Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning? How many times have you heard someone say that about a cranky person? Clearly getting up on the wrong side of the bed is not what actually causes the problem. For most people having a bad day starts before they even get out of bed. It starts with the amount of sleep they get each night. In December 2010, Arianna Huffington gave a TED talk explaining the importance of sleep. Sleep in her opinion gives us all the energy we need for the day and also allows us to clear our minds at night. Sleep deprivation is a serious issue that causes lack of focus and puts people at a greater risk of accidents because they are less alert. Yet in our society today many people are proud of the lack of sleep they get. They think that the more time they allow themselves in the day the more they get accomplished. Contrary to what they believe, depriving themselves of sleep will only make them less productive. In today’s society, everyone needs to re-evaluate the amount of sleep they actually need in order to complete their daily tasks to the best of their ability.
Arianna Huffington uses a combination of two powerful techniques to conduct her TED talk. Her first important technique is her humor. In the four minutes she is on stage, she has her audience laughing the entire time. Although her topic sounds ridiculous, she proves her main idea by appealing to the listener’s sense of logic. This is her second useful technique. By putting both of these useful techniques together, her audience follows her train of thought more easily and also agrees with her ideas. She relates her topic to her personally and also to people in the world which helps her audience understand what she is saying and also apply it to their lives personally. By effectively utilizing these techniques, Huffington is able to convince her audience that what she says is right in just the short time period of four minutes.
Huffington’s presentation style was basically the same as every other TED talk I have watched. She did not use any slides or charts or videos to illustrate her points, she just talked and explained what she wanted her audience to take away from her performance. Her TED talk was extremely short and it is the first short video I have watched. Due to this aspect of her speech, she was forced to make her points very quickly and not beat around the bush for a long period of time. I actually liked this more because then she could only tell a few stories and she did not get repetitive throughout her talk. Personally, I thought that her presentation was the best one I have seen because of all these aspects of her presentation style.
I think that there is one simple and obvious answer to the question what matters in this video. Sleep matters. Sleep is the basis of our energy and productivity each day. Without the appropriate amount of sleep, people are more likely to make bad decisions because they cannot fully comprehend the tasks that they are assigned to do. Therefore, I think that society needs to allow everyone, adults included, the availability to get more sleep during the night. Even though some work time will be lost during the day, during the time that people are awake, they will be more efficient which will actually save time in the long run. Also if people were allowed more time to sleep in general, they might be happier and more pleasant to be around which would result in a more peaceful and productive workplace. As for education, high school students are always the most tired in the mornings. So therefore it makes no sense that high school students have the earliest schedule. Students would be more attentive and interested in their own learning if they were not tired when they went to school. They would also understand new information more easily if they were not half asleep when they learned it. If students were allowed a later start for school, then in the future, the world would greatly benefit.
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