TED Talks are really the gold standard today for modern presentation skills. Almost everyone has seen a TED Talk at some point; these lectures have been shared on social media and shown everywhere from in the board room to the classroom.
The original TED Talks in 1984 began by focusing on technology, entertainment, and design. These talks started small and grew in popularity over the years. There are dozens of these talks online for you to watch. How can you pick the right ones to share with your team?
Our suggestion is to look at TED Talks that give your employees some perspective on their work-life balance. With more employees working from home than ever before, we know it’s harder for these workers to shut down right at 5:00. When you live and work in the same space, it’s hard to strike a balance.
Today, 39% of knowledge workers say work-life balance is the most important requirement of their job. The three issues that lead to a problem with work-life balance, they stated, are stress, too much bureaucracy, and feeling underappreciated. Finding a work-life balance is possible, but it does take effort. These Ted Talks are great tools to help your employees find the ever-elusive work-life balance for a more satisfying experience in your company.
Top Ted Talks on Work-Life Balance
- Let’s start with Nigel March and his talk on “How to Make Work-Life Balance Work.” Nigel was a typical corporate drone. He handled his heavy workload by eating and drinking too much. Nigel lays the baseline for work-life balance by suggesting workers face a fundamental truth: Some jobs just do not allow for family time or even for the kind of balance that is healthy for a worker. Instead, he suggests, work-life balance starts with selecting the right job and then regularly focusing on best practices to maintain separation between family, personal, and work time. This talk is particularly relevant for employers that have remote workers struggling with burnout during COVID.
- Robert Waldinger’s “What Makes a Good Life? Lessons From the Longest Study on Happiness,” uses extensive data from a nearly 80-year study as well as practical advice to teach what makes humans truly happy and healthy. (Hint: It’s not fame or money!) The original Harvard study began tracking graduates in 1938 during the Great Depression. Their goal was to find the key to happiness. The study followed these original subjects into their 50s and 60s, but also added new test subjects as they sought to determine what makes for a good life, and balance between working and family. Waldinger shared that it was the test subjects who had better relationships in their lives—not their work—lived longer and stayed happier.
- Laura Vanderkam’s “How To Gain Control of Your Free Time,” is a fun way to look seriously at the 168 hours that you have every week to get things done. Laura studied more than 1,000 women to find out how they were able to multitask all of the responsibilities between their family, work, and their own lives to get everything done each week that’s required of them. She says, “Time is highly elastic…it will stretch to accommodate.” The point, Laura suggests, is that you can have it all as long as you prioritize what’s important. Instead of saying “I don’t have time for XYZ,” “I don’t have time because it’s not a priority.” The TED Talk is an important reminder for your teams to prioritize the things that matter, including family, fun, and taking care of themselves.
If you’re looking for better work/life balance, call on PrideStaff Thousand Oaks!
