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TED英语演讲：如何不让琐事占据我们宝贵的时间
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 fr-om 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，你在办公室，准备开始一天的工作。这时，坐在附近、你勉强认得的那个人，径直走到你的隔间把你的椅子拿走了，并且没有对此说一个字，就直接把它推走了。没告诉你为何那么多椅子摆在那，却偏偏拿走了你的。
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?"
不了解你或许需要这把椅子来完成今天的工作，你不能容忍这样的事，你会跟着那人走到他的隔间，然后质问：“为什么拿我的椅子?”
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 fr-om this woman who you kind of know fr-om 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.
现在是星期二的早晨，你在办公室日历上突然跳出一个会议邀请，来自于你在走廊里有点头之交的这位女士。标题栏显示会议是有关一个你勉强听说过的项目，但是没有议程，没有任何信息告诉你被邀请到这个会议的原因。
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)
但你接受了邀请并去参会，当这个毫无成果的会议结束，你回到自己的办公桌，你站在办公桌旁说“天，我希望拿回过去的两小时，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 fr-om 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.
每一天我们都在让好心的同事们，从我们身上窃取。我说的是远比办公室家具更有价值的东西，我说的是时间。你的时间，事实上，我认为我们正处在一种叫MAS的、可怕的新型全球性疫病中M(盲目)A(接受)S(综合症)。
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."
盲目接受综合症的主要症状是当会议邀请一出现在你的日历上时就接受它，这是不自觉地反应——叮，点击，哔——把它加到你的日历上了“得走了。我开会已经迟到了”
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.
会议很重要，是吧?合作是任何企业成功的关键。一个进展良好的会议可以收获非常正向，可行性高的成果。但是在全球化以及大型信息技术之间，我们工作的方式在过去几年里已发生了翻天覆地的变化，然后我们很痛苦。我们痛苦不是因为别人不能运作个好的会议，而是因为MAS，我们的盲目接受综合症，这个病状是我们自找的。
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.
事实上，我能证明MAS是一种全球性的疫病，我来告诉你为什么。几年前我在Youtube上传了一个视频，在视频中我把所有你曾经历的最糟糕的会议情况展现出来，时长大约五分钟，包含了一切有关令我们讨厌的会议、主持者完全不知道怎样运作会议、参会者完全不知道自己为什么参加。
The whole thing kind of collapses into this collaborative train wreck. And everybody leaves very angry.It'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 fr-om home today.
整件事演变成一场集体脱轨，每个人离开时都很愤怒这仿佛挺可笑的。我们来简单看一下(视频)我们今天的目标是就一个非常重要的提议达成一个共识作为一个团队，我们需要决定如果——哔哔——嗨，谁刚刚加入了?嗨，我是乔。我今天在家办公。
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 in.Our 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，乔。谢谢你的加入，很好，我刚提到说，我们此次会议有很多人参加，所以我们跳过点名我就直接开始了，我们今天的目标是就一个非常重要的提议达成一个共识，作为一个团队，我们需要决定如果——哔哔——(笑声)嗨，谁刚刚加入了?没人?我以为我听到了哔声。
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.
听起来很熟悉吗?这对我来说也非常熟悉在我上传视频之后的几星期，来自数十个国家的50万人，真的是数十个国家观看了这个视频之后的三年，每个月依然有几千次观看，到现在大约有一百万次了。事实上有一些全球大公司，你肯定知道的公司，但我不会说出名字，他们征求我的允许想将此视频用于上岗培训，来教导他们的新员工们怎样不要在公司里开这样的会议。
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."
如果几百万次的观看记录和已被大公司使用的事实，不足以证明开会已经是全球性问题，在视频被上传之后有成千上万条评论发布在网络上，数千人写下这样的话“我的天，这就是我的今天”“这是我的每一天!”“这是我的生活”。
One guy wrote, "It's funny because it's true.Eerily, 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.
有个人写到“这很有趣，因为这就是事实，怪异、可悲、令人沮丧的事实，它让我笑到哭出来，然后我哭了，哭得更伤心了”这个可怜的人写到：“这是我直到退休或死亡的每一天，叹气”这些都是真实的评论，很令人伤感。
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!"
这些网上评论有一个共同点，是已认定我们无能为力来避免参加这些会议，避免忍受这些效率很差会议，避免日日如此。但其实我们绝不是无能为力，实际上盲目接受综合症的解药就在我们手里，真的就在我们指尖我称其为“拒绝MAS”我记得高中学过的西班牙语，这句的意思大概是“已经够了，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.
拒绝MAS的做法很简单，首先，下次你接到会议邀请时，那种没有包含任何相关信息的会议邀请，点击“不确定”按钮!你是可以这么做的，所以才有这个按钮，就在“接受”按钮旁边或者是“或许”按钮，或者是别的什么按钮让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，找到那个邀请你参加会议的人，告诉他们你很高兴能支持他们的工作，问他们会议的目的，告诉他们你愿意去学习怎样能帮他们打成目标，如果我们总是这样做以尊重的态度这样做，人们会在邀请别人参加会议时多动点脑筋，你在接受与否时做出更周全的决定，人们或许能真的开始列出议程。
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.
想象一下或者他们不会开一个12人参加的电话会议来讨论数据，而用简单电子邮件就把事情搞定的，人们的行为会因为你的改变而随之改变。他们也会把你的椅子还给你。拒绝盲目选择综合症!谢谢。