BINGE WATCHING TED VIDEOS

So I joined my current company about three months back. The company I work for is a multi-billion dollar corporation (yes, I wanted to boast about it) and that has two implications for its new “joinees”. First, it is very difficult to bring something of value addition to the company in the initial months of your joining and second, you sometimes find yourself with little to no work.

I found myself in the unfortunate, lulling grasp of the second scenario in the first two weeks of this month. I would walk up to my desk early in the morning, wind up whatever little work I had for that day in about two hours and then chill for the day. Being a coffee lover, I would rotate among my office cafes and enjoy a vanilla late while reading a book or talking to someone over the phone. But then two things happened: a lot of people started seeing me regularly at the cafes and I started spending a lot of money on coffee and “snacks”. With the danger of being branded a “slob” or ending up (partially) broke I switched to another, more universally accepted form of procrastination: YouTube 

YouTube is a procrastinator’s paradise (Not that I was procrastinating, I just didn’t have enough work). It is both “scaringly” easy and oddly convenient to get lost into the black hole that is YouTube. Being no stranger to the addictive powers of YouTube I decided to be a little smart about watching videos this time. In college, I had heard a lot about TED and knew that TED talks contained decent content on a wide range of topics. So after one week of coffee “breaks” and reading “sessions” I switched to TED. And I fell in love.

The first video I saw was “Inside the mind of a procrastinator” by Time Urban and realized I had always been a “precrastinator” for almost my entire life. I then switched to “Your body language shapes who you are” by Amy Cuddy and discovered the power of non-verbal actions. I followed these two gems by watching videos on introversion, breaking bad habits, substance abuse, cerebral palsy, innovation in energy production, Lifi and many more.

The reasons I fell in love with the talks were many:

1. The quality of the content of the speech - the content was crisp, precise, hard hitting and almost always conclusive. The speeches more often than not, ended on a solution.
2. The delivery of the speech - every speech that I listened to flawlessly delivered with an effortless flow.
3. The topic:  The talks I watched were on anything and everything. Most topics were not what you would call “run of the mill” but formed a wide spectrum of issues and solutions.

Here are the links of some of the videos:

Inside the mind of a master procrastinator | Tim Urban
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arj7oStGLkU

A simple way to break a bad habit | Judson Brewer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-moW9jvvMr4

Susan Cain: The power of introverts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0KYU2j0TM4

Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are | Amy Cuddy | TED Talks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks-_Mh1QhMc