Long-time readers will know that I am a bit of a TED fanatic. I’d love to get the best of the UK’s brains together for an affordable, UK version of TED. I’ve met so many talented, world-changing people over the last year. I’d love to get them up on a stage. One day, one day. It will happen. In the mean-time…

Enjoy the on-line TED videos. The trouble is, with so many now on-line, where do you start? Well, at the 50 million views mark, TED have announced their Top 10 TEDTalks of all time, and even put together a highlights video. They are good brain food – although don’t take that too literally with the top video in the list:

1. Jill Bolte Taylor’s stroke of insight
2. Jeff Han’s touchscreen foreshadows the iPhone and more
3. David Gallo shows underwater astonishments
4. Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos Photosynth
5. Arthur Benjamin does “mathemagic”
6. Sir Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity
7. Hans Rosling shows the best stats you’ve ever seen
8. Tony Robbins asks why we do what we do
9. Al Gore on averting a climate crisis
10. Johnny Lee demos Wii Remote hacks

All I can say is, enjoy! Btw, you can retrieve the TED talks via iTunes – which is just about providing a reason to live for my poor frequently-rebooting AppleTV. My Top 10 would have been slightly different. For lots of reasons Sir Ken Robinson would be top of my list:

And, speaking of brain food, Steve Lawson has a novel way of dealing with the pressures of being a one-man band (literally, in Steve’s case), in this post on Creative Choices “…Employ Yourself“. There again, I may just be a little biased, given one of his sources…

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• Too Much Choice – Too Little Happiness
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Time for the regular “end of month” summary post, all be it a few days into February.

The last couple of months have been packed with meeting brilliant new people, for all sorts of different reasons. Photographers, speakers, designers and others have all given me new perspectives and a stronger appreciation of their talents, and of my own strengths and weaknesses. More than ever I want to get out to the next TED event that I can, or find an equivalent of TED in the UK (any one know of one?).

Hanging around with talented people is inspiring. For me, one of the great things about blogging is the brilliant people I get to meet. The conversation has been quieter this month, as many of the discussions have been face to face, rather than in the comments. Do add your comments to posts, I value them very much – even a single sentence can spark an inspiring discussion.

The ten most read posts in January were:

1. Why Don’t You See What You Can Do in an hour (with 3,815 views this month).
2. Watch out for the frogs!
3. The Now Habit – Dealing with Procrastination.
4. A Sense of History.
5. 10 Tips To Gain You a Better 08
6. Getting Started with GTD
7. Never Lose Another Thought Again!
8. ThinkingRock is 2 good!
9. Too Much Choice – Too Little Happiness
10. How to Deal with Being Overwhelmed at Work.

The close runner up was 5 Ways to Reduce the Stress of Choice. Thank you to all who have commented or linked to posts – I plan to make one by one mentions during the rest of the month!

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These Things Come in Threes

Three things in two days. First, I loose contact with my phone. Second, my MacBook Pro dies. Then, in a third and final twist, traffic on the blog increased by 2000% (yes, two thousand) and I get locked out of WordPress. Coincidence? Of course. I got a free lesson in personal productivity in the process; How do you survive when your options are shut down?

Day One

On day one, I headed into London, having agreed to phone everyone I was meeting when I located a suitable coffee shop to gather in. I arrived and reached for my phone. No phone in my pocket. No phone in my bag. Generally, no phone anywhere. How did we survive before we had a phones in our pockets? Perhaps we were more organized, perhaps we just wondered around lost. We only had certain opportunities to communicate, so we planned a little more and were a little less spontaneous. We certainly weren’t sending a text when someone was trying to talk to us! When we got opportunities to communicate, we made the most of them.

There I was with one pound in my pocket. Now, the way the dollar is going, one pound may be worth about $5 at the moment, but it still only gets you one phone call from a UK phone box. As I stood in the pouring rain in central London, staring at the phone box, I didn’t know who to call to sort out the mess. Miraculously, it all worked out fine. I was still glad when I got my phone back later in the day.

Day Two

On day two, I flipped open the lid of my trusty MacBook Pro to do my semi-regular backup and… Nothing. Bright light on front, but black screen. 18 months old and it was dead. Cue raised blood pressure and a trip to the Apple store. Despite mouth-to-mouth from the man at the genius bar (note to self: they really don’t like it when you call it the geek bar), there was no getting any sense out of the thing. The result? A very productive day of phone calls and ticking off items on the to do list that had been left undone because I’d been caught up in email, slide creation and the wonders of the Internet. The MacBook story is to be continued… For now, my trusty G4 is helping me through, sans Microsoft Windows.

The Psychology of Happiness

So, a little bit of Psychology, to fuzz up your day, specifically the psychology of choice and of happiness. Two gentlemen, Barry Schwartz and Dan Gilbert, have made these topics more accessible via their TED talks last year. To summarize and synthesize the two: The more choice we have, the less happy we are. When we do get choices, we don’t use them well, and when we make mistakes, we rationalize them to ourselves, but still we worry that we didn’t do the right thing.

And Finally

We are at our most happy when we aren’t given too many choices, because choices cause stress. Despite that, we always want the ability to have lots of choice, we call it freedom. We want the freedom to keep our options open. Together that creates some interesting insight into why all of this technology causes us to procrastinate. Technology creates so many different possibilities, and with it a whole range of new decisions for us to worry about.

See also: 5 Ways to reduce stress, by reducing choices.

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You may remember that I am a big TED fan (not the cuddly animal – the amazing conference). Digging thought the archives recently, I rediscovered this gem from Al Gore. He has become a powerful communicator and this is a fine example. Here are some key things that he does, that you can do too:

• Start with them not you
  • Build rapport with the audience
  • Interact with them
  • Take them into your confidence
• Make your slides work for you and your audience
  • Work with your slides
  • Use simple graphics, not lots of text
  • Use colour – it enhances recall
• Use narrative
  • Use the power of story
  • Use the power of the unexpected
  • Use good humour
• Speak little and with big gestures

Start with them not you when you present

Right at the start he acknowledges the audience and thanks the organizers. It is good manners to thank whoever it was that invited you, and good practice if you want to be invited back. Be personal and personable. Even from the stage, you can build a relationship with the audience. Effective communication comes out of relationship. Invest time in building rapport with the audience, before trying to making your point.

Talk to the audience as individuals, as if you are having a conversation, but you just happen to be doing most of the talking. Make it a two way conversation by interacting with the audience and asking questions. For a large audience, a question with a show of hands works well. In a small venue a show of hands is less intimidating than asking someone to answer. Notice how Al Gore uses asides to the audience. Taking the audience into your confidence builds trust.

Make your slides work for you – they are your support

Work with your slides. Don’t let them control you, but don’t leave them as a random light show behind you. Notice how Al Gore engages with his slides. He gestures towards them, points at them, and even looks at them as each new slide appears. Let the slides join in the conversation . If you look at your slides, your audience will too. A note of caution though: don’t end up talking to your slides, facing away from the audience. It may be ok if you have a microphone, but without one people won’t be able to hear you. It also isn’t good for anyone who needs to lip read. Remember, when you look at the slides, you have lost eye contact with the audience. Too long with out eye contact and you will loose their attention.

Use slides with simple graphics, rather than lots of text, to support your point. But do avoid irrelevant photos and poor quality clip art. A photo of your dog might be cute, but if the dog isn’t your point, it distracts from it. Use graphics that make your point, not ones that say something else. Less really is more on a slide. I don’t like all of the slide designs in the talk, but they do work to support his points. Notice how colour (or even color ) is used. It increases information retention significantly, as long at it doesn’t look like an explosion in a paint factory.

Tell a story – use narrative in your presentation

Story telling has its own special power; ‘and then… and then… and then…. and then’. This natural flow creates a sense of progress, of getting somewhere. Humour is a fantastic communication tool as well, but not jokes that are in poor taste. Al Gore uses Self-deprecating humour. This is a safer bet, although don’t over do it. Remember that you don’t have the status of an ex-vice president. If you knock yourself down too many rungs, people will wonder why they are listening to you. Use a narrative, then break it. Saying or doing something unexpected can be humorous and will keep the audience’s attention, just don’t go overboard.

Less words, more action(s)

Speak little, but with big gestures. Al Gore uses pace and pause to great effect. Notice the gaps between sentences, this is thinking time for you and the audience. Think of the speed of your words like a car on a race track, slow down for the corners, pick up the pace on the straights. Use hand gestures, but go bigger than you would in a one to one conversation. For fans of Father Ted, think ‘big cow, little cow’. As Father Ted is always trying to explain to Dougal, a big cow that is far away looks like a little cow. Your big hand gestures on stage look like little ones from far away. Also, don’t go all symmetrical with those gestures. If both hands do the same thing all the time, it starts to look unnatural. Be you, just a little bit bigger.

Enjoy the video here…

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