36 TED Talks Worth Watching

I’ve spent ten hours and forty-eight minutes watching these, not including the fact that many I’ve watched more than once.

TED is a great example of useful video in my opinion, but as someone pointed out at the TEDx event I attended last weekend, it’s not just about ideas being spread, hopefully some people take action on some of these ideas too.

In fact I went through a period in my life not too long ago where I made a point of watching one new TED video each day as a scheduled break in the day.

I keep a running Evernote…err…ugh…note, on all the TED talks that I’ve watched that I found particularly interesting and that I would possibly watch again.

It’s a great way to keep track of ideas that have given you some insights, and quite frequently I’ve had the very great experience of watching a TED talk, getting version 101 and then going on to read the books written by many of these great speakers. At the very least it’s led to me checking out their work online, people like Kevin Kelly (who has done some TED talks, but whom I did not feature below), Sir Ken Robinson and Steven Johnson, all people with ideas I discovered through TED initially and have since come to feature in my own writing and work in some way, shape or form.

TED has the tremendous power to influence us all.

Here is a list of talks I recommend watching, in no particular order:

1. Jamie Oliver on Teaching Food/Cooking To Every Child

2. Simon Sinek on Why and How Leaders Inspire Others

3. Daniel Pink on Motivation 3.0

4. Dr. Nicholas Christakis on The Hidden Influence of Social Networks

5. Jason Fried on Why Work Doesn’t Happen at Work

6. Sir Ken Robinson on Schools Kill Creativity

7. Sir Ken Robinson on Bring on a Learning Revolution

8. Steven Johnson on Where Good Ideas Come From

9. Dan Ariely on Are We In Control of Our Own Decisions?

10. Daniel Kahneman on The Riddle of Experience vs Memory