The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch

A book that was born out an interesting concept, "The Last Lecture" is a lecture where professors reflect on their deaths and think about what matters most to them. As Pausch wrote, "what wisdom would we impart fo the world if we knew it was our last chance?". 

Content: The book consists of 61 chapters where Pausch shares different important moments in his life that he is grateful for. Some key experiences include his time as a Disney Imagineer, teaching as a professor, and his role in his family. It was easy to follow throughout, the people and experiences that were important to him were consistently mentioned, but it was difficult to grasp the key learning point sometimes. 

Estimated reading time needed: 3h

Key takeaways: 

1) Self-esteem is not given, it's built. We need to give children things that they can't do, so that when they are actually able to do it, it builds on their self-esteem. We must be wary of 'protecting' children from such exploration and growth.

2) Sports is not just about having fun. It's also about teamwork, perseverance, sportsmanship and more. This concept may be elusive to some parents who think students should simply study hard (especially in Asia), and sports is just a type of game where children waste their time having fun.

3) It's not crucial for everyone to observe how hard you work. This reminds me of how people say we should work hard in silence and succeed in silence. The more we say it out, there will be people who try to bring us down, whether purposely or not. 

4) We will always hit a brick wall in life. Pausch writes that "brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough". I think that sometimes those brick walls are truly unscalable, so we have to continuously improve ourselves before we try to climb over the wall again.

5) Not everything needs to be fixed.

6) Time is finite. It must be managed, planned, spent on the right things that are important to us. One day, we might find that we have less than we think.

7) When penguins are about to jump into the water that may have predators, which penguin jumps first? "Someone's got to be the first penguin".

8) "It's not about how to achieve your dreams. It's about how to lead your life". Many people talk about having dreams - and dreams are important. But first and foremost, we must lead our lives the right way, and things will fall into place.

Recommendation: Overall, it was an interesting book with some nuggets of wisdom. One thing I do not appreciate is that sometimes there was no 'so what' to the story written, so it was sometimes difficult to understand what Pausch was trying to teach us. The hook about this book is that Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer before giving this lecture, which didn't stop him from wanting to depart key takeaways. In fact, it made him want to give this lecture even more so. For a couple of hours, this book may be worth reading if you enjoy reading books with interesting concepts, and are keen to take away some nuggets of life.