TED英語演講：如何不讓瑣事佔據我們寶貴的時間

如果不會合理利用時間，那麼你的日常生活中總容易被一些瑣事浪費掉大部分時間，David Grady博士就用偷椅子的人暗喻我們在日常辦公時經常會被一些不經意的瑣事，尤其是被哪些可有可無或收效不大的事情佔據了時間。下面是小編為大家收集關於TED英語演講：如何不讓瑣事佔據我們寶貴的時間，歡迎借鑑參考。

演講者：David Grady

演講稿

Picture this: It's Monday morning, you're at the office, you're settling in for the day at work, and this guy that you sort of recognize from down the hall, walks right into your cubicle and he steals your chair. Doesn't say a word — just rolls away with it. Doesn't give you any information about why he took your chair out of all the other chairs that are out there.

想象一下： 星期一的早晨，你在辦公室，準備開始一天的工作。這時，坐在附近、你勉強認得的那個人，徑直走到你的隔間把你的椅子拿走了，並且沒有對此説一個字，就直接把它推走了。沒告訴你為何那麼多椅子擺在那，卻偏偏拿走了你的。

Doesn't acknowledge the fact that you might need your chair to get some work done today. You wouldn't stand for it. You'd make a stink. You'd follow that guy back to his cubicle and you'd say, "Why my chair?"

不瞭解你或許需要這把椅子來完成今天的工作，你不能容忍這樣的事，你會跟着那人走到他的隔間，然後質問：“為什麼拿我的椅子?”

Okay, so now it's Tuesday morning and you're at the office, and a meeting invitation pops up in your calendar. (Laughter) And it's from this woman who you kind of know from down the hall, and the subject line references some project that you heard a little bit about. But there's no agenda. There's no information about why you were invited to the meeting.

現在是星期二的早晨，你在辦公室日曆上突然跳出一個會議邀請，來自於你在走廊裏有點頭之交的這位女士。標題欄顯示會議是有關一個你勉強聽説過的項目，但是沒有議程，沒有任何信息告訴你被邀請到這個會議的原因。

And yet you accept the meeting invitation, and you go. And when this highly unproductive session is over, you go back to your desk, and you stand at your desk and you say,"Boy, I wish I had those two hours back, like I wish I had my chair back." (Laughter)

但你接受了邀請並去參會，當這個毫無成果的會議結束，你回到自己的辦公桌，你站在辦公桌旁説 “天，我希望拿回過去的兩小時，就像我希望拿回我的椅子。”

Every day, we allow our coworkers, who are otherwise very, very nice people, to steal from us. And I'm talking about something far more valuable than office furniture. I'm talking about time. Your time. In fact, I believe that we are in the middle of a global epidemic of a terrible new illness known as MAS: Mindless Accept Syndrome.

每一天我們都在讓好心的同事們，從我們身上竊取。我説的是遠比辦公室傢俱更有價值的東西，我説的是時間。你的時間，事實上，我認為我們正處在一種叫MAS的、可怕的新型全球性疫病中 M(盲目)A(接受)S(綜合症)。

The primary symptom of Mindless Accept Syndrome is just accepting a meeting invitation the minute it pops up in your calendar. (Laughter) It's an involuntary reflex — ding, click, bing — it's in your calendar, "Gotta go, I'm already late for a meeting."

盲目接受綜合症的主要症狀是當會議邀請一出現在你的日曆上時就接受它，這是不自覺地反應——叮，點擊，嗶——把它加到你的日曆上了“得走了。我開會已經遲到了”

Meetings are important, right? And collaboration is key to the success of any enterprise. And a well-run meeting can yield really positive, actionable results. But between globalization and pervasive information technology, the way that we work has really changed dramatically over the last few years. And we're miserable. (Laughter) And we're miserable not because the other guy can't run a good meeting, it's because of MAS, our Mindless Accept Syndrome, which is a self-inflicted wound.

會議很重要，是吧?合作是任何企業成功的關鍵。一個進展良好的會議可以收穫非常正向，可行性高的成果。但是在全球化以及大型信息技術之間，我們工作的方式在過去幾年裏已發生了翻天覆地的變化，然後我們很痛苦。我們痛苦不是因為別人不能運作個好的會議，而是因為MAS，我們的盲目接受綜合症，這個病狀是我們自找的。

Actually, I have evidence to prove that MAS is a global epidemic. Let me tell you why. A couple of years ago, I put a video on Youtube, and in the video, I acted out every terrible conference call you've ever been on. It goes on for about five minutes, and it has all the things that we hate about really bad meetings. There's the moderator who has no idea how to run the meeting. There are the participants who have no idea why they're there.

事實上，我能證明MAS是一種全球性的疫病，我來告訴你為什麼。幾年前我在Youtube上傳了一個視頻，在視頻中我把所有你曾經歷的最糟糕的會議情況展現出來，時長大約五分鐘，包含了一切有關令我們討厭的會議、主持者完全不知道怎樣運作會議、參會者完全不知道自己為什麼參加。

The whole thing kind of collapses into this collaborative train wreck. And everybody leaves very 's kind of funny. Let's take a quick look. (Video) Our goal today is to come to an agreement on a very important proposal. As a group, we need to decide if — bloop bloop — Hi, who just joined? Hi, it's Joe. I'm working from home today.

整件事演變成一場集體脱軌，每個人離開時都很憤怒這彷彿挺可笑的。我們來簡單看一下(視頻)我們今天的目標是就一個非常重要的提議達成一個共識作為一個團隊，我們需要決定如果——嗶 嗶—— 嗨，誰剛剛加入了? 嗨，我是喬。我今天在家辦公。

Hi, Joe. Thanks for joining us today, great. I was just saying, we have a lot of people on the call we'd like to get through, so let's skip the roll call and I'm gonna dive right goal today is to come to an agreement on a very important proposal. As a group, we need to decide if —bloop bloop — (Laughter) Hi, who just joined? No? I thought I heard a beep.

嗨，喬。謝謝你的加入，很好，我剛提到説，我們此次會議有很多人蔘加，所以我們跳過點名我就直接開始了，我們今天的目標是就一個非常重要的提議達成一個共識，作為一個團隊，我們需要決定如果——嗶 嗶——(笑聲)嗨，誰剛剛加入了?沒人?我以為我聽到了嗶聲。

Sound familiar? Yeah, it sounds familiar to me, too. A couple of weeks after I put that online, 500,000 people in dozens of countries, I mean dozens of countries, watched this video. And three years later, it's still getting thousands of views every month. It's close to about a million right now. And in fact, some of the biggest companies in the world, companies that you've heard of but I won't name, have asked for my permission to use this video in their new-hire training to teach their new employees how not to run a meeting at their company.

聽起來很熟悉嗎?這對我來説也非常熟悉在我上傳視頻之後的幾星期，來自數十個國家的50萬人，真的是數十個國家觀看了這個視頻之後的三年，每個月依然有幾千次觀看，到現在大約有一百萬次了。事實上有一些全球大公司，你肯定知道的公司，但我不會説出名字，他們徵求我的允許想將此視頻用於上崗培訓，來教導他們的新員工們怎樣不要在公司裏開這樣的會議。

And if the numbers — there are a million views and it's being used by all these companies —aren't enough proof that we have a global problem with meetings, there are the many, many thousands of comments posted online after the video went up. Thousands of people wrote things like, "OMG, that was my day today!" "That was my day every day!" "This is my life."

如果幾百萬次的觀看記錄和已被大公司使用的事實，不足以證明開會已經是全球性問題，在視頻被上傳之後有成千上萬條評論發佈在網絡上，數千人寫下這樣的話“我的天，這就是我的今天”“這是我的每一天!”“這是我的生活”。

One guy wrote, "It's funny because it's ly, sadly, depressingly true. It made me laugh until I cried. And cried. And I cried some more." (Laughter)This poor guy said, "My daily life until retirement or death, sigh." These are real quotes and it's real sad.

有個人寫到“這很有趣，因為這就是事實，怪異、可悲、令人沮喪的事實，它讓我笑到哭出來，然後我哭了，哭得更傷心了”這個可憐的人寫到：“這是我直到退休或死亡的每一天，歎氣” 這些都是真實的評論，很令人傷感。

A common theme running through all of these comments online is this fundamental belief that we are powerless to do anything other than go to meetings and suffer through these poorly run meetings and live to meet another day. But the truth is, we're not powerless at all. In fact, the cure for MAS is right here in our hands. It's right at our fingertips, literally. It's something that I call ?No MAS! (Laughter) Which, if I remember my high school Spanish, means something like, "Enough already, make it stop!"

這些網上評論有一個共同點，是已認定我們無能為力來避免參加這些會議，避免忍受這些效率很差會議，避免日日如此。但其實我們絕不是無能為力，實際上盲目接受綜合症的解藥就在我們手裏，真的就在我們指尖我稱其為“拒絕MAS” 我記得高中學過的西班牙語，這句的意思大概是“已經夠了，停止吧”。

Here's how No MAS works. It's very simple. First of all, the next time you get a meeting invitation that doesn't have a lot of information in it at all, click the tentative button! It's okay, you're allowed, that's why it's there. It's right next to the accept button. Or the maybe button, or whatever button is there for you not to accept immediately.

拒絕MAS的做法很簡單，首先，下次你接到會議邀請時，那種沒有包含任何相關信息的會議邀請，點擊“不確定”按鈕!你是可以這麼做的，所以才有這個按鈕，就在“接受”按鈕旁邊或者是“或許”按鈕，或者是別的什麼按鈕讓你不用立刻同意接受。

Then, get in touch with the person who asked you to the meeting. Tell them you're very excited to support their work, ask them what the goal of the meeting is, and tell them you're interested in learning how you can help them achieve their goal. And if we do this often enough, and we do it respectfully,people might start to be a little bit more thoughtful about the way they put together meeting invitations. And you can make more thoughtful decisions about accepting it. People might actually start sending out agendas.

接着，找到那個邀請你參加會議的人，告訴他們你很高興能支持他們的工作，問他們會議的目的，告訴他們你願意去學習怎樣能幫他們打成目標，如果我們總是這樣做以尊重的態度這樣做，人們會在邀請別人參加會議時多動點腦筋，你在接受與否時做出更周全的決定，人們或許能真的開始列出議程。

Imagine! Or they might not have a conference call with 12 people to talk about a status when they could just do a quick email and get it done with. People just might start to change their behavior because you changed yours. And they just might bring your chair back, too. (Laughter) No MAS! Thank you.

想象一下或者他們不會開一個12人蔘加的電話會議來討論數據，而用簡單電子郵件就把事情搞定的，人們的行為會因為你的改變而隨之改變。他們也會把你的椅子還給你。拒絕盲目選擇綜合症!謝謝。