By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.

Don’t bail: the best gold is at the bottom of barrels of crap.

Randy Pausch, the Last Lecture

Update: Sorry, Randy, I couldn’t do it.

Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want something badly enough.

Randy Pausch, the Last Lecture

1. Write down the problem.
2. Think very hard.
3. Write down the answer.

Generally speaking, people provide better maintenance for their cars than for their own bodies.

Scott Adams, The Dilbert Future

“The illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” — Alvin Toffler, author and futurist

Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.

Something I’ve learned while struggling to change our Wild, Wild West development process at Objectware:

Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.

I often keep track of particularly good commencement addresses because of their insight and motivational value. Steve Jobs, of Apple Computer, recently gave such a commencement address to Stanford University graduates. An important excerpt:

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

On May 16 of this year, Jon Stewart, Class of 1984, of The Daily Show fame, delivered his stellar commencement address at the college of William & Mary. If he’d been the speaker at my college graduation, I might have actually gone. Some choice excerpts, though the entire address is worth reading:

When I left William and Mary, I was shell-shocked. Because when you’re in college, it’s very clear what you have to do to succeed. You knew what you had to do to get to this college and to graduate from it. But the unfortunate, yet truly exciting thing about your life is that there is no core curriculum. The entire place is an elective. The paths are infinite and the results uncertain. And it can be maddening to those that go here, because your strength has always been achievement. So if there’s any real advice I can give you, it’s this.

College is something you complete. Life is something you experience. So don’t worry about your grade or the results or success. Success is defined in myriad ways, and you will find it, and people will no longer be grading you, but it will come from your own internal sense of decency which I imagine, after going through the program here, is quite strong.

Love what you do. Get good at it. Competence is a rare commodity in this day and age. And let the chips fall where they may.

I graduated. Isn’t that nice? So roll up your sleeves, and let the work begin.