童年的梦想
2010-04-22
Randy Pausch诊断出患有癌症之后，在Carnegie Mellon大学做“最后的演讲”，题为：《真正实现你儿时的梦想》（Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams）。
提起童年，仅有的记忆似乎就是读书、读书……
Pausch教授儿时到迪斯尼工作、感受零重力等梦想，让人感到一种奢侈。我们的童年似乎没有这么多梦想。
Pausch在临死时回顾这些梦想，回顾因为这些梦想带来的成就，让人不胜唏嘘。
《最后的演讲》（The Last Lecture）应当无法成为一部名著，却是一本发人深省的书，会给我们的生活带来诸多启示。
Pausch的话或许胜过任何评论吧。
8月29日 我在读书笔记中写道：
When the waitress brought our meals, I congratulated her on her pregnancy. "You must be overjoyed," I said.
"Not exactly," she responded. "It was an accident."
As she walked away, I couldn't help but be stuck by her frankness. Her casual remark was a reminder about the accident dental elements that play into both our arrival into life... and our departure into death. Here was a woman, having a child by accident that she surely would come to love. As for me, through the accident of cancer I'd be leaving three children to grow up without my love. (page 13)
Many people might expect the talk to be about dying. But it had to be about living. (page 9)
I was paying tribute to that life experience, and to Walt Disney himself, who famously had said, "If you can dream it, you can do it." (page 16)
I let the slide linger, so the audience could follow the arrows and count my tumors. "All right," I said. "That is what it is. We can't change it. We just have to decide how we'll respond. We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." (page 17)
He'd also warned me that even if I was in a position of strength, whether at work or in a relationship, I had to play fair. "Just because you're in the driver's seat," he'd say, "doesn't mean you have to run people over." (page 23)
I always like the story of Pandora's box, so Tammy and I painted our version of it. Pandora, from Greek mythology, was given a box with all the world's evils in it. She disobeyed orders not to open it. When the lid came off, evil spread throughout the world. I was always drawn to the story's optimistic ending: Left at the bottom of the box was "hope." So inside my Pandora's box, I wrote the word "Hope." (pages 29-30)
As an aside, there's a lesson here: Have something to bring to the table, because that will make you more welcome.(page 33)
But I did manage to get on that plane, almost four decades after floating became one of my life goals. It just proves that if you can find an opening, you can probably find a way to float through it. (page 34)
On the first day of practice, we were all scared to death. Plus he hadn't brought along any footballs. One kid finally spoke up for all of us. "Excuse me, Coach. There are no footballs."
And Coach Graham responded, "We don't need any footballs."
There was a silence, while we thought about that...
"How many men are on the football field at a time?" he asked us.
Eleven on a team, we answered. So that makes twenty-two.
"And how many people are touching the football at any given time?"
One of them.
"Right!" he said. "So we're going to work on what those other twenty-one guys are doing."
Fundamentals. That was a great gift Coach Graham gave us. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. As a college professor, I've seen this as one lesson so many kids ignore, always to their detriment: You've got to get the fundamentals down, because otherwise the fancy stuff is not going to work. (pages 35-36)
8月30日 我在读书笔记中写道：
"That's a good thing," the assistant told me. "When you're screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they've given up on you."
That lesson has stuck with me my whole life. When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody's bothering to tell you anymore, that's a bad place to be. You may not want to hear it, but your critics are often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you, and want to make you better.
There's a lot of talk these days about giving children self-esteem. It's not something you can give; it's something they have to build. Coach Graham worked in a no-coddling zone. Self-esteem? He knew there was really only one way to teach kids how to develop it: You give them something they can't do, they work hard until they find they can do it, and you just keep repeating the process.
When Coach Graham first got hold of me, I was this wimpy kid with no skills, no physical strength, and no conditioning. But he made me realize that if I work hard enough, there will be things I can do tomorrow that I can't do today. Even now, having just turned forty-seven, I can give you a three-point stance that any NFL lineman would be proud of.
I realize that, these days, a guy like Coach Graham might get thrown out of a youth sports league. He'd be too tough. Parents would complain. (pages 36-37)
But I was hugely impressed. Kirk, I mean, Shatner, was the ultimate example of a man who knew what he didn't know, was perfectly willing to admit it, and didn't want to leave until he understood. That's heroic to me. I wish every grad student had that attitude. (page 45)
But I kept my mantra in mind: The brick walls are there for a reason. They're not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. (page 51-52)
I watched Dr. Wolff use semantics to phrase whatever he could in a positive light. When we asked, "How long before I die?" he answered, "You probably have three to six months of good health." That reminded me of my time at Disney. Ask Disney World workers: "What time does the park close?" They're supposed to answer: "The park is OPEN until 8 p.m." (page 62)
My message: People are more important than things. A car, even a pristine gem like my new convertible, was just a thing. (page 70)
"... The brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough. They're there to stop the OTHER people." (page 73)
Brick walls are there for a reason. They give us a chance to show how badly we want something. (page 79)
No matter how bad things are, you can always make thing worse. At the same time, it is often within your power to make them better. (page 88)
Through the whole ordeal, I don't think we ever said to each other: "This isn't fair." We just kept going. We recognized that there were thing we could do that might help the outcome in positive ways... and we did them. Without saying it in words, our attitude was, "Let's saddle up and ride." (page 93)
Given my short road ahead, did I want to spend those precious getting that refund? I did not. Could I afford to pay $16.55? I could. So I left the store, happier to have fifteen minutes than sixteen dollars. (pages 107-108)
Time must be explicitly managed, like money. My students would sometimes roll their eyes at what they called "Pauschisms," but I stand by them. Urging students not to invest time on irrelevant details, I'd tell them: "It doesn't matter how well you polish the underside of the banister."
You can always change your plan, but only if you have one. I'm a big believer in to-do lists. It helps us break life into small steps. I once put "get tenure" on my to-do list. That was naïve. The most useful to-do list breaks tasks into small steps. It's like when I encourage Logan to clean his room by picking up one thing at a time.
Ask yourself: are you spending your time on the right things? You may have causes, goals, interests. Are they even worth pursuing? I've long held on to a clipping from a newspaper in Roanoke, Virginia. It featured a photo of a pregnant woman who had lodged a protest of jackhammers was injuring her unborn child. But get this: In the photo, the woman is holding a cigarette. If she cared about her unborn child, the time she spent railing against jackhammers would have been better putting out that cigarette.
Develop a good filing system. When I told Jai I wanted to have a place in the house where we could file everything in alphabetical order, she said I sounded way too compulsive for her tastes. I told her: "Filing in alphabetical order is better than running around and saying, 'I know it was blue and I know I was eating something when I had it.'"
Rethinking the telephone. I live in a culture where I spend a lot of time on hold, listening to "Your call is very important to us." Yeah, right. That's like a guy slapping a girl in the face on a first date and saying, "I actually do love you." Yet that's how modern customer service works. And I reject that. I make sure I am never on hold with a phone against my ear. I always use a speaker phone, so my hands are free to do something else.
I've also collected techniques for keeping unnecessary calls shorter. If I'm sitting while on the phone, I never put my feet up. In fact, it's better to stand when you're on the phone. You're more apt to speed things along. I also like to have something in view on my desk that I want to do, so I have the urge to wrap things up with the caller.
Over the years, I've picked up other phone tips. Want to quickly dispatch telemarketers? Hang up while you're doing the talking and they're listening. They'll assume your connection went bad and they'll move on to their next call. Want to have a short phone call with someone? Call them at 11:55 a.m., right before lunch. They'll talk fast. You may think you are interesting, but you are not more interesting than lunch.
Delegate. As a professor, I learned early on that I could trust bright, nineteen-year-old students with the keys to my kingdom, and most of the time, they were responsible and impressive. It's never too early to delegate. My daughter, Chloe, is just eighteen months old, but two of my favorite photos are of her in my arms. In the first, I'm giving her a bottle. In the second, I've delegated the task to her. She looks satisfied. Me, too.
Take a time out. It's not a real vacation if you're reading email or calling in for messages. When Jai and I went on our honeymoon, we wanted to be left alone. My boss, however, felt I needed to provide a way for people to contact me. So I came up with the perfect phone message:
"Hi, this is Randy. I waited until I was thirty-nine to get married, so my wife and I are going away for a month. I hope you don't have a problem with that, but my boss does. Apparently, I have to be reachable." I then gave the names of Jai's parents and the city where they live. "If you call directory assistance, you can get their number. And then, if you can convince my new in-laws that your emergency merits interrupting their only daughter's honeymoon, they have our number."
We didn't get any calls. (pages 108-111)
Time is all you have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think. (page 111)
"The kind of people I want on my research team are those who will help everyone else feel happy to be here." (page 118)
Luck is indeed where preparation meets opportunity. (page 119)
Men first walked on the moon during the summer of 1969, when I was eight years old. I knew then that pretty much anything was possible. It was as if all of us, all over the world, had been given permission to dream big dreams. (page 131)
When you use money to fight poverty, it can be of great value, but too often, you're working at the margins. When you're putting people on the moon, you're inspiring all of us to achieve the maximum of human potential, which is how our greatest problems will eventually be solved. (pages 132-133)
I'll take an earnest person over a hip person every time, because hip is short-term. Earnest is long-term.
Earnestness is highly underestimated. It comes from the core, while hip is trying to impress you with the surface. (page 133)
Don't Complain, Just Work Harder
Too many people go through life complaining about their problems. I've always believed that if you took one-tenth the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, you'd be surprised by how well things can work out.
I've known some terrific non-complainers in my life. One was Sandy Blatt, my landlord during graduate school. When he was a young man, a truck backed into him while he was unloading boxes into the cellar of a building. He toppled backwards down the steps and into the cellar. "How far was the fall?" I asked. His answer was simple: "Far enough." He spent the rest of his life as a quadriplegic.
Sandy had been a phenomenal athlete, and at the time of the accident, he was engaged to be married. He didn't want to be a burden to his fiancée so he told her, "You didn't sign on for this. I'll understand if you want to back out. You can go in peace." And she did.
I met Sandy when he was in his thirties, and he just wowed me with his attitude. He had this incredible non-whining aura about him. He had worked hard and become a licensed marriage counselor. He got married and adopted children. And when he talked about his medical issues, he did so matter-of-factly. He once explained to me that temperature changes were hard on quadriplegics they can't shiver. "Pass me that blanket, will you, Randy?" he'd say. And that was it.
My favorite non-complainer of all time may be Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play Major League Baseball. He endured racism that many yong people today couldn't even fathom. He knew he had to play better than the white guys, and he knew he had to work harder. So that's what he did. He vowed not to complain, even if fans spit on him.
I used to have a photo of Jackie Robinson hanging in my office, and it saddened me that so many students couldn't identify him, or knew little about him. Many never even noticed the photo. Young people raised on color TV don't spend a lot of time looking at black-and-white images.
That's too bad. There are no better role models than people like Jackie Robinson and Sandy Blatt. The message in their stories is this: Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won't make us happier. (pages 138-139)
"When it comes to men who are romantically interested in you, it's really simple. Just ignore everything they say and only pay attention to what they do." (page 146)
It's also a reminder that failure is not just acceptable, it's often essential. (page 148)
The person who failed often knows how to avoid future failures. The person who knows only success can be more oblivious to all the pitfalls.
Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer. (page 149)
And despite my love of efficiency, I think that thank-you notes are best done the old-fashioned way, with pen and paper. (page 151)
My advice was more about helping them recognize that there are respectful, considerate things that can be done in life that will be appreciated by the recipient, and that only good things can result. (page 152)
The Friday Solution
I got tenure a year earlier than people usually do. That seemed to impress other junior faculty members.
"Wow, you got tenure early," they'd say to me. "What was your secret?"
I said, "It's pretty simple. Call me any Friday night in my office at ten o'clock and I'll tell you. (Of course, this was before I had a family.)
A lot of people want a shortcut. I find the best shortcut is the long way, which is basically two words: work hard.
As I see it, if you work more hours than somebody else, during those hours you learn more about your craft. That can make you more efficient, more able, even happier. Hard work is like compounded interest in the bank. The rewards build faster.
The same is true in your life outside of your job. All my adult life I've felt drawn to ask long-married couples how they were able to stay together. All of them said the same thing: "We worked hard at it." (page 156)
I've always admired people who are over-prepared. In college, I had a classmate named Norman Meyrowitz. One day he was giving a presentation on an overhead projector and in the middle of his talk, the lightbulb on the projector blew out. There was an audible groan from the audience. We'd have to wait ten minutes until someone found a new projector.
"It's okay," Norm announced. "There's nothing to worry about."
We watched him walk over to his knapsack and pull something out. He had brought along a spare bulb for the overhead projector. Who would even think of that?
Our professor, Andy van Dam, happened to be sitting next to me. He leaned over and said, "This guy is going places." He had that right. Norm became top executive at Macromedia Inc., where his efforts have affected almost everyone who uses Internet today. (page 160)
Tell the Truth
If I could only give three words of advice, they would be "tell the truth." If I got three more words, I'd add: "All the time." My parents taught me that "you're only as good as your word," and there's no better way to say it.
Honesty is not only morally right, it's also efficient. In a culture where everyone tells the truth, you can save a lot of time double-checking. When I taught at the University of Virginia, I LOVED the honor code. If a student was sick and needed a makeup exam, I didn't need to create a new one. The student just "pledged" that he hadn't talked to anybody about the exam, and I gave the old one.
People lie for lots of reasons, often because it seems like a way to get what they want with less effort. But like many short-term strategies, it's ineffective long-term. You run into people again later, and they remember you lied to them. And they tell lots of other people about it. That's what amazes me about lying. Most people who have told a lie think they got away with it...when in fact, they didn't. (pages 163-164)
If you can find your footing between two cultures, sometimes you can have the best of both worlds. (page 171)
Everyone has to contribute to the common good. To not do so can be described in one word: selfish. (page 176)
When we're connected to others, we become better people. (page 176)
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