Welcome to March! New Years resolutions have faded, it’s STILL winter, and there’s a lot of work to be done. So here are a few TED talks to keep you inspired, creative, and motivated.
Elizabeth Gilbert – Your elusive creative genius
One of my favorite TED talks, author of Eat, Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about following up your greatest success and attempting to chase down the creativity that made it possible.
“I think that allowing somebody, one mere person to believe that he or she is like, the vessel, you know, like the font and the essence and the source of all divine, creative, unknowable, eternal mystery is just a smidge too much responsibility to put on one fragile, human psyche. It’s like asking somebody to swallow the sun.”
Kare Anderson: Be an opportunity maker
Kare talks about how making people who are unlike ourselves our allies… creates opportunities, for everybody.
“What I’m asking you to consider is what kind of opportunity- makers we might become, because more than wealth or fancy titles or a lot of contacts, it’s our capacity to connect around each others better side and bring it out.”
Margaret Gould Stewart: How giant websites design for you (and a billion others, too)
Margaret guides us through how complicated it can be to create designs that scale, but how important it is, to get it right.
“Audacity to believe that the thing that you’re making is something that the entire world wants and needs, and humility to understand that as a designer, it’s not about you or your portfolio, it’s about the people that you’re designing for, and how your work just might help them live better lives.”
Richard St. John: Success is a continuous journey
Richard demonstrates how believing that you’re successful is a great way to fail.
“So I went back to doing the projects I loved. I had fun again, I worked harder and, to cut a long story short, did all the things that took me back up to success.”
Edith Wilder: How we found the giant squid
Edith shows us how changing the method used to view underwater species helped catch a shot of the very elusive giant squid. Her very creative alternative approach generated amazing results.
“We’ve only explored about five percent of our ocean. There are great discoveries yet to be made down there, fantastic creatures representing millions of years of evolution and possibly bioactive compounds that could benefit us in ways that we can’t even yet imagine.”
What are some ways you stay creative and motivated to do your best work? How do you inspire others to do their best work?