I love TED Talks. I think TED is great, and the concept of spreading ideas that are…well, worth spreading…is wonderful. (If you don’t know what TED is, check out their Web site. It’s probably wise to have a clear schedule when visiting for the first time, because you will get sucked in for a few hours.)

The only problem with browsing TED Talks on the Web site is that there are just too many of them! That’s why I was pleased to discover that Netflix has created some thematically-grouped collections of TED Talks. Some of these collections include “Smart Laughs,” “On Life Lessons and Confessions,” “Head Games,” and “Rad Invention.” One such collection is called “Life Hack”; it contains 10 talks, each of which provides a small tip or trick that everyone can do to improve some aspect of their lives—a “life hack.”

Although these are not my original ideas, in the spirit of “ideas worth spreading,” I have decided to compile a list describing the TED Talks in the Netflix “Life Hack” collection. Honestly, this list is primarily for my own reference, so that I can return to it as needed to remind myself of this great advice. If you would like to benefit from it as well, click below to read on.

1. Your body language shapes who you are — Amy Cuddy
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks-_Mh1QhMc
   
   Ms. Cuddy explains her profoundly simple discovery: Not only do people express their feelings through nonverbal cues (such as facial expressions and gestures), but conversely, these “nonverbals” can also affect our emotions and self-perception. Universal gestures such as pride (raising the arms above the head and lifting the chin) are expressed by people who feel powerful or victorious. What isn’t as intuitively obvious—but equally true according to Ms. Cuddy’s research—is that assuming a prideful pose can also make someone feel more powerful. She suggests adopting a “power pose” for two minutes (in private) before entering a stressful, evaluative situation such as a job interview.What is especially intriguing is her finding that people who made a consistent effort to make themselves feel more powerful actually experienced personality changes that made them more assertive and confident. Instead of “faking it until they made it,” they actually “faked it until they became it.” I think this goes to show that personalities are always malleable to some extent. It may not be easy to change your personality, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
2. The game that can give you 10 extra years of life — Jane McGonigal
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfBpsV1Hwqs
   
   Ms. McGonigal, a video game designer and avid gamer, begins her talk by responding to what she says is the most common question she was asked after her first TED Talk encouraging people to play more games. She says people asked her if she thought, on her deathbed, she would regret not having played more video games. In reply, she lists the top five regrets of the dying and explains that games may at least help with several of these regrets:
   – I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
   – I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
   – I wish I had let myself be happier.
   – I wish I’d had the courage to express my true self.
   – I wish I’d lived a life true to my dreams, instead of what others expected of me.Ms. McGonigal then describes a traumatic head injury she received and how she created a game, “Jane the Concussion Slayer,” to help fight the adverse effects. She recounts how she rebranded the game as “SuperBetter” and published it for others to use, and she describes the overwhelmingly positive feedback she received from others who had started playing the “game.” She explains that, in contrast to post-traumatic stress disorder, some people who experience traumatic events undergo a process of post-traumatic growth. She lists the top five things said by people experiencing post-traumatic growth:
   – My priorities have changed — I’m not afraid to do what makes me happy.
   – I feel closer to my friends and family.
   – I understand myself better; I know who I really am now.
   – I have a new sense of meaning and purpose.
   – I’m better able to focus on my goals and dreams.Finally, Ms. McGonigal explains how easy it is to extend one’s lifetime by building up four types of resistance: physical, mental, emotional, and social. Simple tasks, such as taking a few steps every hour or taking a moment to thank a friend or loved one, can make us more resilient, and this added resilience can lead to longer life.
3. The happy secret to better work — Shawn Achor
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLJsdqxnZb0Instead of working and achieving things and expecting to be happy as a result, perhaps instead being positive leads to success and accomplishment. External environment is a terrible predictor of happiness; more important are optimism and the ability to see stress as a challenge rather than a threat.Mr. Achor outlines a set of simple tasks that can train our brains, in much the same way that we train our bodies, to be more performant and to make us happier. Those tasks are:
   – Write down three new things you are grateful for each day for 21 days.
   – Write a journal entry about a positive experience you have had in the past 24 hours, every day.
   – Exercise; it teaches your brain that behavior matters.
   – Meditate; it allows you to find peace and focus.
4. Feats of memory anyone can do — Joshua Foer
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6PoUg7jXsAMemory is a skill that we are entrusting more and more into the hands of technology. People who enter and win memory competitions are not extraordinary geniuses or savants; they have average memories which they have trained to perform “amazing” feats of remembering. The convenience of technology has come at the cost of reduced attention spans and memory capacities. This cost is a sign of laziness on our parts; instead of investing the time and energy to process our experiences and interactions more deeply, we offload the job of “remembering” onto our computers or smartphones.Although Mr. Foer did not say so directly, I inferred that the lack of deep processing and the trust of information in technology is slowly depriving us of an important part of our humanity. Our brains are so complex and developed—more so than any other species in the animal kingdom—and yet we are choosing not to use them to their full potential. Technology can be wonderful when it simplifies repetitive tasks or performs immense calculations that we would never have been able to do otherwise. Technology does not, however, need to take over basic responsibilities that humans have developed and honed literally over thousands of years. (And yet, because a computer can remember more cheaply than a human, computers are becoming the preferred memory storage systems. It’s the Industrial Revolution of the electronic age.)
5. How to start a movement — Derek Sivers
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V74AxCqOTvgIn this brief (three-minute) TED Talk, Mr. Sivers draws life lessons from this video of one guy starting a dance party at the Sasquatch Music Festival in 2009. He discusses the fearlessness required by the leader (the initial shirtless guy who starts it all). He points out that being the first follower is, in some sense, being a leader too: “The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader.” It is critical, he says, for the leader to embrace the first followers as equals, demonstrating the importance of the movement, rather than the leader. He shows how the movement (dance party) picks up momentum as more and more people begin to join the crowd; people who were afraid to participate before, he says, now feel comfortable joining the group.
6. How to tie your shoes — Terry Moore
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAFcV7zuUDAThis ultra-pragmatic, three-minute talk demonstrates the two forms of the tennis shoe knot. Mr. Moore explains that most people learn the “weak form” of this knot growing up. He also illustrates how a minor variation in tying results in the “strong form” of the knot, and he claims that this version comes untied less often and is all around better. (I’m not going to try to explain the difference between the two forms in words; check out the video link above for a demonstration.)
7. How to make choosing easier — Sheena Iyengar
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pq5jnM1C-A

   Ms. Iyengar begins by asking how many choices you think you make in a given day or week. She observes that we make dozens of choices per day and hundreds of choices per week, but she posits that having more choices is not always a good thing. She gives examples of how having too many choices may overwhelm the chooser, reducing the overall effectiveness of the decision-making process as well as the chooser’s satisfaction with the choice.In order to counteract these negative consequences of excessive choice, Ms. Iyengar proposes four improvements for businesses and others to consider. First, she recommends to “cut” the number of choices, eliminating some unpopular or extraneous choices from the selection. Next she explains the importance of “concretizing” choices, illustrating to choosers the differences among the choices. As an example, she cites studies showing that people typically spend 10% to 15% more with debit or credit cards than they do with cash because the money on the cards doesn’t feel real. (Quite intriguing, methinks.)

   The third technique is to “categorize” the choices, again helping to show how the choices differ. People feel more satisfied having fewer overall choices grouped into more categories than if a larger selection were grouped into fewer categories. Finally, Ms. Iyengar emphasizes the importance of “conditioning for choice,” meaning that choices with fewer options should be presented before more complex choices with a larger set of options. This technique helps people psychologically “ramp up” and get engaged before the larger choices are presented. All of this is great advice, whether you are the one offering the choice or the one making the decision.

8. All it takes is 10 mindful minutes — Andy Puddicombe
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzR62JJCMBQ

   Mr. Puddicombe begins by asking: When was the last time you took 10 minutes to do literally nothing? He says that he expects it has been a long time for most people (it certainly has for me). He then goes on to describe the benefits and merits of meditation. He explains that meditation can help to avoid feeling overwhelmed or stressed. Rather than focusing on any specific thought, he says, meditation involves sitting back and observing thoughts without judgment or involvement. Mr. Puddicombe advocates taking 10 minutes every day to meditate, arguing that the feelings of doubt and stress inherent in most people’s daily lives needn’t exist. We assume that these things are part of everyday life, but that isn’t necessarily the case, and meditation is the key to eliminating those negative feelings. (At least, that’s Mr. Puddicombe’s argument. I have been wanting to develop a meditation ritual, but there is definitely some mental diligence and discipline involved in reaching the detached state he describes. Perhaps I should start training my mind more regularly.)

9. How to succeed? Get more sleep — Arianna Huffington
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nncY-MA1Iu8

   Ms. Huffington offers an extraordinarily simple and humble tip: Sleep! She explains that getting enough sleep every night will make you happier, more productive, and more inspired. This is one talk that hardly requires an explanation; it is hard to argue with great advice like this! (Although this talk was delivered at the TED Women conference, I would like to think its content is applicable to men and women alike.)

10. Ten top time-saving tech tips — David Pogue
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoT0-2vu9m4

    Mr. Pogue, a tech author and columnist for The New York Times (and whose books I have been reading as far back as middle school), offers ten brief tips for some common modern technologies. He also stole my idea with his alliterative TED Talk title (re: the title of this post), but I digress. His tips are as follows:
    – Use the Space bar to scroll one page at a time in Web browsers. Shift+Space scrolls up instead of down.
    – Use the Tab key to navigate between fields in Web forms. You can type the letter of the choice you want to find it quickly in a drop-down menu.
    – To zoom in a Web browser, use Ctrl and the “+” key; Ctrl and “-” zooms out. (Macs use the Command key instead of the Ctrl key.)
    – Press the Space bar twice on a smartphone to insert a period and space and to automatically capitalize the next letter. This makes ending a sentence and starting the next one much faster.
    – Pressing the Call or Dial button on cell phones will either redial the last number or display a list of recent calls, depending on the phone.
    – To skip past generic pre-recorded voicemail instructions, if you know the carrier for the number you are dialing, you can press “*” (Verizon), “#” (AT&T and T-Mobile), or “1” (Sprint).
    – In addition to typical search queries, Google can also be used as a dictionary (e.g., “define ectoplasm”), a unit converter (e.g., “42 light years in miles” or “miles in 42 light years”), and a flight tracker (e.g., “Delta 123”).
    – In most text editing software, double-clicking a word selects just that word. Typing when something is highlighted will replace the highlighted text. Double-clicking and then dragging will typically select text incrementally one word at a time.
    – Most digital cameras allow you to half-press the shutter button before actually taking the photo. This allows you prefocus the shot and reduce shutter lag (the time between pressing the button and the image actually being captured).
    – Presentation software (PowerPoint, Keynote) allows you to “black out” the slide (display a black screen) while presenting by pressing the “B” key. Similarly, pressing the “W” key will display an all-white screen.