Time travel for beginners | Mark Earls | TEDxPatras
In this mind-expanding talk, Mark Earls, Writer, Thinker, Producer & Speaker, challenges our obsession with clock time and invites us to rethink our relationship with time itself. Blending storytelling, psychology, and lived experience, he shows how we can bend, stretch, and reclaim time not just to improve productivity, but to live more meaningfully.From the ticking of the clock to the silence of deep reflection, Mark Earls explores how human time differs from machine time and why rediscovering “the space between the tick and the tock” might be the key to a better future. Mark Earls is an award-winning writer, thinker, producer, and speaker who is passionate about understanding human behavior, how it works at scale, and how to put those insights to work. His background is in marketing and advertising, and it is there he first pioneered the use of behavioral science and what we now know as the “Nudge” theory.In particular, Mark has argued strongly and repeatedly for the idea that we are a social species and that behavior is commonly shaped in the space between us (rather than between our ears).Mark works extensively as an advisor to businesses and NGOs around the world. This international perspective leads him to prioritize the role of culture over psychology universals, and this is where his interest in our ideas about Time comes from: both ideas we are conscious of and those embedded in our experience of the world around us. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
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