Academic Productivity

Just learned that Randy Pausch has passed away. Most of you will have been exposed to his extremely moving talk on ‘how to get the things you want’ at CMU, his last lecture, when he was diagnosed with cancer and give only a few months to live. What I didn’t know is that he also gave a talk on .

What I liked the most is his first slide: The goal is FUN. This one, Tim Ferris got right, and he seems very successful at indoctrinating people with this idea. I really hope it works out, because I’d love to see more people having fun around.

However, I challenge you to find a single academic that can live the life that Tim is proposing! But that a different conversation.

Another crucial point is his understanding of the famous 2 x 2 table in , Stephen F. Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Key: the 2 and 3 are often misplaced; people tend to do important, non-urgent last (i.e. after non-important, urgent). So the best order for the four cells is:

Also: a recipe for having short meetings: stand up. That limits the time a person can talk to you (you both get tired).

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 6:41 pm and is filed under Announcements, Evaluation, Time management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.