Translator: Zsuzsa Viola Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
Thank you for having me.
I don't speak Spanish; I am sorry.
I speak very fast, but because this is being translated,
I need to speak slower.
(Sigh)
A little bit about me.
My real name is Nuseir Yassin.
I'm 25 years old. I was born in Israel.
I'm also Palestinian,
and I flew from India last night for this, and it's worth it.
I'm also known as Nas.
(Applause)
The reason I'm here talking to you is because every day of my life,
every single day,
I'm making one video that's one minute long.
To make that video, it takes me 10 hours.
It's really hard.
And I've been making this for 565 days straight.
And every video is about an idea.
I'm here to talk about one idea.
And that idea is very, very easy to sort of distill into one question.
That question is very simple.
How's life?
You know, most people would answer, "Life's good."
And you move on.
That answer is, you know, it's good enough.
Some people will say, "Life is bad."
And then you try to make that life good.
You try to take life from bad to good.
There's a lot of pep talks;
there's a lot of TED Talks also
about how to take life from being terrible to being normal.
From, you know, having an addiction to having a normal life.
From being sad to being happy.
The problem is I never had a bad life.
I've always had a good life.
You know, I never went to the hospital;
I never felt poor or rich -
I just had a really good life.
And so I'm more concerned
about how to make life go from good to great,
from good to amazing, from good to fricking fantastic.
And that's what I'm here to talk about.
To illustrate that idea
I'm going to talk a little bit about my life, okay?
My life started in the country of Israel.
I was born and raised there as a Palestinian.
I came from a nice family.
We were not poor; we were not rich.
It was a good life.
And that's the first intervención - or intervention.
I'm trying, guys.
(Laughter)
That's the first intervention I had to make in my life
to make it go from good to better.
So I decided to leave Israel and go to the United States.
Because for me, I thought,
in America, in New York or Boston, I would have a better life.
So I spent months and months and months in Israel studying for the SAT exam,
trying to go to a US university.
And then I got lucky.
I got into Harvard,
and all of a sudden, life became better.
[Studied at Harvard]
But not great.
Four years - automatically, life became better.
Then I graduated, got a job for one-and-a-half years,
and that's when life really, really became good.
I would go out every weekend.
I would party in New York City.
I was making $120,000 every year.
And I was 24 years old.
I was working seven hours per day, and I had complete freedom.
It was an amazing life.
I was making more money than my dad, my mom and my brother combined.
This was my life.
It's amazing; it's New York.
But the problem is, if you ask me, "How's your life?"
I would say, "Good."
Because while I was doing that,
I had this revelation for -
and that's why I wear this t-shirt.
People would ask me, "How old are you?"
And I would say, "I'm 24."
And they're like, "Well, that's young."
No, that is not young.
Here's why.
I'm a male in the US.
You're supposed to live until 76 years, on average, in the US.
So with a simple math - 24 out of 76 - that's 32%.
I’m 1/3 dead with my life.
I'm 1/3 done.
I'm not young; I'm old!
When I realized that, I got scared.
I said, "I need an intervention."
But before I tell you about the intervention,
I want to share with you a video that I made about that story
that I put on Facebook.
This is the video.
It's a simple question:
How old are you?
(Video) Hi! I have one question for you.
How old are you?
Girl: I'm 25 years old.
Nas Daily: 25 sounds young.
But if you live until 30 - you’re not young.
You’re almost dead!!
On average, you won’t die at 25:
you'll die at 76 if you're male, 78 if you're female
in the United States.
Which means you're 33% done with life, on average.
When I realized that myself,
I quit my job, packed my bags, and started this show,
and traveled to 55 countries, including Japan,
where people live the longest!
I made this T-shirt and wore it every single day for 290 days
to remind me that life is to be enjoyed before it's over!
See, if you're a baby and I give you 100% of your life,
there's no way you say,
"Take 5% of it for a three-year job that I hate
or 10% of it for a husband I don’t love."
So why are you wasting it now that you’re not a baby?
When you think of life in terms of percentages,
every minute of it will start to matter.
That's one minute. See you tomorrow!
(Applause and cheers)
Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you so much.
Thank you.
That's an example of a one-minute video that shares one idea.
When I realized that in New York,
I was like, "F - beep, beep, beep - I need to change my life."
I need to quit and decide to do something greater.
There has to be something better
than sitting around in New York, drinking every weekend
and working for six hours on something you don't care about.
The money didn't matter at that point.
That's when I started NAS DAILY.
My name is Nas, daily.
(Laughter)
It meant I'm going to use every single day of my life,
and I'm going to make it count.
And for that, like everyone here, I want to travel.
I want to go to any country in the world.
I want to visit China.
I want to visit Philippines, Antarctica.
I want to go everywhere.
And I didn't want to just travel just to have fun.
I wanted to summarize every day into one video
and put it on Facebook and share it with everybody.
Which meant there's no more weekends.
There's no more "I'm sick."
There's no more "I don't feel like doing this."
Every single day.
So, it's been 565 days,
which means we made 565 one-minute videos,
traveled to 55 countries,
and made videos about things that make you proud.
Things that mattered.
About the genocide in Rwanda.
Peace in Israel and Palestine.
The Ganges River in India.
Drone laws in Colombia or India or whatever.
Today, I mean in the next few days,
I'm going to make the videos about Colombia, the coffee.
You know, these types of things.
To get you an example of what type of videos I make,
I'm going to share with you my favorite video
that I made in the Philippines.
And the idea is simple.
I wanted to live on $0.00 for the whole day.
[Living on $0.00 for a day]
[Day 276]
(Video) I want to see if I can have food, water, shelter for the whole day
for $0.00 here in Manila.
I gave up my valuables, my drone and my entire wallet
and checked out of the hotel to hit the streets.
It’s a bad idea!
I cannot take buses or taxis!
I cannot eat out!
But what I can do is rely on people's generosity.
For water, I say, "I'm thirsty. Thank you. Thank you."
Guard: "You're a Muslim; I’m also a Muslim; that’s why …
When people are thirsty, what's better to give?"
ND: For food, I say, "I lost my wallet," and leave.
"You ran after me!" Guy: "Yes, yes!" ND: " Why?"
Guy: "I'm just sharing my blessings."
ND: Unbelievable.
But for shelter - this is a bit hard.
I say, "I'm stranded."
I ask one, two, three, four, five, six, seven people,
and then I meet this guy.
Guy: "What happened to you, man?"
ND: "It's a long story."
He takes me in, buys me food, offers me his home, gives me his bed
and doesn't even want to be filmed.
There is still good in this world.
Guy: That's one minute. See you tomorrow!
ND: Thank you. Thank you.
(Applause)
You don't have to clap, you don't have to clap.
There's very few videos that make me cry, and that was one of them.
When I made it, not now.
(Laughter)
So, as you can tell,
each one of these videos takes like a lot of time to make,
but it felt like I was using my life in a way that's better than just good.
Luckily, a lot of people also like these videos,
and so far around 370 million times
that my videos have been seen.
From these people, one of them became my girlfriend.
She's right here.
Stand up.
Hi, Elaine.
(Applause)
She's great.
And many of them became my friends.
Life, all of a sudden, became better.
I found everything.
But even after this, you asked me, "How is life?"
I'll just say, "It's good."
It was still not great.
The reason for that
is because as I make those one-minute videos every day,
if I die now, the videos die tomorrow.
There're no more one-minute videos, the Facebook page is done, and that's it.
Life is good, but it wasn't great.
And I felt like the only way to make life great -
if I build something that's bigger than me.
Something, that if I die, will continue tomorrow,
the day after, the year after.
That something could be a company.
You'd have employees.
It could be a non-profit.
It could be anything.
That's what I realized is the only way to have a great life.
That's why on Day 432, exactly, I started a Nas Daily company.
The idea was very simple.
There's 2.3 million people that watch my videos, that like the page.
I would like to help these people create videos just like I do.
I want to turn them from 2.3 million people
to 2.3 million video creators.
And for that, I had to make a company.
I had to hire a team.
I had to think of an app to make.
I had to intervene in my life again to make it great.
Is my life great now?
No.
Because the company is still work in progress.
The reason I mention the company to you guys
is because not every "intervención"
ends up with a good outcome.
This is still stressing the hell out of me.
I am losing a lot of weight, I don't have time to eat, and it's hard.
But in 12 months, if we do another TEDx talk,
I think life will be great.
To summarize everything I said,
of course, I made a one-minute video about it.
And here it is.
[500 Days!]
Play.
(Video) [500 Days!]
On this rainy day in Manila, I am celebrating Day 500.
It's Day 500.
(Cheers)
And on Day 500, I want to talk about life.
So I'll start with mine.
I grew up in an amazing family household.
We were not poor or rich; we were fine.
And by age 19,
my life got comfortable at home.
To get a better one, I needed to change.
So I applied to Harvard.
I got it and moved to the US!
My life got so much better!
I graduated, got an engineering job and made $120,000 a year!
Ten years of this - I would have been a millionaire!
But this would be the ultimate comfort zone.
So I quit and took another chance to start this page!
Instead of going down, my changes paid off,
and life became better!
More freedom! More money! More life!
And a girlfriend!
But on Day 500,
my one-minute videos are making me too comfortable.
When you’re doing well, you get comfortable.
And when you get comfortable, you plateau.
Your country is not holy; change it!
Your job is not forever; quit!
And this page is not forever either.
So, it will change.
That's one minute. See you tomorrow!
Exactly.
This is not a one-minute video, for the first time ever.
Facebook is favoring longer videos,
which means my one-minute videos don't do as well anymore.
They don't show up on your news feed.
Unless they're longer.
F*@§§#
This is just a long video telling you that in addition to my one-minute videos,
I’ll be making longer content,
because things change.
The bigger messages here is that as much as you love your home,
your job, your video format or your country,
they will change.
Because when life is good, that means it’s time to make it better.
That’s one min -
That’s one message. See you tomorrow!
[NAS DAILY]
So,
(Applause)
thank you.
You don't have to, you don't have to.
So, that's pretty much it.
For the past 562 days, for the past four years,
I'm trying every day to make life go from bad to good to great.
Actually, only from good to great.
So I'll end this talk by asking you, "How is your life?
Is it bad? Is it good?
Or is it fricking great?"
Thank you, guys.
Thank you for your time.
Appreciate it.
(Applause, cheers)
And that's it.
(Applause)
But before I leave,
today is Day 565,
and I would like to have you guys in my video.
And so,
(Cheers)
every video ends with the same line:
"That's one minute. See you tomorrow!"
Es un minuto de video, nos vemos mañana.
Okay? And so I was hoping if we could all say that line together.
Okay?
Okay, so I'm just going to point this - in Spanish.
How do you say it in Spanish again?
Es un minuto de video, nos vemos mañana - okay?
So, it's like one, two, three:
es un minuto de video, nos vemos mañana. (Laughter)
You know, nos vemos mañana, okay?
But say it at the same time, with energy.
Okay.
All right. Sorry I took the stage.
One sec.
[So ... how's life]
All right.
One, two, three, go:
(Audience) Es un minuto de video, nos vemos mañana.
(Cheers, applause)