Occasionally, I get so wrapped up in other things that I totally miss something big (I didn't hear about the Columbia Shuttle disaster until almost a year later). The most recent "big" thing I missed was the buzz about Dr. Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture. When the buzz went around shortly after the WSJ article I didn't pick up on the significant bits of the conversation and filed this into my brain as "just another last lecture" and it went into the "if I happen to have time while it's still in my brain, I may go look for it" bucket. Needless to say, I didn't have time then.

Then the book came out and I had a second opportunity to miss the boat.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed it was available for the Kindle I had recently purchased and so I purchased a copy...but I was already reading something else (W.E.B. Griffin's The Shooters), so it sat on the digital bookshelf for a bit.

Finally, last week, I was talking with a friend and she mentioned having seen it on YouTube. "It's on YouTube?" I said. "Duh!", she replied (okay, she didn't reply exactly that way). So I launched my browser (IE8!) and watched it. That night (luckily this was last Friday, so I was able to stay up late) I proceeded to also watch quite a few of the related videos. This week I read the book and watched Dr. Pausch's lecture on Time Management.

And over the last week, I've been asking every friend and colleague if they have watched the lecture and encouraging those that have not seen it to do so. Now I'm recommending it to anyone who takes the time to read my (sporadic) blog. Both lectures will inspire you both personally and professionally and have applicability to both halves of your life. If you haven't watched it, find an hour and sixteen minutes during this weekend and do so. If you are married, watch it with your spouse. If you have teenage or older children, watch it with your kids. In case I'm not clear, if you haven't seen The Last Lecture, it's worth giving up sleep to watch it.

Bit of a disclaimer: I think I would be as passionate about this even without the personal touch, but it has touched me extra as about a month ago my Mother was diagnosed with cancer and a couple of years ago my best friend and skydiving buddy died of pancreatic cancer. I really choked up while reading the book when it mentioned Randy asking his doctor if he could SCUBA...my buddy had the same conversation with his doc but with skydiving rather than SCUBA diving.

Here's the links: