8 TED Talks That Will Help You Increase Productivity

Unlock your productivity and (finally) get through your to-do list with the help of these TED Talks.

With so much extra time at home, the pressure is on to stay productive. But with countless distractions (hello funny cat videos), outside stressors occupying your mind and the challenges of working from home, getting some decent work done in the day is now harder than ever. From getting your brain to focus to learning how to manage your time better and prevent burn out, here are 8 TED Talks that will help you increase your productivity.

Read more: 8 Inspiring TED Talks To Listen To Right Now

Productivity & How Not to Burn Out | Max Kaplan

You probably clicked into this article to find out how you can do more in your day, but Max Kaplan is here to remind us of the importance of rest, and how in that time of zero work, zero distractions, and zero noise, our mind is given the chance do its magic. Max learned this early on when his mom advised him to spend one hour doing something that makes him happy every day, and he’s never looked back.

Read more: 5 Ways To Recognise And Prevent Burnout

Inside the mind of a master procrastinator | Tim Urban

Are you guilty of always leaving your work to the very last minute? Tim Urban is all too familiar with pulling an all-nighter to meet a deadline. In this hilarious and insightful talk, he takes us on a journey through YouTube binges, Wikipedia rabbit holes and bouts of staring at a black Word doc – and encourages us to think harder about what we’re really procrastinating on.

Read more: Everything You Need To Know About Working From Home

Forget Multitasking, Try Monotasking | Paolo Cardini

Designer Paolo Cardini questions the efficiency of multitasking and makes the case for *gasp* “monotasking”. Only two percent of people are able to control multitasking environments – so why do we all try to handle so much at once? Perhaps we’d be more productive if we focus on one task at a time…

How to Get Up in the Morning | Zibby Lindholm

Could the key to getting things done be as simple as confidence? Zibby Lindholm provides a path to help people develop the confidence to enable them to take that first step (and more importantly, follow through!). Touching on overthinking and how this can be the cause of a mental block, she shares how she overcomes this hurdle, acknowledging that confidence is not an innate quality and using the talk itself to demonstrate this.

How To Get Your Brain to Focus | Chris Bailey

How do we harness our attention to focus deeper, get distracted less and even become more creative? Could the culprit to our demise be our smartphone? International bestselling author of Hyperfocus and The Productivity Project, Chris Bailey, talks about how our ability to focus is the key to productivity, creativity and living a meaningful life.

Stop trying so hard. Achieve more by doing less. | Bethany Butzer

The most common answer to “How are you?” these days is, “Busy”. We wear our busyness like a badge of honour, but all this busyness comes at a cost. Bethany Butzer asks if there’s a way to still be productive members of society without sacrificing our health and well-being in the process. Her answer is yes. She explains the concept of “down stream effort”, and how to live life and achieve goals effectively and efficiently without over exertion.

Read more: How To Prioritise Your Wellbeing At Work

3 Reasons you aren’t doing what you say you will do | Amanda Crowell

The bad news: we all face powerful mental blocks that stop us when we’re trying to achieve our goals. The good news: Amanda Crowell is here to show us how to outwit them. Whether you just don’t think you can do something, believe people like you aren’t good at something or feel like you have to do something but don’t really want to, Amanda offers a way to kick these excuses to the curb.

Enter the cult of extreme productivity | Mark Adams

In this talk, Mark Adams introduces a powerful system that takes productivity thinking to a whole new and terrifying level, allowing a person to achieve almost any goal they set themselves with rapid speed. Think you can handle it? Mark’s radical idea is to bin your goals and affirmations and embrace fear by making irreversible decisions. Warning: This is the second time Mark has done a TEDx talk. The first time his talk was banned…

Read more: 16 Ways To Beat Boredom When You’re Stuck At Home