So I had the chance to give a TED talk recently. What an incredible experience!
I choose to tackle a topic that is an essential part of our lives: time management. More specifically, how we can find the time in our increasingly busy schedules to work on creative side-projects.
Finding The Time
As Jason Fried from 37 Signals said: “If you don’t make time for creativity, you’ll never get to it”.
Our lives are more than ever a balancing act between a long list of priorities: work, family, friends, hobbies and health. It can be dizzying just achieving some sort of basic equilibrium. This is something I’ve personally struggled with for years, with various projects pulling me in different directions.
20% Time
The angle I took to explore the idea was that of “20% time” for all. Google famously offers its engineers 20% time to work on side-projects. I wondered if this concept was more generalizable outside of Google to all of us. What if we all had 20% time to work on a side-project of our choice?
After not being able to find a formal definition online, I chose to define a 20% project as “something that you are doing aside from your main objective or job because it’s interesting without fully knowing its outcome.”
I think the most interesting aspect of 20% time is the reward it can generate with time. A small side-project can have a profound transformational experience on your life. I used a few examples from such luminaries as Jack Dorsey, Bill Gates and Thomas Keller to illustrate. The idea was to demonstrate that 20% time could work in a variety of different contexts: tech, non-tech, academia, arts, design, business and even cooking!
We are also implementing 20% time at my startup Busbud over the summer, which will be an interesting experiment in time management and creativity. As promised, I’ll be discussing our experience, best practices and learnings right here on this blog in the fall. Stay tuned!
Here is my talk:
Thanks
I’d like to thank the amazing organizers of the TedX conference in Montreal, especially to team president Annabelle Gauriat, who led this wonderful project, and Ludvig Bellehumeur, who helped speakers refine their talks. Your TEDx team truly did an outstanding job. Thanks for giving me the freedom to explore this idea. I was also very lucky to learn a lot from my fellow speakers all day on a wide range of topics, from genetics to urbanism.
Thanks finally to everyone who has kept the conversation going, either in person or via email. It was a pleasure to see your interest for my talk and hear your thoughts about how we can all make more time for creativity.