9 inspiring TED Talks you can watch in under 5 minutes
TED
There are over 2,200 TED Talks available to watch online, and it can be overwhelming to decide which ones are worth your time.
Many of them stretch on well past 10 minutes, but there are some under five.
We've gone through all of the shortest TED Talks and picked the best inspirational ones.
The next time you take a coffee break, watch one of these and get insight into a unique way of seeing the world, in less than five minutes.
Matt Cutts explains how a simple trick can get you to stop procrastinating
TEDGoogle engineer Matt Cutts was inspired a few years ago by the filmmaker and "human guinea pig" Morgan Spurlock to try something new for 30 days.
Cutts made it a monthly ritual. He soon learned to realize early on whether or not a new habit was right for him, but even if it wasn't — like novel writing — he at least got to try it out.
"I also noticed that as I started to do more and harder 30-day challenges, my self-confidence grew," he says. "I went from desk-dwelling computer nerd to the kind of guy who bikes to work. For fun!"
Watch it here »
Arianna Huffington dispels a long-held productivity myth
Jacopo Raule/GettyArianna Huffington, Huffington Post editor in chief, is one of the most vocal proponents of the benefits of sleep.
She explored them at length in her latest book, "The Sleep Revolution."
In this talk, she explains that the workaholic tendency to flaunt how little sleep one needs to be productive is not based in reality.
"I was recently having dinner with a guy who bragged that he had only gotten four hours sleep the night before. And I felt like saying to him ... 'You know what? If you had gotten five, this dinner would have been a lot more interesting," she says, only half joking.
Watch it here »
David Brooks says you should live for your eulogy, not your résumé
TEDDavid Brooks, the New York Times columnist and author, is enamored with the writings of the late rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik.
Soloveitchik argued that there are two sides to every person: the external side that wants to conquer the world, and the internal side that wants to hear a calling and obey the world. Someone's personality is the result of how the struggle between these two sides play out.
Brooks says we live in a world that neglects the internal side, and "that turns you into a shrewd animal who treats life as a game, and you become a cold, calculating creature who slips into a sort of mediocrity where you realize there's a difference between your desired self and your actual self. You're not earning the sort of eulogy you want, you hope someone will give to you."
His talk is a brief meditation on how to achieve a better balance.
Watch it here »
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