Just Try It

“The next 30 days are going to pass whether you like it or not, so why not think about something you have always wanted to try and give it a shot for the next 30 days?,” asks Matt Cutts, a computer programmer for Google. Cutts issued this challenge to his audience at a TED conference, suggesting that they try something they’ve never done and experience life to the fullest. Cutts applies this to his own life, by embarking on numerous challenges to make and break habits, and also just for the joy of trying new things. For example, he has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, written a novel, and ridden his bike to work, all in 30-day increments.  Now, he can define himself as not just a computer “nerd”, but as a novelist, and as an adventurous person who experiments with and enjoys life. I think this is an interesting idea that can add a little extra to everyone’s lives. After all, you never know if you will like something until you try it. Unknowingly, I have applied a form of this idea to my life. At the end of the cross-country season I was burned out on running, and could not psych myself up for running again during track season. So, I did something crazy. With no experience to rely on, I decided to join my high school swim team in the spring (joining the sport this late is unheard of). Now I am considering giving up pre-season cross-country training for a summer swim team. Who knew? I have found a love and talent in something that was completely foreign to me a year ago. This idea can also be applied to education, particularly in high school. I think that the goal of the journey through high school is to find yourself and to define your interests. If varying types of classes are mandated for students to take, students could find a new talent or joy to pursue, that they never would have thought of before. This happened for me when I took the scary leap into English 9 Honors. I did not think of myself as an “English person”, and in fact, it was my least favorite subject, so it was quite a leap of faith to venture into an honors English class. However, English has now become my favorite class that I look forward to every day in school. All should embrace the practice of trying new things as it can lead to a more diverse life, and can uncover hidden talents or passions.

Cutts demonstrates the best poise on stage of all the other speakers in TED talks that I have watched. He is relaxed and very comfortable with his audience, and speaks with a lot of passion, making his speech very easy to listen to. He also incorporates personal examples and pictures to show that trying something new can really make life more enjoyable. In my TED talk, I will attempt to mirror the relaxedness and passion he shows while presenting his topic; excellent poise and presentation style really makes a difference to the audience in speeches.

Changing the World: One Student at a Time

          What do you do with 1400 volunteers who specialize in English (the subject), a pirate supply store, and a magazine office? Why, put it all together at 826 Valencia, and add in an English-centered tutoring center for kids of course! Dave Eggers is the mastermind behind this idea. When he lived in Brooklyn in 2000, he heard from his teaching friends that they were having trouble keeping their students at grade level in reading and writing. His friends wished for more manpower so that their students could get the help they needed through one-on-one learning time. Eggers wanted to help, but he did not see a way to bring the skills of his neighborhood (which was filled with writers, editors, and the like) to benefit the lives of the struggling students. But the story does not end there. He soon moved back to San Francisco, California where a magazine he worked with, the “McSweeney’s Quarterly”, and a few other magazines rented an office space which they shared with a tutoring center. Suddenly, a light bulb went off. Ding! Why not open the building up to kids who need extra help with English homework? The professional writing community working there could volunteer their free time and give one-on-one attention to the students! And so, 826 Valencia was born. Here, a pirate supply store pays for the rent, because the property is officially zoned for retail, and the magazine employees (along with other volunteers) offer homework help to excited kids after school. This idea has inspired other similar centers to pop up all over the country and even internationally! Egger hopes that many other transformative partnerships will develop and dramatically change the lives of thousands of school children. Through his TED Talk, he encourages and challenges others to invest their time in the up and coming generation. By sharing their knowledge and giving one-on-one time, adults can help children to make tremendous progress in their education. This can lead to the formation of a new generation that is fully prepared to solve the problems the world presents. I know this idea is occurring in my own life--through my parents. Whenever I need help on homework, need some constructive criticism on a paper, or need to bounce an idea off of someone, I turn to my parents. When teachers cannot provide the time and attention their students need, the child’s parents should be encouraged to step in and help their student with school. According to Eggers, just 35 to 40 hours a year of one-on-one attention can help a student achieve at one grade level higher. One-on-one time is essential to students’ lives, and if provided by someone, namely their parents, it can help them to succeed even more in school.

       Eggers has a game-changing and profound idea that if practiced can revolutionize the success of children in education. His humorous presentation style helps to package his speech up and tie it with a bow. He constantly makes the audience laugh and captures their attention with his idea and somewhat odd story of how it came to be. He also shows numerous pictures from 826 Valencia and other centers like it to give the audience visuals of his idea in action. However, he is very nervous, particularly about how much time he has left, and stumbles over his speech with many “uh”s, “um”s, and “ah”s. Eggers’s innovative idea and fun presentation style deservingly earns him a standing ovation at the end of his TED Talk.

Why? How? What?

What makes Apple, the Wright Brothers, and Dr. Martin Luther King stand out? There are/were other technology companies equal in ideas, other inventors equal in brilliance, and other activists equally vocal, so what could possibly make these three any different than the others? Their “backwards” (yet correct) approach to their respective problems. Take Apple for example. Instead of telling people what they sell, how their product is different than the competition, and neglecting to include why they do it, Apple instead defines their belief, or why they do things the way they do, then describe how they do the things they believe, and then as a result, show their great product. For example, a marketing pitch by Apple could be, as Simon Sinek states, "Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly. We just happen to make great computers. Want to buy one?". However, like Sinek says, other companies advertise, "We make great computers. They're beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly. Want to buy one?". The first marketing pitch would have much more success in persuading consumers than what the majority of the market utilizes. Sinek suggests that the "golden circle", which progresses inwards from “What do we want to do?”, “How do we do it?”, and “Why do we do what we do?”, must be reversed for success and greatness. Apple, the Wright Brothers, and Dr. Martin Luther King have had tremendous success where others have failed, and starkly stood out among the rest because they followed the "golden circle" from inside to the outside. By clearly defining their belief, Apple, the Wright Brothers, and Dr. Martin Luther King can have people relate to and identify with their belief, causing people to support them, making them stand higher than all others. Belief and purpose should be applied to all businesses, and anyone who wants to be placed above the rest. Success results when people can relate their own beliefs and lives to a product, business, or other person. End of story. Relationships and connections lend themselves to success. I think this is an extremely important aspect to add into all TED Talks. By sharing not just an idea, but a belief that others can identify with, that TED Talk will be EXTREMELY memorable. In my TED Talk, I will make sure to do this, as this seems to be a consistent theme within the TED Talks I have watched, and the book I am reading (A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink). While they enforce the idea of using stories that people can relate to, and not necessarily belief, I believe that the two are connected and can help me to deliver a memorable, long-lasting TED Talk.

Simon Sinek has an interesting presentation style similar to Daniel Pink’s use of RSA Animate. Sinek had a giant paper pad up on stage that he used to draw diagrams to illustrate his point. While this gave the audience a visual, I did not think it stood out very much, unlike Pink’s RSA Animate. However, he improved over Pink’s talk because he did not stumble over what he was saying. Overall, the content of Sinek’s speech was the interesting and inspiring part, while the visuals did not really add to or detract from his talk.

Secrets For All to See

“Secrets can take many forms. They can be shocking or silly or soulful. They can connect us to our deepest humanity or with people we’ll never meet,” says Frank Warren, creator of Post Secret. This experiment started in New York when he handed out self-addressed postcards to strangers and asked them to write a secret and mail it to him, so he could post them on his Post Secret blog. Since then, the idea has spread wildly. Every day, he receives artful homemade postcards from all over the world containing secrets that have never been told to anyone else. Currently, he has collected and posted over 500,000 secrets! These secrets help people to deal with the pain in their lives by sharing the secret with the world, and to connect with others through the knowledge that they are not alone. Warren says that, “It was through crowdsourcing, it was through the kindness that strangers were showing me, that I could uncover parts of my past that were haunting me.” The beauty of this project lays in the fact that people can share their secrets anonymously to share their grief, pain, or laughter with the world. This sharing with others is one of the traits that unites the world as one, as humanity, because we can take part in the emotions of others. As Warren says, “Secrets can remind us of the countless human dramas, of frailty and heroism, playing out silently in the lives of people all around us even now.”  The sharing of secrets helps to build strong relationships with others, such as in the case of best friends, who share all their secrets with one another. Recently in English class, everyone wrote down a secret on a note card, and after we exchanged them, we wrote poems about the secret we received. While many of these secrets were silly, they helped to connect us to each other by sharing a part of our lives with one another. In their own way, secrets are little stories that connect us to others and make us human.

          Of all the TED Talks I have watched and reflected on, Warren’s presentation style is the one that I want to emulate during my speech. His use of stories was ASTOUNDING (go watch it, I can’t even describe how amazing it was!). By sharing a few of the different secretsthat he has received, some bitter and some sweet, he captivated his audience like none other. For example, when he read, “I found these stamps as a child, and I have been waiting all my life to have someone to send them to. I never did have someone,” the audience was dead silent (as in, hear a pin drop silent), and riveted to what he was saying. Then he merely showed an image (see up right) of one of the postcards he received, and the audience burst into laughter. This comedic relief helped to lighten the mood. His perfect blend of secrets that told stories, an insightful speech, and interesting images captured his audience (myself included) and helped to communicate his point. Because of his story-telling method, everybody in the audience was able to personally connect to his speech, which is what I will make the goal of my TED Talk presentation style.


Image: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/frank_warren_half_a_million_secrets.html

Change Through Contribution

The human race has much to contribute to itself. This is the idea of “cognitive surplus”, defined by Clay Shirky as, “…the ability of the world’s population to volunteer and to contribute and collaborate on large, sometimes global projects.” The human race largely enjoys creating and sharing, either civically, bettering the life of the entire world, or communally, just for other members of a group. This idea is shown through the success of civil organizations such as Wikipedia, an encyclopedia where everyone can contribute to articles, and Ushahidi, which can be used to aggregate information provided by the community to map crises (violence, destruction, etc.) and also by communal pictures such as Lolcats. With the generosity, free time, and media abundance inherent in society today, the collection and collaboration of ideas and talents can change the face of the world. For example, during a week dedicated to raising funds for children with cancer, the teachers at my school volunteered their talents to put on a show where the ticket proceeds went towards bettering the lives of children with cancer. This talent show demonstrates that the collaboration of even a small number of people can positively impact the world. Similarly, my English class could be on the verge of changing education. Many ideas we discuss on a daily basis are directed towards changing how education runs—incorporating technology everywhere possible, letting students direct their own learning, and making the learning, not an “A+”, the focus of school. We have determined that if these ideas were implemented correctly, education could become exponentially better. In addition, I am certain that we are not the only class who has sought to change schooling. Who knows? In the future, my generation could be changing the face of education. With all the ideas and brilliance that my generation has, we could revolutionize the way our children are taught. With the help of technology, human generosity, free time, and media abundance, the world will soon embark on a revolutionary journey that will create, challenge, and improve ideas to create an overwhelmingly better society.

Clay Shirky shares his profound ideas very ingeniously by weaving the ideas into a story. This tactic helps people to remember his speech as one that stood out. His style echoes Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind, which reflects that, “Stories are easier to remember—because in many ways, stories are how we remember.” Many brilliant ideas are shared at TED, but the ones that share an inventive idea along with a story are remembered longer. For my TED Talk, I will aim to find a more personal story than one like Shirky’s, in order to have something that the audience can directly relate to, engaging them even more. I will also be sure to incorporate more interesting visuals that more than just support one point in my speech, but carry great meaning with them, so that they prove the entirety of my speech.

Image: http://www.anticareer.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/wikipedia_logo.jpg

The Key to Success: Yourself

          Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose. According to Daniel Pink, these are the three factors which can lead to better performance and personal success. However, this conclusion shows that the business world is wrong. Why? If these three factors are truly the keys to motivation in the workplace, then the extremely commonplace belief that money can motivate people to do better is wrong. Multiple studies conducted in different countries have all shown the same thing about human behavior. If given straight forward, “a+b=c” sort of tasks, then a “carrot stick” incentive works extremely well. However, if the task requires creativity or thinking, then the higher paid groups actually perform worse than lower paid groups. Could this relate to school? Why do kids often perform so poorly in school? Simply because these underperforming kids are not motivated by the gleaming “A+” that teachers reward students with, or phased by being punished with an “F”. So…incentive doesn’t always work to make people perform better, it may actually make them perform worse…so, what does improve people’s performance? Self-motivation and self-direction. The most amazing trait that humankind shares is that each and every person is good at something and brings their own ideas to the table. However, if businesses remain in a management mindset, then people cannot be themselves and share what may be a world-changing idea. Atlassian, an Australian software company, has mastered the idea of letting employees direct themselves. Once a quarter, the company allows people to work on absolutely whatever they want to work on for 24 hours, with the only requirement being that they present their results at a meeting the next day. This undiluted autonomy has lead to software fixes and new ideas that would never have come up before. Who knows what might happen in schools if grades were taken off the table, and students were allowed to master their own learning? The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has instituted a very interesting idea. For the first year in college, MIT does not grade assignments, in other words, the students do the work or they don’t. This places students in a position of power over themselves and their own learning. Taking the focus off of grades can actually help students to blossom and to reach their full potential. I think that this would help many students including myself. I have always been motivated to do my very best in school. While I have also been extremely motivated to maintain “A’s” in every class, I have had an inner drive that pushes me to be the best I can be. However, I cannot always utilize this inner drive to be the best that I can be because the dark storm cloud of maintaining a 4.0 GPA looms above my head. Self-motivation and self-direction can completely transform business and education.  To quote Dan Pink, “If we start treating people like people, and not assuming that they’re horses…we can actually build organizations and work lives that make us better off. But I also think they have the promise to make the world just a little bit better”. If we let people go to do their own thing and to contribute to the world’s collective knowledge and improvement (like Wikipedia), the world can be truly amazing because of people’s never-thought-of solutions to problems.

     Dan Pink’s presentation style captures the audience like none other. Through the use of RSA Animate, Dan Pink’s message is literally “drawn out” and gives a visual picture that engages the audience, and reinforces what he is speaking about. It helps to clarify the subject, and adds a slight spin of humor to the topic of motivation. I think this is an attention-grabbing idea that I might consider to prove my point further. However, when he speaks he stumbles a lot, which I will attempt to not model.

The Future of the World Held in David Blaine's Lungs

David Blaine set the world record for breath-holding underwater at 17 minutes and four seconds. That’s right, 17 whole minutes, just a few minutes less than the duration of his TED Talk. No tricks, no magic, no illusions, no breathing contraptions, just him and his lungs. How?! Isn’t that impossible? Aren’t you considered dead by then? Blaine was only able to complete this seemingly impossible task by living and training by his belief that, “…I think magic…is pretty simple. It’s practice, it’s training and experimenting, while pushing through the pain to be the best that I can be”. Blaine illustrates an admirable trait very uncommon in today’s world. He shows that through hard work and dedication to a goal, one can literally accomplish anything. This is an extremely important trait that is lost on many who are part of my generation. Many teenagers often don’t care about their education, or much of anything really. They blow off tests, homework, and their teachers, and instead whine and complain about how hard their life is (even though it really isn’t) while playing video games on their couch. The upcoming generation could learn a very important lesson from Blaine that can insure a bright future—challenge yourself to be the best you can be and to reach your full potential. If this key trait is not instilled into young people now, we could be headed to a society where people don’t try. That’s it. Let me say it again. The vast majority of people will simply not try in life, in their job, in everything, if the idea of being the best you can be is not ingrained into the deepest folds of their potential-holding minds. In Daniel Pink’s book, Drive, he points out that there are three types of motivation that cause humans to do something. To paraphrase, there is incentive, or doing something for a reward, there is biological drive, in other words, the survival instinct, and there is one more source of motivation, where the joy of completing the task is the reward by itself. This is being lost in society. Imagine that—a human behavior being LOST, possibly forever. This will be my and my peers’ world in less than 20 years. Will we choose not to do something well if we are not rewarded for it, or if it is not necessary to our survival? Will we leave the blatantly obvious problems of the world to somebody else to fix, when there is nobody who will? What will our society look like to future historians? What will become of the world? The world – our world – could fail.

While recounting his crazy stunts, Blaine shares many highly personal experiences in a jovial manner, which endears him to the audience and engages them, so that his TED talk is not just about some guy who did something amazing at some point. It shows the audience that amazing things can come out of ordinary people. His use of personal pictures also adds credibility and helps to attract his audience’s attention even more. The combined use of recounting his personal experiences and displaying pictures helps to weave an amazing story about the benefits of dedication that is more than just a lesson, but a true application.

Being Educated Out of Creativity

“…We don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it. So why is this?”, asks Sir Ken Robinson in his TED Talk about schools killing creativity. Both Robinson and Daniel Pink, the author of A Whole New Mind, see and agree that the left side of the brain (the logical and analytical half) has to this point in history been defined as the more important hemisphere in public education. In A Whole New Mind, Pink argues that “…the PSAT, the SAT, the GMAT, the LSAT, the MCAT…They’ve created an SAT-ocracy—a regime in which access to the good life depends on the ability to reason logically, sequentially, and speedily” (Pink). Success in life and school has been dominated by logical, left-brained thinking. For example, in schools all over the world, subjects are categorized from most to least important. Math and language (left-brained) are at the top, followed by social studies (also left-brained), and finally, at the bottom rung of the ladder are the fine arts. The education system’s sole use and acceptance of the left hemisphere of the brain has poisoned young children’s creative minds and withered the once healthy and strong tree of limitless imagination, capabilities, and ideas. How might you ask? The seemingly simple lesson of right and wrong. Robinson defines creativity as, “…the process of having original ideas that have value”. He also says that, “…if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original…” This is the very essence of how creativity is choked; if the fear of being wrong is ingrained into children’s minds, as it is currently, they will lose their potential to try things, to be creative, and to learn on their own. Mistakes should be hailed as learning experiences that kids need to learn from, so that they can improve themselves for the next time. This is especially true in my life. For example, after I had recently acquired my learner’s permit, I was driving with my mom, and I flew, and I mean FLEW, through a left turn (yes, the light was green…), forcing everybody’s cheeks to squish against the window and their blood pressure to sky rocket. I still remember my mistake to this day and have not made the mistake again…it was a learning experience. As the next generation is poised to take on an unpredictable but revolutionary future, “…creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status” (Robinson).

Robinson relates his idea by being a fun and comical, easy-going, yet intelligent speaker. He artfully blends in stories, jokes, and rhetorical questions to create more than a boring speech on stage about how something needs to be done about education; his technique instead penetrates the audience’s minds to make this idea, perhaps the most important idea to the future of the world, to stand out, to be remembered, and to stick. This insures that this issue, unlike many others, will not be forgotten, and will be dealt with. The destruction of the very thing that makes all of us human, creativity, cannot continue.