Back in 2014, long before Artificial Intelligence became the subject that everyone was talking about, Tim Urban began some serious research. It hit him pretty quickly that what was happening in the world of AI is not just an important topic, but, by far, THE most important topic for our future. After three years of diving deeply into the subject and all its future implications, Tim published “The AI Revolution and the Road to Superintelligence,” taking readers on a deep exploration of what AI is, how it works and why it will dramatically change our lives. Vox dubbed this Tim’s “epic series on artificial intelligence” Read More >

Instantly, Tim established himself as the ultimate explainer of AI to a wide range of audiences—including Silicon Valley thought leaders. Elon Musk shared “The AI Revolution” twice on X, commenting, “Excellent and funny intro article about Artificial Superintelligence! Highly recommend reading.” Tim soon turned his fascinating exploration of AI into a gripping talk—one which the head of Sweden’s Øredev conference called “the best keynote in years.” After experiencing the same talk at Social Media Week in New York, conference founder Toby Daniels wrote that Tim “was brilliant, inspiring and terrifying at the same time, and left most of us speechless, breathless and in a mixed emotional state of wonder and awe at what the future holds.”

As AI races into nearly every industry, every company and every part of our lives, Tim remains the ultimate (and frequently entertaining) explainer of the most transformational shift in the way we live, work and evolve as a society. Read Less ^

In college, Tim Urban’s procrastination problem got so bad that he found himself writing the first word of his 90-page senior thesis only 72 hours before it was due. After spending years trying to understand how his mind worked, he finally put his thoughts down on paper, creating three cartoon stick drawings—the Rational Decision-Maker, the Instant Gratification Monkey and the Panic Monster—to represent the major “players” in his head that battled over the steering wheel. The post went viral. And soon, Tim was explaining how procrastination works to a TED audience in Vancouver. A hilarious presentation that consistently delights and inspires audiences, it has been viewed by over 60 million people, making it the third most-watched TED Talk of all time. Read More >

Since then, Tim has become the go-to speaker on procrastination, why we do it and how we can overcome it. He supplements the points from his TED Talk with a discussion of a famous tool called the Eisenhower Matrix, which reminds people of the difference between what’s urgent and what’s important. He then shifts to solutions, talking through six strategies for overcoming both the short- and long-term procrastination that plagues so many of us at work and in our personal lives. Using his trademark “time” visuals, Tim finishes the talk with a powerful reminder that time is precious. It’s a talk that leaves the audience spent from laughing and inspired to make positive changes in their lives. Read Less ^

We focus so much on “what” we and others think that we often forget to ask ourselves how we think. In this talk, Tim Urban explores how individuals think, how groups think together and how these two things are connected. Read More >

In 2020, Tobi Lütke, the CEO of Shopify, printed out Tim’s articles on what he calls “high-rung” thinking and bound them into booklets for his entire company to read. The articles, Lütke believed, held critical lessons for teams and leaders.

In this talk, Tim teaches these lessons directly. First, he explains the primary tool, the Thinking Ladder, which identifies four categories of thinking: a Scientist, a Sports Fan, an Attorney and a Zealot. Tim has explained the Thinking Ladder to audiences of leaders, creatives and strategists—all of whom can become far more effective by learning how to keep their thinking on the “high rungs” of the ladder. While the top rung (the Scientist) is ideal for brainstorming and “back to the drawing board” discussions, the second rung (the Sports Fan) is best for teams trying to execute a plan together. But what’s most important is to avoid something we all tend to do: drift downwards to the ladder’s low rungs (the Attorney and the Zealot), where we fall prey to confirmation bias.

Then, Tim explains how the Thinking Ladder applies to groups, introducing audiences to two broad kinds of intellectual culture:

• The Idea Lab: a “high-rung” culture where disagreement is encouraged, where people are always respected but ideas are not.
• The Echo Chamber: a “low-rung” culture that penalizes departure from the prevailing narratives at the company and incentivizes independent minds to remain “in the closet” about what they really think.

While Idea Lab culture unleashes the full intellectual power of a group of minds and gives the company a superbrain, Echo Chamber culture leaves that potential untapped—the company brain is simply the brain of the CEO, widely repeated.

These new terms are memorable and catchy, and audiences will be using them years after hearing the talk. Read Less ^

In this talk, Tim Urban brings three of his most popular concepts together: Read More >

The Cook and the Chef: Based on Tim’s close work with Elon Musk, the cook and the chef are symbols of two ways of reasoning. To be a cook is to follow the recipes of others—recipes about how to strategize, how to manage staff and how to live life outside of work. To be a chef means to “reason from first principles”—to actually mess around with “raw ingredients” and come up with an original recipe. In people like Musk and Steve Jobs, what often seems like genius is actually just an unusual knack for thinking like a chef.

The Scientist and the Sports Fan: Tim introduces the audience to his popular tool, the Thinking Ladder, and explains the four “rungs” of the ladder. While the top rung (the Scientist) is ideal for brainstorming and “back to the drawing board” discussions, the second rung (the Sports Fan) is best for teams trying to execute a plan together. But what’s most important is to avoid something we all tend to do: drift downwards to the ladder’s low rungs (the Attorney and the Zealot), where we fall prey to dogma and confirmation bias and get stuck in outdated ideas.

Echo Chambers and Idea Labs: Here, Tim introduces two kinds of intellectual culture: The Idea Lab, where disagreement is encouraged, where people are always respected but ideas are not. And the Echo Chamber, which penalizes departure from the prevailing narratives and incentivizes independent minds to remain “in the closet” about what they really think.

While Idea Lab culture unleashes the full intellectual power of a group of minds and gives the company a superbrain, Echo Chamber culture leaves that potential untapped—the company brain is simply the brain of the CEO, widely repeated.

Online, the articles about these three concepts have gone mega-viral, being read by over 2.5 million people. In this talk, Tim brings together the very best of these articles, leaving the audience with three memorable concepts they can use forever. Read Less ^

In 2016, Tim Urban looked out at American society and knew something was off. Political tribalism was on the rise, anger was overflowing on social media and productive discussions seemed impossible. Tim spent the next six years coming up with an answer to the question: What’s Our Problem? Read More >

In this talk, Tim zooms out on the American landscape, explaining how rapid changes in technology, geography, government and media have had unforeseen consequences.

Tim believes our political thinking and our conversations are constrained by the lens we use: the “horizontal” left-center-right axis. He introduces the audience to a new way to visualize politics, using the core tool in his book, What’s Our Problem: a vertical axis that can add a critical element of nuance into the picture. He supplements the political “left” and “right” with two new, incredibly useful terms: “high-rung politics” and “low-rung politics.” Full of hope, this talk also offers a solution for all of our divisions. Read Less ^

Imagine if all of human history were recorded in an 800-page book, with each page covering 250 years. Almost every feature of our modern world—electricity, cars, airplanes, fossil fuels, telephones, television, radio, discoveries of the atom and general relativity, space travel, the internet and artificial intelligence—exists only on the most recent page: page 800. Read More >

The time we live in is a total anomaly in almost every way imaginable—because technological growth is exponential, and it has absolutely exploded in the past two centuries. What does this mean about our future?

In this talk, Tim Urban grips the audience with the shocking reality of the time we live in and talks through three major advances happening right now that promise to shape our world in the near future: artificial general intelligence, brain-machine interfaces and becoming a multi-planetary species. Tim’s articles on these three topics have been read by over 10 million people. Read Less ^