3 TED Talks to Improve Your Work Performance

In our crazy modern world, there seems to be no shortage of two things: inspiration and entertainment. And TED Talks combine them both.

If you were wondering why they call them Ideas Worth Spreading, seek no further. For the sake of saving your time, we did all the hard work for you and cherry-picked three of the most thought-provoking TED Talks that will help improve your work performance.

Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work

We decided to follow Shawn Achor’s suit and open the article with a fun story. Which, incidentally, is Shawn Achor’s TED Talk.

In this extraordinary performance filled with personal stories and childhood memories, Achor discusses how happiness promotes productivity. His entire talk focuses on positivity and the way little habits can help you be happy and more productive.

One piece of advice that he gives is to write down three things for which you are grateful 21 days in a row. Just three new things each day. The idea is that your brain will continue to scan the world not for the negative, but for the positive first. We at Weekdone have made employee happiness and satisfaction one of the key criteria when measuring employee weekly progress.

Mind you, we do a great disservice to Achor by putting this all on paper, so find 12 minutes to listen to this brilliance in its entirety:

[Tweet “The reality doesn’t shape us, but the lens through which your brain views the world shapes you”]

Jason Fried: Why work doesn’t happen at work

In this talk, Jason Fried, author of a business bestseller Reword and co-founder of 37signals, shares his belief that offices are the ultimate place of interruptions.

He proposes that work at office is not really suited for creative tasks, and the only reason people work there is that they erroneously believe this kind of formal environment to instill discipline. However, when people really need to get their tasks done, offices don’t provide long period of uninterrupted time.

To mitigate this, Fried proposes some radical ideas, such as No-talk Thursdays where you refrain from talking to your colleagues, thus reducing distractions. Not unlike us, he also wages war on meetings, citing them as one of the biggest killers of productivity.

In addition, Jason Fried thinks that we should switch from active communication to digital collaboration.

Here is some extra information about online team collaboration and getting insights to your team.


 [Tweet “If there are 10 people in the meeting, it’s a 10-hour meeting”]

 Nigel Marsh: How to make work-life balance work

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. When Nigel Marsh says that, you know he’s talking from years of experience.

If you’ve been desperate to draw a line between your long working hours and rapidly deteriorating life, you will find this personal account very interesting. Marsh encourages you to shape up your life and make a difference. As far as he’s concerned, there’s no such thing as a small thing.

Work-life balance is not easy to achieve, especially when you’re on your own. Thankfully, now you have Marsh and his practical tips. At the end of this talk, he describes an ideal day balanced between family time, personal time and business time.

With just the tiniest improvements in the right places, you can really turn your life around and boost your productivity. We at Weekdone urge you to make up to 5-7 plans and review them weekly. Weekly Planning Saves You Hours of Doing.

[Tweet ” It is quite easy to balance work and life when I didn’t have any work”]