/Last-Lecture-Randy-Pausch/dp/14013232...) were both life changers, but it would have been hard to know that going in to reading them.

Still another problem is that there are multiple ways at getting repetition. One approach is to read one book really intently. Another approach though is to consume similar related media over a period of time. If you listen to a weekly podcast (like EconTalk, for one example), very often similar themes come up over and over again. Or you can read several books by one author, or a group of related authors.

Finally, and maybe this is a more minor point, the post's author mentions taking down great quotes. One thing I've realized from my reading is that great quotes sometimes help summarize and understand the flow, but pretty often they don't. One of the nice thing about reading on the Kindle app on a phone is that there are multiple colors for highlighting, and I find it helps to highlight differently for "this is an awesome quote" vs. "this sentence is important in following the structure of the argument."

If you like this post, you will probably love The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch: http://www.amazon.com/Last-Lecture-Randy-Pausch/dp/140132325...

Pausch's book also carries the message that you can be persistent and obtain anything you want. But I really like Suster's stories of paying it forward to others.

Oct 03, 2010 · andre3k1 on Ask HN: Good books?
If you're looking for something different then check out The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. It's is an eye-opening book in a very nontraditional sense.

You may remember Pausch as the computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon who was told that he had but a few months left to live (cancer). This book doesn't stray from its topic: "What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance?" If you're looking for motivation and an "out of the box" approach to analyzing daily life then this is it.

Here's the book: http://www.amazon.com/Last-Lecture-Randy-Pausch/dp/140132325...

Here's the famous speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

bobds
I didn't know he wrote a book about it, thanks. I've watched the speech a few times and it is excellent.
If you enjoyed this article, you will probably love Randy Pausch's Last Lecture: http://www.amazon.com/Last-Lecture-Randy-Pausch/dp/140132325...

I had already watched the lecture on YouTube and thought I wouldn't get much from the book but I was wrong.

The story of Pausch muscling his way into Disney's Imagineer team is fantastic.

hboon
Also watch Randy Pausch's lecture on Time Management: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0
Not in the similar vein, but I would recommend "The Last Lecture" (by Randy Pausch). It was very inspirational to me. http://www.amazon.com/Last-Lecture-Randy-Pausch/dp/140132325...
Apr 22, 2008 · 1 points, 0 comments · submitted by as
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