Learning is a continuous process. One of my favorite learning techniques is networking and discussing ideas with people, deep diving into different topics with subject domain experts. However, this is not always easy. Networking events, conferences, and talks are not frequent enough to satisfy my curiosity. Therefore, I decided to mimic these experiences through TED Talks. As part of my “resolutions list” for 2023, I have committed to watching 100 TED Talks. I usually keep small summaries and key ideas as notes for my future self, and I have decided to make this list public in the hope of helping you find some interesting things to watch and listen to.
It is important to note that nothing in this list should be taken as a source of truth, particularly with regards to health and finance-related talks. If any of the ideas I extract from the talks on this list sound interesting to you, I recommend watching the entire talk and taking your own notes. There is a high chance that I may get things wrong since we are all human, and it is not fun to trust incorrect information, especially on critical topics such as health. Consider this list as an inspirational resource with potential ideas that may pique your interest, but also a place where we can start discussions and sharing ideas in the comments. The bullet points include both my own notes and the speaker’s words, so it is best to listen to the entire talk if something sounds compelling. I will update the list in such a way that the most recent ones I watch will be at the top. Keep learning and enjoy!
Fun fact, is having a TED Talk on your bucket list as well? ‘Cause it is on mine, but more on that here.
A short moment before continuing, if you enjoy this article and want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee here.
- 7 to 8 hours of sleep while recommended is just an average
- some important nuances get lost
- not getting sleep in the long term is associated with health problems
- but fixating solely on 7-8 hours ignores the fact that good sleep is different from person to person
- having too much sleep data makes some people obsess with it
- it may lead to orthosomnia – preoccupation to achieve perfect sleep -> causing even more sleep problems
- stop fixating on the number
Why are we happy? Why aren't we happy? | Dan Gilbert
- prefrontal cortex is an experience simulator in our head
- one year after winning the lottery or becoming paraplegics, both lottery winners and paraplegics are equally happy with their lives
- the impact bias: the tendency to overestimate the hedonic impact of future events
- we synthesize happiness but we think happiness is a thing to be found
- inspiring talk, lots of nice presentation style jokes
How reliable is your memory? | Elizabeth Loftus
- studying false memories: things that never happened, or remembering things that happened differently (accusation on innocent people – crimes for things they didn’t do)
- memory works like a wikipedia page – you can go there and change it and so can other people
- when you feed people some missinformation about an experience they may have had, you can contaminate or change their memory
- if you plant false memories -> repercussions that affect people behavior (false memory that a specific food did good/bad in your childhood
A beginner's guide to quantum computing | Shohini Ghose
- quantum computers operate by controlling the behaviour of particles, in a completely different system to regular ones
- quantum computers are not just a more powerful computer, just like you can’t build a light bulb by buliding better and better candles
- a quantum computer is a new type of device
- regular computers operate on bits 0/1, quantum computers operate on fluid states, they allow some uncertainty
- quantum computers can be used to
- generate private keys for encrypting messages so hackers could not copy the keys because of the uncertainty
- design the molecules for drugs in healthcare industry
- teleportation of information from one place to another without phisically transmitting the information (because of the fluid component of the particles)
How to build your creative confidence | David Kelley
- when people gain confidence they work on the things that are really important in their livfe
- people are naturally creative, it’s not a God-given thing
The voices in my head | Eleanor Longden
- Life story about author – hearing voices in hear head
The difference between winning and succeeding | John Wooden
- success – “peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do the best of which you’re capable”
- your reputation is what you’re perceived to be, your character is who you really are. character is much more important
- in whatever you do, you must be pacient
- very inspiring speech from old wise man
Andrew Stanton: The clues to a great story
- storytelling is joke telling, knowing your punchline, your ending
- everybody loves stories. stories cross the barriers of time and discover the similarities between us
- “there isn’t anybody who can’t be loved once you hear their story” -> make me care
- all good stories should give you a promise in the beginning
- making the audience put something together keeps them engaged, keeps them wanting to hear the story. don’t give them 4, give them 2+2
- if we go static stories die, life is not static
- very nice speech
Give yourself permission to be creative | Ethan Hawke
- it’s not up to us if something is good or not (when we try to give something to the world, have an impact on the society)
- the world is an extremely unreliable critic
- ask yourself: do you think human creativity matters?
- when you experience something bad (break up, death of someone loved etc.), art is not a luxury, it’s sustenance
- human creativity is nature manifests in us
- the time of life is short, are we spending it doing what’s important to us? most of us not
- just follow your love, there is no path
- don’t read to the book you should read, read the book you want to read
- don’t listen to the music that you used to like, take some time to listen to new music
- take time to listen to new people
- feel foolish, play the fool
Making sense of string theory | Brian Greene
- kaluza – scientist who was very interested in theory – story that he ran a book about swimming and then jumped into the ocean – he bet his life on theory
- superstring theory – a theory that tries to understand the fundamental invisible uncuttable constituents making the world around us -> journey deep inside the objects analysing what they contain
- there are about 20 numbers that describe our universe (like the gravity, mass of particles etc.), measured in a very precise way, however nobody has an explanation for why they have those values. but if these numbers would have different values, our universe wouldn’t exist
- very engaging way to present something scientific and serious
How books can open your mind | Lisa Bu
- encountering a new culture created a habit of comparative reading (different perspectives – chinese books: china is on the center of the world)
- lots of benefits for reading books from different perspectives, languages, viewpoints
Why you should make useless things | Simone Giertz
- she created a lot of “useless” robots – washing teeth helmet, waking up machine
- building things that had the purpose of failing helped her deal with the anxiety of making things perfect
- the pressure was replaced by excitement
- very nice speech and talk skills
I am the son of a terrorist. Here's how I chose peace | Zak Ebrahim
- his father exposed him to a different part of islam that few people get to see
- for the most part, we all want the same thing out of life
- in every religion, culture however you will find some people who hold so fervently to their beliefs that they need to use any means to make others life the way they think
- his childhood didn’t allow him to enhance social skills and made him judge people on religion and beliefs
- his opinions changed when he started being exposed to more people and cultures
The best stats you've ever seen | Hans Rosling
- very nice chart presenting evolution of family size and presentation style
- great way to show charts and progress + storytelling based on charts and data
- average can really fool you on data when you compare things
The happy secret to better work | Shawn Achor
- very nice opening and presentation jokes
- positive psychology -> studying what is merely average, we would remain merely average
- studying the outliers and outperformers you can ideally increase that average
- study on Harvard students: regardless of how happy students were for being accepted to university, their focused got drifted away not only on the competition, but also on the privilege and the competition
- 25% of your job success is predicted by IQ, whereas 75% is predicted by optimism level, social support and ability to see stress as a challenge, rather than a threat
- most of companies and schools work by the formula: if you work harder, you’ll be more successfull. if you’re more succesfull, you’ll be happier, but
- everytime you get success, your brain changes the success idea. you get a good grade, you want a better grade; you get a good job, you want a better job
- if happiness is on the other side of success, you never get there
- it is ideal to work in a reverse order: if you can raise the positive level in the happiness, you gain something called positive advantage making your brain perform better
- dopamine (you feel when you’re happy) has 2 purposes: making you have, but also turning on the centers in your brain allowing you to adapt in a different way
- creative lasting positive change
- 3 gratitudes
- journaling (over a positive experience in the past 24 hours, makes you relive it)
- Exercise
- Meditation
- random acts of kindess
- 21 days in a row
The surprising science of happiness | Dan Gilbert
- our brain became bigger by gaining a new part: the prefrontal cortex – helps us simulate things in our head
- happiness can be synthetized
- synthetic happiness (getting what you want) vs natural happiness (being happy for not getting what you want)
- people that can do reversible decisions are less happy than people with irreversible decisions
How I learned to read -- and trade stocks -- in prison | Curtis "Wall Street" Carroll
- financial illiteracy is a disease that affected generations and generations
- financial literacy is not a skill, is a lifestyle
Get comfortable with being uncomfortable | Luvvie Ajayi Jones
- speaking up with the hope that others will follow the example
- too few people willing to be the domino, making things fall one of the other
- fear has very much power from keeping us doing or saying the things that are our purpose
- we have to speak hard truths when necessary
5 ways to listen better | Julian Treasure
- we are losing listening because of the historical recording capabilities progress (writing, recording etc)
- media has to yell at us with words like “shocking” -> it’s more and more difficult to get our attention
- exercises to improve listening
- silence – 3 minutes/day of silence to recalibrate your ears
- the mixer – in any place, try to listen how many sound channels there are
- savoring – mundane sounds (coffee grinder), listen how interesting they can be, around us all the time
- listening positions – move your listening position to what’s appropriate. play with them as levers (active/passive, critical/empathetic)
- RASA – receive, appreciate (make sounds – oh, nice etc.), summarise, ask (questions)
What I learned as a prisoner in North Korea | Euna Lee
- She and the team made a documentary about North Korean refugees that lived very badly in China
- She and a colleague were taken to an army base by two North Korean soldiers when filming a documentary at the border
- 140 days in a cell in North Korea, with the “enemy” – enemy became the view for that after growing up in South Korea and having everything designed around that
- After 3 years in a cell, they sentenced her to 12 years of labor camp
- Female guards asked her at some point if one night stands really happen in the US. Coming from guards in the country where it is illegal to hold hands in public. The girls grew up subject to some propaganda cartoons as well, defining the “enemy” as South Korea and the US. However for a moment in the prison, they were girls sharing similar interests
- The experience in North Korea makes her remember about some positive experience and some guards that were kind humans and she interacted with in the cell
- She was able to see humanity in her “enemy”’s eyes, mentioned propaganda many times
The difference between healthy and unhealthy love | Katie Hood
- It’s important to notice the unhealthy signs that we most likely miss
- It’s important to know that not how a relationship starts it’s important, but rather how it involves
- Do you feel like you have space?
- Are you comfortable with the intimacy space?
- Isolation
- When boyfriend/girlfriend try to pull you from your friends/family
- Seeds of doubt about everyone in your pre-relationship life
- You keep a balance by still having plans with people and encouraging your partner to do before
- Extreme jealousy
- The partner becomes very demanding in knowing where you are and when
- Love shouldn’t feel like threatening and desperate
- Belittling
- Your partner should have your back, should keep your secrets and be loyal
- Volatility
- Emotional rollercoaster, dangerous to your relationship
- You can’t make every relationship work, some of them need to be left behind
- It’s not rocket science: open communication, mutual respect, kindness, respect
The single biggest reason why start-ups succeed | Bill Gross
- If you get people with the right equity amount, you can unlock human potential very strongly
- 5 essential elements that lead to success
- Ideas
- Team
- Business Model
- Does the company have a clear path to revenue?
- Funding
- Timing
- Is it too early and the world is not ready for it? Already too many competitors?
- Analyzed multiple companies that succeeded and failed. The order of the most important factors:
- Timing – 42% counted for win vs fail
- Team
- Idea
- Business model
- Funding
- If you’re underfunded initially, with today’s progress is easy to get funded at some point as long as you execute
- Airbnb succeeded very well because of the timing – the big recession made people try rent things that are cheaper and more affordable
- Execution matters a lot, ideas matters a lot, but timing is very important. Be very honest if the consumers are ready for it.
How to triple your memory by using this trick | Ricardo Lieuw On | TEDxHaarlem
- With all the technology, memorizing feels less important
- Making bizarre images helps you memorize -> you create links between different words/names and the things you want to memorize
- Experimenting with different methods to do different stuff -> you get good at experimenting -> you get good at anything
The Power of Positivity | Guy Katz | TEDxZurich
- Everything starts with a positive attitude
- “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances”
- A study shows that it takes a tenth of a second to make an impression of a stranger and more time doesn’t change the impression you made in the first place
- Study shows that we remember 5% of things we see and 35% of things we smell
- The small details make a big difference because we don’t expect them (the hotel that remembers you have a pineapple allergy from 2 years ago)
- We communicate with our bodies long before our mouth start making noise
- “Optimists and pessimist die the same way, they just live differently; I prefer to live as an optimist”
Does Working Hard Really Make You a Good Person? | Azim Shariff | TED
- People attach moral worth to effort regardless the type of effort
- Some who struggles to finish a task for the same quality as someone who does it quickly, that person may have a strong moral -> effort moralization
- The harder-working person was seen as a more moral person in studies
- Person who wakes up every morning and goes running -> you may initially see such a person as “Mr Perfect”. However that person is struggling running and however does it -> the kind of person you want in your circle
- Much of our effort is used to build our moral, to prove other people we are hard workers
The Simple Secret of Being Happier | Tia Graham | TEDxManitouSprings
- Happiness is a choice, something that you do
- “A happy life is not being happy all the time. A happy life has more positive than pain”
- “A happy life makes you psychologically rich”
- You should spend time doing things you really enjoy doing
- Happiness musts:
- Spend a lot of time with your friends and family – human connection is nr 1 predictor of happiness
- Getting good night sleep
- Exercise at least 4 times a week
- Do work that you like
How to sound smart in your TEDx Talk | Will Stephen | TEDxNewYork
- The way you speak and gesticulate really can make you look like you know what you’re talking about
- Must watch before having an important public speaking session, really on point
How not to take things personally? | Frederik Imbo | TEDxMechelen
- As a football referee “it’s always his fault” and wanted to learn how to not take things personally
- When someone cancels something last minute and you might feel you’re not important enough -> you take things personally
- It’s our ego speaking when we take things personally
- Strategy 1: it’s not about me. Shift the focus from me to we -> see the intention of the other person
- Strategy 2: it is about me. You take things personally if you know there is some truth in it. “Give yourself some empathy”
Think Fast. Talk Smart | Matt Abrahams | TEDxMontaVistaHighSchool
- People fear the idea of cold calling “What do you think?”
- How to get more confidence and think fast and talk smart
- Approach: in an open way, be open to ideas. Most of us think about “here’s what I need to say”, which is wrong -> switch to “here’s what my audience needs to hear” (this puts you in the service of the audience)
- Audience: You need to appreciate your audience and think about their knowledge and what they need/want to hear
- Time: what time of day are you speaking? If you speak in the morning, bring more energy in your speech to boost the energy for your audience (+ after lunch)
- Location: location matters. Think about the environment, the way the room is setup etc.
- It is much easier for humans to understand information when it’s structured
- A chronological structure can help you navigate your audience: here’s how things were in the past, here’s how they are now, here’s how they will be in the future.
- The problem-solution-benefit structure is very strong as well
- The what, so-what, now-what structure
There's more to life than being happy | Emily Esfahani Smith
- “Sooner or later we all wonder: is this all there is?”. This is not due to lack of happiness, but rather due to lack of meaning in life
- Four pillars of meaningful life:
- Belonging – being in relationships for being valued for where you are. Some groups deliver cheap belonging: you’re valued for what you believe, what you hate, not who you are. True belonging springs from love. Acts that devalue others and make them feel invisible: checking the phone when someone speaks, passing by someone with acknowledgement.
- Purpose – purpose is less about what you want, but what you give (using your strengths to serve others). Purpose gives you something to live for
- Transcendence – you get connected to a higher reality. For some this comes from seeing art, going to church, writing etc. These experiences change you.
- Storytelling – the story you tell yourself about yourself (how you became you). Your life is not just a list of events. (“My life was good, not it’s bad” – this comes of stories get you depressed – you need to rephrase and analyze your story)
The first 20 hours -- how to learn anything | Josh Kaufman | TEDxCSU
- It takes 10000 hours to learn something new and get good at it. That would be a full-time job for 5 years, too long. This rule came out of expert-level performance (ultra competitive people)
- The rule deviated from the telephone game: it takes 10000 hours to be in the top of an ultra competitive field -> it takes 10000 hours to be an expert in something -> it takes 10000 hours to be good at something -> it takes 10000 hours to learn something. But the last statement is not true
- People get good at things with practice
- Learning curve becomes a plateau after some time. His point is that after 20 hours, you get from being incompetent at something new to being decently good at it
- Steps to get rapid skills
- Deconstruct to skill – decide exactly what you want to do when you’re done and break it in smaller pieces
- Learn enough to self-correct – get 3-5 resources, but don’t use them as a way to procrastinate. “I will start to do that when I finish these 20 books” -> that’s procrastination. Your need to learn enough to self correct -> learning becomes at getting better when you notice a mistake
- Remove practice barriers (distractions, internet etc.)
- Practice at least 20 hours – some skills have a frustrating barrier. By committing to do the 20 hours you will overcome that frustrating barrier
- Ukulele – you can sing any song with only 4 chords. Wow wow!
- The major barrier for learning something is not intellectual, it’s emotional because we’re scared of feeling stupid
Extreme Ownership | Jocko Willink | TEDxUniversityofNevada
- War story, real war story which ended up in a bad situation
- The commander took the responsibility for “who’s fault was it”. It hurt his ego for taking the blame, but also knew that this maintained the integrity as a leader and as a man. The ego needed to be controlled so that the ego won’t control
- When he took responsibility, his commander started trusting him even more. The team didn’t look respect, but realized the fault would not be passed over them
- When a team takes ownership of the problems, the problems get solved. True fact in war, business and life. Take ownership!
- Take ownership of the problems and also of the solutions for getting things done. Take ownership of your future and your life.
The art of choosing - Sheena Iyengar
- Assumptions
- Make your own choices
- Study performed with group of kids
- Anglo american kids
- If choices were enforced by someone else, the performance was drastically lower (someone else selected the color to draw with for them)
- Some kids were embarrassed when they were told that their mother chose for them
- Asian-american kids
- They performed better when their parents did the choices for them
- Anglo american kids
- It’s wrong to assume that everybody performs best when making their own choices
- Study performed with group of kids
- The more choices you have, the bigger the chance to make the right choice
- Study performed on people from ex-communist countries
- They were offered 7 types of sodas, but many participants were referring to all of them like “soda”, one single type of drink, not choices
- In reality, many of the choices are among things that are not really different
- The value of choice depends on our ability to find the differences for all the available choices
- Study performed on people from ex-communist countries
- Make your own choices
- Inspiring talk, nice to only listen to it
The Skill of Humor | Andrew Tarvin | TEDxTAMU
- “Humor is a must have in today’s overworked, underappreciated, stress-filled, sleep-derived culture”
- Benefits of humor
- Gets people to listen
- Increases long-term memory retention
- Improves understanding
- Aids in learning
- Helps people communicate messages
- Improve group cohesiveness
- Reduce status differentials
- Diffuses conflict
- Builds trust
- Brings people closer together
- Humor is a skill, you can learn it by practicing it
- The more we become comfortable with humor, the more we do it
- Very nice presentation skills, to be rewatched, I relate to it
How to know your life purpose in 5 minutes | Adam Leipzig | TEDxMalibu
- College reunion, 80% unhappy people, 20% happy
- The 20% happy knew: who they were, what they did, who they did it for, what those people wanted or needed and what they got out of it (how they changed)
- “If all you’re doing is examining, you’re not living”
Six behaviors to increase your confidence | Emily Jaenson | TEDxReno
- The number 1 skill required to succeed at top management level was confidence
- Behaviors:
- Count yourself in
- Counting will get you started and momentum will keep you going
- Say in your mind: 3, 2, 1 Go – and act as you need to act
- Give yourself 20 seconds of courage
- Before doing something big, when you are not fully decided, just get that 20 seconds of courage to post something, say something etc.
- Take a seat at the table
- Cheer for other people’s success
- Bolster your confidence for a new activity through your already great performance in another
- What are you really good at?
- What’s easier now than it was 1 year ago?
- Celebrate constantly
- Keep track of your accomplishments, take your team out, order a pizza etc.
- By celebrating, you will mark in your brain a reference to the success
- Count yourself in
After watching this, your brain will not be the same | Lara Boyd | TEDxVancouver
- What we know about the brain is changing very fast
- Even when you think about nothing, the brain is very active
- Everytime you learn a new fact or skill, you change your brain
- London taxi drivers who have to learn the map of London in order to get the license, proved to have larger brain regions devoted to mapping memories
- “The primary driver of change in you brain is your behavior [..] nothing is more effective than practice at helping you learn”
- Increased difficulty during practice will lead to more learning and better structural change of brain
- Each individual will see different changes in the brain
- “Learning is about doing the work that the brain requires”
What I learned from 100 days of rejection | Jia Jiang
- Rejection theory -> for 30 days you go out and look for a rejection. Every day get rejected on something; in the end you will be more comfortable with the pain
- He started a blog: 100 days of rejection on with the different rejections received every day
- Day 3 of this journey -> crazy idea -> get donuts arranged as the olympic rings. The people took him so seriously that they actually did that for him. His video became viral on youtube and became famous and invited in different talk shows. This wasn’t his goal, he wanted to learn
- Lesson: “if i mention some doubt people might have before asking the question, i gained their trust, people were more likely to say yes to me”
- “When you get rejected in life, consider the possibilities, don’t run. Embrace them”
Why you think you're right -- even if you're wrong | Julia Galef
- “Motivated reasoning” -> trying to make some ideas win and others lose; the drive to attack or defend ideas
- If we want to improve our judgment, the most important thing is to learn how to be proud instead of ashamed when we notice we might have been wrong (intrigued instead of defensive)
The art of asking | Amanda Palmer
- “Through the very act of asking people, I’d connect with them. And when you connect with them, people want to help you”
- Nice life/career story and inspiring way of public speaking
The history of our world in 18 minutes | David Christian
- 13.7 billion years, the beginning of time
- DNA copies itself and has information on organisms
- Information is part of our story
- As it copies, once in billion times, there are errors in the DNA -> creates complexity
- Human language -> system of communication -> we can share what we learn that can accumulate from generation to generation -> that’s why we have history (collective learning)
- Interesting facts about evolution (to be rewatched when more fresh context is needed)
How to fix a broken heart | Guy Winch
- When your heart is broken you’re going through the wrong path, you simply can’t trust what your mind is telling you
- “Heartbreak creates such dramatic emotional pain, our mind tells us the cause must be equally dramatic”
- You have to balance your thoughts, not their smile only, but also how they made you really feel. “Your mind will try to tell you that they were perfect, but they were not”
Communication Complexity: Face-to-Face With A Stranger | Phil Salem | TEDxTexasStateUniversity
- 1/week – 15 minutes face to face conversation with a stranger
- learn something, it’s a stranger
- “conversation doesn’t just shuffle the cards, it creates new ones”
- Communication is complex:
- There are rules of what to say and not say when you meet someone
- Then you make your own rules when you get close to someone
- There are rules to what to say and not at work, with your brother/sister, with your wife etc.
- If you forget rules are different, you’re getting in problems
The Habit That Could Improve Your Career | Paul Catchlove | TED
- Study on “what makes a good leader”
- A good capacity for reflection -> listed as one of the top 5 skills
- Others: empathy, listening, consideration and team development
- Reflection is about our learning, looking at past events without judging, but with critical lens
- “Reflection requires courage”
- Reflection can be done through purposeful thinking, journal entries, audio notes, discussion with mentor or real friend
- Find out what works for you and make a real commitment, what can you do better the next time
- “Reflection provides great insight” – helps you focus on what matters for real
The surprising habits of original thinkers | Adam Grant
- “Originals are nonconformists, people who not only have new ideas, but take actions to champion them” – they people you want to bet on
- Originals – late to the party
- Pre-crastinators are less creative than people whole are moderately procrastinators
- Leonardo da Vinci needed 16 years to finish Mona Lisa, but that helped him better understand lighting techniques
- Martin Luther King “I have a dream” – the result of improvising, the speech was not finished on time
- Procrastinating is a vice when it comes to productivity, but can be a virtue for creativity
- First movers: 47% failure rate, 8% for improvers. Facebook after MySpace, Google after yahoo. It’s much easier to improve some else’s idea
- To be original you don’t have to be first
- Ideas about originals
- Originals – feel doubt and fear
- To types of doubt: self doubt and ideas doubt
- Self doubt leads you to freeze, ideas doubt makes your experiment, try
- The kind of person who doubt the default and looks for a better option
- Originals are afraid to fail. But they are also more afraid of not trying
- The biggest regrets are not our actions, but our nonactions
- Originals – have lots of bad ideas
- The greatest originals are the ones who failed the most cause they tried the most
- Beethoven, Mozart, Bach had to generated hundreds of compositions to come up with a smaller number of masterpieces
- To be original you need to generate more ideas
Life is easy. Why do we make it so hard? | Jon Jandai | TEDxDoiSuthep
- “When I work hard, why is my life so hard?”
- When people have free time -> time for themselves -> time to understand themselves -> you can see what you want in life
- Went back home -> small garden (15 minutes effort per day, 2 months per year), enough food to feed 6 people and sell some on the market. “Why was Bangkok so hard compared to this?”
- He built a house working 2 hours/day for a few months. His friend has to take on debt for 30 years to buy a house -> He had 29 years of free time -> Life is easy?
- Buying something because you need it, not that you like it
- “Why do we destroy our spirit?”
- The choice to be easy or hard it’s on you
3 habits that kill your confidence | Shadé Zahrai | TEDxMonashUniversity
- The typical 12 month old will try to learn how to walk regardless of how many times they fall. They just do it and don’t wait for the “success” of the first steps
- As we grow up we start to experience self-doubt (maybe because of bullying, demanding parents etc.). This can end up preventing people from expressing their full potential
- Failure to launch – you constantly stay in a cycle of learning, consuming books, podcasts etc, constantly doubting that you’re not ready yet
- Rumination and overthinking => procrastination and stagnation
- We excessively ruminate on what-ifs
- Treading water – failing to finish what you start, treading water
- Self doubt => hesitation, you lose interest
- Instead of getting to the finish line, it sounds better to start something new
- Destination obsession – Exciting goal, put in the work and discipline -> short term fulfillment, you start thinking about the next step
- Traps you to feel like you’ve never done enough
- I’ll be happy when I get “there” (but “there” is always far)
- Bronze medalists are happier than silver ones because they compare to downwards: “I almost missed the podium”
- Upward counter factual thinking – instead of feeling inspired, it feels like you’re falling behind, endlessly trying to catch up
- The feeling of rejection enables the same brain parts as physical pain -> it makes sense you body wants to avoid it (procrastination)
- Try transforming “I can’t do this” to “How can I make this happen?” (shift in narrative)
- Treading water mind pit -> you need to find and align to a clear “why” in order to feel inspired and continue your journey
- Schedule time to think what you’re doing and why
- “This thing I’m working towards is for the sake of what?”
- Set boundaries for yourself
- You should channel the discipline to commit taking breaks (if you’re destination obsessed you’re more likely already disciplined)
- “We are what we repeatedly do”
A simple way to break a bad habit | Judson Brewer
- There are studies proving that even when you try to pay attention, at some point our mind will drift away to dream on something or check social media
- Trigger -> behavior -> repeat and it becomes a habit. You feel sad, you eat sugar, you “learn” that sadness may be taken away with sweets.
- Cognitive control -> using cognition to control ourselves. “This is the first part of the brain that goes offline when we are stressed”
- “Curiosity is naturally rewarding. How does it feel to be curious? It feels good!”
- Instead of noticing a notification for a message and compulsively reply, hold on to your feelings, get curious on why this happened, “feel the joy of letting go” -> repeat (control yourself, mindfulness)
How language shapes the way we think | Lera Boroditsky
- Does the language we speak shapes the way we think? -> A question studied for a long time
- Tribe called Kuuk Thaayorre:
- They don’t use “left” or “right”
- They use cardinal directions: north, south, east, west for everything -> “there’s an ant on your southwest leg”
- “Hello” is “Which way are you going?” and the answer should be “North-northeast in the far distance. How about you?”
- For them, time doesn’t get locked on the body, but on the landscape
- Some countries don’t have words for all numbers and they can’t use the trick for counting on questions like “how many things do you see in the picture?”
- Some languages differ in the color spectrum
- Some languages have differences on gender
- Bridge is Feminine in German and Masculine in Spanish
- Does that influence people?
- If you would ask them to describe them, Germans would say “beautiful”, “elegant”, Spanish would say “strong” because we stereotype genders
- Some languages describe events differently
- “I broke the vase” in English makes you see who is responsible for breaking, whereas in Spanish it would sound more like “the vase broke” and you would remember the accident, not the person causing it
What really matters at the end of life | BJ Miller
- “For most people, the scariest thing about death isn’t being dead, it’s dying, suffering. “
- “A nice thing about suffering it’s that it connects the caregiver and the care receiver – human beings.”
- Compassion -> suffering together
- You can always find a shock of beauty or meaning in what life you have left.
- If we love small moments ferociously, we can learn to live well not in spite of death, but because of it.
- Inspirational to watch it, not only listen to it
- Research on who is successful and why in different areas
- One characteristic emerged as the top thing -> grit. Grit is passion and perseverance for long term goals
- Day in, day out to make the future a reality
- Living like a marathon, not a sprint
- Grittier kids were more likely to graduate
How to spot a liar | Pamela Meyer
- Lying is a cooperative act (if you were lied to, you agreed to be lied to)
- Lies fill the gap on what you wish to be to what you really are (you wish to be taller, richer etc.)
- We start early -> babies start crying to fake it
- Lie spotter techniques:
- Liars will distance themselves from the subject (“I did not have sexual relationships to that woman..Miss Lewinsky”)
- We usually freeze the upper body when we lie
- The real smile is in the eyes! A fake smile will have nothing in the eyes
- A true person will provide details, engage to help you find the truth. The attitude will tell you if someone lies!
- Someone who is lying will add irrelevant details to the story
How to make stress your friend | Kelly McGonigal
- People who experience stress but don’t think that stress harms their health, are the least likely to die
- Stress makes you social -> oxytocin released in stress makes you reach support (makes you you’re noticed, makes you ask for help); your stress response makes you be surrounded by people who care about you
- The stress hormone strengthens your health
- When you tell someone about your situation, you release the stress and become healthier
- Caring creates resilience -> caring about others helps you; you create the biology of others
My philosophy for a happy life | Sam Berns | TEDxMidAtlantic
- Effects of Progeria (super rare disease):
- Tight skin
- Lack of weight gain
- Stunted growth
- Heart disease
- 3 aspects for the philosophy of being happy:
- Be OK with what you ultimately can’t do because there is so much you CAN do
- Surround yourself with people you want to be around
- Keep moving forward
- “Around here…we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things” (Walt Disney)
- “As I’m striving to change the World, I will be happy”
Celeste Headlee: 10 ways to have a better conversation | TED
- Don’t multitask, be present. If you wanna get out of the conversation, get out, don’t be half in
- Don’t pontificate. Assume that you have something to learn. Everybody is an expert in something
- Use open-ended conversation. Let people describe it. “How did that feel?”. They will stop for a second and think to a much more deeper answer
- Go with the flow.
- If you don’t know, say that you don’t know.
- Don’t equate your experience with theirs. If they’re having trouble at work, don’t tell them about your trouble at work. It’s not about you, don’t take that moment from them
- Try not to repeat yourself. It’s boring.
- Stay out of the weeds. People don’t care about names, dates, or details. What they care about is you, what you have in common, forget the details
- Listen. The most important one. If your mouth is open, you’re not learning
- Be brief. “A good conversation is like a miniskirt; short enough to retain interest, but long enough to cover the subject. (My sister)”
Who are you, really? The puzzle of personality | Brian Little
- Introvert != antisocial, you may just be able to be a bit more ok without stimulation
- Very nice speech and presentation style
- Extroverts use a lot of diminutives -> you meet Charles, really fast becomes “Charlie”
- Extroverts prefer black-white direct language, introverts use “I must again tell you that bla bla”
- When you act for too long out of your regular character (you act as an extrovert when you are an introvert) you need to take care of yourself for some time after
You can grow new brain cells. Here's how | Sandrine Thuret
- Neurogenesis = generating new brain cells
- By age 50, we would exchange the neurons in hippocampus with adult-born neurons
- Neurons are import for learning and memory
- Antidepressants – increase the production of newborn neurons and decrease the symptoms of depression
- Activities that increase neurogenesis
- Learning
- Sex
- Running
- What you consume
- Calorie restriction
- Blueberries
- Curcurmin
- Intermittent fasting
- Folic acid
- Zinc
- Caffeine
- Omega 3 fatty acids (salmon)
- Flavonoids (dark chocolate, blueberries)
- Resveratrol (red wine)
- Activities that decreases neurogenesis
- Stress
- Sleep deprivation
- Getting older
- What you consume
- Alcohol
- Rich saturated fats
How to speak so that people want to listen | Julian Treasure
- Avoid:
- Gossip
- Judging
- Negativity
- Complaining
- Excuses
- Lying
- Dogmatism (confusion of facts with opinions)
- HAIL:
- Honesty – be clear and straight
- Authenticity – be yourself
- Integrity – be your word
- Love – wish them well
- Pace – Slow down to emphasize
- Silence helps from time to time!
- Pitch and volume
- Imposing your sound all the time -> not nice; only do it when you have something important to say (asking for a raise etc.)
- Warm up exercise before any talk:
- Arms up, deep breath, “ahhhhhh”
- “Ba, ba, ba, ba”
- “Brrrrr”
- “La lal la la la la”
- “Rrrrrrrrrr”
- “We” – high, “aw” – low
Tim Urban: Inside the mind of a master procrastinator | TED
- “You’re looking for easy and fun, but that works for animals only”
- Very very nice presentation skills!
How craving attention makes you less creative | Joseph Gordon-Levitt
- There’s two feelings: getting attention and paying attention
- “I think that our creativity is becoming more and more of a means to an end – and that end is to get attention.”
- The attention-driven business model of today’s social media companies. Selling the attention of users to advertisers
- “The more attention you are able to get, the more attention a social media company is able to sell”
- “Being addicted to getting attention is like being addicted to anything else. It’s never enough” – “Once I get to 10K followers I will be amazing”
- “If you’re creativity is driven by a desire to get attention you’ll never be creatively fulfilled”
How to stay calm when you know you'll be stressed | Daniel Levitin
- Key idea for me: Under stress you’re not going to be at your best
What You Can Do to Prevent Alzheimer's | Lisa Genova | TED
- We still have no disease-modifying treatment (TedTalk from 2018) and no cure
- Presence of amyloid plaques accumulating -> PET scan required, you don’t face memory loss yet. It takes 15-20 years of accumulation before reaching a tipping point -> causing clinical symptoms of the disease
- After the tipping point -> you forgot where you put your keys. “But instead of finding them in your pocket, you find them in the refrigerator”
- Our DNA alone does not determine whether we get Alzheimer’s
- What influences?
- Deep sleep is like a power cleanse for the brain
- Poor sleep hygiene might be a predictor to Alzheimer’s
- High blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, smoking, high cholesterol have all been shown to increase the risk of Alzheimer’s
- A heart-healthy mediterranean lifestyle and diet can help to counter the tipping of the scale
- “Every time we learn something new we are creating and strengthening new neural connections, new synapses.”
- We can be resilient to the presence of Alzheimer’s pathology through the recruitment of yet-undamaged pathways -> we create these by learning new things (ideally as rich in meaning as possible)
- You don’t want to repeat things you did, but rather create complete new things (meet new people, read new books etc.)
Looks aren't everything. Believe me, I'm a model. | Cameron Russell
- Image is powerful, but superficial
- “These are not pictures of me, these are constructions” (wow, super nice way of saying it!)
Intermittent Fasting: Transformational Technique | Cynthia Thurlow | TEDxGreenville
- Big focus on helping women (maybe/why not in general? -> the video doesn’t mention anything on men)
- When you eat is more important than what you eat
- The concept of “calories-in calories-out” is not effective
- ⅔ of women over 40-50 ar overweight and more than ½ obese
- Intermittent fasting can benefit fat loss for women
- When we’re fasted, insulin levels are low and we can tap into fat stores for energy
- If you skip breakfast, you reduce the calorie intake by 20-40%
- Some benefits other than fat loss:
- Improves mental clarity because insulin levels are low
- Spikes human growth hormone -> lean muscle mass
- Autophagy (only evoked when fasted)
- Improves cholesterol profile, reduce blood pressure
- Reduce risk for developing cancer or Alzheimer’s disease
- IT IS NOT FOR EVERYONE. AVOID IT IF
- If you are a diabetic
- If you are a child, adolescent or >70 years
- If you are pregnant
- If you have chronic heart issues, kidney issues
- History of distorted relationship with food (e.g. anorexia)
- Low body mass
- When you fast, you can drink water, coffee or tea, they don’t break it
- Recommended the 16/8 interval (16 hours no eat, 8 eat)
- Give it a 30-day trial to decide if it’s for you
- There are foods more advantageous for you when you fast
- Real whole foods -> that’s what your body needs
- Protein -> organic or pastured meat, wild-caught fish
- Healthy fats, helping with satiety, makes us happy -> avocados, coconut oil, grass-fed butter and nuts
- Unprocessed carbohydrates -> low-glycemic berries, green leafy vegetables, squash, quinoa, sweet potatoes as opposed to brand and pasta
- Limit sugar and alcohol
- Keep yourself well hydrated
The One Question Every Aspiring Leader Needs To Ask | Constance Hockaday | TED
- It seems like we don’t believe we can have the things we want
- The 3 deepest desires technique: “pretend that you’re gonna die tomorrow, what is one thing that you need to do before you die?” -> it was difficult to have authority over herself and to wish different things than parents/society would want for you
- You’re gonna answer the question today
- And then tomorrow
- And it ends up being about how you answer it in the long term
- “What kind of leader do you want to be?”
How to Outthink Your Competition -- with a Lesson from Sports | Rasmus Ankersen | TED
- “The league table never lies”, but not that simple tho
- Gambler thinks -> “the league table always lies”
- Football is a very random game, low scoring game compared to basketball for example
- The fewer goals the sport has, the more random effects influence
- The best team wins less often in football and low scoring sports than in high scoring sports
- GD (goal difference) is important for a gambler in football, overall at the end of season
- The shot difference is important for gamblers as well
- Success turns luck into genius
- A gambler will think that good outcomes doesn’t mean you will always have good outcomes -> this is how you should run a company
- How do we separate luck from skill?
- A lot of statistics and math explained, super nice!
How to gain control of your free time | Laura Vanderkam
- Time will accommodate what we choose to put into it -> priorities
- I don’t have time -> often means It’s not a priority
- Friday afternoon -> the best moment to prepare your priorities (slow time)
- Family dinner is canceled? -> Try family breakfast maybe
- Even when we are busy, we can focus on things that matter
Are Video Calls the Best We Can Do in the Age of the Metaverse? | Josephine Eyre | TED
- What makes us human? Forethought – helps us image and create our future (deeply creative)
- Carnegie mellon -> turning on your camera on video calls makes you less creative as a team
- We should be more creative in workspaces instead of corporate
The magic of Fibonacci numbers | Arthur Benjamin
- “Mathematics is the science of patterns” (nice way of saying it!)
- Fibonacci numbers appear in nature surprisingly often
- The number of petals on a flower
- The number of spirals on a spiral or pineapple
- A lot of patterns happening with the Fibonacci numbers
- Nice talk for visualizing numbers and beauty of mathematics
- “Mathematics is not just solving for X, it’s also figuring out Y”