演讲稿首先必须开头要开门见山，既要一下子抓住听众又要提出你的观点，中间要用各种方法和所准备的材料说明、支持你的论点，感染听众，然后在结尾加强说明论点或得出结论，结束演讲。那么我们写演讲稿要注意的内容有什么呢？下面是小编为大家整理的演讲稿，欢迎大家分享阅读。
and so when i moved to new york city after college and got completelysucker-punched in the face by depression, i did the only thing i could think ofat the time. i wrote those same kinds of letters that my mother had written mefor strangers, and tucked them all throughout the city, dozens and dozens ofthem. i left them everywhere, in cafes and in libraries, at the u.n.,everywhere. i blogged about those letters and the days when they were necessary,and i posed a kind of crazy promise to the internet: that if you asked me for ahand-written letter, i would write you one, no questions asked. overnight, myinbo_ morphed into this harbor of heartbreak -- a single mother in sacramento, agirl being bullied in rural kansas, all asking me, a 22-year-old girl who barelyeven knew her own coffee order, to write them a love letter and give them areason to wait by the mailbo_.
well, today i fuel a global organization that is fueled by those trips tothe mailbo_, fueled by the ways in which we can harness social media like neverbefore to write and mail strangers letters when they need them most, but most ofall, fueled by crates of mail like this one, my trusty mail crate, filled withthe scriptings of ordinary people, strangers writing letters to other strangersnot because they're ever going to meet and laugh over a cup of coffee, butbecause they have found one another by way of letter-writing.
but, you know, the thing that always gets me about these letters is thatmost of them have been written by people that have never known themselves lovedon a piece of paper. they could not tell you about the ink of their own loveletters. they're the ones from my generation, the ones of us that have grown upinto a world where everything is paperless, and where some of our bestconversations have happened upon a screen. we have learned to diary our painonto facebook, and we speak swiftly in 140 characters or less.
but what if it's not about efficiency this time? i was on the subwayyesterday with this mail crate, which is a conversation starter, let me tellyou. if you ever need one, just carry one of these. (laughter) and a man juststared at me, and he was like, "well, why don't you use the internet?" and ithought, "well, sir, i am not a strategist, nor am i specialist. i am merely astoryteller." and so i could tell you about a woman whose husband has just comehome from afghanistan, and she is having a hard time unearthing this thingcalled conversation, and so she tucks love letters throughout the house as a wayto say, "come back to me. find me when you can." or a girl who decides that sheis going to leave love letters around her campus in dubuque, iowa, only to findher efforts ripple-effected the ne_t day when she walks out onto the quad andfinds love letters hanging from the trees, tucked in the bushes and the the man who decides that he is going to take his life, uses facebook as a wayto say goodbye to friends and family. well, tonight he sleeps safely with astack of letters just like this one tucked beneath his pillow, scripted bystrangers who were there for him when.
these are the kinds of stories that convinced me that letter-writing willnever again need to flip back her hair and talk about efficiency, because she isan art form now, all the parts of her, the signing, the scripting, the mailing,the doodles in the margins. the mere fact that somebody would even just sitdown, pull out a piece of paper and think about someone the whole way through,with an intention that is so much harder to unearth when the browser is up andthe iphone is pinging and we've got si_ conversations rolling in at once, thatis an art form that does not fall down to the goliath of "get faster," no matterhow many social networks we might join. we still clutch close these letters toour chest, to the words that speak louder than loud, when we turn pages intopalettes to say the things that we have needed to say, the words that we haveneeded to write, to sisters and brothers and even to strangers, for far toolong. thank you.
try something new for 30 days 小计划帮你实现大目标
a few years ago, i felt like i was stuck in a rut, so i decided to followin the footsteps of the great american philosopher, morgan spurlock, and trysomething new for 30 days. the idea is actually pretty simple. think aboutsomething you’ve always wanted to add to your life and try it for the ne_t 30days. it turns out, 30 days is just about the right amount of time to add a newhabit or subtract a habit — like watching the news — from your life.
几年前， 我感觉对老一套感到枯燥乏味，所以我决定追随伟大的美国哲学家摩根·斯普尔洛克的脚步，尝试做新事情30天。这个想法的确是非常简单。考虑下，你常想在你生命中做的一些事情 接下来30天尝试做这些。这就是，30天刚好是这么一段合适的时间 去养成一个新的习惯或者改掉一个习惯——例如看新闻——在你生活中。
there’s a few things i learned while doing these 30-day challenges. thefirst was, instead of the months flying by, forgotten, the time was much morememorable. this was part of a challenge i did to take a picture everyday for amonth. and i remember e_actly where i was and what i was doing that day. i alsonoticed that as i started to do more and harder 30-day challenges, myself-confidence grew. i went from desk-dwelling computer nerd to the kind of guywho bikes to work — for fun. even last year, i ended up hiking up njaro, the highest mountain in africa. i would never have been thatadventurous before i started my 30-day challenges.
当我在30天做这些挑战性事情时，我学到以下一些事。第一件事是，取代了飞逝而过易被遗忘的岁月的是这段时间非常的更加令人难忘。挑战的一部分是要一个月内每天我要去拍摄一张照片。我清楚地记得那一天我所处的位置我都在干什么。我也注意到随着我开始做更多的，更难的30天里具有挑战性的事时，我自信心也增强了。我从一个台式计算机宅男极客变成了一个爱骑自行车去工作的人——为了玩乐。甚至去年，我完成了在非洲最高山峰乞力马扎罗山的远足。在我开始这30天做挑战性的事之前我从来没有这样热爱冒险过。
i also figured out that if you really want something badly enough, you cando anything for 30 days. have you ever wanted to write a novel? every november,tens of thousands of people try to write their own 50,000 word novel fromscratch in 30 days. it turns out, all you have to do is write 1,667 words a dayfor a month. so i did. by the way, the secret is not to go to sleep until you’vewritten your words for the day. you might be sleep-deprived, but you’ll finishyour novel. now is my book the ne_t great american novel? no. i wrote it in amonth. it’s awful. but for the rest of my life, if i meet john hodgman at a tedparty, i don’t have to say, “i’m a computer scientist.” no, no, if i want to ican say, “i’m a novelist.”
我也认识到如果你真想一些槽糕透顶的事，你可以在30天里做这些事。你曾想写小说吗?每年11月，数以万计的人们在30天里，从零起点尝试写他们自己的5万字小说。这结果就是，你所要去做的事就是每天写1667个字要写一个月。所以我做到了。顺便说一下，秘密在于除非在一天里你已经写完了1667个字，要不你就甭想睡觉。你可能被剥夺睡眠，但你将会完成你的小说。那么我写的书会是下一部伟大的美国小说吗?不是的。我在一个月内写完它。它看上去太可怕了。但在我的余生，如果我在一个ted聚会上遇见约翰·霍奇曼，我不必开口说，“我是一个电脑科学家。”不，不会的，如果我愿意我可以说，“我是一个小说家。”
(laughter)
(笑声)
so here’s one last thing i’d like to mention. i learned that when i madesmall, sustainable changes, things i could keep doing, they were more likely tostick. there’s nothing wrong with big, crazy challenges. in fact, they’re a tonof fun. but they’re less likely to stick. when i gave up sugar for 30 days, day31 looked like this.
我这儿想提的最后一件事。当我做些小的、持续性的变化，我可以不断尝试做的事时，我学到我可以把它们更容易地坚持做下来。这和又大又疯狂的具有挑战性的事情无关。事实上，它们的乐趣无穷。但是，它们就不太可能坚持做下来。当我在30天里拒绝吃糖果，31天后看上去就像这样。
(laughter)
(笑声)
so here’s my question to you: what are you waiting for? i guarantee you thene_t 30 days are going to pass whether you like it or not, so why not thinkabout something you have always wanted to try and give it a shot for the ne_t 30days.
所以我给大家提的问题是：大家还在等什么呀?我保准大家在未来的30天定会经历你喜欢或者不喜欢的事，那么为什么不考虑一些你常想做的尝试并在未来30天里试试给自己一个机会。
thanks.
谢谢。
(applause)
(掌声)
when i was seven years old and my sister was just five years old, we wereplaying on top of a bunk bed. i was two years older than my sister at the time-- i mean, i'm two years older than her now -- but at the time it meant she hadto do everything that i wanted to do, and i wanted to play war. so we were up ontop of our bunk beds. and on one side of the bunk bed, i had put out all of myg.i. joe soldiers and weaponry. and on the other side were all my sister's mylittle ponies ready for a cavalry charge.
there are differing accounts of what actually happened that afternoon, butsince my sister is not here with us today, let me tell you the true story --(laughter) -- which is my sister's a little bit on the clumsy side. somehow,without any help or push from her older brother at all, suddenly amy disappearedoff of the top of the bunk bed and landed with this crash on the floor. now inervously peered over the side of the bed to see what had befallen my fallensister and saw that she had landed painfully on her hands and knees on all fourson the ground.
i was nervous because my parents had charged me with making sure that mysister and i played as safely and as quietly as possible. and seeing as how ihad accidentally broken amy's arm just one week before ... (laughter) ...heroically pushing her out of the way of an oncoming imaginary sniper bullet,(laughter) for which i have yet to be thanked, i was trying as hard as i could-- she didn't even see it coming -- i was trying as hard as i could to be on mybest behavior.
and i saw my sister's face, this wail of pain and suffering and surprisethreatening to erupt from her mouth and threatening to wake my parents from thelong winter's nap for which they had settled. so i did the only thing my littlefrantic seven year-old brain could think to do to avert this tragedy. and if youhave children, you've seen this hundreds of times before. i said, "amy, amy,wait. don't cry. don't cry. did you see how you landed? no human lands on allfours like that. amy, i think this means you're a unicorn."
(laughter)
now that was cheating, because there was nothing in the world my sisterwould want more than not to be amy the hurt five year-old little sister, but amythe special unicorn. of course, this was an option that was open to her brain atno point in the past. and you could see how my poor, manipulated sister facedconflict, as her little brain attempted to devote resources to feeling the painand suffering and surprise she just e_perienced, or contemplating her new-foundidentity as a unicorn. and the latter won out. instead of crying, instead ofceasing our play, instead of waking my parents, with all the negativeconsequences that would have ensued for me, instead a smile spread across herface and she scrambled right back up onto the bunk bed with all the grace of ababy unicorn ... (laughter) ... with one broken leg.
what we stumbled across at this tender age of just five and seven -- we hadno idea at the time -- was something that was going be at the vanguard of ascientific revolution occurring two decades later in the way that we look at thehuman brain. what we had stumbled across is something called positivepsychology, which is the reason that i'm here today and the reason that i wakeup every morning.
when i first started talking about this research outside of academia, outwith companies and schools, the very first thing they said to never do is tostart your talk with a graph. the very first thing i want to do is start my talkwith a graph. this graph looks boring, but this graph is the reason i gete_cited and wake up every morning. and this graph doesn't even mean anything;it's fake data. what we found is --
(laughter)
if i got this data back studying you here in the room, i would be thrilled,because there's very clearly a trend that's going on there, and that means thati can get published, which is all that really matters. the fact that there's oneweird red dot that's up above the curve, there's one weirdo in the room -- iknow who you are, i saw you earlier -- that's no problem. that's no problem, asmost of you know, because i can just delete that dot. i can delete that dotbecause that's clearly a measurement error. and we know that's a measurementerror because it's messing up my data.
so one of the very first things we teach people in economics and statisticsand business and psychology courses is how, in a statistically valid way, do weeliminate the weirdos. how do we eliminate the outliers so we can find the lineof best fit? which is fantastic if i'm trying to find out how many advil theaverage person should be taking -- two. but if i'm interested in potential, ifi'm interested in your potential, or for happiness or productivity or energy orcreativity, what we're doing is we're creating the cult of the average withscience.
if i asked a question like, "how fast can a child learn how to read in aclassroom?" scientists change the answer to "how fast does the average childlearn how to read in that classroom?" and then we tailor the class right towardsthe average. now if you fall below the average on this curve, then psychologistsget thrilled, because that means you're either depressed or you have a disorder,or hopefully both. we're hoping for both because our business model is, if youcome into a therapy session with one problem, we want to make sure you leaveknowing you have 10, so you keep coming back over and over again. we'll go backinto your childhood if necessary, but eventually what we want to do is make younormal again. but normal is merely average.
and what i posit and what positive psychology posits is that if we studywhat is merely average, we will remain merely average. then instead of deletingthose positive outliers, what i intentionally do is come into a population likethis one and say, why? why is it that some of you are so high above the curve interms of your intellectual ability, athletic ability, musical ability,creativity, energy levels, your resiliency in the face of challenge, your senseof humor? whatever it is, instead of deleting you, what i want to do is studyyou. because maybe we can glean information -- not just how to move people up tothe average, but how we can move the entire average up in our companies andschools worldwide.
the reason this graph is important to me is, when i turn on the news, itseems like the majority of the information is not positive, in fact it'snegative. most of it's about murder, corruption, diseases, natural very quickly, my brain starts to think that's the accurate ratio of negativeto positive in the world. what that's doing is creating something called themedical school syndrome -- which, if you know people who've been to medicalschool, during the first year of medical training, as you read through a list ofall the symptoms and diseases that could happen, suddenly you realize you haveall of them.
i have a brother in-law named bobo -- which is a whole other story. bobomarried amy the unicorn. bobo called me on the phone from yale medical school,and bobo said, "shawn, i have leprosy." (laughter) which, even at yale, ise_traordinarily rare. but i had no idea how to console poor bobo because he hadjust gotten over an entire week of menopause.
(laughter)
see what we're finding is it's not necessarily the reality that shapes us,but the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes your if we can change the lens, not only can we change your happiness, we canchange every single educational and business outcome at the same time.
when i applied to harvard, i applied on a dare. i didn't e_pect to get in,and my family had no money for college. when i got a military scholarship twoweeks later, they allowed me to go. suddenly, something that wasn't even apossibility became a reality. when i went there, i assumed everyone else wouldsee it as a privilege as well, that they'd be e_cited to be there. even ifyou're in a classroom full of people smarter than you, you'd be happy just to bein that classroom, which is what i felt. but what i found there is, while somepeople e_perience that, when i graduated after my four years and then spent thene_t eight years living in the dorms with the students -- harvard asked me to; iwasn't that guy. (laughter) i was an officer of harvard to counsel studentsthrough the difficult four years. and what i found in my research and myteaching is that these students, no matter how happy they were with theiroriginal success of getting into the school, two weeks later their brains werefocused, not on the privilege of being there, nor on their philosophy or theirphysics. their brain was focused on the competition, the workload, the hassles,the stresses, the complaints.
when i first went in there, i walked into the freshmen dining hall, whichis where my friends from waco, te_as, which is where i grew up -- i know some ofyou have heard of it. when they'd come to visit me, they'd look around, they'dsay, "this freshman dining hall looks like something out of hogwart's from themovie "harry potter," which it does. this is hogwart's from the movie "harrypotter" and that's harvard. and when they see this, they say, "shawn, why do youwaste your time studying happiness at harvard? seriously, what does a harvardstudent possibly have to be unhappy about?"
embedded within that question is the key to understanding the science ofhappiness. because what that question assumes is that our e_ternal world ispredictive of our happiness levels, when in reality, if i know everything aboutyour e_ternal world, i can only predict 10 percent of your long-term happiness.90 percent of your long-term happiness is predicted not by the e_ternal world,but by the way your brain processes the world. and if we change it, if we changeour formula for happiness and success, what we can do is change the way that wecan then affect reality. what we found is that only 25 percent of job successesare predicted by i.q. 75 percent of job successes are predicted by your optimismlevels, your social support and your ability to see stress as a challengeinstead of as a threat.
i talked to a boarding school up in new england, probably the mostprestigious boarding school, and they said, "we already know that. so everyyear, instead of just teaching our students, we also have a wellness week. andwe're so e_cited. monday night we have the world's leading e_pert coming in tospeak about adolescent depression. tuesday night it's school violence andbullying. wednesday night is eating disorders. thursday night is elicit druguse. and friday night we're trying to decide between risky se_ or happiness."(laughter) i said, "that's most people's friday nights." (laughter) (applause)which i'm glad you liked, but they did not like that at all. silence on thephone. and into the silence, i said, "i'd be happy to speak at your school, butjust so you know, that's not a wellness week, that's a sickness week. whatyou've done is you've outlined all the negative things that can happen, but nottalked about the positive."
the absence of disease is not health. here's how we get to health: we needto reverse the formula for happiness and success. in the last three years, i'vetraveled to 45 different countries, working with schools and companies in themidst of an economic downturn. and what i found is that most companies andschools follow a formula for success, which is this: if i work harder, i'll bemore successful. and if i'm more successful, then i'll be happier. thatundergirds most of our parenting styles, our managing styles, the way that wemotivate our behavior.
and the problem is it's scientifically broken and backwards for tworeasons. first, every time your brain has a success, you just changed thegoalpost of what success looked like. you got good grades, now you have to getbetter grades, you got into a good school and after you get into a betterschool, you got a good job, now you have to get a better job, you hit your salestarget, we're going to change your sales target. and if happiness is on theopposite side of success, your brain never gets there. what we've done is we'vepushed happiness over the cognitive horizon as a society. and that's because wethink we have to be successful, then we'll be happier.
but the real problem is our brains work in the opposite order. if you canraise somebody's level of positivity in the present, then their braine_periences what we now call a happiness advantage, which is your brain atpositive performs significantly better than it does at negative, neutral orstressed. your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levelsrise. in fact, what we've found is that every single business outcome brain at positive is 31 percent more productive than your brain atnegative, neutral or stressed. you're 37 percent better at sales. doctors are 19percent faster, more accurate at coming up with the correct diagnosis whenpositive instead of negative, neutral or stressed. which means we can reversethe formula. if we can find a way of becoming positive in the present, then ourbrains work even more successfully as we're able to work harder, faster and moreintelligently.
what we need to be able to do is to reverse this formula so we can start tosee what our brains are actually capable of. because dopamine, which floods intoyour system when you're positive, has two functions. not only does it make youhappier, it turns on all of the learning centers in your brain allowing you toadapt to the world in a different way.
we've found that there are ways that you can train your brain to be able tobecome more positive. in just a two-minute span of time done for 21 days in arow, we can actually rewire your brain, allowing your brain to actually workmore optimistically and more successfully. we've done these things in researchnow in every single company that i've worked with, getting them to write downthree new things that they're grateful for for 21 days in a row, three newthings each day. and at the end of that, their brain starts to retain a patternof scanning the world, not for the negative, but for the positive first.
journaling about one positive e_perience you've had over the past 24 hoursallows your brain to relive it. e_ercise teaches your brain that your behaviormatters. we find that meditation allows your brain to get over the cultural adhdthat we've been creating by trying to do multiple tasks at once and allows ourbrains to focus on the task at hand. and finally, random acts of kindness areconscious acts of kindness. we get people, when they open up their inbo_, towrite one positive email praising or thanking somebody in their social supportnetwork.
and by doing these activities and by training your brain just like we trainour bodies, what we've found is we can reverse the formula for happiness andsuccess, and in doing so, not only create ripples of positivity, but create areal revolution.
thank you very much.
(applause)
chinese restaurants have played an important role in american history, as amatter of fact. the cuban missile crisis was resolved in a chinese restaurantcalled yenching palace in washington, d.c., which unfortunately is closed now,and about to be turned into walgreen's. and the house that john wilkes boothplanned the assassination of abraham lincoln is actually also now a chineserestaurant called wok 'n roll, on h street in washington.
事实上，中国餐馆在美国历史上发挥了很重要的作用。古巴导弹危机是在华盛顿一家名叫“燕京馆”的中餐馆里解决的。很不幸，这家餐馆现在关门了，即将被改建成沃尔格林连锁药店。而约翰·威尔克斯·布斯刺杀林肯总统的那所房子现在也成了一家中餐馆，就是位于华盛顿的“锅和卷”。
and if you think about it, a lot of the foods that you think of or we thinkof or americans think of as chinese food are barely recognizable to chinese, fore_ample: beef with broccoli, egg rolls, general tso's chicken, fortune cookies,chop suey, the take-out bo_es.
如果你仔细想想，就会发现很多你们所认为或我们所认为，或是美国人所认为的中国食物，中国人并不认识。比如西兰花牛肉、蛋卷、左宗棠鸡、幸运饼干、杂碎、外卖盒子。
so, the interesting question is, how do you go from fortune cookies beingsomething that is japanese to being something that is chinese? well, the shortanswer is, we locked up all the japanese during world war ii, including thosethat made fortune cookies, so that's the time when the chinese moved in, kind ofsaw a market opportunity and took over.
所以有趣的是，幸运饼干是怎么从日本的东西变成中国的东西的呢?简单地说，我们在二战时扣押了所以的日本人，包括那些做幸运饼干的。这时候，中国人来了，看到了商机，自然就据为己有了。
general tso's chicken -- which, by the way, in the us naval academy iscalled admiral tso's chicken. i love this dish. the original name in my book wasactually called the long march of general tso, and he has marched very farindeed, because he is sweet, he is fried, and he is chicken -- all things thatamericans love.
左宗棠鸡，在美国海军军校被称为左司令鸡。我很喜欢这道菜。在我的书里，这道菜实际上叫左将军的长征，它确实在美国很受欢迎，因为它是甜的，油炸的，是鸡肉做的——全部都是美国人的最爱。
so, you know, i realized when i was there, general tso is kind of a lotlike colonel sanders in america, in that he's known for chicken and not war. butin china, this guy's actually known for war and not chicken.
我意识到左宗棠将军有点像美国的桑德斯上校(肯德基创始人)，因为他是因鸡肉而出名的而不是战争。而在中国，左宗棠确实是因为战争而不是鸡肉闻名的。
so it's kind of part of the phenomenon i called spontaneousself-organization, right, where, like in ant colonies, where little decisionsmade by -- on the micro-level actually have a big impact on the macro-level.
这就有点像我所说的自发组织现象。就像在蚂蚁群中，在微观层面上做的小小决定会在宏观层面上产生巨大的影响。
and the great innovation of chicken mcnuggets was not nuggetfying them,because that's kind of an easy concept, but the trick behind chicken mcnuggetswas, they were able to remove the chicken from the bone in a cost-effectivemanner, which is why it took so long for other people to copy them.
麦乐鸡块的发明并没有给他们带来切实收益，因为这个想法很简单，但麦乐鸡背后的技巧是如何用一种划算的方式来把鸡肉从骨头上剔出来。这就是为什么过了这么久才有人模仿他们。
we can think of chinese restaurants perhaps as linu_: sort of an opensource thing, right, where ideas from one person can be copied and propagatedacross the entire system, that there can be specialized versions of chinesefood, you know, depending on the region.
我们可以把中餐馆比作linu_：一种开源系统。一个人的想法可以在整个系统中被复制，被普及。在不同的地区，就有特别版本的中国菜。
try something new for 30 days 小计划帮你实现大目标
a few years ago, i felt like i was stuck in a rut, so i decided to followin the footsteps of the great american philosopher, morgan spurlock, and trysomething new for 30 days. the idea is actually pretty simple. think aboutsomething you’ve always wanted to add to your life and try it for the ne_t 30days. it turns out, 30 days is just about the right amount of time to add a newhabit or subtract a habit — like watching the news — from your life.
几年前， 我感觉对老一套感到枯燥乏味，所以我决定追随伟大的美国哲学家摩根·斯普尔洛克的脚步，尝试做新事情30天。这个想法的确是非常简单。考虑下，你常想在你生命中做的一些事情 接下来30天尝试做这些。这就是，30天刚好是这么一段合适的时间 去养成一个新的习惯或者改掉一个习惯——例如看新闻——在你生活中。
there’s a few things i learned while doing these 30-day challenges. thefirst was, instead of the months flying by, forgotten, the time was much morememorable. this was part of a challenge i did to take a picture everyday for amonth. and i remember e_actly where i was and what i was doing that day. i alsonoticed that as i started to do more and harder 30-day challenges, myself-confidence grew. i went from desk-dwelling computer nerd to the kind of guywho bikes to work — for fun. even last year, i ended up hiking up njaro, the highest mountain in africa. i would never have been thatadventurous before i started my 30-day challenges.
当我在30天做这些挑战性事情时，我学到以下一些事。第一件事是，取代了飞逝而过易被遗忘的岁月的是这段时间非常的更加令人难忘。挑战的一部分是要一个月内每天我要去拍摄一张照片。我清楚地记得那一天我所处的位置我都在干什么。我也注意到随着我开始做更多的，更难的30天里具有挑战性的事时，我自信心也增强了。我从一个台式计算机宅男极客变成了一个爱骑自行车去工作的人——为了玩乐。甚至去年，我完成了在非洲最高山峰乞力马扎罗山的远足。在我开始这30天做挑战性的事之前我从来没有这样热爱冒险过。
i also figured out that if you really want something badly enough, you cando anything for 30 days. have you ever wanted to write a novel? every november,tens of thousands of people try to write their own 50,000 word novel fromscratch in 30 days. it turns out, all you have to do is write 1,667 words a dayfor a month. so i did. by the way, the secret is not to go to sleep until you’vewritten your words for the day. you might be sleep-deprived, but you’ll finishyour novel. now is my book the ne_t great american novel? no. i wrote it in amonth. it’s awful. but for the rest of my life, if i meet john hodgman at a tedparty, i don’t have to say, “i’m a computer scientist.” no, no, if i want to ican say, “i’m a novelist.”
我也认识到如果你真想一些槽糕透顶的事，你可以在30天里做这些事。你曾想写小说吗?每年11月，数以万计的人们在30天里，从零起点尝试写他们自己的5万字小说。这结果就是，你所要去做的事就是每天写1667个字要写一个月。所以我做到了。顺便说一下，秘密在于除非在一天里你已经写完了1667个字，要不你就甭想睡觉。你可能被剥夺睡眠，但你将会完成你的小说。那么我写的书会是下一部伟大的美国小说吗?不是的。我在一个月内写完它。它看上去太可怕了。但在我的余生，如果我在一个ted聚会上遇见约翰·霍奇曼，我不必开口说，“我是一个电脑科学家。”不，不会的，如果我愿意我可以说，“我是一个小说家。”
(laughter)
(笑声)
so here’s one last thing i’d like to mention. i learned that when i madesmall, sustainable changes, things i could keep doing, they were more likely tostick. there’s nothing wrong with big, crazy challenges. in fact, they’re a tonof fun. but they’re less likely to stick. when i gave up sugar for 30 days, day31 looked like this.
我这儿想提的最后一件事。当我做些小的、持续性的变化，我可以不断尝试做的事时，我学到我可以把它们更容易地坚持做下来。这和又大又疯狂的具有挑战性的事情无关。事实上，它们的乐趣无穷。但是，它们就不太可能坚持做下来。当我在30天里拒绝吃糖果，31天后看上去就像这样。
(laughter)
(笑声)
so here’s my question to you: what are you waiting for? i guarantee you thene_t 30 days are going to pass whether you like it or not, so why not thinkabout something you have always wanted to try and give it a shot for the ne_t 30days.
所以我给大家提的问题是：大家还在等什么呀?我保准大家在未来的30天定会经历你喜欢或者不喜欢的事，那么为什么不考虑一些你常想做的尝试并在未来30天里试试给自己一个机会。
thanks.
谢谢。
(applause)
(掌声)
i was one of the only kids in college who had a reason to go to the _ at the end of the day, and that was mainly because my mother has neverbelieved in email, in facebook, in te_ting or cell phones in general. and sowhile other kids were bbm-ing their parents, i was literally waiting by themailbo_ to get a letter from home to see how the weekend had gone, which was alittle frustrating when grandma was in the hospital, but i was just looking forsome sort of scribble, some unkempt cursive from my mother.
and so when i moved to new york city after college and got completelysucker-punched in the face by depression, i did the only thing i could think ofat the time. i wrote those same kinds of letters that my mother had written mefor strangers, and tucked them all throughout the city, dozens and dozens ofthem. i left them everywhere, in cafes and in libraries, at the u.n.,everywhere. i blogged about those letters and the days when they were necessary,and i posed a kind of crazy promise to the internet: that if you asked me for ahand-written letter, i would write you one, no questions asked. overnight, myinbo_ morphed into this harbor of heartbreak -- a single mother in sacramento, agirl being bullied in rural kansas, all asking me, a 22-year-old girl who barelyeven knew her own coffee order, to write them a love letter and give them areason to wait by the mailbo_.
well, today i fuel a global organization that is fueled by those trips tothe mailbo_, fueled by the ways in which we can harness social media like neverbefore to write and mail strangers letters when they need them most, but most ofall, fueled by crates of mail like this one, my trusty mail crate, filled withthe scriptings of ordinary people, strangers writing letters to other strangersnot because they're ever going to meet and laugh over a cup of coffee, butbecause they have found one another by way of letter-writing.
but, you know, the thing that always gets me about these letters is thatmost of them have been written by people that have never known themselves lovedon a piece of paper. they could not tell you about the ink of their own loveletters. they're the ones from my generation, the ones of us that have grown upinto a world where everything is paperless, and where some of our bestconversations have happened upon a screen. we have learned to diary our painonto facebook, and we speak swiftly in 140 characters or less.
but what if it's not about efficiency this time? i was on the subwayyesterday with this mail crate, which is a conversation starter, let me tellyou. if you ever need one, just carry one of these. (laughter) and a man juststared at me, and he was like, "well, why don't you use the internet?" and ithought, "well, sir, i am not a strategist, nor am i specialist. i am merely astoryteller." and so i could tell you about a woman whose husband has just comehome from afghanistan, and she is having a hard time unearthing this thingcalled conversation, and so she tucks love letters throughout the house as a wayto say, "come back to me. find me when you can." or a girl who decides that sheis going to leave love letters around her campus in dubuque, iowa, only to findher efforts ripple-effected the ne_t day when she walks out onto the quad andfinds love letters hanging from the trees, tucked in the bushes and the the man who decides that he is going to take his life, uses facebook as a wayto say goodbye to friends and family. well, tonight he sleeps safely with astack of letters just like this one tucked beneath his pillow, scripted bystrangers who were there for him when.
these are the kinds of stories that convinced me that letter-writing willnever again need to flip back her hair and talk about efficiency, because she isan art form now, all the parts of her, the signing, the scripting, the mailing,the doodles in the margins. the mere fact that somebody would even just sitdown, pull out a piece of paper and think about someone the whole way through,with an intention that is so much harder to unearth when the browser is up andthe iphone is pinging and we've got si_ conversations rolling in at once, thatis an art form that does not fall down to the goliath of "get faster," no matterhow many social networks we might join. we still clutch close these letters toour chest, to the words that speak louder than loud, when we turn pages intopalettes to say the things that we have needed to say, the words that we haveneeded to write, to sisters and brothers and even to strangers, for far toolong. thank you.
over the ne_t five minutes, my intention is to transform your relationshipwith sound. let me start with the observation that most of the sound around usis accidental, and much of it is unpleasant. (traffic noise) we stand on streetcorners, shouting over noise like this, and pretending that it doesn't , this habit of suppressing sound has meant that our relationship with soundhas become largely unconscious.
there are four major ways sound is affecting you all the time, and i'd liketo raise them in your consciousness today. first is physiological. (loud alarmclocks) sorry about that. i've just given you a shot of cortisol, yourfight/flight hormone. sounds are affecting your hormone secretions all the time,but also your breathing, your heart rate -- which i just also did -- and yourbrainwaves.
it's not just unpleasant sounds like that that do it. this is surf. (oceanwaves) it has the frequency of roughly 12 cycles per minute. most people findthat very soothing, and, interestingly, 12 cycles per minute is roughly thefrequency of the breathing of a sleeping human. there is a deep resonance withbeing at rest. we also associate it with being stress-free and on holiday.
the second way in which sound affects you is psychological. music is themost powerful form of sound that we know that affects our emotional state.(albinoni's adagio) this is guaranteed to make most of you feel pretty sad if ileave it on. music is not the only kind of sound, however, which affects youremotions.
natural sound can do that too. birdsong, for e_ample, is a sound which mostpeople find reassuring. (birds chirping) there is a reason for that. overhundreds of thousands of years we've learned that when the birds are singing,things are safe. it's when they stop you need to be worried.
the third way in which sound affects you is cognitively. you can'tunderstand two people talking at once ("if you're listening to this version of")("me you're on the wrong track.") or in this case one person talking twice. tryand listen to the other one. ("you have to choose which me you're going tolisten to.")
we have a very small amount of bandwidth for processing auditory input,which is why noise like this -- (office noise) -- is e_tremely damaging forproductivity. if you have to work in an open-plan office like this, yourproductivity is greatly reduced. and whatever number you're thinking of, itprobably isn't as bad as this. (ominous music) you are one third as productivein open-plan offices as in quiet rooms. and i have a tip for you. if you have towork in spaces like that, carry headphones with you, with a soothing sound likebirdsong. put them on and your productivity goes back up to triple what it wouldbe.
the fourth way in which sound affects us is behaviorally. with all thatother stuff going on, it would be amazing if our behavior didn't change. (technomusic inside a car) so, ask yourself: is this person ever going to drive at asteady 28 miles per hour? i don't think so. at the simplest, you move away fromunpleasant sound and towards pleasant sounds. so if i were to play this --(jackhammer) -- for more than a few seconds, you'd feel uncomfortable; for morethan a few minutes, you'd be leaving the room in droves. for people who can'tget away from noise like that, it's e_tremely damaging for their health.
and that's not the only thing that bad sound damages. most retail sound isinappropriate and accidental, and even hostile, and it has a dramatic effect onsales. for those of you who are retailers, you may want to look away before ishow this slide. they are losing up to 30 percent of their business with peopleleaving shops faster, or just turning around on the door. we all have done it,leaving the area because the sound in there is so dreadful.
i want to spend just a moment talking about the model that we've developed,which allows us to start at the top and look at the drivers of sound, analyzethe soundscape and then predict the four outcomes i've just talked about. orstart at the bottom, and say what outcomes do we want, and then design asoundscape to have a desired effect. at last we've got some science we canapply. and we're in the business of designing soundscapes.
just a word on music. music is the most powerful sound there is, ofteninappropriately deployed. it's powerful for two reasons. you recognize it fast,and you associate it very powerfully. i'll give you two e_amples. (first chordof the beatles' "a hard day's night") most of you recognize that younger, maybe not. (laughter) (first two notes of "jaws" theme) and most ofyou associate that with something! now, those are one-second samples of is very powerful. and unfortunately it's veneering commercial spaces,often inappropriately. i hope that's going to change over the ne_t fewyears.
let me just talk about brands for a moment, because some of you run brand is out there making sound right now. there are eight e_pressions ofa brand in sound. they are all important. and every brand needs to haveguidelines at the center. i'm glad to say that is starting to happen now. (intelad jingle) you all recognize that one. (nokia ringtone) this is the most-playedtune in the world today. 1.8 billion times a day, that tune is played. and itcost nokia absolutely nothing.
just leave you with four golden rules, for those of you who run businesses,for commercial sound. first, make it congruent, pointing in the same directionas your visual communication. that increases impact by over 1,100 percent. ifyour sound is pointing the opposite direction, incongruent, you reduce impact by86 percent. that's an order of magnitude, up or down. this is ly, make it appropriate to the situation. thirdly, make it valuable. givepeople something with the sound. don't just bombard them with stuff. and,finally, test and test it again. sound is comple_. there are many countervailinginfluences. it can be a bit like a bowl of spaghetti: sometimes you just have toeat it and see what happens.
so i hope this talk has raised sound in your consciousness. if you'relistening consciously, you can take control of the sound around you. it's goodfor your health. it's good for your productivity. if we all do that we move to astate that i like to think will be sound living in the world. i'm going to leaveyou with a little bit more birdsong. (birds chirping) i recommend at least fiveminutes a day, but there is no ma_imum dose. thank you for lending me your earstoday. (applause)
