The QLog

The Last Lecture

"We can not change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." - Randy Pausch

Former Disney Imagineer and Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch is an inspiring man at age 47. He is also dying from pancreatic cancer but you would not know from his enthusiasm for life. On September 18, 2007 he gave his 'last lecture' to a packed audience at McConomy Auditorium. Also, more recently, his new book The Last Lecture, was published and I do recommend it. However, I suggest that watching the original lecture should be mandetory for just about every adult at any age!

As someone who strives to enable the goals of others, I promise that if you choose to spend the full 76 minutes viewing this very enjoyable lecture, you will be well rewarded. It will help focus your thinking on what should be most important for your life: striving to acheive your dreams!

50/5 Challenge

I have encouraged friends, family, and clients (and some strangers) to consider crafting the following:

A. A Life List of 101 Goals that includes goals for 1, 3, 5, 10, 20, (and maybe 50) year time horizons.

B. A Purpose Statement to explain the reason one has for waking up everyday (a good starting point is to consider what you would like people to say about you...both now and 100 years after you have died).

However, a few people have told me that they have have a hard time with both of these activities. Here is an exercise that can help.

Today, you are given both "the good news" and "the bad news".

1. While having breakfast with your accountant, you discover that your net worth has suddenly increased, due to all your efforts, to $50 million dollars!

2. However, after lunch, during a routine doctor visit, you discover that you only have 5 years to live. These will be healthy years until the very last day; however, there is no cure or treatment.

This is the 50/5 Challenge. Map out how you would spend your time for the next five years. Go into detail. Do not just say "travel the world". Where would you go? Why? With who? What would you do there? What else?

If you have a problem with goal setting, this may help you gain some insight into what you really would like to try, see, experience, be, or have before you really do enter into your last five years of your life.   

What Have You Forgotten?

On March 19th, the world lost writer and visionary Sir Arthur C. Clarke. You can see the farewell video that he recorded for his 90th birthday where he outlines his world-changing "three wishes" for humanity I hope they all are granted in the near future.   

Although Clarke is best well known for his science fiction novels such as Childhood’s End (which has been in print for 50-plus years and has generated over $25 million in revenue) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (plus the 1969 movie of the same name that he co-created with director Stanley Kubrick), he also wrote a technical paper that outlined the feasibility of a true global communication system in 1945 via satellites in geosynchronous orbit, a brilliant insight, some years before Sputnik. Twenty years later, Clarke wrote an interesting essay entitled "How I Lost a Billion Dollars in My Spare Time" about this idea as he did not patent the the concept (yet, he points out, the patent itself would have expired by the time it would become economically viable anyhow).

I decided to re-read his classic novel Rendezvous with Rama and while I was immersed within his fictional universe, I discovered a great question, a motto of one of the characters, Karl Mercer: What Have You Forgotten?

Consider your current goals, projects, and tasks. What is missing? What is hiding? What have you overlooked? Is there an assumption you need to re-think, a variable you need to re-calculate? In other words, what have you forgotten?

Thought Question Thursday

Would you rather double your income or triple your happiness?

Of course, these goals are not necessarily mutually exclusive; however, choose the answer that would be more important to you at this point in your life. Then consider the deeper question: why?

Two Extremes and the Mean

When considering any major problem, it is useful to consider these three potential end-games.

1) What is the worst possible thing that could happen? Consider the bleakest consequence. What steps can be taken to decrease the possibility of this occurring?

2) What is the best case scenario? Stay objective when answering this; however, consider the optimum solution and the methods that would produce this successful result.

3) What is the most likely outcome? Why do you think this is the case? Analyze your assumptions.

THE Answer or Answers?

As we grow up, schools often instill the idea that problems have a single answer. Exams and questions are often worded to provide the 'correct' solution.

Few problems are this black and white. To become a successful problem solver, it is vital you break away from this sociological conditioning. Instead of seeking THE answer, seek a minimum of three potential solutions. Then evaluate the costs and benefits of each possibility and select the best choice. 

Legacy

Joseph J. Luciani, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and author who has stated that he would like his epitaph to read "I'd Rather Be Reading This". That is his statement to demonstrate how much he enjoys his own life, even with the minor trials and troubles that everyone encounters.   

Question: How do you want to be remembered after you have shed your mortal coil? 

Take a few minutes and consider what words you would want on YOUR tombstone? What philosophy, idea, or event would be important for others to note when vising your grave 200 years from now? Write your own epitaph tonight.

Of course, a pithy sentence can not truly summarize the complexity and subtly of a real life; yet, this exercise will help you clarify your current path and allow you to consider some course corrections.

Then, consider how can that same statement be re-crafted into your life mantra or purpose sentence. As Steven Covey has written "start with the end in mind". The hard work begins tomorrow: living a life to capture the essence of your vision.

Two Service Questions

Give these some thought:

• Who can I help today?
• Who can I help tomorrow?