The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

Novel: The Last Lecture

Author: Randy Pausch

Format: Audiobook

Source: OC Public Library

Rating: 5/5

 

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

 

Summary

 

Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Melon University. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He gave one last lecture at his university, before retiring. The Last Lecture’s book is an extension of that lecture into 60 small lectures. The theme is how he achieved his childhood dreams. And gives his advice on how we can also achieve our childhood dreams. 

 

Audiobook

 

Narrators: Erik Singer

Publisher: Books on Tape

Duration: 4 hours 13 minutes

Number of parts: 4

Rating: 5/5

Review: Erik Singer does a great job of reading this book. His voice and tones bring out the emotions of the author brilliantly. This audiobook wouldn’t be the same if read in a monotonous voice. The audiobook is small, four parts and four hours. And I enjoyed every minute and every second of this audiobook. This is one audiobook I would like to have in my personal collection.

 

My thoughts

 

The last lecture is a non-fiction motivational book. Randy Pausch uses his life’s snippets to give life lessons. Listening to him achieving his childhood goals one by one is inspiring and motivating. The best way to review this book is to include some of my favorite lessons learned. 

 

1. People are more important than things. 

 

When Randy’s sister was instructing her kids to be careful about spilling food or drink in their uncle’s car. Randy poured the can on soda on his back seat by himself. He wanted to tell the kids it’s okay if you make the car dirty. Randy didn’t get angry at his wife for hitting his car with her’s in front of the garage. She nervously told him about the accident and that she will get the dents repaired. He listened calmly and asked her not to worry about the dents. The relief on his wife’s face was more important than the dented cars.  

Ironically, we love our things more than the people in our life. Right? We get angry when a child or family member breaks a glass plate, spill food or drink, drops our phone or laptop, etc. And forget that we can replace those phones and plates. We can clean the sofa, car seat, carpets or clothes. But it is hard to erase the fear and hurt our angry words cause others. 

 

2. Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted

 

I have baked bread three times till now. And I failed all the three times spectacularly. First was burnt, second was hard, and the third tasted terrible. That will not stop me from trying the fourth time. But from all those failed attempts, I gained an experience of what recipes don’t work along with my mistakes. 

Another example is my mother, who makes the best “aloo tikki” (potato cutlets). She tried almost a dozen times until she reached her goal – the same flavors and crispiness in her cutlets as our favorite eatery’s aloo tikki. Each time she used lessons from her mistakes and experience.

Failures are necessary when we are working on our goals. We should welcome them. We should not get upset and give up when we fail. Instead, use our experiences from those failures and start again. Experience is the most valuable asset that we can share with others. 

 

3. The Brick Walls are there for a reason

 

The problems we face while pursuing our dreams or passions or goals are the brick walls. They tell us how badly we want to achieve our dreams or goals. If we want them badly enough, we would find a way to cross these brick walls or better bring the wall down. And if we aren’t passionate enough, we would let the brick wall stop us and give up our goals. 

Looking back, I can provide numerous instances where I gave up at the first occurrence of a problem. Even I wanted to give up blogging on multiple occasions. My blogging brick walls – personal problems, lack of readers, no inspiration, comparing myself to other bloggers, procrastination, etc. I loved blogging about recipes and books enough to make efforts to cross these walls as and when they come, so far. Hope to continue bringing those walls down. If you are a blogger and face these, just keep doing what you are doing, and bring those walls down.

 

4. Don’t complain, just work harder

 

Randy gives the example of a Sandy who became a quadriplegic after an accident. Sandy was an athlete before the accident. He never complained about his condition or losing his athletic prowess. Instead, he worked hard,  become a marriage counselor, married and adopted kids.

The point is, we all keep complaining about our problems. Often we complain about our difficult boss. Or our annoying colleagues, or the bad situations we find ourselves in, or the failed plans or projects, or our weight, etc. Whining about problems just wastes our time and energy. Instead, if we use the same energy and time on finding the solution, we might move ahead in achieving our goals and our life.

 

 

5. When you’re screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they’ve given up on you

 

Feedback and criticisms are necessary. We will never know if we are doing right or wrong without them. We might hate the critics. But it is also true that if someone takes time to give you an honest feedback, then they care about you and want you to succeed.

 

There are so many lessons I learned from the book, but it will be better if you read or listened to the book and explore them by yourself, instead of me writing all of them down here. 

 

Would I recommend it?

 

Totally. No doubt. Read or listen to this great book. A must read.

 

Have you read this book? Share your favorite lesson from this book with me.

Happy Reading!