It's About Learning

I have been subscribing to LifeHacker even before it was popular because they consistently point to some of the most interesting and useful information. I have also been watching TED talks since they first went online back in 2006 and over the years I have lost count of the number of full TED and TEDx talks that I have watched. Some are amazing like Ken Robinson’s Why Schools Kill Creativity or Simon Sinek’s, How Great Leaders Inspire Action, and others while others are simply informative.

So when the post Transform Your Life In One Month: The 31 Best TED Talks Of All Time That Will Inspire You I immediately checked it out to see if there were any TED talks that I needed to watch. I was surprised to find that out of the 31 recommended talks I missed only David Blaine’s How I held my breath for 17 minutes. But had added this talk to my Evernote “to watch” list so I was planning on getting to it. I then followed another link on the Lifehacker page to the post 10 Inspiring TED Talks That Will Completely Refresh Your Perspective On Life and I learned that I had watched all these TED talks as well. Noticing a pattern I went to the TED site and looked at The most popular talks of all time and found that I had watched all these TED Talks as well.

What makes TED talks and these talks in particular so appealing? I have my suspicions and to confirm them I did some research and found Mark Fidelman’s Forbes post and infographic Here’s Why TED and TEDx are So Incredibly Appealing (infographic) which I believe offers a couple of key reasons so many of us watch so many of the same TED talks. TED’s philosophy of “simplified authentic storytelling” works so well because we (humanity) all love stories. We all respond to a well-told story. Equally important and perhaps even more transforming is TED Director, Chris Anderson’s passion for and commitment to the TED mission of “ideas worth sharing” he has surrounded himself and all of us through the TED talks with people who want to change the world.

We are drawn to TED talks because we are moved by powerful stories about how humanity can change the world. This passion to change the world is best summarized in Steve Job’s narration in Apple’s Think Different campaign.