

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
Like this article? Sign up for a free trial here .
Do you want to know what the six lessons from The Last Lecture are? How can you implement them into your own life?
Randy Pausch used his Last Lecture to recount lessons he had learned or taught throughout his life. The Last Lecture lessons include: the value of honest feedback, people before material things, humility, rising to the occasion, breaking down brick walls, and accepting reality.
Keep reading to learn about the six The Last Lecture lessons.
The Last Lecture: Lessons Learned
In summer 2006, Randy Pausch experienced pain in his upper abdomen, followed by jaundice. He at first thought he had hepatitis, but CT scans showed a tumor on his pancreas. Of all cancers, pancreatic cancer is the most deadly; half of those who get it die within six months of diagnosis and 96% die within five years.
Pausch approached his treatment like a scientist, asking questions and seeking data. His goal was to live as long as possible for his family and to that end, he was willing to endure any potentially effective treatment, no matter how miserable it made him. He underwent a complicated surgery called a “Whipple” procedure, which removed his gallbladder and part of his pancreas, stomach, and small intestine. This was followed by chemotherapy and radiation. He lost 44 pounds from the brutal regimen, but scans in January showed no additional signs of cancer.
However, tests seven months later in August 2007 showed that the cancer had metastasized to his liver. Pausch and his wife learned the bad news from looking at his charts on the doctor’s computer while waiting for his appointment. The next step was palliative treatment (more chemo) to ease his symptoms to improve his quality of life and possibly extend his life by a few months.
When Pausch asked how long he had to live, the doctor said he probably had three to six months of good health. The positive spin reminded Pausch of the way Disney employees are taught to respond when people ask when the park closes: “The park is open until 8 p.m.”
The day before the checkup, Pausch had told his wife Jai that regardless of the test results, for the moment, it felt great to be alive and be with her. That’s how he decided to live the rest of his life—focusing on the moment.
Sometime later, a Carnegie Mellon colleague told him she’d seen a man driving a convertible while listening to music. His arm hung out the window, he was tapping the song’s rhythm on the side of the car, and he had a smile on his face. She was surprised to realize it was Pausch, so obviously living in the moment.
Earlier Life Lessons
Besides the hard lessons of his diagnosis, Pausch used his Last Lecture to recount other lessons he had learned or taught throughout his life. The Last Lecture lessons included:
The Value of Honest Feedback
Pausch could be arrogant and tactless, but on two memorable occasions, others put him in his place. The first was his sister Tammy, when he was seven and she was nine. As they waited at the school bus stop one morning, he was being bossy and obnoxious, so she tossed his lunch box into a puddle just as the bus came. She was sent to the principal’s office, and the principal decided to let their mother handle it. She, in turn, deferred to their father. Their dad listened to the story with a smile and all but congratulated Tammy for putting her brother in his place.
Later, a faculty member and mentor at Brown University, where Pausch was an undergraduate, told him it was a shame that people found him arrogant because it would hold him back in the future; Pausch concluded that he’d just been tactfully told he was a jerk.
He came to appreciate those in his life who gave him honest feedback and he tried to do the same for his students.
People Over Things
The second of The Last Lecture lessons was that people are more valuable than materialistic possessions. Before he was married, Pausch enjoyed being an uncle to his sister’s two children. He took the role seriously, trying to teach them life lessons and new ways of thinking. He had two rules for their outings: don’t whine and don’t tell mom what they’d done with their uncle.
Once, when the kids were seven and nine, he picked them up in his new convertible. As they climbed in, their mother warned them not to get it dirty. Hearing this, Pausch calmly opened a can of soda and poured it onto the cloth-covered back seats. His message was that a car is just a possession—and people are more important than materialistic possessions. Later that weekend, when his nephew got the flu and threw up on the car seat, Pausch was glad he’d delivered that message.
After he got married, he passed the same message along to Jai. She’d backed out of their garage in their minivan and struck his convertible. She put both vehicles in the garage, cooked his favorite meal, and with trepidation, told him what had happened. She explained that both vehicles still ran but that the convertible had the most damage.
First, Pausch said, let’s finish dinner. Later, as they looked at the vehicles, Jai said she’d get repair estimates in the morning. Pausch replied that since the vehicles still worked, there wasn’t any need to fix the dents. They were just materialistic possessions, with a utilitarian purpose, like garbage cans and wheelbarrows—you don’t fix those when they get dented. In life and marriage, not everything needs to be fixed. Sometimes it’s better to let small things go.

———End of Preview———
Like what you just read? Read the rest of the world's best book summary and analysis of Randy Pausch's "The Last Lecture" at Shortform .
Here's what you'll find in our full The Last Lecture summary :
- What Randy Pausch's philosophy of life was
- How a professor with only months to live recounted his life's experiences and lessons
- How a computer science professor ended up on a secret project with Disney