Monthly Archives: April 2008

Lessons from a dying man…

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Randy Pausch is dying.  He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and his life expectancy is measured in weeks and months, not years.  You might have heard of Dr. Pausch and his “Last Lecture” (which I highly recommend — google it) or his book of the same title (which I also recommend, it’s on iTunes).  Seeing this man squeeze every ounce of life out of each day has been truly inspiring.

I stumbled upon Randy’s videos through iTunes U.  I’m such a nerd that instead of keeping up with the latest albums by the latest artists, I’m searching for free knowledge on iTunes.  I saw that a new University had posted content (sweet!) so I check out Carnegie Mellon University.  Not really sure why I clicked through to Computer Science, but I did and I saw a video titled “Time Management”.  I thought it was a bit odd to be placed in Computer Science, and I needed some help managing my time, and it was only an hour long so I watched it.  This is when I find out that this guy is dying and immediately after watching the video I check him out on Google.  Apparently I was a little slow on the uptake — he’s kind of a celebrity now.  Anyway, that doesn’t change the fact that this guy’s story has definitely left more than a few chisel marks on my life.

When you think about it, we’re all dying; it’s the only thing guaranteed coming to us.  Randy is fortunate enough to know that he is running out of time which has given him the opportunity to make the most of it.

No links in this post; Look him up — it’s worth it.

Dreaming Big

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It’s the only way to dream.

I’m a bit of a visionary; I have a habit of taking ordinary ideas and turning them into impossible dreams. “But what if we COULD” has become my mantra. My problem is on the execution and follow through which have been poor at best. It wasn’t until recently that I discovered my problem was that I don’t have any goals. When I had the motivation to go, I didn’t have any direction and my efforts ended miserably soon after I began. So, over the past few weeks I’ve come up with a list of goals I’d like to accomplish.

  1. Become a College Professor (currently my dream job would be to teach at SFA).
  2. Run the Boston Marathon
  3. Learn to read Greek, Italian, and German
  4. Become a Millionaire by the time I’m 50
  5. …I don’t have to share ALL of my goals :-)

All of these goals have varying levels of “impossibility” which just means that they are worthwhile. The only way they are completely impossible is if I give up and say “I can’t do it”. I’m too young (and too thin) to not achieve these goals.

Each of these goals are specific enough to motivate me to change my behavior to achieve them. A goal “to get in shape” is far to general and rarely produces any results.

Each of these goals reflect more on who I’d like to BE that what I’d like to DO in life. I don’t want to have a million dollars, I want to be financially responsible and if I am REALLY responsible with my money, over the next 24 years I can’t see how I wouldn’t be a millionaire (also, $1000 per month invested in a mutual fund averaging 12% over 20 years would be about a million — compound interest baby!).

If I fail at any of these goals, I will most certainly be a better person for trying. If I can’t run a 3 hour 10 minute marathon (to QUALIFY for Boston), I’ll still be in excellent shape. If I don’t have a million by the time I’m 50, I’ll be out of debt, have a paid for house and be able to pay cash when my kids go off to college. If I can’t read the manual to my Italian sports car, well, I’ll have an Italian sports car right? ;-)

I’m finding (through reading and experience) that we are MUCH more effective at even the smallest of things if we establish goals and develop strategies to meet those goals. Every day strategies, or tiny goals that can be accomplished each day will propel us (slowly) towards our bigger goals.

What are your goals? It’s okay if you didn’t have any before reading this — but you’d only be hindering yourself if you choose to not establish any now.

“Free”lancing

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My latest project, the Dallas Chapter of the SFA Alumni Association.  This was actually a complete redesign.  The original site included a social network that just wasn’t really working.  The organization hopes to increase donations for scholarships and general operations through a business directory.  I’m still working up ideas for that, but the basic structure of the site is done — it’s very lean and utilizes CSS for the styling.  The Content Manager is actually WordPress 2.5 (I started out building my own extremely lite CMS with PHP and TinyMCE but thought, “Why reinvent the wheel?”).  I took the site design I had made and modified it into a WordPress template.

I did this one for free, but I’m hoping to generate some business from it.