TED简介：2015 | 人在面临压力时，头脑往往被乌云覆盖，导致思维不够清晰，从而难以作出正确和理性的判断。Daniel Levitin先生这次在TED演讲台上将和大家分享他的一次尴尬经历，一组惊人的数据和一个绝妙的方法来教大家如何做到处乱不惊，临危不惧。

演讲者：Daniel Levitin 丹尼尔·列维京

片长：12：04

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A few years ago, I broke into my own house. I had just driven home,it was around midnight in the dead of Montreal winter, I had been visiting my friend, Jeff, across town, and the thermometer on the front porch read minus 40 degrees -- and don~q~t bother asking ifthat~q~s Celsius or Fahrenheit, min us 40 is where the two scales meet-- it was very cold. 

几年前，我闯入了自己的家。我开车回到家，在蒙特利尔的寒冬，大约午夜时分，我开车从城镇一边到另一边，去看望我的朋友Jeff，门廊上的温度计显示零下40度——不需要知道是摄氏度还是华氏度，到了零下40度，两个温度显示都一样——天气非常冷。

And as I stood on the front porch fumbling inmy pockets, I found I didn~q~t have my keys. In fact, I could see them through the window, lying on the dining room table where I hadleft them. So I quickly ran around and tried all the other doorsand windows, and they were locked tight. I thought about calling alocksmith -- at least I had my cellphone, but at midnight, it could take a while for a locksmith to show up, and it was cold. 

当我站在门廊，摸索着我的口袋，发现找不到钥匙。实际上，我透过窗户能看到我的钥匙， 我把它们留在了餐桌上。我赶紧围着房子转，找能进去的门和窗户，而它们都被锁紧了。我想到打电话给锁匠，至少我还有手机，但在午夜，锁匠要过来可能需要一段时间，并且天气真的很冷。

I couldn~q~t go back to my friend Jeff~q~s house for the night because Ihad an early flight to Europe the next morning, and I needed to getmy passport and my suitcase.

当晚我又不能回朋友Jeff的家，因为第二天我要坐早班机到欧洲，必须要进屋里拿护照和行李。

So, desperate and freezing cold, I found a large rock and I brokethrough the basement window, cleared out the shards of glass, Icrawled through, I found a piece of cardboard and taped it up overthe opening, figuring that in the morning, on the way to theairport, I could call my contractor and ask him to fix it. 

因此，在绝望和寒冷中，我找到一块大石头，打破了地下室的窗户，清理了玻璃碎片后， 我爬进屋里，找到了一块硬纸板，用胶带把它封贴在打破的窗户上，我想着早晨去机场的路上，可以打电话给承包商，请他来修理窗户。

This was going to be expensive, but probably no more expensive than amiddle-of-the-night locksmith, so I figured, under the circumstances, I was coming out even.

修理费会很昂贵，但不会比在午夜时找锁匠来开锁更贵，所以我觉得，在这种情况下即使打破了窗户，也还划得来。

Now, I~q~m a neuro scientist by training and I know a little bit about how the brain performs under stress. It releases cortisol thatraises your heart rate, it modulates adrenaline levels and itclouds your thinking. 

我是一个职业的神经科学家，我大概知道在压力下大脑是如何工作的。大脑会释放皮质醇引起你的心率加速，它调节你的肾上腺素水平并阻碍你的思维能力。

So the next morning, when I woke up on toolittle sleep, worrying about the hole in the window, and a mentalnote that I had to call my contractor, and the freezingtem peratures, and the meetings I had upcoming in Europe, and, you know, with all the cortisol in my brain, my thinking was cloudy,but I didn~q~t know it was cloudy because my thinking was cloudy.

第二天早晨，我醒来的时候严重睡眠不足，还在担心窗户上打破的洞，心里想着必须打电话给承包商，还有，天气非常寒冷，在欧洲有个会要开，还有，因为我大脑释放的皮质醇，我的思维变得混沌，但我没觉察到它很混沌，因为我的思维很混沌。

And it wasn~q~t until I got to the airport check-in counter, that Irealized I didn~q~t have my passport.

直到我在登机手续办理柜台时， 才意识到我忘了带护照。

So I raced home in the snow and ice, 40 minutes, got my passport,raced back to the airport, I made it just in time, but they had given away my seat to someone else, so I got stuck in the back ofthe plane, next to the bathrooms, in a seat that wouldn~q~t recline,on an eight-hour flight. Well, I had a lot of time to think during those eight hours and no sleep.

于是，我在冰天雪地中用了40分钟赶回家，拿了护照后，又赶回机场，刚好赶上了飞机， 但他们已把我的座位给了别人，我不得不坐在飞机最后一排，紧挨着洗手间，在八个小时的飞行中，我的座椅都不能往后倾。于是我就有了很多时间去思考，因为我在八小时中无法睡觉。

And I started wondering, are there things that I can do, systems that I can put into place, that will prevent bad things from happening? Or at least if bad things happen, will minimize the likelihood of it being a total catastrophe. 

我开始想，我能做些什么，有什么切实可行的方法，可以防止不好的事发生呢? 或者至少，就算不好的事情真的会发生，也能把损失降到最小。

So I started thinkingabout that, but my thoughts didn~q~t crystallize until about a monthlater. I was having dinner with my colleague, Danny Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winner, and I somewhat embarrassedly told him abouthaving broken my window, and, you know, forgotten my passport, and Danny shared with me that he~q~d been practicing something called prospective hindsight.

所以，我开始思考这个问题，但我没有想出来，直到一个月后，我和同事，也是诺贝尔奖获得者DannyKahneman去吃晚餐，我有点尴尬地告诉他，我打破窗户爬进屋里，还有忘记拿护照的事，而Danny和我分享了他一直在练习的称为”预测后见之明“的东西。

It~q~s something that he had gotten from the psychologist Gary Klein,who had written about it a few years before, also called thepre-mortem. Now, you all know what the postmortem is. Whenever there~q~s a disaster, a team of experts come in and they try to figure out what went wrong, right? Well, in the pre-mortem, Danny explained, you look ahead and you try to figure out all the things that could go wrong, and then you try to figure out what you can doto prevent those things from happening, or to minimize the damage.

这是他从心理学家Gary Klein那里学到的。Gary前几年已经写了这个理论，也称为"事前剖析"。你们都知道事后剖析是什么意思。每当有灾难， 一个专家小组就会前去调查，尝试找出导致灾难的原因，对吧 ?而Danny解释，在事前剖析中，你要预测，尝试想出可能出错的所有事情，然后你要尝试可能的方法来防止这些错误发生，或将损失降到最小。

So what I want to talk to you about today are some of the things we can do in the form of a pre-mortem. Some of them are obvious, some of them are not so obvious. I~q~ll start with the obvious ones.

所以，今天我想和你们谈谈关于在事前剖析中，我们能做的一些事情。有些方式是显而易见的， 而有些则不那么明显。我先谈显而易见的方式。

Around the home, designate a place for things that are easily lost.Now, this sounds like common sense, and it is, but there~q~s a lot ofscience to back this up, based on the way our spatial memory works.There~q~s a structure in the brain called the hippocampus, that evolved over tens of thousands of years, to keep track of the locations of important things -- where the well is, where fish can be found, that stand of fruit trees, where the friendly and enemytribes live. 

在家里，指定一个地方，放容易丢失的东西。这听起来就像是常识，也的确是，但这符合我们空间记忆的工作原理，有很多科学依据支持这一点。在我们大脑里，有一个叫海马体的结构，已经进化超过数万年了，它可以追踪重要东西的位置——例如，水井的位置、能够发现鱼的地方、果树的位置，以及友好物种和敌对物种分别居住在哪里。

The hippo campus is the part of the brain that in London taxicab drivers becomes enlarged. It~q~s the part of the brain that allows squirrels to find their nuts. And if you~q~re wondering,somebody actually did the experiment where they cut off the olfactory sense of the squirrels, and they could still find the irnuts. They weren~q~t using smell, they were using the hippo campus,this exquisitely evolved mechanism in the brain for finding things.But it~q~s really good for things that don~q~t move around much, not so good for things that move around. 

海马体是大脑的一部分，伦敦出租车司机的海马体结构通常比常人要大。松鼠能找到坚果，也要归功于它们大脑的海马体。你们可能对这点感到疑惑，但有人的确做了一个实验。他们切掉了松鼠的嗅觉器官，松鼠仍然能找到它们的坚果。它们不是用嗅觉，而是用大脑的海马体，这个进化完美的大脑机制是用来找东西的。但只是对找固定的东西比较有效，找会移动的东西却不是很管用。

So this is why we lose car keysand reading glasses and passports. So in the home, designate a spotfor your keys -- a hook by the door, maybe a decorative bowl. Foryour passport, a particular drawer. For your reading glasses, aparticular table. If you designate a spot and you~q~re scrupulous about it, your things will always be there when you look for them.

这就是为什么我们会常常找不到车钥匙、老花镜和护照。所以，在家里指定一个地点存放你的钥匙——门上的挂钩，或是一个装饰碗。在一个特定的抽屉存放你的护照。你的老花镜要放在特定的桌子上。如果你指定了特定的地方，并且一丝不苟地做这些事，当你寻找它们时， 这些东西总是会在那里。

What about travel? Take a cell phone picture of your credit cards,your driver~q~s license, your passport, mail it to yourself so it~q~sin the cloud. If these things are lost or stolen, you canfacilitate replacement.

关于旅行呢? 用手机拍下你信用卡的照片，还有你的驾照和护照，把这些照片发到你的电子邮箱，储存在数据云端。如果一旦丢失或被盗了，你可以很方便地用电子件代替它们。

Now these are some rather obvious things. Remember, when you~q~reunder stress, the brain releases cortisol. Cortisol is toxic, and it causes cloudy thinking. So part of the practice of the pre-mortem is to recognize that under stress you~q~re not going to beat your best, and you should put systems in place.

这些是一些显而易见的事前剖析方法。记住，当你有压力时，大脑会释放皮质醇。皮质醇是有毒的，它会导致思维不清晰。所以，做事前剖析的练习，是要认识到在压力下，你不是在最佳状态，你还应该把事情做到井然有序。

And there~q~s perhaps no more stressful a situation than when you~q~re confronted with a medical decision to make. And at some point, all of us are going to be in that position, where we have to make a very important decision about the future of our medical care or that of a loved one, to help them with a decision.

不过也许没有什么比你要做医疗决策更紧张的情况了。有时，我们都会经历这种事情，我们必须要做出一个很重要的决策，为我们自己或自己爱的人做医疗决策。

brain passport 大脑 护照 窗户