Can addiction ever be positive and beneficial for someone? Let us not be restricted by its definition although the word inevitably has negative connotations. In the case of work addiction, it is a double edged sword. For extreme cases workaholics may suffer from malnutrition due to frequent skipping of meals and lose social contact with friends and families. However, being a workaholic will ensure a swift elevation through the posts in your career, it also ensures that your time is not wasted and you learn much in the process.
This bring me to my point, nope- it is not about My aspiration to be a workaholic nor My experience as a workaholic. I would like to introduce you to something called TED. Something that got me hooked to and addicted.
TED is an organization that often negotiates with accomplished people to give talks on their personal experience, their findings and thoughts. The speakers may range from Steve Jobs to Arthur Benjamin and from William Kamkwamba to Bill Gates. The topics may be courageous, inspiring, persuasive so on and so forth, addressing Global Warming or the importance of letter writing. And TED aims to compile all this video on one site, (http://www.ted.com) and allow viewing to be free-of-charge. They do this, with only one aim, conveying messages, ideas, that are worth spreading.
I happened to chance upon TED 2 years ago, under the recommendation of my brother. At that time, TED was not as established, it didn't had their transcript, it did not had introduction about speakers nor subtitles. At that age, my capability to understand and appreciate the talks were limited, and so I was not very interested in them. This year, I revisited the site while reading an article on the net. I remembered the first video I viewed was regarding our origins which was substantiated with plenty of pictures and videos by a speaker who tried to convey her belief that we originated from primates. The talk was fascinating and clearly got me thinking. Before I knew it, I was clicking on many of the videos, one by one. Clearly, I was addicted as the ideas were truly worth spreading.
Well, I would not say this is an all beneficial addiction when you neglect your revision to watch the TED videos. However, you can take away many tips about presentations and how the presenters made use of their slideshows. Most of the presenters were trained and extremely skilled, which explains why one can enjoy it thoroughly. There are also subtitles in 29 languages and aides in your comprehension of the talk.
By watching this videos, I firmly believe that it will broaden your horizon and encourage critical thinking instead of whaling away your time, Facebooking, feeding on useless addiction. I assure you that these videos are mostly entertaining as many speakers implant humor in their talk, even entertaining to the extend you get addicted to them. Whether or not you are agreeable to the idea, you would definitely have some learning points to take away on how this great people manage to generate an idea, how they go about doing it to substantiate it such that it can be persuasive.
However, just yesterday, I realised that on one hand, although watching these talks allow you to gain insights and entertaining at the same time, I chanced upon some videos I viewed before in the past and was disappointed when I tried to recall the gist of the talk only to have failed. Hence, I came to the realisation that it is essential for me to document each talk with a reflection and my view on the topic and that only then would I had clearly gained. Not to mention that this will also train me in critical analysis and broaden my experience, further etching the talk into my mind. I have decided to do this in the form of blogging to share my ideas and facilitate active discussion.
To end off, I hope my post had served its purpose to introduce TED to some of you and convey the idea that rather than indulging in useless addictions that only develops bad habits within you, watching these entertaining and informative talks will be more entertaining. And I congratulate you if it ever becomes your addiction and you manage to kick the others out of your life.
I hope you will ever find the talks as entertaining as I described. Do check in on my blog in the near future, I may be posting up my reflections soon!
Well, that's all, folks!
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