"Time Management" by Randy Pausch, November 2007

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

Randy Pausch, an inspiring computer scientist and educator, delivers an engaging talk on time management sprinkled with humor and real-life anecdotes at the University of Virginia in 2007. With personal perspectives shaped by his battle with pancreatic cancer, Randy discusses effective time management strategies. From understanding the core of why we do what we do to innovative ways to manage interruptions and emails, his insights encourage spending time efficiently both in professional and personal spheres. Known for co-founding Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center and developing Alice, a significant initiative to promote computer science among young women, Randy’s wisdom on balancing time serves to inspire and educate.

Highlights

Randy Pausch, known for his humor and wisdom, discusses time management at the University of Virginia in 2007 🍏.
He shares strategies to manage time effectively, drawn from his battle with pancreatic cancer 🔥.
Randy reflects on his academic career, emphasizing the importance of setting goals and focusing on what truly matters 🎯.
He advocates for pragmatic actions over platitudes, offering crisp strategies like keeping your inbox clear and prioritizing tasks efficiently 📧.
The talk encourages an inspirational style, coupled with practical advice on delegating tasks and valuing time over money⌛.
Randy's efforts in promoting computer science among young women, notably through the Alice project, are underscored 👩‍💻.
His humorous take on dealing with life's interruptions serves as a powerful message for leading a more joyous life
Despite facing a life-shortening illness, his talk remains light-hearted, insightful, and full of life lessons 🐔.

Key Takeaways

Prioritize your tasks not by urgency but by importance to make long-term impacts ✨.
Delegate effectively and ensure those receiving tasks have the full authority to accomplish them 💼.
Adopt a clear, strategic approach to emails—handle them once and sort them by priority 📧.
Utilize multiple monitors to enhance productivity as it makes digital juggling more seamless 🖥️.
Avoid using email notifications as interruptions—they should work at your pace, not the other way around 🔔.
Turning time into a commodity helps you value it as much as money, arguably more 🕰️.
Emphasize the importance of keeping your workspace organized to avoid time-wasting, chaotic scenarios 🗂️.

Overview

Randy Pausch delivers a powerful seminar on time management, intertwining his experiences as an academic with personal stories shaped by his ongoing battle with pancreatic cancer. His anecdotes blend humor with practical advice on using time—a precious, unrenewable resource—to its maximum potential.

Known for his dynamic and engaging style, Randy offers pragmatic solutions to everyday problems like overflowing inboxes and bothersome interruptions. He underscores the importance of prioritizing tasks by importance rather than urgency, and promotes the value of delegating tasks, ensuring those tasked have the authority to make decisions and act efficiently.

Randy's lasting educational contributions, such as the Alice project aimed at fostering interest in computer science among young women, reflect his commitment to effective teaching and inspiring change. His uplifting talk not only highlights effective time management techniques but also emphasizes the need to cherish time with family and pursue passions with enthusiasm.

Chapters

00:00 - 05:30: Introduction and Welcome The Introduction and Welcome chapter begins by extending a warm welcome to attendees at the University of Virginia, acknowledging the presence of many out-of-town visitors and expressing gratitude for their attendance. The speaker highlights the presence of a distinguished guest, Randy Pausch, who is not only a friend but also a mentor to the speaker. Their first meeting dates back to 1992, marking the beginning of a significant relationship when the speaker became a professor at the university. The speaker feels fortunate to have met Randy, setting a tone of admiration and respect.
05:30 - 11:30: Randy Pausch's Professional Background Randy Pausch is recognized for his greatness noted early in his career. He is remembered for his honesty, courage, and grace. As a mentor, Randy is described as a blend of Yoda, Captain Kirk, and Jim Carrey, highlighting his unique mix of wisdom, leadership, and humor. His influence has imparted many important life lessons over the years.
11:30 - 16:00: Randy's Impact and Contributions Randy is celebrated for his candid and straightforward advice, which was free from political correctness or excessive politeness. This blunt honesty made him an exceptional and appreciated mentor by many, contributing significantly to the speaker's success. The chapter emphasizes the impactful role Randy played as a mentor, highlighting a belief that while talent operates within its capacity, genius fulfills its necessary duties.
16:00 - 23:00: Randy Pausch's Health and Motivation for the Talk The chapter focuses on Randy Pausch, highlighting his health and motivation for giving a talk. Wendy's genius and wit are acknowledged for being a valuable asset to Randy and others. Randy believes in having fun while pursuing education, asserting that those who disagree may lack understanding of both fun and education.
23:00 - 30:00: Time Management: Goals, Priorities, and Planning This chapter likely delves into how Randy's efforts in funding education have significantly elevated the platform and impacted lives globally in a lasting manner. The introduction of the Dean suggests a transition into an in-depth analysis of strategies in time management, focusing on setting goals, task prioritization, and effective planning.
30:00 - 38:00: Time Management: Managing Tasks and To-Do Lists The chapter focuses on the importance and techniques of time management, specifically around managing tasks and to-do lists. The narrative includes a speech or discussion about 'Randy', where the speaker, presumably Jim who is an engineer or lawyer, expresses gratitude and excitement for the gathering in honor of Randy Pausch. However, the transcript is incomplete and lacks specific details about time management strategies discussed within the chapter.
38:00 - 45:00: Paperwork and Email Management The chapter titled 'Paperwork and Email Management' begins with an acknowledgment of a full audience and an expression of gratitude towards attendees. The speaker then plans to provide some background on Randy, suggesting the audience already has some familiarity with him, either directly or indirectly. Following this introduction, the speaker intends to make important announcements related to the University of Virginia's School of Engineering. These announcements hold special significance for their community, particularly as they pertain to new developments or events involving Randy, who is mentioned as having received a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science.
45:00 - 55:00: Office Setup and Productivity Tips The chapter titled 'Office Setup and Productivity Tips' includes content on academic achievements and professional journey of an individual who graduated with a science degree from Brown University and obtained a PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University. After completing his PhD, he joined the faculty of the computer science department at the University of Virginia, where he was awarded tenure. His research focused on human-computer interaction and he was also a dedicated educator.
55:00 - 63:00: Scheduling and Managing Interruptions The chapter discusses a initiative led by a mentor in Virginia, focusing on the Alice software project - a design tool aimed at engaging middle school girls in computer animation. It highlights the success of the project and mentions an upcoming collaboration with Electronic Arts to incorporate 3D characters into the next version of Alice.
63:00 - 71:00: Delegation and Communication In the chapter titled 'Delegation and Communication', the focus is on the significance of effective delegation and communication strategies. The chapter highlights the success story of Randi, who achieved a significant milestone by creating an animation for The Sims, known as the most popular PC video game ever. This achievement not only marks a personal success for Randi but also serves as a major contribution to enhancing literacy in computer science education. The announcement made on behalf of Bob Pianta, Dean of the Curry School of Education, underscores the importance of contributions that bolster educational efforts in the realm of computer science.
71:00 - 77:00: Technology and Efficiency The chapter titled 'Technology and Efficiency' discusses the initiative at the University of Virginia, where a well-established mentoring program aims to boost self-esteem and leadership skills among at-risk middle school girls by pairing them with college women. The program, a collaboration between the Women's Center and the Curry School of Education, is expanding to include the Alice programming language in its curriculum through a partnership with the Department of Computer Science. This inclusion is intended to enhance technological skills among the participants.
77:00 - 81:00: Email Management Tips The chapter titled 'Email Management Tips' discusses an initiative that aims to expose middle school girls and their college mentors to computing concepts. This is achieved through designing three-dimensional animated virtual worlds. The discussed initiative impacts several important areas, such as encouraging young women to venture into technology fields, assisting at-risk groups, and fostering interdisciplinary bridges. This effort is aligned with values close to Randy's heart.
81:00 - 84:00: Working with Bosses and Vacations The chapter begins by acknowledging the significance of Randy's legacy, especially his co-founding of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon. This initiative is built on the collaborative efforts between technologists and non-technologists working together to create projects aimed at entertainment, information, and inspiration.
84:00 - 91:00: General Time Management and Life Tips The chapter discusses time management and life tips, highlighted with the involvement of Disney and Randy's upcoming publication. Randy has worked with Disney Imagineering and is co-authoring a book titled 'The Last Lecture,' published by a Disney-owned company. His work and life are characterized by an infectious enthusiasm and inspiring spirit.
91:00 - 95:00: Conclusion and Key Takeaways The chapter concludes with a tribute to Randy Pausch, emphasizing his qualities as a smart, funny, and courageous individual despite facing difficult times. The speaker expresses gratitude for Randy's presence and invites the audience to welcome him back to the University of Virginia.
95:00 - 98:00: Acknowledgements and Thank You The chapter, titled 'Acknowledgements and Thank You,' appears to be focused on expressing gratitude and appreciation. The transcript begins with a reminder to not tip the waiter before the meal arrives, suggesting a metaphorical or literal caution about premature gratitude. The speaker addresses Gabe and Jim, indicating specific individuals to whom they are grateful, although the specifics of their contributions are not detailed in the excerpt. Overall, the tone of the chapter suggests a mix of gratitude and a touch of humor.

"Time Management" by Randy Pausch, November 2007 Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 welcome to the University of Virginia I notice a lot of folks in from out of town and we appreciate you coming we are very fortunate to have today with us my friend and mentor Randy Pausch I first met Randy at 1992 when I became a professor here at UVA and I was lucky enough to recognize
00:30 - 01:00 Randy's greatness early on and his honesty courage and grace were very striking even back then as a mentor randy has been sort of a cross between Yoda Captain Kirk and Jim Carrey and his unique combination of wisdom and leadership and humor has so many many important life lessons over the years
01:00 - 01:30 Randy always gave me and everybody else honest advice that was untainted by political correctness and in fact sometimes I'm tainted by politeness even but I appreciated that greatly because as a mentor that's exactly what you want and I owe a lot of my success to him and he's been a perfect mentor there's an old saying that talent does what it can but genius does what it must
01:30 - 02:00 and Wendy's genius has been a valuable asset to me and to many many others over the years his sharp wit has made us laugh many many times and still does and randy repeatedly reminded us that those who think that you can't have a lot of fun while getting an education probably don't know much about either
02:00 - 02:30 indeed randy has raised the level of funding education to an entirely new dimension and we will forever be grateful to him for doing so and for the wonderful value added to our lives and Randy's impact will continue to touch and affect many many people across the world for many many years to come and now we'd like to introduce our Dean of
02:30 - 03:00 engineering Jim a lawyer which has a few more things to say about Randy Wow it's really great to see everyone here and we school engineering plat science it's really excited that you've come to help us honor our colleague and friend Randy Pausch my understanding is that
03:00 - 03:30 the every seat is filled so we really do appreciate everyone being with us what I want to do right now is just give you a little bit of background on Randy I know a lot of you know about him either directly or indirectly but then I want to make a couple of announcements that are special to us here at the University of Virginia in the School of Engineering and and special in terms of an initial announcements of things that are going to happen Randy received his BS degree in computer
03:30 - 04:00 science from Brown University in 1982 and his PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1988 directly from CMU he joined the faculty of the computer science at the University of Virginia where he successfully was granted tenure during his time at Virginia he established a major research activity in the general area of human-computer interaction probably more importantly he was a dedicated educator and served as a
04:00 - 04:30 mentor for many students and many of his colleagues one of the most important and most successful initiatives while at Virginia was the Alice software project a computer animation design tool which has proven very effective at getting and keeping middle school girls interested in computers in fact thanks to an agreement with Electronic Arts the next version of Alice will use the 3d characters and
04:30 - 05:00 animation from The Sims the most popular PC video game in history this is an important outstanding accomplishment for Randi but even more important it will be the major contribution will be a major contribution to efforts to increase literacy literacy in computer science on behalf of Bob pianta Dean of the curry School of Education in myself I am pleased to announce that the University
05:00 - 05:30 of Virginia young women leader want young woman leaders program a well established mentoring program of the University of Virginia Women's Center and the curry School of Education that pairs at-risk middle school girls with college women with the goal of boosting the self-esteem and leadership skills of both groups is now planning to incorporate Alice into its mentoring program through a collaborative effort with the department of computer science
05:30 - 06:00 this an issue will allow both the middle school girls and their college mentors to receive exposure to computing concepts through design of three-dimensional animated virtual worlds this will impact several important fronts all near and dear to Randy's heart including encouraging young women to enter technology fields helping at-risk groups and building cost disciplinary bridges the university is
06:00 - 06:30 honored to be able to incorporate Randy's great legacy into this worthwhile endeavor at carnegie-mellon randy co-founded the entertainment Technology Center an activity based on the principle of having technologists and non technologies works together on projects that produce artifacts that are intended to entertain inform and inspire he has
06:30 - 07:00 also worked for a period with Disney Walt Disney's Imagineering I am also pleased to let you know that Disney owned publisher upper-upper Eon has just announced plans to publish a book about Randy called the last lecture which will be co-authored by Randy and wall street journalists reporter Jeff zasler throughout everything Randy does there is an infectious and inspiring enthusiasm that spirit is intact today
07:00 - 07:30 even though he is facing a very difficult time a husband and the father of three Randy is a smart funny courageous man I am thankful that he chose to spend this day with us and I'm honored to welcome him back to the University of Virginia grounds and now please join me and welcome welcome him professor Randy Pausch
07:30 - 08:00 thank you that's very kind but never tip the waiter before the meal arrives it's a thank-you Gabe and Jim I couldn't imagine being more grateful for an
08:00 - 08:30 introduction these are two people that I've known a long long time I taught here at the University of Virginia I love this school it's just an incredible place filled with tradition and history and respect the kind of qualities that I really admire that I want to see preserved in American society and this is one of the places that I just love for preserving that I think the honor code alone at the University of Virginia just is something that every University administrator should study and look at and say you know why can't we do that
08:30 - 09:00 too so I think there are a lot of things about this place to love I'm going to talk today on the topic of time management the circumstances are as you probably know a little bit unusual I think at this point I'm an authority to talk about what to do with limited time my my battle with pancreatic cancer started about a year and a half ago thought did all the right things but it's you know as my oncologist said if you could pick off a list that's not the one you'd want to pick so on August 15th
09:00 - 09:30 these were my cat scans you can see that if you scroll through all of them there were about a dozen tumors in my liver and the doctors at that time said you are likely to have three the way they say it you have three to six months of good health left right optimism and positive phrasing it's sort of like when you're a Disney what time does the park closed the park is open until 8:00 so I have three to six months of good health well let's do the math today is
09:30 - 10:00 three months and 12 days so what I had on my day timer for today was not necessarily being at the University of Virginia I'm pleased to say that we do treat with palliative chemo they're going to buy me a little bit of time on the order of a few months if it continues to work I am still in perfectly good health with Gabe of the audience I'm not going to do push-ups because I'm not going to be shown up Gabe is really in good shape but I to be in relatively good health I had
10:00 - 10:30 chemotherapy yesterday you should all try it's great but it did just sort of beg the question I have finite time some people said you know so why are you going and giving a talk well there are a lot of reasons I'm coming here and giving a talk one of them is that I said I would write that's a pretty simple reason and I'm physically able to another one is that going to the University of Virginia is not like going to some far in place people say aren't you spending all your time with family and by coming back here for a day I am spending my time with
10:30 - 11:00 family both metaphorically and literally because it turns out that many of you have probably seen this picture from the talk that I gave these are my niece and nephew Chris and Laura and my niece Laura is actually a senior a fourth year here at mr. Jefferson's University so Laura can you stand up so they see what you've gotten taller and I couldn't be happier to have her
11:00 - 11:30 here at this university and the other the other person so that's Laura the other person in this picture is Chris and Chris if you could stand up so they say you've got much taller and they have grown in so many ways not just in height and it's been wonderful to see that and be an uncle to them is there anybody here on the faculty or PhD students of the history department we have any history people here at all okay
11:30 - 12:00 anybody hears from history find Chris right after the talk because he's currently in his sophomore year at William and Mary and he's interested in going into a ph.d program in history down the road and there aren't many better PhD programs in history than this one so so I'm pimping for my nephew here let's be clear hi [Applause] so what are we going to talk about today we're going to talk about you know this is not like the lecture that you may have seen me give before this is a very
12:00 - 12:30 pragmatic lecture and one of the reasons that I had agreed to come back and give this is because Gabe had told me that and many other faculty Murs had told me that they had gotten so much tangible value about how to get more done and I truly do believe that time is the only commodity that matters so this is a very pragmatic talk and it is inspirational in a sense it will inspire you by giving you some concrete things you might do to be able to get more time more things done in your finite time so I'm going to talk specifically about how to set goals
12:30 - 13:00 how to avoid wasting time how to deal with a boss originally this talk was how to deal with your advisor but I've tried to broaden it so it's not quite so academically focused and how to delegate to people some specific skills and tools that I might recommend to help you get more out of the day and to deal with the real problems in our life which are stress and procrastination I mean you can lick that last one you're probably in good shape and really you don't need to take any notes so I'll presume if I see any laptops open you're actually just you know doing
13:00 - 13:30 I am or email or something if you're listening to music please at least wear headphones I would always say but all of this will be posted on my website and just to make it really easy if you want to know when to look up any slides that have a red star on them are the points that I think you should really make sure that you you got that one and conversely if it doesn't have a red star well so the first thing I want to say is that Americans are very very bad at dealing
13:30 - 14:00 with time as a commodity we're really good at dealing with money as a commodity I mean we're as a culture very interested in money and how much somebody earns is a status thing and so on and so forth but we don't really have time elevated to that people waste their time and just always fascinates me and one of things that I noticed is that very few people equate time and money and they're very very equatable so the first thing I started doing when I was a teacher was asking my graduate students well how much is your time worth an hour
14:00 - 14:30 or if you work at a company how much is your time worth to the company what most people don't realize is that if you have a salary let's say you make $50,000 a year it probably cost that company twice that in order to have you as an employee because there's heating and lighting and other staff members on so forth so if you get paid $50,000 a year you are costing that company they may have to raise $100,000 in revenue and if you divide that by your hourly rate you begin to get some sense of what you are worth an hour and when you have to make
14:30 - 15:00 trade-offs of should I do something like write software or should I just buy it or should I outsource this having in your head what you cost your organization an hour is really kind of a staggering thing to change your behavior because you start realizing that wow if I free up 3 hours of my time and I'm thinking of that in terms of dollars that's a big savings so start thinking about your time and your money almost as if they are the same thing and of course Ben Franklin knew that a long time ago so you've got to manage it and you've got to manage it just like
15:00 - 15:30 you manage your money now I realize not all Americans manage their money that's what makes the credit card industry possible and that's and apparently mortgages too so but most people do at least understand they don't look at you funny if you say well can I see your monetary budget for your household in fact if I say your household budget you presume that I'm talking about money when in fact the household budget I really want to talk about is probably your household time budget the entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon students would come in
15:30 - 16:00 and during the orientation I would say this is a master's program everybody's paying full tuition and it was roughly thirty thousand dollars a year and and the first thing I would say is if you're going to come into my office and say I don't think this is worth $60,000 a year I will throw you out of the office I'm not even going to have that discussion and of course they would say oh god this couch guy is a real jerk and then they were right but what I then followed on with was because the money is not important you can go and earn more money later and what
16:00 - 16:30 you'll never do is get the two years of your life back so if you want to come into my office and talk about the money I'll throw you out but if you want to come into my office and say I'm not sure this is a good place for me to spend two years I will talk to you all day and all night because that means we're talking about the right thing which is your time because you can't ever get it back a lot of the advice I'm going to give you particularly for undergraduates how many people in this in this room are undergraduates by show of hands okay good still young a
16:30 - 17:00 lot of this would add a Hans and Franz on star tonight live if you're old enough hear me now but believe me later right a lot of this is going to make sense later and one of the nice things as I gave gaybies volunteered to put this up on the web I understand that people can actually watch videos on the web now so this is so a lot of this only makes sense later and when I talk about your boss if you're a student think about that is your academic advisor if you're a PhD student think that is your PhD advisor and if you're you know if you're
17:00 - 17:30 watching this and you're a young child think of this as your parent because that's sort of the person who is in some sense your boss and the talk goes very fast and I as I said I'm very big on specific techniques I'm not really big on platitudes I mean platitudes are nice but they don't really help me get something done tomorrow the other thing is that one good thief is worth 10 good scholars and in fact you can replace the word scholars in that sentence with almost anything so almost everything in this talk is to some degree inspired which is a fancy fancy way of saying lifted
17:30 - 18:00 four from these two books and I found those books very useful but it's much better to get them into the old form so what I basically done is collected the nuggets for your bath I like to talk about the time famine I think it's a nice phrase does anybody here feel like they have too much time okay new body excellent and I like the word famine because it's a little bit like thinking about Africa I mean you can airlift all the foods you want in to solve the crisis this week but the
18:00 - 18:30 problem is systemic and you really need systemic solutions so a time management solution that says oh I'm going to fix things for you in the next 24 hours is laughable just like saying on a cure hunger in Africa in the next year you need to think long term and you need to change fundamental underlying processes because the problem is systemic we just have too many things to do and not enough time to do them the other thing to remember is that it's not just about time management that sounds like a kind of a lukewarm you know a talk on time management that's kind of you know milquetoast but how about the talk is
18:30 - 19:00 how about not having ulcers right that catches my attention so a lot of this is life advice this is how to change the way you're doing a lot of the things and how you allocate your time so that you will lead a happier more wonderful life and I loved in the introduction that you talked about fun because if I've brought fund academia well it's about damn time I mean you know if you're not going to have fun why do it right that's what I want to know I mean life really is too
19:00 - 19:30 short if you're not going to enjoy it you know people who say well I'm you know I've got a job but I don't really like it and I'm like well you could change oh that would be a lot of work you're right you should keep going to work every day doing a job you don't like thank you goodnight right so the overall goal is fun my middle child Logan is is my favorite example I don't think he knows how to not have fun now grant a lot of things he does are not fun for his mother and mace but he's loving every second of it and he doesn't
19:30 - 20:00 know how to do anything that isn't ballistic and full of life and he's going to keep that quality I think he's my little Tigger and I always remember Logan when I think about the goal is to make sure that you lead your life you know I want to maximize use of time but really that's the means not the end the end is maximizing fun people who do intense studies and log people and videotape and so on and so forth say that the typical office worker wastes almost two hours a day alright the desk is messy they can't
20:00 - 20:30 find things and disappointments unprepared for meetings they can't concentrate does anybody in here by show of hands ever have any sense that one of these things is part of their life okay I think we've got everybody so these are the universal thing and you shouldn't feel guilty if some of these things are plaguing you because they plague all of us they plagued me for sure and the other thing I want to tell you is that it sounds a little cliched and trite but being successful does not make you manage your time well managing
20:30 - 21:00 your time well makes you successful if I have been successful in my career I assure you it's not because I'm smarter than all the other faculty I mean I'm looking around and looking at some of my former colleagues I mean I see Jim Cahoon up there I am not smarter than Jim Cahoon okay you know I constantly look around the faculty places like the University of Virginia or Carnegie Mellon I go damn these are smart people and I snuck in but what I like to think I'm good at is the meta skills because if you're going to have to run with people who are faster than you you have to like find the right ways to optimize what skills
21:00 - 21:30 you do have so let's talk first about goals priorities and planning anytime anything crosses your life you've got to ask this thing I'm thinking about doing why am i doing it almost no one that I know starts with the core principle of there's this thing on my to-do list why is it there because you start asking well why is I mean again my kids are great at this that's all I ever hear at home is why why why right and similarly they're going to stop saying why they're just going to say okay I'll do it right so ask why am I doing this what is the
21:30 - 22:00 goal why will I succeed at doing it and here's my favorite what will happen if I don't do it if I just say yeah I'm just not the best thing in the world and have something on my to-do list and I just go no no one has ever come and taken me to jail I talk my way out of a speeding ticket last week it's really cool it's like the closest I'm ever going to be to attractive and blonde I
22:00 - 22:30 told the guy you know why we had just moved and so on and so forth and he looked at me and he said well for a guy who's only got a couple of months to live you sure look good and I just pulled up my shirt to show the scar and I said yeah I look good on the outside but the tumors are on the inside you know he just ran back to his cruiser and so that's one positive law-enforcement experience for me so yeah so the police have never come because I crossed something off my to-do
22:30 - 23:00 list and and that's a very powerful thing because you just got all that time back the other thing to keep in mind when you're doing goal-setting is a lot of people focus on doing things right I think it's very dangerous to focus on doing things right I think it's much more important to do the right things if you do the right things adequately that's much more important than doing the wrong things beautifully all right doesn't matter how well you polish the underside of the Bannister okay and keep that in mind Lou Holtz had a great list Lou Holtz's 100 things to do in his life
23:00 - 23:30 and he would sort of once a week look at it and say you know if I'm not working on those 100 things why was i working on the others and I just think that's an incredible way to frame things there's something called the 80/20 rule sometimes you'll hear about the 90/10 rule but the key thing to understand is that a very small number of things in your life or on your to-do list arta contribute the vast majority of the veil of the value so if you have if you're a salesperson 80% of the revenue is going to come from
23:30 - 24:00 20% of your clients and you better figure out who those 20% are and spend all of your time sucking up to them because that's where the revenue comes so you've got to really be willing to say this stuff is what's going to be the value and this other stuff isn't and you got to have the courage of your convictions to say and therefore I'm going to shove the other stuff off of the boat the other thing to remember is that experience comes with time and it's really really valuable and there are no shortcuts to getting it so good judgment
24:00 - 24:30 comes from experience and experience comes from judgment so if things aren't going well that probably means you're learning a lot and it'll go better later this is by the way why we pay so much in American society for people who are you know typically older but have done lots of things in their past because we're paying for their experience because we know that experience is one of the things you can't fake and do not lose the sight do not lose sight of the power of inspiration so
24:30 - 25:00 Randy's in a in an hour long talk and you know we've already get our first Disney reference Walt Disney's quote well does he has many great quotes what I love is if you can dream it you can do it and a lot of my cynical friends say daddy a tiata to which I say shut up i inspiration is important and I'll tell you this much if you I don't know if Walt was right but I'll tell you this much if you refuse to allow yourself to dream it I know you won't do it so the power of dreams are that they give us a
25:00 - 25:30 way to take the first step towards an accomplishment and Walt was also not just a dreamer Hult worked really hard Disneyland this amazes me because I know a little bit about how hard it is to put theme park attractions together and they did the whole original Disneyland Park in 366 days that's from the first shovel full of dirt to the first paid admission all right think about how long it takes to do something say at a State University
25:30 - 26:00 by comparison so it's a you know it's just fascinating when someone once asked Walt Disney how did you get it done in 366 days he just deadpan we used every one of them so again there are no short carts certain shortcuts there's a lot of hard work in anything you want to accomplish planning is very important one of the time management cliches is planning to fail failing to plan is planning to fail and planning has to be done at multiple
26:00 - 26:30 levels I have a plan every morning when I wake up and I say what do I need to get done today what I need to get done this week what do I need to get done each semester that's sort of the time quanta because I'm an academic and that doesn't mean you're locked into it people say yeah but things are so fluid you know I'm going to have to change the plan and I'm like yes you are going to have to change the plan but you can't change it unless you have it and the excuse if I'm not going to make a plan because things might change is just this paralysis of I don't have any marching orders so have a plan acknowledge that
26:30 - 27:00 you're going to change it but have it so you have the basis to start with to do this how many people here right now if I said can you produce it could show me their to-do list okay not bad not bad the key thing with to-do lists is you have to break things down into small steps I literally once I might to do this when I was a junior faculty member at the University of Virginia I put get tenure that that was naive
27:00 - 27:30 and I looked at that for a while and I said oh that's really hard I don't think I can do that and my children Dillon and Logan and Chloe particularly Dillon is at the age where he can clean his own Dan room thank you very much but he doesn't like to and Chris is smiling because I used to do this story on him but now I've got my own kids to pick on but Dylan will come to me and say I can't pick up my room it's too much stuff he's not even a teenager and he's already got that move you know
27:30 - 28:00 and I say well can you make your bed yeah I can do that okay can you put all the clothes in the hamper yeah I can do that and you know you do three or four things and then it's like well Dylan you just cleaned your room clean my room and he feels good he is empowered and everybody's happy and of course I've had to spend twice as much time managing him as I could have done it by myself but that's okay that's what being a boss is about is growing your people no matter how small or large they might
28:00 - 28:30 be at the time the last thing about to-do lists are getting yourself going is if you've got a bunch of things to do do the ugliest thing first there's an old saying if you have to eat a frog don't spend a lot of time looking at it first and if you have to eat three of them don't start with the small one all right this is the most important slide in the entire talk so if you want
28:30 - 29:00 to leave after this slide I will not be offended because it's all downhill from here and this is blatantly stolen this is Steven Covey's great contribution to the world he talks about it and one in the seven Habits book it's imagine your to-do list most people sort their to-do lists either you know the order that I got it throw it on the bottom or they sort it in due date list which is more sophisticated and more helpful but still very very raw so looking at the four quadrant to-do list if you've got a
29:00 - 29:30 quadrant where things are important excuse me and do soon important and not do soon not important and do soon and not important and not do soon all right which of these four quadrants do you think upper left upper right lower left or right which one do you think you should work on immediately upper left you are such a great crowd okay and which one do you think you should probably do last lower right and that's you know that's easy that's obviously number one that's obviously number four
29:30 - 30:00 but this is where everybody in my experience gets it wrong what we do now is we say I do the number ones and I move on to the stuff that's due soon and not important when you write it in this quadrant list it's really stunning because I've actually seen people do this and they say okay and this is due soon and I know it's not important so I'm going to get right to work on it and the most crucial thing I can teach you about time management is when you're done picking off the important and do soon that's when you go here you go -
30:00 - 30:30 it's not due soon and it's important and there will be a moment in your life where you say hey this thing that's due soon but not important I won't do it it's not important it says so right here on the chart and and magically you have time to work on the thing that is not due soon but is important so that next week it never got a chance to get here because you killed it in the crib
30:30 - 31:00 my wife won't like that metaphor but you kill the or you you you solve the problem of something that's due next week when you're not under time stress because it's not due tomorrow and suddenly you become one of those zen-like people who just always seem to have all the time in the world because they've figured this out alright paperwork the first thing you need to know is that having cluttered paperwork leads to thrashing you end up with all these
31:00 - 31:30 things on your desk and you can't find anything and the moment you turn to your desk your desk is saying to you I own you I have more things than you can do and there are many colors and laid out so what I find is that it's really crucial to keep your desk clear and we'll talk about where all the paper goes in a second and you have one thing on your desk because then it's like ha now it's Thunderdome me and the one piece of paper right and so I usually win that one
31:30 - 32:00 one of the mantras of time management is touch each piece of paper once you get the piece of paper you look at it you you work at it and I think that's extremely true for email how many people here well I'm going to take it for granted that everybody here has an email inbox how many people are right now have more than 20 items in their email inbox oh I'm in the right room your inbox is not your to-do list and I
32:00 - 32:30 my wife has learned that I need to get my inbox clear now sometimes this really means just filing things away and putting something on my to-do list remember the to-do list is sorted by importance but my eat does anybody here have an e mock you have an email program where you can press the sort by importance button you know it's amazing how people who build software that really is a huge part of our life and getting work done haven't a clue and that's not a slam on any particular
32:30 - 33:00 company I think they all have missed the boat and I just find it fascinating because everybody I know where most people I know have this inbox that I got to ask how many people have more than 100 things in their email I'm just not going to keep going this is too depressing so you really want to get the thing in your inbox look at it and say I'm either going to read it right now or I'm going to file it and put an entry in my to-do list and that's just a crucial thing because otherwise every time you go to read your email you're just swamped and it's just
33:00 - 33:30 as bad as the cluttered paper you're all trying to figure out how that heading goes with that picture a filing system is absolutely essential and I know this because I married the most wonderful woman in the world but she's not a good filer but she is now because after we got married and we moved in together and we resolved all the other typical couple things I said we have to have a place where our papers go and
33:30 - 34:00 it's in alphabetical order and she said that sounds a little compulsive and I said okay honey so I went out to Ikea and I got this big nice way too expensive big wooden fake mahogany thing with big drawers so she liked it because it looked kind of kind of nice and having a place in our house where any piece of paper went and was in alphabetical order did wonderful things for our marriage because there was never
34:00 - 34:30 any of this honey where did you put blah blah blah right and there was never being mad at somebody because they had put something in someone X a place there was an expected place for it and when you're looking for important receipts or whatever it is this is actually important and we have found that this has been a wonderful thing for us I think file systems among groups of people whether it's a marriage or in office are crucial but even if it's just you having a place where you know you put something really beats all hell out of running around for an hour going where is it I know it's blue and
34:30 - 35:00 I was eating something when I read it I mean this is this is not a filing system this is madness a lot of people ask me so Randy what does your desk look like so as my wife would say this is what Randy's desk looks like when he's photographing it for a talk the important thing is that I'm a computer geek so I have the desk off to the right and then I have a computer station off to the left I like to have my desk in front of a window whenever I
35:00 - 35:30 can do that this is an old photograph these have now been replaced by LCD monitors but I left the old picture because the crucial thing is it doesn't matter if they're fancy high-tech the key thing is screen space lots of people have studied this how many people in this room have more than one monitor on their computer desktop ok not bad so we're getting there it's starting to happen what I found is that I could go back from 3 to 2 but I just can't go back to 1 there's just too many things and if somebody said it's the difference
35:30 - 36:00 between working on a desk like at home and trying to get work done on the little tray on an airplane in principle the little tray on the airplane is big enough for everything you need to do it's just that in practice it's it's pretty small so multiple monitors I think are very important and I'll show you in a second what I have on each one of those and I believe in this multiple monitor thing we believed in it for a long that's that's my research group our laboratory a long time ago Carnegie Mellon that's Caitlin Kelleher who's now dr. Kelleher thank you and she's at
36:00 - 36:30 Washington University in st. Louis doing doing wonderful things but we had everybody with three monitors and the cost on this is absolutely trivial if you figure the cost of adding a second monitor to an employee's yearly cost to the company it's not even 1% anymore so why would you not do it so one of my walk aways for all of you is you should all go to your boss and say I need a second monitor I just can't work without it Randy told me to tell you that because it will increase your
36:30 - 37:00 productivity and the computers can all drive two monitors so why not so what do I have on my three monitors on the left is my to-do list all sorts of stuff in there and my system we're all idiosyncratic my system is that I just put a number zero through nine and I use an editor that can quickly sort on that number in the first column but the key thing is it's sorted by priority in the middle is my mail program note the empty inbox and I try very hard I sleep better if I go
37:00 - 37:30 to sleep with the inbox empty when my inbox does creep up I get really testy so my wife will actually say to me I think you need to clear the inbox on the third one is a calendar that's this is from a number of years ago but that's kind of like what my my my days would be I used to be very heavily booked and I don't care which software you use on which care which calendars I don't care if it's paper or computer whatever works for you but you should
37:30 - 38:00 have some system whereby you know where you're supposed to be next Tuesday at 2 o'clock because even if you can live your life without that you're using up a lot of your brain to remember all that and not know about you but I don't have enough brain to spare to use it on things I can have paper or computers do for me so back to the overview on the desk itself let's zoom in a little bit look I have the one and one thing I'm working on at the time I have
38:00 - 38:30 a speakerphone this is crucial how many people here have a speakerphone on their desks ok not bad but a lot more people don't speaker phones are essentially free and I spend a lot of time on hold and that's because I live in American society where I get to listen to messages of the forum your call is extremely important to us watch while my actions are cognitively dissonant from my words
38:30 - 39:00 it's like the worst abusive relationship in the world imagine a guy picks you up on the first date he smacks you in the mouth and says I love you honey that's that's pretty much how modern customer service works on the telephone but the great thing about a speakerphone is you hit the speakerphone and you dial and then you just do something else and if it takes seven minutes it takes seven minutes and hey I just look at this as somebody's piped music into my office that's very nice of them I also found that having a
39:00 - 39:30 timer on the clock on the on the phone is handy so that when somebody finally picks up in Bangalore I can I can say things like I'm so glad to be talking with you by the way if you're keeping records on this sort of thing I've been on hold for seven and half minutes but you don't say it angry you just say it as I presume you're logging this kind of stuff and you're not angry so they don't get angry back at you but they feel really guilty and that's good you want guilty right so a speakerphone is really great I find that a speakerphone is probably the best
39:30 - 40:00 material possession you can buy to counter stress if I were like teaching a yoga and meditation class I'd say we'll do all the yoga meditation I think that's wonderful stuff but everybody also has to have a speakerphone what else do we have besides a speakerphone let's talk about telephones for a second I think that the telephone is a great time-waster and I think it's very important to keep your business calls short so I recommend standing during phone calls great for exercise and if you tell yourself I'm not going to sit down until the call is over
40:00 - 40:30 you'll be amazed how much brisker you are start by announcing goals for the call hello sue this is Randy I'm calling you because I have three things that I wanted to get done boom boom boom because then you've given her an agenda and when you're done with the three things you can say that's great those are the three things I had it was great to talk to you I love to talk to you get by boom we're off the phone whatever you do do not put your feet up I mean if you put the feet up it's just all over and the other handy trick is have something on your desk that you actually are kind of interested in going
40:30 - 41:00 to do next so the phone call instead of being Wow I can get off the phone and go do some work or I could keep chit-chatting and usually the person you've called they'd like to chitchat too all right so this is where the time waster in the office goes and if you're a grad student well if you're a grad student already know about time wasting so having something you really want to do next is a great way to get you off the phone quicker so you got to train yourself getting off the phone is hard for a lot
41:00 - 41:30 of people I don't suffer from an abundance of politeness so my sister who's known me for a long time is laughing a knowing laugh so when I want to get off the phone I want to get off the phone I'm done and what I say is you know I love to keep talking with you but I have some students waiting now I'm a professor somewhere there must be students waiting right I mean it's got to be
41:30 - 42:00 now sometimes you get in a situation like with a telemarketer all right and that's awkward because a lot of people are so polite I have no trouble with telemarketers I'll just go there with them all right if you're a telemarketer and you call my house you have made a mistake yeah I can't talk right now but once you give me your home phone number and I'll clay background dinnertime yeah Seinfeld did a great bit on that or or if you want to be a little bit more over the line I'd love to talk with you about that but first I have some things I'd like to sell you and the funny part is
42:00 - 42:30 they never realize you're yanking with them that's it but if you have to hang up on a telemarketer what you do is you hang up while you're talking well I think that's really interesting and I would love to keep you know I mean talk about self-effacing hanging up on yourself and they won't figure it out if they do and they call back just do an answer right so a ten years from now all anybody will remember from this talk is
42:30 - 43:00 hang up on yourself the other thing is group your phone calls call people right before lunch or right before the end of the day because then they have something they would rather do than keep shitty chatting with you so I find that calling somebody at 11:50 is a great way to have a ten-minute phone call because frankly you may think you're interesting but you are not more interesting than lunch I have become very obsessive about phones and using time productively so I I just think that everybody should have
43:00 - 43:30 something like this I don't care about fashion so you know I don't have Bluetooth and you know I have this big ugly thing hi I'm Julie from time-life right but the thing this allows me to do because you know I am sort of living the limit case right now of I've got to get stuff done and I really don't have a lot of time so I get an hour a day where I exercise on my bike and this is me on my bike and if you look carefully you can see I'm wearing that headset I've got my cell phone and for an hour a day I ride my bike around the neighborhood this is time that I'm spending on the phone
43:30 - 44:00 getting work done and it's not a moment being taken away from my wife or my children and it turns out that I can talk and ride a bike at the same time amazing the skill sets I have so it works better in cold weather climate in warm weather climates but I have just found that having a headset frees me up even it's just around the house you wear a headset you can fold laundry it's an absolute twofer and I just think telephones should have headsets and someday we will all have the Borg
44:00 - 44:30 implant and it will be a non-issue what else is on my desk I have sort of one of those address stampers because I got tired of writing my address I have a box of Kleenex in your box at work if you're a faculty member you have to have a box of Kleenex because if Jim is laughing right you know at least if you teach the way I do there will be crying students in your office and what I found to defuse a lot of that is that I would have cs3 52 or
44:30 - 45:00 whatever written on the side of the Kleenex box and I would turn it as I handed it to them and they would take the Kleenex and it would be like oh I said yeah yeah you know it's for the class you're not alone so having Kleenex is very important and thank-you cards I'll now ask the embarrassment question and I don't mean to pick on you but it just points things out so well by show of hands who here has written a
45:00 - 45:30 thank-you note that is not a quid pro quo I don't mean oh you gave me a gift I wrote you a thank-you note and I mean a physical thank-you note with a pen and ink and paper not not email because emails better than nothing but it's that much better than nothing okay how many people here have written a thank-you note in the last week not bad I do better here than at most places because it is UVA chivalry is not dead because how many people in the last month how many people in the last year the fact that there are
45:30 - 46:00 a non-trivial number of hands not up for the year means that anybody who's in this audience as parents are going whoo that was my kid thank you notes are really important there they're a very tangible way to tell someone how much you appreciated things I have thank you notes with me and that's cuz I'm actually writing some later today to some people who've done some nice things for me recently and you say what God you have time for that I'm like yes I have time for that because it's important even in my current status I will make time to write thank-you
46:00 - 46:30 notes to people and even if you're a crafty weaselly bastard you should still write thank-you notes because it makes you so rare that when someone gets a thank-you note they will remember you it seems like the only place that thank-you notes are really taken seriously anymore is when people interviewing for jobs they now sometimes write thank-you notes to the recruiters which I guess shows a sign of desperation on the part of the recent graduates but thank-you notes are a wonderful thing and I would encourage all of you to go out and buy a stack at
46:30 - 47:00 your local dime store and have them on your desk so that when the moment ceases you it's right there and I leave my thank-you notes out on the desk readily accessible and as I've said before gratitude is something can go beyond cards when I got tenure here I took my whole research team down to Disneyworld on my nickel for a week and I just I believe in large gestures but you know it's also a lot of fun I wanted to go to write I didn't send them without proper chaperoning after all what else I have a paper recycling bin
47:00 - 47:30 and this is very good because it helps save the planet but it also helps save my butt so when I have a piece of paper that I would be throwing away I put it in that bin and that takes I don't know a couple of weeks to to get filled up and then actually send somewhere else and so what I really done here is I've created sort of the Windows Macintosh trash can you can pull stuff back out of it works in the real world too and about once a month I go threading through there to find the receipt that I didn't think I'd ever
47:30 - 48:00 need again that I suddenly need and it's extremely handy I suspect that if I were giving this talk in 10 years I would say I just put it in the auto scanner right because I find it almost inconceivable that 10 years from now first off that a lot of the stuff would be paper in my hands anyway but if it were paper that I would have any notion of doing anything other than putting it on the desk where it goes zipped and it's already scanned because it touched the desk right you know this kind of stuff is not really hard to do so I think that's what's going to happen and of course I have a phone book
48:00 - 48:30 notepad I can't live without post-it notes all right I mean and the view out the window of the dog because the dog reminds me that I should be out playing with him we have we had the when I got married I married into a family I got a wife and two beautiful dogs there's the other one could you help me with the debate I've had with my wife by show of hands how many people would semantically say the dog is on the couch nobody thank you thank you because the
48:30 - 49:00 dog was not allowed on the couch and my wife came in one day and anyway thank you for agreeing with me it makes me feel very good so the dog is wonderful the dogs have long gone on but they are still in our hearts and our memories and and I think of them every day and they're they're just they're still a part of my life I've presented to you how I do my office how I do things it's not the only way
49:00 - 49:30 one of the best assistants I've ever met was a woman named Tina Cobb and she has a really different systems she's a spreader all right if you think about it there's a method to her madness everything here is exactly one arms radius from where she sits you know it's it's like a two-armed octopus and she got so much stuff done and I never presumed to tell somebody else how to change their system if their system is working Tina was much more efficient than I was so you know I would just say look do what works for you and everybody has to find the system for themselves
49:30 - 50:00 but you really got to think about what makes me more efficient now let's talk about office logistics in most office settings people come into each other's offices and proceed to suck the life out of each other if you have a big cushy chair in your office you might as well just slather butter all over yourself and send yourself naked into the woods for the wild animals to attack you I say make your office comfortable for you and optionally comfortable for others so no comfy chairs I used to have folding chairs in my office fold it up against
50:00 - 50:30 the wall so people want to come in to me and talk with me they can stand and I would stand up because then the meetings going to be really fast because we want to sit down but then if it looks like it's something we should have a little more time on I very graciously go over and open the folding chair I'm such a gentleman some people do a different tack on this they have the chair already there but they cut two inches off the front leg so the whole time you're in their office you're sort of scooting yourself up I'm not advocating that but I thought it was damn clever the first time I saw it
50:30 - 51:00 scheduling yourself verbs are important you do not find time for important things you make it and you make time by electing not to do something else there's a term from economics that everybody should hold near and dear to that heart and that term is opportunity cost the bad thing about doing something that isn't very valuable it's not that it's a bad thing to have done it the
51:00 - 51:30 problem is that once you spend an hour doing it that's an hour you can never again spend in any other way and that's important now how do you keep these unimportant things from sucking into your life you learn to say no it's great my my youngest child Chloe is at an age where this is her new word about to weekly as she learned it and it's like now everything's no you know no no no no no no she should be giving this talk and I asked her and she said no so she's home playing
51:30 - 52:00 alright but we all hate to say no because people ask us for help and we want to be gracious so let me teach you some gentle knows the first one is I'll do it if I'm really strapped but I want to help you I don't want you to be in the bind so if nobody else steps forward I will do this for you alright or I'll be your deep fallback which you have to keep searching for somebody else now you will find out about the person's character at that moment because if they say great I got my sucker and they stopped looking then they have abused a
52:00 - 52:30 relationship but if they say that's great my stress levels down at zero because now I know it's not going to be a disaster but I'm going to keep looking for somebody for whom it's less of an imposition that's a person that will get lots of this sort of support okay when I was in graduate school we did a moving party with four people a lot of moving parties carry heavy objects we had four people we should have had twelve it was a long day and after that I stopped there new policy I said from now on when somebody says will you help me move I'll say how much stuff you got and they
52:30 - 53:00 would tell me I'd say whom that sounds like about eight people if you give me the names of seven other people that will be there I'll be there and I never again was at a moving party that went 14 hours in January in Pittsburgh everybody has good and bad times a big thing about time management is find your creative time and defend it ruthlessly spend it alone maybe at home if you have to but defend it ruthlessly the other thing is
53:00 - 53:30 find your dead time schedule meetings phone calls exercise mundane stuff but do stuff during that where you don't need to be at your best and we all have these times and the times are not at all intuitive I discovered that my most productive time was between 10:00 p.m. and midnight which is really weird but it's sort of this for me it's just this burst of energy right before the end let's talk about interruptions an interruption there are people who measure this kind of stuff who have stop
53:30 - 54:00 watches and clipboards and what they say is that an interruption takes typically six to nine minutes but then there's a four to five minute recovery to get your head back into what you're doing and if you're doing something like software creation you may never get your head back there the cost can be infinity but if you do the math on that five interruptions blows a whole hour so you've got to find ways to reduce both the frequency and the length of these interruptions one of my favorites is turning phone calls into email if you phone my office at Carnegie Mellon it
54:00 - 54:30 says hi this is Randy please send me email again I presume everybody here has email how many people here when a new message comes in does your computer go ding or make some other noise we still have people doing that what the heck is wrong with you people and I love the fact that computer scientists just know nothing about anything so for years by default all these packages out of the box would go ding every time you get a new piece of email so we had taken a technology explicitly designed to reduce
54:30 - 55:00 interruption and we'd turn them into interruptions so you just got to turn that off whole point of email is you go to it when you're ready not you're sitting around like Pavlov's dog saying oh maybe I'll get another email in the same way you try to not interrupt other people I save stuff up so I have boxes for Tina or for my research group meeting and I put stuff in those boxes and then once a week or however often when the box gets full I walk down the hall and I interrupt that person one time and say here are the eight things I have for you
55:00 - 55:30 how do you cut things short because people will always want to spend more time than you want to spend you can say look somebody interrupts you and says you know got a few minutes and say well I'm in the middle of something right now and that tells them I'm interrupting it I'm going to do it quickly but I got to get back to that or you can say I only have five minutes the great thing about that is that later you have the privilege of extending that if you so choose but when the five minutes are up you can say well I said at the beginning at five minutes and I really have to go now so it's a very socially polite way to bound the amount of time on the interaction if somebody is in your office and they don't get it now I'm not
55:30 - 56:00 saying it as a computer scientist I have an inordinate amount of time to interact the opportunity to interact with people with no social skills but if you have someone in your office who is just not getting it what you do is you stand up you walk to the door you compliment them for some reason this is a crucial part of the process you thank them and you shake their hand and if they still don't leave which is pretty
56:00 - 56:30 much a guarantee that you're dealing with someone from my tribe then you're in the doorway you just keep going what I have found is that people don't like it when you look at your watch while you're talking with them so what I do is I put a wall on the clock right behind them so it's just off axis from their eyes and I can just kind of glance over a little bit when I need to see what time it is it's a very nice way to get me information without being rude to them time Journal's time is the commodity you
56:30 - 57:00 better find out where your time is going so monitor yourself and update it throughout the day you can't wait till the end of the day and say what was I doing at 10:30 because our memories aren't that good so what you do and I really hope that technology within you know another five years or so will be so good that the time journals can be created automatically or at least some facsimile of it but until then what we do is we monitor it ourselves so this is what an empty time journal would look like the details aren't important but the key thing is that when you fill it in you've got a bunch of categories and
57:00 - 57:30 what I was doing and you can do this very informally but you get a lot of real data about where your time went and it's always very different anybody who's done monetary budgeting you look at you go wow I didn't know I was spending that much on dry-cleaning or restaurants would it's always a fascinating surprise and you always spend more than you think but with time budgets you find out that the time is just going wildly differently than you would have imagined the best example of this I know is a turn word Winifred Brooks is time clocks he's a brilliant computer scientist but
57:30 - 58:00 he also has this great array of clocks in his office and when you go in and talk to him he says is this meeting about research or teaching or whatever and then he flips the appropriate switch at the end of the week he knows exactly where his time went a man is a genius when when I meet with students and this is I think Jetts it's appropriate for people in the workplace I say what's your schedule you have a set of fixed meetings every every time every week and what you have to do is you have to look
58:00 - 58:30 at those and identify the the open blocks where you're going to waste time and I can tell you're going to waste time just by looking at it so in this case you've got a class where you've got a class at a certain point and then you've got a gap until the next class so I've identified those here and the gaps between classes that in this case last an hour or an hour and a half this is just prime time to be wasted so what I always taught my students was make up fake class the fake classes go to one specific place in the library during that hour and when you're sitting there
58:30 - 59:00 with just you in the library and your books there's a pretty good chance you might actually study so don't go and hang out with friends for an hour just make that a fake class make your own little study hall it's a simple trick but it's amazing how effective it is when somebody just explicitly does it when you've got your time journal data what do you figure out from that what am i doing that doesn't need to be done what can someone else do I love everyday sort of saying what am i doing that I could delegate to somebody else my sister is again laughing because she knows who that person was in our youth
59:00 - 59:30 what can I do more efficiently and how am I wasting other people's time when you get good at time management you realize that it's a collaborative thing I want to make everybody more efficient it's not a selfish thing it's not me against you it's how do we all collectively get more done as you push on the time journal stuff you start to find that you don't make yourself more efficient at work so you can become some sort of uber worker person you become more efficient it works so you can leave at 5:00 and go
59:30 - 60:00 home and be with the people that you love people call this work-life balance for the junior faculty you may have heard of it in some sort of mythical sense but it is it is possible I found that I worked less I work fewer hours after I got married and I got more done and I was always fascinated in graduate school that the people who graduated fastest with their PhDs were the people who had
60:00 - 60:30 a spouse and kids so how can that be that's like a built in boat anchor all right you know you got all these other demands on your time and I'm like a single guy and I got all the time in the world and that's the problem I approach it like I got all the time in the world so my time isn't precious when you got a spouse and little kids your spouse is likely to say things to you like you better not be in at that grad school more than 40 hours a week so when you come in you're not sitting around playing computer games not that I ever did that but when you come in you're coming in
60:30 - 61:00 and you're doing work and I found like most people that once I got married and had kids my whole view of time management really got I mean we were playing for real stakes now because now there are people whose lives are impacted if I'm spending too much time at work the other thing about time management it makes you really start to look through a crystalline lens and figure out what's important and what's not I love this picture I've blanked out her name but this says bla bla bla bla bla whereas a pregnant woman and it says she is worrying about the effect on her unborn
61:00 - 61:30 child from the sound of jackhammers so they're doing construction and the people here are laughing because they can see that this woman who's so concerned about the jackhammers affecting her unborn child is holding a lit cigarette you got to get really good at saying I got to focus my time and energy on the things that matter and not worry about the things that don't know I'm not a medical doctor and I don't play one on TV but I'm willing to bet that if I were the fetus I'd be saying put the cigarette out mom I can deal with the noise
61:30 - 62:00 alright so in terms of I want to take a little story about effective versus efficient I actually was going to give this talk a couple of weeks ago and I talked with Gabe about it and we're going to come up here because as a surprise for my wife her favorite musical group in the whole world is the police and has been for a long long time a wonderful group and so we said hey we're going to drive up to Charlottesville and see them we managed to get some tickets and I said well honey well as long as we're up there I promise Gabe a long time ago that I wanted to give my time management talk
62:00 - 62:30 and she said okay because it's about a three-hour drive so it's very efficient to couple these two trips together and about two days later she said you know honey I know how you are with talks and before you give one for a couple of days you start to obsess and and as we talk through it she said so we're going to go up in this couples time away we got in a sitter to watch the kids and this couples time away is going to be eaten up by you obsessing over preparing this talk and I thought about it I said okay so obviously the right solution is we should keep our
62:30 - 63:00 couples time our couples time will go up we'll see the concert you know we'll have our time together and I'll just schedule a different day and I'll go up on one day trip and I'll do the talk and she said wow that was easy and as write once you frame it in the right way and you say yeah the cost here is that I have to do the drive a second time but it turns out I'm doing the drive with my nephew Christopher and we talked and my mom this turns out so the time wasn't even dead time so there was no loss at all but the key thing was we said it's not about efficiency it's about effectiveness and best overall outcome
63:00 - 63:30 and of course one of the nice things was that we did get to go to the police concert and I really want to thank gaben and Jim mailer because we really went to the concert and my wife was very happy I'm the guy in the back saying she's not paying any attention to me today but but it was wonderful and he is a charming gentleman in person he is absolutely charming so let's talk about procrastination there's an old saying procrastination is the thief of time buck Rastan ation is hard and I have a
63:30 - 64:00 little bit of an insight here for you we don't usually procrastinate because we're lazy sometimes people rationalize their procrastination they say well gee if I wait long enough maybe I won't have to do it right that's true sometimes you get lucky all right but and other people say gee if I start on it now I'm just going to spend all the time on it if I only if I only give myself the last two days I'll do it in two days because that's the work expands to fill the time available Parkinson's
64:00 - 64:30 law that's marginally true but I think the key balance here is to understand that doing things at the last minute is really expensive and it's just much more expensive than doing it just before the last minute so if you're doing something and you can still mail it through the u.s. mail you have suddenly avoided that oh my god I've got to do the whole FedEx thing now I love FedEx FedEx supports our whole universal habit of procrastination but it also allows us to get stuff there when it really has to be there in a
64:30 - 65:00 hurry so that's a wonderful thing but I think you have to you have to realize that if you push things right up to the deadline that's where all the stress comes from because now you can't reach people if somebody is out of the office for just one day your whole plan is upset so you really have to work hard on this kind of stuff the other things that deadlines are really important we are all essentially deadlines driven so if you have something that doesn't do for a long time make up a fake deadline and act like it's real and that's wonderful because those the deadlines when push comes to shove you can slip on by a couple of days and it's alright so
65:00 - 65:30 they're less stressful if you are procrastinating you've got to find some way to get back into your comfort zone identify why you're not enthusiastic whenever I procrastinate on something there's always a deep psychological reason usually it's I'm afraid of being embarrassed because I don't think I'll do it well or I'm afraid I'm going to fail at it and sometimes it involves asking somebody for something and one of the most magical things I've learned in my life is that sometimes you just have to ask and wonderful things happen but you just
65:30 - 66:00 have to you know step out and do that I I won the parent lottery I have just wonderful parents and my dad unfortunately passed away not too long ago but there's one of my favorite photographs because my dad was such a smart guy I could almost never surprise him or impress him because he was just that good but we were down on a family vacation at Disney World and the monorails were going by and we're going to board the monorail and we noticed that in the in the front up here in the cabin on earth you can see in this picture but there's an engineer who drives the monorail and they're actually guests something there with him which is
66:00 - 66:30 kind of unusual my dad now we're talking about that and I knew because I've done some consulting for Disney my dad saying oh they probably have to be special VIPs or something like that I said oh there is a trick there is a special way you get into that cabin and he said really what is it I said I'll show you Dylan come with me and Dylan who's the back of his head you can see there we walk up and I whispered to Dylan we can ride in the front and we go to the attendant of the attendants says why yes you can and he opens the gate and my dad is just like I
66:30 - 67:00 said I told you there was a trick I didn't say it was hard and sometimes all you have to do is ask and it's that easy let's talk about delegation nobody operates individually anymore and you can accomplish a lot more when you have help however most people delegate very poorly they treat delegation is dumping I don't have time to do this you take care of it you know and then they micromanage and it's just a disaster the first thing if you're going to delegate something to a subordinate is you grant them Authority
67:00 - 67:30 with responsibility you don't tell somebody go take care of this but if you need to spend any money you've got to come back to me for approval ah that's not empowering them that's telling you don't trust them if I trust you enough to do the work I trust you enough to give you the resources and the budget and the time and whatever else you need to get it done you give them the whole package the other thing is delegate but always do the ugliest job yourself so when we need to vacuum the lab before a demo I bring in the vacuum cleaner and I vacuum it all right do the dirtiest job yourself so it's very clear that you're
67:30 - 68:00 willing to still get the dirt on your hands treat your people well people are the greatest resource and if you are fortunate enough to have people who report to you treat them with dignity respect and you know to sound a little bit corny the kind of love that they should have from someone who cares about them in their professional development and for crying out loud staff and secretaries are your lifeline all right if you don't think you should treat them well because it's a decent thing to do at least treat them well because if you don't they will get you right and they will get you good and you
68:00 - 68:30 will deserve it and I will applaud them by giving a talk on time management with Alf Weaver in the audience where is elf there he is that's like talking about surviving the Jonestown flood if Noah's in the audience one of things that Alf Weaver taught me is whether it's to a colleague or to a subordinate if you want to get something done you cannot be vague and he said you give somebody a specific thing to do a
68:30 - 69:00 specific date and time Thursday is not a specific time Thursday at 3:22 gets somebody's attention and you give them a specific penalty or reward that will happen if that deadline for that thing is not met and then he policy said and remember the penalty reward has to be for them not you one right I won't be screwed over if you need that deadline Oh bummer all right this is an important point to not get wrong
69:00 - 69:30 challenge people I've been told that one of the tricks is you delegate until they complain I don't bite until I complain but what I found is that under delegation is a problem people are usually yearning for the opportunity to do more they want to be challenged they want to prove to you and themselves they can be more capable so let them communication has to be clear so many times people get upset with their bosses because there's a misunderstanding and particularly in a time of email it's so easy to communicate via email even if
69:30 - 70:00 you had a face-to-face conversation send a two-line email just to be specific afterwards and it's not like we're trying to be all lawyer like it's just that as judge Wapner said get it in writing if you remember the People's Court and judge Wapner said if there isn't a problem it's not a problem it didn't take you much time but if there ever is a problem well wait a second there won't be a problem because there's a written record and that's the magic there won't be a confusion because you can't disagree about the written work don't give people how you want them do it tell them what you want them to do give them objectives not procedures let
70:00 - 70:30 them surprise you with a way of solving a problem you would never have imagined sometimes those solutions are mind blowing good or bad but they're really much more fun than just having them do it the way you would have done it and you know what if you're a university your job should be to have people smarter than you ie your students and they will come up with stuff you would never have thought of the other thing is tell people the relative importance of each task I mean so many people say oh my boss is an ogre they gave me five things to do I'm like what do they tell you which one was the most
70:30 - 71:00 important oh yeah hmm I guess I could ask that knowing that if you have five things which are the ones to get done is really important because if you're flying blind you've got a 20% chance of getting them done in the right order and delegation can never be done to you does everyone see the difference in the two pictures this is my daughter Chloe I love her to death but I want her to grow up to be a
71:00 - 71:30 wonderful person and I know the sooner she holds her own bottle the better sociology beware upward delegations sometimes you try to delegate people try to hand it back to you one of the best things I ever saw was someone who had a secretary trying to say I can't do this you'll have to take it back and he just put his hands behind his back and took a step backwards and then he waited and then eventually the secretary said or maybe I could find this other solution and he said that's wonderful I'm so proud you thought of
71:30 - 72:00 that right it was just it was an elegant gesture reinforced behavior won't repeated one of my favorite stories in the one minute manager as he talked about did you ever wonder how they got the killer whales to jump through the hoop if they did it like modern American office managers they would yell at the killer whale jump through the hoop and every time the killer whale didn't jump through the hoop they'd hit it with a stick right I mean this is how we train people in the office place read the book if you want to see how they actually do it because I'm curious I know now but it's
72:00 - 72:30 really cool how they do get them to do it so reinforced behavior one repeated when people do things that you like praise them and thank them that's worth more than any amount of monetary reward or a little plaque people really like to just be told straight up thank you I really appreciate that you did a good job the other thing is that if you don't want things delegate it back up to you don't learn how to do them I take great pride I don't know how to run photo copiers and fax machines and I ain't going to learn that's certainly now I'm not going to spend my remaining time meetings the average executive spends
72:30 - 73:00 more than 40% of his or her time in a meeting my advice is when you have a meeting lock the door unplug the phone and take everybody's BlackBerry's because if it's worth our time it's worth our time if it's not worth our time it's not worth our time but I don't have any interest in being in a room with six people who are all half there because that's very inefficient I don't think meeting should ever last more than an hour with very rare exception and I think that there should be an agenda I got into a great habit a couple of years ago when I just started saying it's a no agenda I won't attend
73:00 - 73:30 and the great thing about that is whoever called the meeting had to actually think before they showed up about why we were supposed to be there because otherwise it's like well why are we here because we had a meeting it's on all of our calendars it's it's just a classic Dilbert moment so most important thing about meetings and again this this comes from the one minute manager one minute minutes at the end of a meeting somebody has to have been assigned to the scribe and they write down in one minute or less what decisions got made and who is responsible for what by when then the email it out everybody because
73:30 - 74:00 if you don't do that you have your next weekly meeting next week and you all sit around going now who is going to do this right it's very inefficient and it's so fast to just do these one-minute minutes let's talk about technology people I'm a computer scientist so they say which gadget will make me more time efficient and I don't have an answer for that it's all idiosyncratic but I will tell you that my favorite comment about technology comes from a janitor at the University of Central Florida who said computers are faster they just take longer
74:00 - 74:30 that's Zen right there so that's another way of saying only use technology that's worth it and worth it is end to end did it make me more efficient and that depends on how you work and we're all different and remember that technology is getting insane I walked into McDonald's and I ordered you know happy meal number two and they said would you like a cell phone with that I went to the grocery store to buy sixteen slices of American cheese and you get growl yours encyclopedia so with
74:30 - 75:00 sixteen slices of cheese you get all of man's knowledge for free that's just spooky scary and remember that technology really has to be something that makes your life better you guys may have seen this I just find it very humorous
75:00 - 75:30 so only use technology that helps you I find the technology is good if it allows you to do things in a new way just doing the same things a little bit faster with technology is nice but when technology changes the workflow so I was carving pumpkins a few years ago and this is FM a good friend of mine and you don't know if you can see it but down by her right
75:30 - 76:00 knee is a pattern and you lay this pattern over the pumpkin you get this little special carving knife and you can instead of these amateurish pumpkins like I made you get this sort of howling at the moon and her husband Jeff and I thought this was really cool but it in sign of a reactionary Burning Man kind of a moment we grabbed our power drills and we carved our pumpkins that way use technology if it changes the way you do things because you get and believe me the results of a power drill you get
76:00 - 76:30 these little oh it's just gorgeous let's talk briefly about email because email is such a large part of all our lives first off don't ever delete any of it save all of it I started doing this ten years ago write an interesting thing is that all the historians talk about oh it's such a shame we don't have people keeping Diaries we don't know what their day is like I'm like you fools we have just entered a society circa about ten years ago and I'm a living example of it every piece of my correspondence is not only saved it's searchable so if I were
76:30 - 77:00 you know a person of merit a historian which is a big stretch a historian could actually look at my patterns of communication much better than the most compulsive diary writer now we could talk about whether or not I'm being in for full you know introspective that's that's about content but in terms of quantity it's great and of course you can save your email and you can search it and it's just wonderful because you can pull back stuff from five years ago so never delete your email here's a big email trick if you want to
77:00 - 77:30 get something done do not send the email to five people hey could somebody take care of this every one of those five recipients is thinking one and only one thing I deleted it first all right so the other four people will take care of this I don't have to so you send it to one and only one person but if you really want it to be done send it to somebody who can do it tell them what's again Alf Weaver specific things specific time and then these the penalty can be more subtle like you just see see
77:30 - 78:00 their boss all right and the other thing I've had to teach I had this conversation with every student in my entire career because they send email and then they just wait for the person to respond and I say if the person is not responded within 48 hours it's okay to nag them and the reason it's okay to nag them because if they haven't responded within 48 hours the chance that they are ever going to respond is zero I mean maybe not zero maybe that small but in my experience if people don't respond you
78:00 - 78:30 within 48 hours you'll probably never hear from them so just start nagging them let's talk about the care and feeding of bosses there's a phrase managing from beneath because we all know that all bosses are idiots that's certainly the expression you know the offense the sense I've gotten from everybody who has a boss when you have a boss write things down do that clear communication thing ask them when is our next meeting what do you want me to have done by then so you've got sort of a contract who can I turn to for help besides you because I
78:30 - 79:00 don't want to bother you and remember your boss wants a result not an excuse general advice on vacations phone callers should get two options the first one is when you're on vacation the first option is contact John Smith not me I'm out of the office but this person can help you now if it's urgent or call back when I'm back why because you don't want to come back to a long sequence of phone messages saying you know hey Randy can you help me get care of this and you call them back and you know you mean on vacation for a week they already solved it and the other thing is that it's not
79:00 - 79:30 a vacation if you're reading email all right trust me on that it's not a vacation if you're reading email I can stay in my house all weekend and not read email and it's a vacation but if I go to Hawaii and I've got a blackberry I'm not on vacation and I know this when I got married my wife and I got married we left our reception in a hot-air balloon which did not have wireless on it and Dean Jim Morris at the time we took a month-long honeymoon which was great but
79:30 - 80:00 not really long enough and Jim Morris said and I said I'm not gonna be reachable for a month and Jim said that's not acceptable so what do mean it's not acceptable he said well I pay you so that's the not acceptable work and I said oh okay there and I said there so there has to be a way to reach me he said yes I said okay so you called my office there would be a phone answering machine message that said hi this is Randy I'm on vacation I waited till 39 to get married and so we're going for a month and I hope you have a problem with that but apparently my boss does so he says I have to be reachable
80:00 - 80:30 so here's how you can reach me my wife's parents live in blah blah blah town here's their names 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 [Applause] here's some of my most important advice we close with some of the best stuff kill your television people who study this say the average American watches 28
80:30 - 81:00 hours of television a week that's almost three-quarters of a full-time job so if you really want to get time back in your life you don't have to kill your television but just unplug it put it in the closet and put a blanket over it see how long it takes you to get the shakes turn money into time especially junior faculty members or other people who have young children this is the time to throw money at the problem hire somebody else
81:00 - 81:30 to mow your lawn do whatever you need to do but exchange time for exchange money for time at every opportunity when you have very young children because you just don't have enough time it's just too hard and the other thing is eat and sleep and exercise above all else you always have time to sleep because if you get sleep-deprived everything falls apart other general advice never break a promise but renegotiate them if need be if you said I'll have this done by Tuesday at noon you can call the person on Friday and say I'm still good to my
81:30 - 82:00 word but I'm really jacked up and I'm going to have to stay and work over the weekend to meet that Tuesday deadline is there any way there's any slack and a lot of times they'll say Thursday spine because I really need it Thursday but I told you Tuesday or they'll say oh it's no problem I can have Jim do that instead of you he has some free time now if they say no I there's no wiggle room here you say that's okay no problem I'm still good to my work all right if you haven't got time to write it do it right you don't have time to do it wrong that's self-evident recognize that most things are pass/fail people spend way too much time there's a
82:00 - 82:30 reason we have the expression good enough it's because the thing is good enough and the last thing is get feedbacks loops ask people in confidence because if someone will tell you what you're doing right or doing wrong and they'll tell you the truth that's worth more than anything else in the whole world I recommend these two books time management is not a late-breaking field both these books are old books but I recommend them highly and it's traditional to close a talk like
82:30 - 83:00 with this is like this with here's the things I told you about I'm not going to tell you the things I told you about I'm going to tell you the things that you can operationally go out and do today first thing if you don't have a day timer or a personal digital assistant you know a Palm Pilot or ever go get one put your to-do lists in priority order you can use the four quadrants or do what I do just put a number zero nine but sorted by priority and do a time journal if that's really too much effort just count the number of hours you watch of television in the next week that's my
83:00 - 83:30 gift to you and the last thing is once you've got your day-timer make a note for 30 days from today it's okay if that one goes ding to remind you and revisit this talk in 30 days it will be up on the web courtesy of gabe and ask what have I changed and if I haven't changed anything then we still had a pleasant hour together if you have changed things then you'll probably have a lot more time to spend with the ones
83:30 - 84:00 you love and that's important time is all we have and you may find one day you have less than you think thank you [Applause]
84:00 - 84:30 mm well that was amazing when me and Mandy first talked about him giving this talk I said well we'll pick
84:30 - 85:00 the biggest Auditorium on campus Capital all right here 850 people and he said you really think we can get 850 people in a room to listen to this and I said not only will do that but we'll have to turn people away and it'll be the biggest attendance since the Dalai Lama came here gave a talk and he said big hitter the Lama and after I started getting hundreds of
85:00 - 85:30 emails from all of you and many other people who couldn't find seats here but we'll have to see it on the web mykola and I said we're going to need a bigger boat and that's how it went so Randy thanks again we love you and it was great
85:30 - 86:00 and those are those are refreshments teas and cookies in the lobby so go out there and have a snack and we'll see you there thank you for coming