TEDx events and talks are quickly becoming a way in which great ideas can be shared. Now, many cities have TEDx events, and many of the TEDx videos are available online.

I had a chance to speak at TEDxRaleigh last December. Doing so was a great experience, not just during the talk, but in preparing for it.

The TEDx format has many different parameters than say, a conference keynote or a convention breakout session. While constricting, these parameters made me a better speaker. So, if you have a chance to give a TEDx talk soon or you’re at an event and someone asks you to “say a few words,” keep these tips in mind to stand out:

Keep it short

TEDx events ask you to keep your talk under 18 minutes, mainly so the video recording has a chance to be uploaded to the TEDx YouTube channel. TED also knows that speaking longer than that and the audience can lose interest. Better yet, some of the most memorable TED or TEDx talks I’ve seen are incredibly short, like less than five minutes. Unlike other speaking gigs, where you’re asked to fill a half-hour or hour block, speaking on a TEDx stage for just six minutes can be a very good thing. Take all the time you need, as long as it’s less than all the time they give you.

Settle on one core idea

At the core of TED and TEDx events are “ideas worth spreading.” This is the ultimate theme of your speech. What is the one core idea you want to spread as the result of your talk? Start big when planning your talk, but boil all the fluff away until you’re left with the one unforgettable idea that you want people to remember. Try to even limit this idea to 140 characters so people in the audience can share it immediately online.

Once you have your core idea worth spreading, you can add back how you’ll arrive at that point and which illustrations to use, so as long as your talk is still short.

Speak with authority

So many public speakers seem to want to make suggestions when speaking, so as not to offend. You may hear, “So, if you want, you should try to…” The audience isn’t sure if they should do what you advise since you don’t really seem to care whether or not they actually implement your knowledge. But, with TEDx, you have to be authoritative. You were chosen to speak because of your expertise in a certain area. You’re good enough! You’re qualified! Speak as one who is credentialed. Your way is the right way. Believe it and let that shine through in your talk. Don’t give suggestions, tell the audience a plan.

Polish it up

At a TEDx event, you’re speaking to two audiences. The first is made up of the people in the same room who are there for the live event. The other is the larger, global audience who will watch the video of your talk. While much of the video production details will be out of your hands, you can control your “ums” and “uhs.” You can make sure you speak clearly and come across as authoritative on camera. Your talk has a chance to live forever online, so be sure to practice like hell until you get it right.

Of course, many of these ideas apply to any speaking situation. If any audience remembers what you said long after you stopped talking, you’ve done a great job. And, here’s my TEDxRaleigh talk. Enjoy:

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For most of us, the working day isn’t working for us. From what I hear from many of my educator friends, the school day isn’t working for students, either (I’m guessing many people don’t do their best work at 7:30 AM, like we ask teenagers to do; seriously – whose idea is/was that?). Because of tradition and convention, it seems like many of us are spending our creative hours not creating and our productive hours not being productive. And this is a shame.

If you have job that demands creating, then you need to do the hard work of figuring out when you’re at your creative best and then protect that time fiercely. If there are certain times when you’re in “the zone,” then block off that amount of time and work on your biggest problems.

In fact, go read this by Sarah Peck. Right now. She shares how she works and why the 9-to-5 doesn’t suit her. Rest assured, she’s putting in her 40 hours (or more), but those hours don’t fit nicely within our normal mindset of when someone should be at “work.”

Or, check out this post on the 37 Signals blog about how a remote worker in Spain was able to get more done because of the time difference. You don’t need to move to Madrid or Paris to get the same effect, but the idea has to make you wonder.

Remember, the goal of our work – especially as entrepreneurs or business owners or leaders – isn’t to work a schedule. It’s to create. To take risks, innovate, or be bold. It’s about forward motion, as Matt Cheuvront emphasizes here. If we’re stuck in work or life, it may be because we need to shake up our schedule.

Some jobs don’t make this easy. Based upon who our boss is or where we work (like in regimented shifts), this may not be feasible. Yet.

The world of work is changing and I think you’d be surprised about how flexible a place may be. With a little finesse and a compelling case of numbers, you may get to come in and stay an hour later. If you worked for me and could show that a shifted schedule makes you a better worker (meaning I get more value out of you), then I’m all ears.

Many companies are understanding this in terms of location and are seeing the benefits of letting people work from home (or the coffee shop or the beach or Spain). It’s only a matter of time before we see the same with time.

What do you think?

Do you work an unconventional schedule in order to get more done? What does that look like? And did you have to sell anyone above you on it? 

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Whether or not you’ve found the sweet spot where your passion is used to meet one of the world’s great needs, I think you may find this video helpful.

I had the chance to chat for 30 minutes with Rémy Chaussé recently as part of her online video series.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• How one can determine and articulate his or her passion(s)
• Once determined how one can then go about living out these passions to the fullest
• Helpful reminders about passion, particularly about how we don’t all need to build a career around it

Enjoy!

Rémy Chaussé interviews Sam Davidson from Remy Chausse on Vimeo.

I was giving a lunchtime talk to a company about some of the core concepts in Simplify Your Life. It was an interesting discussion, because some of the ideas in the book hint at leaving your job once you’ve figured out what it is you’re meant to do in the world. If word gets out that you speak somewhere and everyone quits their job the next day, you’re not likely to get many future bookings.

Ultimately, then, what I highlighted was the notion that for some, our passion needs to become our day job, that there is no truer expression for it. But for some of us, we need to keep our passion a nights-and-weekend pursuit because it’s unrealistic it can become a career or it’s so delicate that spending 40 hours or more a week with it would strain the relationship.

Passion is becoming an oft overused or misunderstood word, and many times I try to reframe the discussion around it. And this is why I like this piece in Harvard Business Review by Oliver Segovia. He challenges readers to abandon the quest for selfish passions in favor of solving problems that affect lots of people the world over.

For many, this is a great idea. Passions tend to look inward: what makes you happy, what you enjoy doing, what gives you the most energy, how you feel most alive. Problems put your focus out there so that you can see what the immediate and future needs of the world are and figure out how to respond.

Better yet, as Segovia notes, problems pay. This may not always be the case with a passion. One of the attendees at my talk that day said his passion was for rugby. He asked how he could build a career around that passion.

I was honest with him. I told him he probably couldn’t. While several jobs exist in the field other than as a rugby player, they’re not in the U.S. So unless he was willing to make a pretty drastic life change and move to New Zealand and work his way up, he may be out of luck. But, his passion could still be fully lived by playing the game with friends on the weekend or keeping up a blog on the subject.

Problems – rather, their solutions – usually come with some kind of way to earn a living. As long as a solution is tied to a funding model (donations or sales) and you can locate a customer base, the pursuit of a problem can be financially sustainable.

The real sweet spot, of course, is to find that job or calling where your deepest passion meets one of the world’s greatest needs (defined as “vocation” by Frederick Buechner). These spots are few and far between, but they’re out there, especially if you chase after your passion with an eye to the horizon looking for problems.

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On Sundays, when I write, I do so at length on some topic of religion, Christianity, Jesus stuff, or faith. Beware.

These Sunday posts seem to get more interaction that other topics I write about. Religion is buzzworthy, apparently.

It also may be because some of my thoughts come as a surprise to many of my Facebook friends, especially those who knew me before the moment that changed everything. They remember me as the youth group kid, the guy destined to become the next big thing at the next big church. Advocating for churches with expiration dates seems like the last thing I should be doing, in their minds.

These people were also not there, though, when everything changed. The summer of 2002 was a pivotal one for me and my faith (and my love life – that’s when I met and fell in love with my wife), due to questions I was asking at the time, books I was reading, and one fateful encounter.

Enter Levi.

One lunch with Levi sent my certainly about religion and theology packing, replacing it with a more compassionate and dynamic faith than I’d ever been a part of. It began over noodles but is a journey that is still taking place.

Want to know the details? Click here to read about it at Niki Mathias’ blog.

She asked me to guest post as part of a series of people she’s profiling who had things change in a flash, who have had to rebuild an understanding about themselves and their world after things fell apart in some way.

I’m happy to share my journey at her place. Here’s an excerpt:

I couldn’t believe I said those very words. Out of my mouth came what I only knew before as dirty devil lies. I shocked myself. What was I doing?  Was I throwing away truth in order to pander to his emotions and come across as politically correct? I was throwing away years of study that had become my very identity. If I said what I did, and worse yet, if I ended up believing it, then I would have no idea who I was. I would be a completely different person and would have to forge a new identity based on who I was after I paid my lunch check. It was my quarter-life crisis five years too early.

I could recant. Even if I never told Levi anything else, I didn’t have to tell any of my like-minded friends what I told him. I could ask God for forgiveness later. No one had to know I even went to lunch. I could just keep it in that secret place all of us keep all of our dirtiest secrets and biggest regrets. I would never have to relive that moment if I didn’t want to. I could continue as before, with this minor road bump serving as a mere hiccup in my quest to be right all the time and keeper of all the answers. I could still study the same theology that dumped me during lunch. Perhaps I could coax it to fall in love with me all over again and we could pretend like lunch never happened.

But to do that I would have to deny who I was becoming. And running from who we are is a chase that never ends and a race we can never win. Our legs will get tired, we will run out of fuel, and who we are will overtake us and we will regret all the miles we ran in the opposite direction. The lunch moment brought to the surface my own destiny and trying to suppress all I was destined to become would only cause me years of heartache I would never be able to get back.

Read the whole thing here.

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