Looking for some motivation this weekend? We’ve rounded up five of our favorite Ted Talks to get your gears turning! Take a watch and let us know which really spoke to you.
How to Gain Control of your Free Time – Laura Vanderkam
Between a work life and a home life, many people feel that they are too busy to fit anything else in. To put this feeling to test, author Laura Vanderkam logged every one of her 168 hours of the week. What she found was that we retroactively overestimate the amount of time we spend stressing about work and underestimate our available downtime. She offers a few practical strategies to help find more time for what matters to us, so we can “build the lives we want in the time we’ve got.”
A Kinder, Gentler Philosophy of Success – Alain de Botton
In this Ted Talk, Alain de Botton looks at our ideas of success and failure under a microscope. Is success always earned? Is failure always earned? He questions these assumptions and helps to find fulfillment in our work.
The Happy Secret to Better Work – Shawn Achor
Contrary to how we might believe, being stressed does not make us work any better. Achor, a psychologist and the CEO of the Cambridge-based consulting firm GoodThink, says that the reverse is true: “If you can raise somebody’s level of positivity in the present, then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage,” he explains. As he describes in the talk, you can actually train your brain to do this. By intentionally conditioning yourself to be more positive, you’ll be able to “work harder, faster, and more intelligently.”
Smash Fear, Learn Anything – Tim Ferriss
What’s the thing that scares you most? You might be afraid of public speaking, or going back to school to get a graduate degree. Just go for it. According to Ferriss, best-selling author of The 4-hour Work Week, “Fear is your friend.” And the best results that come out of life are those that happen after you ask yourself, “What’s the worst that can happen?”
What it Takes to Be a Great Leader – Roselinde Torres
No matter the day, month or season, there are so many professional development opportunities and events for us to go out and take advantage of. Leadership is always one of those elusive topics and it can feel hard to pinpoint the exact right way to do it. According to Torres knowing how to lead could be right in front of us. After spending a quarter-century of observing truly great leaders at work, she shares the three simple but crucial questions would-be company chiefs need to ask to thrive in the future.
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Did all these TedTalks inspire you to make some changes and look for a new opportunity yourself? Check out our open opportunities, we’re hiring around the country.
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