TED Talks by Chris Anderson - Book Summary
This is my summary of ‘TED Talks’ by Chris Anderson. My notes are informal and tailored to my own interests at the time of reading. They mostly contain quotes from the book as well as some of my own thoughts. I enjoyed this book and would recommend you read it yourself (check it out on Amazon).
How to approach a presentation
Be yourself.
Your goal is not to be Winston Churchill or Nelson Mandela. It’s to be you. If you’re a scientist, be a scientist; don’t try to be an activist. If you’re an artist, be an artist; don’t try to be an academic. If you’re just an ordinary person, don’t try to fake some big intellectual style; just be you.
To make an impact, there has to be a human connection.
You can give the most brilliant talk, with crystal-clear explanations and laser-sharp logic, but if you don’t first connect with the audience, it won’t land. Knowledge can’t be pushed into a brain. It has to be pulled in.
Show vulnerability.
It’s the equivalent of the tough cowboy walking into a saloon and holding his coat wide open to reveal no weapons. Everyone relaxes.
Vulnerability can be powerful at any stage of a talk.
As with anything powerful, it should be handled with care. Authentic vulnerability is powerful. Oversharing is not.
Example from Brene Brown’s talk:
A couple years ago, an event planner called me because I was going to do a speaking event. And she said, “I’m really struggling with how to write about you on the little flyer.”
And I thought, “Well, what’s the struggle?” And she said, “Well, I saw you speak, and I’m going to call you a researcher, I think, but I’m afraid if I call you a researcher, no one will come, because they’ll think you’re boring and irrelevant.”
Make them laugh - but not squirm.
Audiences who laugh with you quickly come to like you. And if people like you, they’re much readier to take seriously what you have to say.
Ineffective humor is worse than no humor at all. If you’re not funny, don’t try to be funny.
3 talk styles to avoid:
The sales pitch.
A speaker’s job is to give to the audience, not take from them. Even in a business context where you’re genuinely making a sales pitch, your goal should be to give. The most effective salespeople put themselves into their listener’s shoes and imagine how to best serve their needs.
Usually, pitches happen subtly. The slide showing a book cover; the brief mention about the speaker’s organization’s funding shortfall. In the context of an otherwise great talk, you may even get away with these little nudges. But you’re taking a big risk. At TED, we actively discourage speakers from doing these things.
The ramble.
It’s one thing to underprepare. But to boast that you’ve underprepared? That’s insulting. It tells the audience that their time doesn’t matter. That the event doesn’t matter.
The org bore.
An organization is fascinating to those who work for it - and deeply boring to almost everyone else. Any talk framed around the exceptional history of your company or lab and the complex-but-oh-so-impressive way it is structured, and the fabulously photogenic quality of the astonishingly talented team working with you, and how much success your products are having, is going to leave your audience snoozing at the starting line.
Bad: “Back in 2005, we set up a new department in Dallas in this office building [slide of glass tower here], and its goal was to investigate how we could slash our energy costs, so I allocated Vice President Hank Boreham to the task…”
Better: “Back in 2005 we discovered something surprising. It turns out that it’s possible for an average office to slash its energy costs by 60 per cent without a noticeable loss of productivity. Le me share with you how…”
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Tips for effective preparation
President Woodrow Wilson was once asked how long it took him to prepare for a speech. He replied: “That depends on the length of the speech. If it is a 100minute speech it takes me all of two weeks to prepare it; if it is a half-hour speech it takes me a week; if I can talk as long as I want to it required no preparation at all. I am ready now.”
Decide if you want to script the full talk or not.
One of the first key decisions you need to make - and ideally you’ll make it early on in your talk preparation - is whether you will:
Write out the talk in full as a complete script (to be read, memorized, or a combination of the two).
Have a clearly worked-out structure and speak in the moment to each of your points.
There are powerful arguments in favor of each strategy. It depends on your preferences as a speaker.
It’s important to distinguish unscripted from unprepared. In an important talk, there’s no excuse for the latter. Many unscripted talks, alas, result in half-baked explanations, non sequiturs, key elements missed, and rambling overruns.
Rehearse. Repeatedly.
Have someone record these rehearsals on a smartphone so that you can take a look at yourself in action. Or use Zoom.
Your finish time is your time times 0.9.
Write and rehearse a talk that is nine-tenths the time you were given. 1 hour → 54 minutes. 10 minutes → 9 minutes. 18 minutes → 16:12 minutes.
Pay attention to how you begin and how you end it.
It doesn’t matter whether or not you memorize your talk. However you deliver the rest of the talk, I strongly encourage you to script and memorize the opening minute and the closing lines. It helps with nerves, with confidence, and with impact.
Choose the right clothes for the occasion.
Selecting an outfit is one thing you can check off your to-do-list early. A few questions worth asking:
Is there a dress code?
How is the audience likely to be dressed? You’ll probably want to dress somewhat like they do, but a little bit smarter.
Will you be filmed? If so, avoid wearing brilliant white (it can blow out the shot) or jet black (you might look like a floating head) or anything with a small or tight pattern (it can cause a strange, shimmery effect on camera)
Wear something you feel great in.
You probably don’t want the audience’s first unconscious thought about you to be any of the following: stodgy, slovenly, tasteless, boring, or trying too hard.
Consider wearing something bright that sets you apart from the background. The audience loves bold, vibrant colors, and so does the camera.
Fitted clothing tends to look better on stage than outfits that are loose and baggy.
Make sure your clothes are neatly pressed.
Have backup plan.
Have a funny remark ready if you flub your words, the AV goes awry, or if the clicker doesn’t work. The audience has been there and you instantly win their sympathy. All the better if it’s personal.
“While they sort that out, let me share with you a conversation I just had with a taxi driver…”
“Oh, this is great. Now I have a chance to mention to you something I had to cut from the talk for time reasons…”
“Great, we have a couple of extra minutes. So let me ask you a question of you. Who here has ever…”
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Defining the audience
Language works its magic only to the extent that it is shared by speaker and listener. And there’s the key clue to how to achieve the miracle of re-creating your idea in someone else’s brain. You can only use the tools that your audience has access to. If you start only with your language, your concepts, your assumptions, your values, you will fail. So instead, start with theirs. It’s only from that common ground that they can begin to build your idea inside their minds.
Plan your talk for an audience of one:
Choose someone you know and prepare your talk as if you will be delivering it to that one person only. Choose someone who is not in your field, but who is generally an intelligent, curious, engaged, worldly person - and someone whom you really like. This will bring a warmth of spirit and heart to your talk.
You don’t have to go to their house and practice your talk on them for six months; they don’t even need to know that you’re doing this, Just choose your one ideal listener, and then do your best to create a talk that would blow their mind, or move them, or fascinate them, or delight them.
Most of all, be sure you are actually speaking to one person, and not to a demographic, because a demographic is not a human being, and if you speak to a demographic, you will not sound like you are speaking to a human being.
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Defining the big idea
Every talk needs a big idea, sometimes also called throughline.
You need a connecting theme that ties together each narrative element. All the pieces need to connect.
The throughline traces the path that the journey takes. It ensures that there are no impossible leaps, and that by the end of the talk, the speaker and audience have arrived together at a satisfying destination.
Present just one idea - as thoroughly and completely as you can in the limited time period. What is it that you want your audience to have an unambiguous understanding of after you’re done?
See ‘pyramid principle’.
Bad: “I want to share with you some experiences I had during my recent trip to Cape Town, and then make a few observations about life on the road…”
Better: “On my recent trip to Cape Town, I learned something new about strangers - when you can trust them, and when you definitely can’t. Let me share with you two very different experiences I had…”
A big idea is not the same as a topic.
Your invitation might seem super clear. “Dear Mary. We want you to come talk about that new desalination technology you developed.” “Dear John. Could you come tell us the story of your kayaking adventure in Kazakhstan?”
But even when the topic is clear, the throughline is worth thinking about. A talk about kayaking could have a throughline based on endurance or group dynamics or the dangers of turbulent river eddies. The desalination talk might have a throughline based on disruptive innovation, or the global water crisis, or the awesomeness of engineering elegance.
Your big idea has to be meaningful for your audience.
The point of a talk is to say something meaningful. It’s amazing how many talks never quite do that. There are lots of spoken sentences, to be sure. But somehow they leave the author with nothing they can hold on to. Beautiful slides and a charismatic stage presence are all very well, but if there’s no real takeaway, all the speaker has done - at best - is to entertain.
Focus on ideas that you are passionate about.
Your number-one mission as a speaker is to take something that matters deeply to you and to rebuild it inside the minds of your listeners. We’ll call that something an idea. A mental construct that they can hold on to, walk away with, value, and in some sense be changed by.
It doesn’t have to be a scientific breakthrough, a genius invention, or a complex legal theory. It can be a simple how-to. Or a human insight illustrated with the power of a story. Or a beautiful image that has meaning. Or an event you wish might happen in the future. Or perhaps just a reminder of what matters most in life.
Talk about what you know. Talk about what you know and love with all your heart. I want to hear about the subject that is most important to your life - not some random subject that you think will be a novelty. Bring me your well-worn passion of decades, not some fresh, radical gimmick, and trust me - I will be captivated.
You need enough credibility to take on your big idea.
Look for a single big idea that is larger than you or your organization, but at the same time leverage your experience to show that it isn’t just empty speculation.
Try to encapsulate your big idea in no more than fifteen words.
Those fifteen words need to provide robust content. It’s not enough to think of your goal as, “I want to inspire the audience.” or “I want to win support for my work.” It has to be more focused than that. What is the precise idea you want to build inside your listeners? What is their takeaway?
Examples: throughlines of popular TED talks - note the unexpectedness incorporated into each of them:
More choice actually makes us less happy.
Vulnerability is something to be treasured, not hidden from.
Education’s potential is transformed if you focus on the amazing (and hilarious) creativity of kids.
A history of the universe in 18 minutes shows a path from chaos to order.
Your big idea should have some kind of intriguing angle to inspire curiosity.
Instead of giving a talk about the importance of hard work, how about speaking on why hard work sometimes fails to achieve true success, and what you can do about that.
Instead of planning to speak about the four main projects you’ve recently been working on, how about structuring it around just three of the projects that happen to have a surprising connection?
Test your big idea on someone who could be a typical audience member, and do so not in writing but verbally.
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Crafting the content
Include stories from your personal life.
The stories that can generate the best connection are stories about you personally or about people close to you. Tales of failure, awkwardness, misfortune, danger, or disaster, told authentically, are often the moment when listeners shift from plain vanilla interest to deep engagement.
Be careful.
Some stories can come across as boastful or emotionally manipulative. A good test is to imagine whether you would tell this story to a group of old friends.
When you explain the amazing way you turned a problem into a thrilling success, far from connecting, you may actually turn people off. When you pull the photograph of your eldest son from your jacket pocket right at the end of your talk, declare that he’s been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and say your talk is devoted to him, you may make your audience more uncomfortable than sympathetic.
Aim for just enough detail.
If you’re going to tell a story, make sure you know why you’re telling it, and try to edit out all the details that are not needed to make your point, while still leaving in enough for people to vividly imagine what happened.
Example of a great story:
Well told: “Once, when I was eight years old, my father took me fishing. We were in a tiny boat, five miles from shore, when a massive storm blew in. Dad put a life jacket on me and whispered in my ear, “Do you trust me, son?” I nodded. He threw me overboard. [pause] I kid you not. Just tossed me over! I hit the water and bobbed up to the surface, gasping for breath. It was shockingly cold. The waves were terrifying. Monstrous. Then… Dad dived in after me. We watched in horror as our little boat flipped and sank. But he was holding me the whole time, telling me it was going to be okay. Fifteen minutes later, the coast guard helicopter arrived. It turned out that Dad knew the boat was damaged and was going to sink, and he had called them with our exact location. He guessed it was better to chuck me in the open sea than risk getting trapped when the boat flipped. And that is how I learned the true meaning of the word trust.”
How not to tell it: “I learned trust from my father when I was eight years old and we got caught in a storm while out fishing for mackerel. We failed to catch a single one before the storm hit. Dad knew the boat was going to sink, because it was one of those Saturn brand inflatable boats, which are usually pretty strong, but this one had been punctured once and Dad thought it might happen again. In any case, the storm was too big for an inflatable boat and it was already leaking. So he called the coast guard rescue service, who, back then, were available 24/7, unlike today. He told them our location, and then, to avoid the risk of getting trapped underwater, he put a life jacket on me and threw me overboard before jumping in himself. We then waited for the coast guard to come and, sure enough, 15 minutes later the helicopter showed up - I think it was a Sikorsky MH-60 Jayhawk - and we were fine.”
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Tips for a strong beginning
At the beginning of your talk, you have about a minute to intrigue people with what you’ll be saying. You want an opening that grabs people from the first moment. By the end of the first paragraph, something needs to land.
Focus on two key moments.
First, the 10-second war: can you do something in your first moments on stage to ensure people’s eager attention while you set up your talk topic?
Second, the 1-minute war: can you then use that first minute to ensure that they’re committed to coming on the full talk journey with you?
You can deliver a dose of drama.
Bad example: “I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1983 to loving American mother and an Egyptian father who tried their best to create a happy childhood for me. It wasn’t until I was seven years old that our family dynamic started to change. My father exposed me to a side of Islam that few people, including the majority of Muslims, get to see. But, in fact, when people take the time to interact with one another, it doesn’t take long to realize that, for the most part, we all want the same things out of life.”
Good example: “On November 5th, 1990, a man named El-Sayyid Nosair walked into a hotel in Manhattan and assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane, the leader of the Jewish defense league. Nosair was initially found not guilty of the murder, but while serving time on lesser charger, he and other men began planning attacks on a dozen NYC landmarks, including tunnels, synagogues, and the UN headquarters. Thankfully, those plans were foiled by an FBI informant. Sadly, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center was not. Nosair would eventually be convicted for his involvement in the plot. El-Sayyid Nosair is my father.
You can ignite curiosity.
Ask a surprising question.
Bad: “How do we build a better future for all?” Too broad. Too much of a cliche. I’m bored already.
Good: “How did this fourteen-year old girl, with less than $200 in her bank account, give her whole town a giant leap into the future?”
You can show a compelling slide, video, or object.
If you have the right material, this is clearly a great way to start a talk. Instead of saying, “Today I plan to talk to you about my work, but first I need to give you some background…” you can just start by saying, “Let me show you something.”
When David Christian gave his history of the universe in 18 mins, he began with a video of an egg being scrambled. It was only after 10 seconds or so that you realized that the process was happening in reverse - the egg was being unscrambled. Right there, right in his intriguing opening video, he revealed the throughline of his story… that there is a direction to time.
“The image you’re about to see changed my life.”
“I’m going to play you a video that, at first viewing, may seem to be impossible.”
“Here’s my opening slide. Can you figure out what this thing is?”
“Until two and a half months ago, no living human had cast eyes on this object.”
You can tease, but don’t give it away.
It’s OK to save the big revelations for the middle or end of your talk. In the opening sentences your sole goal is to give your audience a reason to step away from their comfort zone and accompany you on an amazing journey of discovery.
If you decide to tease a little, please note that it’s still very important to indicate where you’re going and why. You don’t have to show the shark, but we do need to know it’s coming. Every talk needs mapping: a sense of where you’re going, where you are, and where you’ve been. If your listeners don’t know where they are in the structure of the talk, they will quickly get lost.
Bad: “Today I’m going to explain to you that the key to success as an entrepreneur is simply this: determination.”
Good: “Over the next five minutes, I plan to reveal what I believe is the key to success as an entrepreneur, and how anyone here can cultivate it. You’ll find clues to it in the story I’m about to tell.”
You can tell a story or get people laughing.
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Tips for an effective ending
The way you end will strongly influence how your talk is remembered. If the ending isn’t memorable, the talk itself may not be.
Whichever way you end, make sure it’s planned. Aim for at least an elegant closing paragraph, followed by a simple thank you.
7 possible ways to end well:
Camera pull-back.
You’ve spent the talk explaining a particular piece of work. At the end, why not show us the bigger picture, a broader set of possibilities implied by your work?
Example: David Eagleman showed that the human brain could be thought of as a pattern recognizer, and that if you were to connect new electrical data to a brain, it could come to interpret that data as if coming from a brand-new sense organ, so that you could intuitively sense brand-new aspects of the world in real time. He ended by hinting at the limitless possibilities this brought with it. “Just imagine an astronaut being able to feel the overall health of the ISS, or, for that matter, having you feel the invisible states of your own health, like your blood sugar and the state of your microbiome, or having 360-degree vision or seeing in infrared or ultraviolet. So the key is this: As we move into the future, we’re going to increasingly be able to choose our own peripheral devices. We no longer have to wait for mother nature’s sensory gifts on her timescales, but instead, like any good parent, she’s given us the tools that we need to go out and define our own trajectory. So the question now is, how do you want to go out and experience your universe?”
Call to action.
If you’ve given your audience a powerful idea, why not end by nudging them to act on it?
Example: Amy Cuddy’s ending of her talk on power posing: “Give it away. Share it with people, because the people who can use it the most are the ones with no resources and no technology and not status and no power. Give it to them because they can do it in private. They need their bodies, privacy, and 2 minutes, and it can significantly change the outcomes of their life.”
Personal commitment.
Sometimes speakers score by making a giant commitment of their own.
Making a major commitment requires judgment. Done wrong, it could lead to awkwardness in the moment, and a loss of credibility later.
Example: Elon Musk addressing the Space X team after a failed launch. “For my part, I will never give up and I mean never.”
Values and vision.
Turn what you’ve discussed into an inspiring or hopeful vision of what might be.
Example: Rita Pierson. “Teaching and learning should bring joy. How powerful would our world be if we had kids who were not afraid to take risks, who were not afraid to think, and who had a champion? Every child deserves a champion, an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection, and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be. Is this job tough? You betcha. Oh God, you betcha. But it is not impossible. We can do this. We’re educators. We’re born to make a difference. Thank you very much.”
Satisfying encapsulation.
Find a way to neatly reframe the case you’ve been making.
Example: Esther Perel. “I look at affairs from a dual perspective: hurt and betrayal on one side, growth and self-discovery on the other - what it did to you, and what it meant for me. And so when a couple comes to me in the aftermath of an affair that has been revealed, I will often tell them this: Today in the West, most of us are going to have two or three relationships or marriages, and some of us are going to do it with the same person. Your first marriage is over. Would you like to create a second one together?”
Example: Amanda Palmer. “I think people have been obsessed with the wrong question, which is, “How do we make people pay for music?” What if we started asking, “How do we let people pay for music?”
Narrative symmetry.
Link back to the opening. Look for a satisfying way the narrative has come full circle.
Lyrical inspiration.
If the talk has opened people up, it’s possible to end with poetic language that taps deep into matters of the heart.
It only works when the rest of the talk has already prepared the groundwork, and when it’s clear that the speaker has earned the right to evoke such sentiment.
Example: Brene Brown.
How not to end:
“Well, that’s my time gone, so I’ll wrap up there.” → You mean, you had a lot more to say but can’t tell us because of bad planning?
“So that concludes my argument, now are there any questions?” → Or, how to preempt your own applause.
“I’m sorry I haven’t had time to discuss some of the major issues here, but hopefully this has at least given you a flavor of the topic.” → Don’t apologize. Plan more carefully. Your job was to give the best talk you could in the time available.
“Finally, I just want to thank my awesome team, who are pictured here: David, Joanna, Gavin, Samantha, Lee, Abdul, and Hezekiah. Also, my university, and my sponsors.” → Lovely, but do you care more about them than your idea, and more than us, your audience?
“So, given the importance of this issue, I hope we can start a new conversation about it together.” → A conversation? Isn’t that a little lame? What should be the outcome of that conversation?
“The future is full of challenges and opportunities. Everyone here has it in their heart to make a difference. Let’s dream together. Let’s be the change we want to see in the world.” → Beautiful sentiment, but the cliches really don’t help anyone.
“I’ll close with this video which summarizes my points.” → No! Never end with a video. End with you!
“In closing, I should just point out that my organization could probably solve this problem if we were adequately funded. You have it in your power to change the world with us.” → Ah, so this was a fundraising pitch all along?
“Thanks for being such an amazing audience. I have loved every moment, standing here, talking to you. I’ll carry this experience with me for a long, long time. You’ve been so patient, and I know that you’ll take what you’ve heard today and do something wonderful with it.” → “Thank you” would have been just fine.
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Designing visuals
Having no slides at all is better than bad slides. Having said that, the majority of talks do benefit from great slides.
Limit each slide to one single core idea.
Don’t leave a slide onscreen once you’ve finished talking about it.
Go to a blank, black slide and then the audience will get a vacation from images and pay more attention to your words.
Then, when you go back to slides, they will be ready to go back to work.
Visuals over text and bullets:
Classic PowerPoint slide decks with a headline followed by multiple bullet points of long phrases are the surest single way to lose an audience’s attention altogether.
Spark people’s curiosity and use slides as a thought trigger:
Instead of a slide that reads, “A black hole is an object so massive that no light can escape from it,” you’d do better with one that reads, “How black is a black hole?” Then you’d give the information from that original slide in spoken form. That way, the slides teases the audience’s curiosity and makes your words more interesting, not less.
Use the right typeface and font sizes.
We usually recommend medium-weight sans-serif fonts like Helvetica or Arial. Don’t use excessively thin fonts as they are hard to read.
Use 24 points or larger in most cases. Use at most three sizes of your chosen typeface per presentation, and there should be a reason for each size. Large size is for titles/headlines, medium size is for your main ideas; small size is for supporting ideas.
Avoid bullets at all costs. This includes dashes at the beginning of text.
Resist underlining and italics, they’re hard to read. Bold typefaces are OK.
Use builds - add words and images to a slide through a series of clicks - to focus people’s attention on one idea at a time.
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Tips for effective delivery
Make eye contact, right from the start.
When you walk onto the stage, you should be thinking about one thing: your true excitement at the chance to share your passion with the people sitting right there a few feet from you.
Don’t rush in with your opening sentence. Walk into the light, pick out a couple of people, look them into the eye, nod a greeting, and smile. Then you’re on your way.
Find “friends” in the audience.
Early on in the talk, look out for faces that seem sympathetic. If you can find three or four in different parts of the audience, give the talk to them, moving your gaze from one to the next in turn.
Everyone in the audience will see you connecting, and the encouragement you get from those faces will bring you calm and confidence.
Work on your voice.
Voice coaches speak of six tools you can use:
Volume
Pitch
Pace
Timbre
Tone
Prosody (the singsong rise and fall that distinguishes, for example, a statement from a question)
Inject variety into the way you speak, variety based on the meaning you’re trying to convey.
I ask people to imagine they’ve met up with friends they went to school with and are updating them on what they’ve been up to. It’s that kind of voice you’re looking for. Real, natural, but unafraid to let it rip if what you’re saying demands it.
Think of your tone of voice as giving you a whole new set of tools to get inside your listeners’ heads. You want them to understand you, yes, but you also want them to feel your passion. And the way you do that is not by telling them to be passionate about this topic, it’s by showing your own passion. It spreads automatically.
Great TED examples of the right use of voice: Kelly McGonigal, Jon Ronson, Amy Cuddy, Hans Rosling, and the incomparable Sir Ken Robinson.
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‘TED Talks’ also covered a few more insightful topics. You’ll find them below in alphabetical order.
Cognitive biases
Cognitive curse of knowledge: We find it hard to remember what it feels like not to know something that we ourselves know well.
Communication
“Great writing is all about the power of the deleted word.” - Richard Bach
Customer value
For my entire entrepreneurial life, my mantra has been to follow the passion. Not my passion - other people’s. If I saw something that people were truly, deeply passionate about, that was the big clue that there was opportunity there. Passion was a proxy for potential.
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