[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
awesome so I’m 27 I’m primarily an
electronic does busy DJ and producer
I’m also creative entrepreneur and I own
a bunch of companies that do a few
things you just heard about them but
primarily I perform live music as a DJ
and I compose my own music in the studio
that’s something I started doing in GC I
graduated in June July 2011 that’s six
years ago
mechanical engineering anybody from MEC
here yeah alright cool so yeah I
graduated six years ago from GC I
started DJing in kinda in high school
but I really got into it when I was in
college I actually have a picture from
college if you play the next slide
yeah so that is that’s me at the
Gymkhana here in DC alright that’s
that’s that’s April 2008 I was that was
the end of my first year when we kind of
put this hop together this you know what
they call it and then we did some more
in at the farm agree circle that at the
hotel and you know all of those kind of
things the really funny thing is I
actually posted this picture on my
Facebook page yesterday you know just
with the caption that I’m so honored to
come back to GC and kind of talk to
everyone and see all the old faces and
everybody and somebody commented on my
on this picture on my Facebook page with
another picture and I took a screenshot
of that picture and I’m gonna show you
the picture that what look at the
comment that these guys wrote if you
play the next slide that’s what some
recommended with on my on my photo which
is kind of what I do right now so I you
know this is SPECT perfect the kind of
like the perfect trajectory between over
these nine years I went from playing
Gymkhana to a few hundred people to kind
of playing a slightly bigger stadium to
about ten thousand people and that’s
kind of what I I do today
[Applause]
so when I was when I was asked to come
to Ted and speak you know I was
obviously very honored and very humbled
and very excited to see every one but I
had a few different things I wanted to
talk about I said maybe you know I can
kind of open up my laptop and show show
everybody how I make music and what my
songwriting process is but that would
have gotten a bit you know technical and
complicated somebody then suggested that
maybe I should come here and talk about
my life but that’s something I really
really dislike doing so I decided not to
do that at all and then I decided that
I’m gonna come out here today and talk
to you guys about a few tools and you
know ideas that I’ve kind of helped me
over the past few years and hopefully I
hope these will help and inspire you as
well right let’s go to the next couple
of slides let me talk to you about the
first thing that I really value with my
life time so time is a really really
beautiful resource in commodity the
beauty of time is that every two human
beings in the world have exactly the
same amount of time available every day
whether it’s 24 hours or a thousand four
hundred forty minutes or 86,400 seconds
to the same second whether you’re
interning student a GC or you’re Roger
Federer or you’re Elon Musk
it doesn’t matter everybody has access
to the same amount of time every day
which is which is pretty intense because
that’s a very level playing field right
in in world we’re usually used to having
a skewed or a biased level field playing
field rather but the beauty of time is
it all depends on what you do with your
24 hours and I decided to view time a
little differently since I was a kid and
to kind of explain my approach and my
analogy to time I’m gonna draw up a very
very cliche and overused analogy which
is time is equal to money right I’m sure
everybody’s has everybody heard this
before like time is equal to money this
is something people keep telling you all
the time you know this is
very common but to kind of understand
how I work with time let’s just talk
about money for a minute and then we’ll
extrapolate that concept and take it
back to time so with money everybody
tells you you know you should save money
and you save that money you invest that
money and you know over the years at the
end of your life or when you retire that
money will grow into more money and then
you’ll be able to live a comfortable
retirement right if we extrapolate this
concept of time the premise being that
when you’re sixty you should not be
working 12 hours a day you should be
working two hours a day okay which means
that at an early age if you start
investing time to create more time then
it follows the same principle of money
right but that’s easier said than done
how do you invest time to create more
time and the key to that of the key at
least my key to that is optimization
every task that we perform can be
optimized and refined outsourced or
condensed to help a safe time which
effectively creates time let me give you
a very rudimental basic example let’s
talk about a simple calculator let’s
rewind 50 years ago actually no let’s
just go back 30 years 30 years ago if
you walked out of a store and you saw
the shopkeeper at the end of the day in
the evening sitting with a list of 50
numbers and adding them up you would be
like that’s a hard-working man there you
know he’s he spent his whole day in the
shop and now he’s doing his accounts and
he’s adding up all his numbers but today
if you walk past the same store and you
see this guy adding up 50 numbers he is
gonna be like what’s wrong with this guy
why he’s not using a calculator you know
in 30 years the calculator has gone from
being a luxury to a necessity and it’s
something we take for granted and that’s
something I feel that we’re all kind of
failing in life to do is to take
everyday tasks that we have to do and
autumn I automate them optimize them
whether it’s using technology or using
more efficient processes you can then
condense your day into a much shorter
day and that’s when you create more time
to start pursuing what you really want
to do people come up to me all the time
and they’re like
I’m 18 I want to become a DJ or I want
to become a musician but my parents want
me to go to college and I don’t want to
go to college because if I go to college
then I won’t have time to become a
musician and I’m like that is absolutely
incorrect in my case when I was in the
third year I was already playing shows
around the country ice to attend class
some money to Friday skip class on
Friday afternoons the teachers here
don’t know that fly out play a couple of
shows in the weekend come back on Sunday
and go to class on Monday kind of right
so it’s absolutely possible to be able
to do two or three things simultaneously
it all really boils down to how you
condense your time and optimize that and
use that really well the next thing I
want to talk to you about is value so
when we perform a task or when we
started your business or we make a firm
or we paint a piece of art you know
alright a piece of music we’re adding
value to the world the most immediate
gain that personally we receive is
monetary value usually the creator is
rewarded monetarily with whatever he
does but there is an underlying
secondary value which is always there
but not really apparent to all of us and
that is the humanitarian
when you perform a certain task and when
you when you’re able to put a smile
across somebody else’s face that
actually affects you back in such a
positive way that that is a very very
strong and constant source of
inspiration for you when you start doing
something different when you try and
venture out on your own you will reach a
point of time where you start but you
begin to question yourself and you’re
like you know what am i up to it
happened to me when when I decided to
pursue music seriously all my friends
had master’s degrees and corporate jobs
and I was like you know what am i doing
am I really you know is this is this the
right move and when I go and play shows
I come back home to my hotel sometimes
at 2:00 in the morning I have to wake up
at 5:00 in the morning get out of my
hotel at 6:00 a.m. to make it to a 7:00
a.m. flight and do that three days
back-to-back and when you’re looking for
that real source of constant inspiration
looking at your bank balance at that
point of time is not going to help you
what you really need at that point of
time is some source of human inspiration
and that inspiration will come to you if
you actually add value to people’s lives
and you’re and you’re able to make a
positive difference and impact on their
lives let’s go to the next thing
the next the next idea is diet I talked
to you about wha like a like a dietary
diet even though I genuinely do advocate
eating and here like living healthy but
that’s a whole different TED talk we can
do that for another half an hour the
diameter here to talk to you about today
is is what we consume and when I mean
what we consume it’s what we consume
with our eyes and I here’s we live in an
age today where everybody has access to
social media all of us have smartphones
in today’s age on social media and
conventional media there is an immense
amount of negativity and misinformation
and what we choose to consume right what
we choose to consume is who we are
most people think that we live normal
lives and there is no there’s no art in
our life but that’s that’s incorrect
there’s art in the way you dress there’s
art in the way you speak in the way you
brew your coffee there’s art in what you
choose to read will choose not to read
what you choose to listen to and when
you consume the right things or when you
regulate what you consume that really
shapes who you are as a person right
that can really define you so today I
implore you that when you know when we
talk about going on a diet we’re like oh
listen I need to lose weight for a week
you know I’m not gonna eat sugar for a
week or I’m gonna stay off alcohol for a
week because I want to slim down or you
know I’m gonna pick wedding coming up
but why don’t we all try and I’ve
actually tried this and it’s great go on
a social media diet for a week okay get
off your Facebook get off whatsapp mute
all the groups that keep sending you
forwards right and instead go back to
like just listen to music on tone listen
to music on a computer or listen to
music on a CD player like
CDs from a childhood pick up a book just
read a fiction book from the 80s or the
90s right just switch things around
because that is the fault that is the
future right we’re reaching this point
in in time where everything is
accelerating and everyone’s trying to
compete to reach this goal but there’s
no gold really like humanity has no goal
everyone is living a completely
independent life everyone has completely
different sets of skills and what you
need when you feel that you’re maxing
out and that you’re burning out is you
need to reset yourself okay and the
reset is all within us
you have the reset within you you just
don’t know where it is we’ve all had
through childhood we read books and you
know we stir guard and play all we need
to do is go and seek some of those
memories back bring some of that stuff
from the past back it’s very refreshing
there’s a wealth of information lying in
books in TV in film go dig out some of
the stuff give up some of the stuff you
do on a daily basis like give up your
daily soaps for a week you know go back
and read some of the classics read what
some of the classics that will really
change the way you think the way you
breathe and it’ll I’m pretty certain it
will inspire you to a new level
coming down to Chris pretty much
concluding my talk is what the title of
my talk is I think we have one more yeah
cool this is the title of my talk from
the classroom to the dance flow and I
kind of also went through various
iterations of what I wanted to say to
you today in this along this title but
the summary of my talk is that I am one
of you and if I can do it you can do it
right you have to understand you
probably won’t realize this now but as
engineers even if you graduate and get
out of engineering college and choose
not to pursue engineering you will
forever in life be able to view things
and solve problems with an analytical
ability that most people can’t and that
is an immense gift you won’t realize
this now like now it now it may sound
like you just need to worry about your
internals but trust me three years down
the line when you get out
of college you’ll realize this the
second biggest thing is most of you
today here are 21 or under 21 that is
very powerful in the next one year you
can take out five jobs fail at all five
of them your friends may laugh at you
your parents may brush you off but it
doesn’t matter because you can’t do that
when you’re 30 if any of those five jobs
click if you succeed with even one of
them then you will have an alternate
career before you even graduate from
college and that is something that’s
really really powerful it’ll give you an
edge over everybody else I’m gonna
conclude with this story I read a few
years back in in a really short book it
it speaks about this wise old man who
lives up on this hill and she is it’s
kind of like a saint you know and this
little boy he takes his bird in his hand
and he he closes his fist and he goes up
to the Saint and he asked him you know
I’ve got this bird in my hand can you
tell me is this bird alive or dead and
the old man looks at the boy and he’s
like he realizes that if he says the
bird is alive then this boy will crush
the bird in his hand and kill the bird
but if he tells him that this bird is
dead then he’ll open his hand and him
the bird will fly away so there was
basically no way the same could be right
so he told the boy that the answer to
your question is in your hands and you
decide that it’s the same with your
dreams the answer to your dream is in
your hand you can choose to clench your
fist and kill your dream or you can
choose to open your fist and let your
dreams fly away you are the future and
only you can decide what you want to do
with it it’s been an absolute pleasure
speaking to you today thank you so much
for this opportunity
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
awesome so I’m 27 I’m primarily an
electronic does busy DJ and producer
I’m also creative entrepreneur and I own
a bunch of companies that do a few
things you just heard about them but
primarily I perform live music as a DJ
and I compose my own music in the studio
that’s something I started doing in GC I
graduated in June July 2011 that’s six
years ago
mechanical engineering anybody from MEC
here yeah alright cool so yeah I
graduated six years ago from GC I
started DJing in kinda in high school
but I really got into it when I was in
college I actually have a picture from
college if you play the next slide
yeah so that is that’s me at the
Gymkhana here in DC alright that’s
that’s that’s April 2008 I was that was
the end of my first year when we kind of
put this hop together this you know what
they call it and then we did some more
in at the farm agree circle that at the
hotel and you know all of those kind of
things the really funny thing is I
actually posted this picture on my
Facebook page yesterday you know just
with the caption that I’m so honored to
come back to GC and kind of talk to
everyone and see all the old faces and
everybody and somebody commented on my
on this picture on my Facebook page with
another picture and I took a screenshot
of that picture and I’m gonna show you
the picture that what look at the
comment that these guys wrote if you
play the next slide that’s what some
recommended with on my on my photo which
is kind of what I do right now so I you
know this is SPECT perfect the kind of
like the perfect trajectory between over
these nine years I went from playing
Gymkhana to a few hundred people to kind
of playing a slightly bigger stadium to
about ten thousand people and that’s
kind of what I I do today
[Applause]
so when I was when I was asked to come
to Ted and speak you know I was
obviously very honored and very humbled
and very excited to see every one but I
had a few different things I wanted to
talk about I said maybe you know I can
kind of open up my laptop and show show
everybody how I make music and what my
songwriting process is but that would
have gotten a bit you know technical and
complicated somebody then suggested that
maybe I should come here and talk about
my life but that’s something I really
really dislike doing so I decided not to
do that at all and then I decided that
I’m gonna come out here today and talk
to you guys about a few tools and you
know ideas that I’ve kind of helped me
over the past few years and hopefully I
hope these will help and inspire you as
well right let’s go to the next couple
of slides let me talk to you about the
first thing that I really value with my
life time so time is a really really
beautiful resource in commodity the
beauty of time is that every two human
beings in the world have exactly the
same amount of time available every day
whether it’s 24 hours or a thousand four
hundred forty minutes or 86,400 seconds
to the same second whether you’re
interning student a GC or you’re Roger
Federer or you’re Elon Musk
it doesn’t matter everybody has access
to the same amount of time every day
which is which is pretty intense because
that’s a very level playing field right
in in world we’re usually used to having
a skewed or a biased level field playing
field rather but the beauty of time is
it all depends on what you do with your
24 hours and I decided to view time a
little differently since I was a kid and
to kind of explain my approach and my
analogy to time I’m gonna draw up a very
very cliche and overused analogy which
is time is equal to money right I’m sure
everybody’s has everybody heard this
before like time is equal to money this
is something people keep telling you all
the time you know this is
very common but to kind of understand
how I work with time let’s just talk
about money for a minute and then we’ll
extrapolate that concept and take it
back to time so with money everybody
tells you you know you should save money
and you save that money you invest that
money and you know over the years at the
end of your life or when you retire that
money will grow into more money and then
you’ll be able to live a comfortable
retirement right if we extrapolate this
concept of time the premise being that
when you’re sixty you should not be
working 12 hours a day you should be
working two hours a day okay which means
that at an early age if you start
investing time to create more time then
it follows the same principle of money
right but that’s easier said than done
how do you invest time to create more
time and the key to that of the key at
least my key to that is optimization
every task that we perform can be
optimized and refined outsourced or
condensed to help a safe time which
effectively creates time let me give you
a very rudimental basic example let’s
talk about a simple calculator let’s
rewind 50 years ago actually no let’s
just go back 30 years 30 years ago if
you walked out of a store and you saw
the shopkeeper at the end of the day in
the evening sitting with a list of 50
numbers and adding them up you would be
like that’s a hard-working man there you
know he’s he spent his whole day in the
shop and now he’s doing his accounts and
he’s adding up all his numbers but today
if you walk past the same store and you
see this guy adding up 50 numbers he is
gonna be like what’s wrong with this guy
why he’s not using a calculator you know
in 30 years the calculator has gone from
being a luxury to a necessity and it’s
something we take for granted and that’s
something I feel that we’re all kind of
failing in life to do is to take
everyday tasks that we have to do and
autumn I automate them optimize them
whether it’s using technology or using
more efficient processes you can then
condense your day into a much shorter
day and that’s when you create more time
to start pursuing what you really want
to do people come up to me all the time
and they’re like
I’m 18 I want to become a DJ or I want
to become a musician but my parents want
me to go to college and I don’t want to
go to college because if I go to college
then I won’t have time to become a
musician and I’m like that is absolutely
incorrect in my case when I was in the
third year I was already playing shows
around the country ice to attend class
some money to Friday skip class on
Friday afternoons the teachers here
don’t know that fly out play a couple of
shows in the weekend come back on Sunday
and go to class on Monday kind of right
so it’s absolutely possible to be able
to do two or three things simultaneously
it all really boils down to how you
condense your time and optimize that and
use that really well the next thing I
want to talk to you about is value so
when we perform a task or when we
started your business or we make a firm
or we paint a piece of art you know
alright a piece of music we’re adding
value to the world the most immediate
gain that personally we receive is
monetary value usually the creator is
rewarded monetarily with whatever he
does but there is an underlying
secondary value which is always there
but not really apparent to all of us and
that is the humanitarian
when you perform a certain task and when
you when you’re able to put a smile
across somebody else’s face that
actually affects you back in such a
positive way that that is a very very
strong and constant source of
inspiration for you when you start doing
something different when you try and
venture out on your own you will reach a
point of time where you start but you
begin to question yourself and you’re
like you know what am i up to it
happened to me when when I decided to
pursue music seriously all my friends
had master’s degrees and corporate jobs
and I was like you know what am i doing
am I really you know is this is this the
right move and when I go and play shows
I come back home to my hotel sometimes
at 2:00 in the morning I have to wake up
at 5:00 in the morning get out of my
hotel at 6:00 a.m. to make it to a 7:00
a.m. flight and do that three days
back-to-back and when you’re looking for
that real source of constant inspiration
looking at your bank balance at that
point of time is not going to help you
what you really need at that point of
time is some source of human inspiration
and that inspiration will come to you if
you actually add value to people’s lives
and you’re and you’re able to make a
positive difference and impact on their
lives let’s go to the next thing
the next the next idea is diet I talked
to you about wha like a like a dietary
diet even though I genuinely do advocate
eating and here like living healthy but
that’s a whole different TED talk we can
do that for another half an hour the
diameter here to talk to you about today
is is what we consume and when I mean
what we consume it’s what we consume
with our eyes and I here’s we live in an
age today where everybody has access to
social media all of us have smartphones
in today’s age on social media and
conventional media there is an immense
amount of negativity and misinformation
and what we choose to consume right what
we choose to consume is who we are
most people think that we live normal
lives and there is no there’s no art in
our life but that’s that’s incorrect
there’s art in the way you dress there’s
art in the way you speak in the way you
brew your coffee there’s art in what you
choose to read will choose not to read
what you choose to listen to and when
you consume the right things or when you
regulate what you consume that really
shapes who you are as a person right
that can really define you so today I
implore you that when you know when we
talk about going on a diet we’re like oh
listen I need to lose weight for a week
you know I’m not gonna eat sugar for a
week or I’m gonna stay off alcohol for a
week because I want to slim down or you
know I’m gonna pick wedding coming up
but why don’t we all try and I’ve
actually tried this and it’s great go on
a social media diet for a week okay get
off your Facebook get off whatsapp mute
all the groups that keep sending you
forwards right and instead go back to
like just listen to music on tone listen
to music on a computer or listen to
music on a CD player like
CDs from a childhood pick up a book just
read a fiction book from the 80s or the
90s right just switch things around
because that is the fault that is the
future right we’re reaching this point
in in time where everything is
accelerating and everyone’s trying to
compete to reach this goal but there’s
no gold really like humanity has no goal
everyone is living a completely
independent life everyone has completely
different sets of skills and what you
need when you feel that you’re maxing
out and that you’re burning out is you
need to reset yourself okay and the
reset is all within us
you have the reset within you you just
don’t know where it is we’ve all had
through childhood we read books and you
know we stir guard and play all we need
to do is go and seek some of those
memories back bring some of that stuff
from the past back it’s very refreshing
there’s a wealth of information lying in
books in TV in film go dig out some of
the stuff give up some of the stuff you
do on a daily basis like give up your
daily soaps for a week you know go back
and read some of the classics read what
some of the classics that will really
change the way you think the way you
breathe and it’ll I’m pretty certain it
will inspire you to a new level
coming down to Chris pretty much
concluding my talk is what the title of
my talk is I think we have one more yeah
cool this is the title of my talk from
the classroom to the dance flow and I
kind of also went through various
iterations of what I wanted to say to
you today in this along this title but
the summary of my talk is that I am one
of you and if I can do it you can do it
right you have to understand you
probably won’t realize this now but as
engineers even if you graduate and get
out of engineering college and choose
not to pursue engineering you will
forever in life be able to view things
and solve problems with an analytical
ability that most people can’t and that
is an immense gift you won’t realize
this now like now it now it may sound
like you just need to worry about your
internals but trust me three years down
the line when you get out
of college you’ll realize this the
second biggest thing is most of you
today here are 21 or under 21 that is
very powerful in the next one year you
can take out five jobs fail at all five
of them your friends may laugh at you
your parents may brush you off but it
doesn’t matter because you can’t do that
when you’re 30 if any of those five jobs
click if you succeed with even one of
them then you will have an alternate
career before you even graduate from
college and that is something that’s
really really powerful it’ll give you an
edge over everybody else I’m gonna
conclude with this story I read a few
years back in in a really short book it
it speaks about this wise old man who
lives up on this hill and she is it’s
kind of like a saint you know and this
little boy he takes his bird in his hand
and he he closes his fist and he goes up
to the Saint and he asked him you know
I’ve got this bird in my hand can you
tell me is this bird alive or dead and
the old man looks at the boy and he’s
like he realizes that if he says the
bird is alive then this boy will crush
the bird in his hand and kill the bird
but if he tells him that this bird is
dead then he’ll open his hand and him
the bird will fly away so there was
basically no way the same could be right
so he told the boy that the answer to
your question is in your hands and you
decide that it’s the same with your
dreams the answer to your dream is in
your hand you can choose to clench your
fist and kill your dream or you can
choose to open your fist and let your
dreams fly away you are the future and
only you can decide what you want to do
with it it’s been an absolute pleasure
speaking to you today thank you so much
for this opportunity
[Music]
[Applause]
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