This section may be called “It’s About How to Live Your Life,” but it’s really about how I’ve tried to live mine. I guess it’s my way of saying: Here’s what worked for me.
—R.P.
28
Dream Big
M EN FIRST walked on the moon during the summer of 1969, when I was eight years old. I knew then that pretty much anything was possible. It was as if all of us, all over the world, had been given permission to dream big dreams.
I was at camp that summer, and after the lunar module landed, all of us were brought to the main farm house, where a television was set up. The astronauts were taking a long time getting organized before they could climb down the ladder and walk on the lunar surface. I understood. They had a lot of gear, a lot of details to attend to. I was patient.
But the people running the camp kept looking at their watches. It was already after eleven. Eventually, while smart decisions were being made on the moon, a dumb one was made here on Earth. It had gotten too late. All of us kids were sent back to our tents to go to sleep.
I was completely peeved at the camp directors. The thought in my head was this: “My species has gotten off of our planet and landed in a new world for the first time, and you people think bedtime matters?”
But when I got home a few weeks later, I learned that my dad had taken a photo of our TV set the second Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. He had preserved the moment for me, knowing it could help trigger big dreams. We still have that photo in a scrapbook.
I understand the arguments about how the billions of dollars spent to put men on the moon could have been used to fight poverty and hunger on Earth. But, look, I’m a scientist who sees inspiration as the ultimate tool for doing good.
The moon landing on our television, courtesy of my father.
When you use money to fight poverty, it can be of great value, but too often, you’re working at the margins. When you’re putting people on the moon, you’re inspiring all of us to achieve the maximum of human potential, which is how our greatest problems will eventually be solved.
Give yourself permission to dream. Fuel your kids’ dreams, too. Once in a while, that might even mean letting them stay up past their bedtimes.
29
Earnest Is Better Than Hip
I ’LL TAKE an earnest person over a hip person every time, because hip is short-term. Earnest is long-term.
Earnestness is highly underestimated. It comes from the core, while hip is trying to impress you with the surface.
“Hip” people love parodies. But there’s no such thing as a timeless parody, is there? I have more respect for the earnest guy who does something that can last for generations, and that hip people feel the need to parody.
When I think of someone who is earnest, I think of a Boy Scout who works hard and becomes an Eagle Scout. When I was interviewing people to work for me, and I came upon a candidate who had been an Eagle Scout, I’d almost always try to hire him. I knew there had to be an earnestness about him that outweighed any superficial urges toward hipness.
Think about it. Becoming an Eagle Scout is just about the only thing you can put on your resume at age fifty that you did at age fourteen—and it still impresses. (Despite my efforts at earnestness, I never did make it to Eagle Scout.)
My wardrobe hasn’t changed.
Fashion, by the way, is commerce masquerading as hip. I’m not at all interested in fashion, which is why I rarely buy new clothes. The fact that fashion goes out of fashion and then comes back into fashion based solely on what a few people somewhere think they can sell, well to me, that’s insanity.
My parents taught me: You buy new clothes when your old clothes wear out. Anyone who saw what I wore to my last lecture knows this is advice I live by!
My wardrobe is far from hip. It’s kind of earnest. It’s going to carry me through just fine.
30
Raising the White Flag
M Y MOTHER always calls me “Randolph.”
She was raised on a small dairy farm in Virginia during the Depression, wondering if there’d be enough food for dinner. She picked “Randolph” because it felt like the name some classy Virginian might have. And that may be why I rejected it and abhorred it. Who wants a name like that?
And yet my mother kept at it. As a teen, I confronted her. “Do you really believe your right to name me supersedes my right to have my own identity?”
“Yes, Randolph, I do,” she said.
Well, at least we knew where we stood!
By the time I got to college, I had had enough. She’d send me mail addressed to “Randolph Pausch.” I’d scrawl “no such person at this address” on the envelope, and send the letters back unopened.
In a great act of compromise, my mom began addressing letters to “R. Pausch.” Those, I’d open. But then, when we’d talk on the phone, she’d revert back to old form. “Randolph, did you get our letter?”
Now, all these years later, I’ve given up. I am so appreciative of my mother on so many fronts that if she wants to burden me with an unnecessary “olph” whenever she’s around, I’m more than happy put up with it. Life’s too short.
Mom and me, at the beach.
Somehow, with the passage of time, and the deadlines that life imposes, surrendering became the right thing to do.
31
Let’s Make a Deal
W HEN I was in grad school, I developed the habit of tipping back in my chair at the dining-room table. I would do it whenever I visited my parents’ house, and my mother would constantly reprimand me. “Randolph, you are going to break that chair!” she’d say.
I liked leaning back in the chair. It felt comfortable. And the chair seemed to handle itself on two legs just fine. So, meal after meal after meal, I’d lean back and she’d reprimand.
One day, my mother said, “Stop leaning back in that chair. I’m not going to tell you again!”
Now that sounded like something I could sign up for. So I suggested we create a contract—a parent/child agreement in writing. If I broke the chair, I’d have to pay to replace not just the chair…but, as an added inducement, the entire dining-room set. (Replacing an individual chair on a twenty-year-old set would be impossible.) But, until I actually broke the chair, no lectures from Mom.
Certainly my mother was right; I was putting stress on the chair legs. But both of us decided that this agreement was a way to avoid arguments. I was acknowledging my responsibility in case there was damage. She was in the position of being able to say “You should always listen to your mother” if one of the chair legs cracked.
The chair has never broken. And whenever I visit her house and lean backward, the agreement still stands. There’s not a cross word. In fact, the whole dynamic has changed. I won’t say Mom has gone as far as to actually encourage me to lean back. But I do think she has long had her eye on a new dining-room set.
32
Don’t Complain, Just Work Harder
T OO MANY people go through life complaining about their problems. I’ve always believed that if you took one-tenth the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, you’d be surprised by how well things can work out.
I’ve known some terrific non-complainers in my life. One was Sandy Blatt, my landlord during graduate school. When he was a young man, a truck backed into him while he was unloading boxes into the cellar of a building. He toppled backwards down the steps and into the cellar. “How far was the fall?” I asked. His answer was simple: “Far enough.” He spent the rest of his life as a quadriplegic.
Sandy had been a phenomenal athlete, and at the time of the accident, he was engaged to be married. He didn’t want to be a burden to his fiancée so he told her, “You didn’t sign on for this. I’ll understand if you want to back out. You can go in peace.” And she did.
I met Sandy when he was in his thirties, and he just wowed me with his attitude. He had this incredible non-whining aura about him. He had worked hard and
become a licensed marriage counselor. He got married and adopted children. And when he talked about his medical issues, he did so matter-of-factly. He once explained to me that temperature changes were hard on quadriplegics because they can’t shiver. “Pass me that blanket, will you, Randy?” he’d say. And that was it.
My favorite non-complainer of all time may be Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play Major League Baseball. He endured racism that many young people today couldn’t even fathom. He knew he had to play better than the white guys, and he knew he had to work harder. So that’s what he did. He vowed not to complain, even if fans spit on him.
I used to have a photo of Jackie Robinson hanging in my office, and it saddened me that so many students couldn’t identify him, or knew little about him. Many never even noticed the photo. Young people raised on color TV don’t spend a lot of time looking at black-and-white images.
That’s too bad. There are no better role models than people like Jackie Robinson and Sandy Blatt. The message in their stories is this: Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won’t make us happier.
33
Treat the Disease, Not the Symptom
Y EARS AGO, I dated a lovely young woman who was a few thousand dollars in debt. She was completely stressed out about this. Every month, more interest would be added to her debts.
To deal with her stress, she would go every Tuesday night to a meditation and yoga class. This was her one free night, and she said it seemed to be helping her. She would breathe in, imagining that she was finding ways to deal with her debts. She would breathe out, telling herself that her money problems would one day be behind her.
It went on like this, Tuesday after Tuesday.
Finally, one day I looked through her finances with her. I figured out that if she spent four or five months working a part-time job on Tuesday nights, she could actually pay off all the money she owed.
I told her I had nothing against yoga or meditation. But I did think it’s always best to try to treat the disease first. Her symptoms were stress and anxiety. Her disease was the money she owed.
“Why don’t you get a job on Tuesday nights and skip yoga for a while?” I suggested.
This was something of a revelation to her. And she took my advice. She became a Tuesday-night waitress and soon enough paid off her debts. After that, she could go back to yoga and really breathe easier.
34
Don’t Obsess Over What People Think
I ’VE FOUND that a substantial fraction of many people’s days is spent worrying about what others think of them. If nobody ever worried about what was in other people’s heads, we’d all be 33 percent more effective in our lives and on our jobs.
How did I come up with 33 percent? I’m a scientist. I like exact numbers, even if I can’t always prove them. So let’s just run with 33 percent.
I used to tell anyone who worked in my research group: “You don’t ever have to worry about what I’m thinking. Good or bad, I’ll let you know what’s in my head.”
That meant when I wasn’t happy about something, I spoke up, often directly and not always tactfully. But on the positive side, I was able to reassure people: “If I haven’t said anything, you have nothing to worry about.”
Students and colleagues came to appreciate that, and they didn’t waste a lot of time obsessing over “What is Randy thinking?” Because mostly, what I was thinking was this: I have people on my team who are 33 percent more effective than everyone else. That’s what was in my head.
35
Start By Sitting Together
W HEN I have to work with other people, I try to imagine us sitting together with a deck of cards. My impulse is always to put all my cards on the table, face up, and to say to the group, “OK, what can we collectively make of this hand?”
Being able to work well in a group is a vital and necessary skill in both the work world and in families. As a way to teach this, I’d always put my students into teams to work on projects.
Over the years, improving group dynamics became a bit of an obsession for me. On the first day of each semester, I’d break my class into about a dozen four-person groups. Then, on the second day of class, I’d give them a one-page handout I’d written titled “Tips for Working Successfully in a Group.” We’d go over it, line by line. Some students found my tips to be beneath them. They rolled their eyes. They assumed they knew how to play well with others: They had learned it in kindergarten. They didn’t need my rudimentary little pointers.
But the most self-aware students embraced the advice. They sensed that I was trying to teach them the fundamentals. It was a little like Coach Graham coming to practice without a football. Among my tips:
Meet people properly: It all starts with the introduction. Exchange contact information. Make sure you can pronounce everyone’s names.
Find things you have in common: You can almost always find something in common with another person, and from there, it’s much easier to address issues where you have differences. Sports cut across boundaries of race and wealth. And if nothing else, we all have the weather in common.
Try for optimal meeting conditions: Make sure no one is hungry, cold or tired. Meet over a meal if you can; food softens a meeting. That’s why they “do lunch” in Hollywood.
Let everyone talk: Don’t finish someone’s sentences. And talking louder or faster doesn’t make your idea any better.
Check egos at the door: When you discuss ideas, label them and write them down. The label should be descriptive of the idea, not the originator: “the bridge story” not “Jane’s story.”
Praise each other: Find something nice to say, even if it’s a stretch. The worst ideas can have silver linings if you look hard enough.
Phrase alternatives as questions: Instead of “I think we should do A, not B,” try “What if we did A, instead of B?” That allows people to offer comments rather than defend one choice.
At the end of my little lesson, I told my students I’d found a good way to take attendance. “It’s easier for me if I just call you by group,” I’d say. “Group One raise your hands…Group Two?…”
As I called off each group, hands would go up. “Did anybody notice anything about this?” I’d ask. No one had an answer. So I’d call off the groups again. “Group One?…Group Two?…Group Three?…” All around the room, hands shot up again.
Sometimes, you have to resort to cheesy theatrics to break through to students, especially on issues where they think they know everything. So here’s what I did:
I kept going with my attendance drill until finally my voice was raised. “Why on earth are all of you still sitting with your friends?” I’d ask. “Why aren’t you sitting with the people in your group?”
Some knew my irritation was for effect, but everyone took me seriously. “I’m going to walk out of this room,” I said, “and I’ll be back in sixty seconds. When I return, I expect you to be sitting with your groups! Does everyone understand?” I’d waltz out and I’d hear the panic in the room, as students gathered up their book bags and reshuffled themselves into groups.
When I returned, I explained that my tips for working in groups were not meant to insult their intelligence or maturity. I just wanted to show them that they had missed something simple—the fact that they needed to sit with their partners—and so they could certainly benefit from reviewing the rest of the basics.
At the next class, and for the rest of the semester, my students (no dummies), always sat with their groups.
36
Look for the Best in Everybody
T HIS IS beautiful advice that I got once from Jon Snoddy, my hero at Disney Imagineering. I just was so taken with the way he put it. “If you wait long enough,” he said, “people will surprise and impress you.”
As he saw things: When you’re frustrated with people, when they’ve made you angry, it just may
be because you haven’t given them enough time.
Jon warned me that sometimes this took great patience—even years. “But in the end,” he said, “people will show you their good side. Almost everybody has a good side. Just keep waiting. It will come out.”
37
Watch What They Do, Not What They Say
M Y DAUGHTER is just eighteen months, so I can’t tell her this now, but when she’s old enough, I want Chloe to know something a female colleague once told me, which is good advice for young ladies everywhere. In fact, pound for pound, it’s the best advice I’ve ever heard.
My colleague told me: “It took a long time, but I’ve finally figured it out. When it comes to men who are romantically interested in you, it’s really simple. Just ignore everything they say and only pay attention to what they do.”
That’s it. So here it is, for Chloe.
And as I think about it, some day it could come in pretty useful for Dylan and Logan, too.
38
If at First You Don’t Succeed…
…TRY, TRY a cliché.
I love clichés. A lot of them, anyway. I have great respect for the old chestnuts. As I see it, the reason clichés are repeated so often is because they’re so often right on the money.
Educators shouldn’t be afraid of clichés. You know why? Because kids don’t know most of them! They’re a new audience, and they’re inspired by clichés. I’ve seen it again and again in my classroom.