TED Talk of the Week 7/7/2014

bscotchsam

I freakin' love TED talks. I'm going to post one every week to get some good brain juices flowin' and get some intelligent discussion powering through this space. FIRST UP!

Nigel Marsh - How to make Work-Life Balance Work

Nigel has one of the best opening lines I’ve seen ever. It grabs the audience, mildly insults them, and is then followed up by the presentation of his credentials via researched quotes. His intro concludes with an outline of his talk - 4 points, or 4 questions rather, that people need to be asking.

Content-wise I would've like to have him answer the questions he poses, though the answers may themselves be worth of an 18 minute talk. I researched his book afterward and found that, while it may have a kernel of wisdom in it, people were generally unimpressed by the claims of balance-finding by an upper-upper-class individual with good family life and a flush bank account. FAIR ENOUGH.

All-in-all, gives some good brain food but not any solutions. My personal takeaway was the idea of the balance-scope : I now consider my past week of living as the timeframe in which I should hit x,y,z goals. A week seems long enough to get everything in, and short enough to keep me on my toes.

Thoughts?

InferiorPickle

I don't work. Can't say much

bscotchseth

Then you've already achieved work-life balance!

Ulnarevern

I don't work either. However the speech is interesting but it seems pretty obvious to me

The little things count is something we hear from times to times, here it is smartly adapted to the speech.

However isn't a 2*3 hours work per day pretty nice ? Plus two hours for lunch it leaves like 6 hours of life if you sleep 10 hours straight or 8 hours plus 2 hours in the car/train/whatever.

I don't remember who wrote this (if I recall correctly it was either from a socialist or a french politician in the early 1900's) : a normal/"perfect" day should be 8 hours a day at work, 8 hours to sleep, 8 hours to live or private life.

Seems a good beginning, even if it's not perfect.

Ulnarevern

That's a way to see it. As i wrote, i think that it was at the begging (first half) of the last century that they considered the 3*8 hours a day. There was no transportation problems at the time and many things changed since.

And the 2*3 hours work per day was what Nigel Marsh said. It's a pretty good work duration compared to 8 hours a day like you do MaxTwelve (and like most people do i believe)