TED演讲｜你离最有创意的自己，只差一个“放空自己”

我却被困在家里，忙着照顾。另外一样会不停推送通知的东西——一个痛苦的、啼哭不止的婴儿，只有被婴儿车推着走的时候，才能安静地睡着。我简直一天要走10到15英里，然后生孩子所增加的体重就减掉了。这倒是不错。

But man, was I bored. Before motherhood, I had been a journalist who rushed off when the Concorde crashed. I was one of the first people into Belgrade when there was a revolution in Serbia. Now, I was exhausted. This walking went on for weeks. It was only until about three months in that something shifted, though. As I pounded the pavement, my mind started to wander, too. I began imagining what I would do when I finally did sleep again.

但是拜托，我太无聊了。在做母亲以前，我曾经是一名记者，我曾经冲向协和式飞机坠毁的现场。在塞尔维亚爆发革命的时候，我是最先进入贝尔格莱德的人之一。可现在，我累坏了。我这么走了好几个星期。不过大约三个月以后，有些事情改变了。当我一步步走过人行道的时候，我的思想也开始漫步。我开始想象如果我终于能好好睡觉了，我要做什么。

So the colic did fade, and I finally got an iPhone and I put all those hours of wandering into action. I created my dream job hosting a public radio show. So there was no more rushing off to war zones, but thanks to my new smartphone, I could be a mother and a journalist. I could be on the playground and on Twitter at the same time. Yeah, well, when I thought that, when the technology came in and took over, that is when I hit a wall.

于是痛苦终于渐渐消退，我也终于拿到了iPhone，同时将这么久以来的思维漫步付诸现实。我创造了自己梦想的工作，主持一台公共电台节目。我不用再冲进战乱之地了，但是有了我新买的智能手机，我能在做母亲的同时做一名记者。我可以在操场上玩耍的同时查看推特。那么，当我想到，当科技的到来取代了人力，这时候我就会处处碰壁。

So, I want you to picture this: you host a podcast,and you have to prove that the investment of precious public radio dollars in you is worth it. My goal was to increase my audience size tenfold. So one day,I sat down to brainstorm, as you do, and I came up barren. This was different than writer's block, right? It wasn't like there was something there waiting to be unearthed. There was just nothing.

我希望你们能想象一下：你主持了一档节目，必须要证明你所获得的珍贵的公共广播的投资都是值得的。我的目标是将我的听众增加十倍。所以有一天，我就坐下来想办法，和你们一样，而我没什么想法。这和作家的文思枯竭不一样，对吧？不是那种有什么东西等待被发掘的障碍，而是根本什么都没有。

And so I started to think back: When was the last time I actually had a good idea? Yeah, it was when I was pushing that damn stroller. Now all the cracks in my day were filled with phone time. I checked the headlines while I waited for my latte. I updated my calendar while I was sitting on the couch.

所以我开始回想：我上一次想出好主意是什么时候的事？对，是我还在推那个破婴儿车的时候。现在我每天所有的缝隙时间都被手机占用了。我一边等我的拿铁一边看头条。我坐在沙发上的时候更新我的日历。

Texting turned every spare moment into a chance to show to my coworkers and my dear husband what a responsive person I was, or at least it was a chance to find another perfect couch for my page on Pinterest. I realized that I was never bored. And anyway, don't only boring people get bored?

短信让所有空闲的时间都变成了向同事和我亲爱的丈夫证明我回复及时的机会，或者至少是个让我找到另外一个舒适的沙发能翻看Pinterest页面的机会。我发现我从没感觉到无聊过。不过，不是只有无聊的人才会觉得无聊吗？

But then I started to wonder: What actually happens to us when we get bored? Or, more importantly: What happens to us if we never get bored? And what could happen if we got rid of this human emotion entirely?I started talking to neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists, and what they told me was fascinating.

但是我开始好奇：我们觉得无聊的时候到底发生了什么？更重要的是，我们永远不觉得无聊会怎么样？如果我们完全抛弃了无聊这种人类情感会怎样？我开始和神经学家以及认知心理学家交流，而他们告诉我的事实非常惊人。

It turns out that when you get bored, you ignite a network in your brain called the "default mode." So our body, it goes on autopilot while we're folding the laundry or we're walking to work, but actually that is when our brain gets really busy. Here's boredom researcher Dr.Sandi Mann.

其实让你感觉无聊的时候，你大脑里一个叫做“默认模式”的系统被点亮了。所以在我们叠衣服或者走路上班的时候，我们的身体开启了自动巡航，但我们的大脑却非常忙碌。这是无聊研究学家SandiMann博士。

Dr. Sandi Mann: Once you start daydreaming and allow your mind to really wander, you start thinking a little bit beyond the conscious, a little bit into the subconscious, which allows sort of different connections to take place. It's really awesome, actually. Manoush Zomorodi:Totally awesome, right?

Sandi Mann博士：当你开始白日做梦，让你的思想四处游荡，你的思考有一点偏离清醒的意识，更偏向于潜意识，使得各种各样的联想开始创建。这其实非常的美妙。Manoush Zomorodi：特别棒，对吧？

So this is my brain in an fMRI, and I learned that in the default mode is when we connect disparate ideas, we solve some of our most nagging problems, and we do something called "autobiographicalplanning." This is when we look back at our lives, we take note of the big moments, we create a personal narrative, and then we set goals and we figure out what steps we need to take to reach them. But now we chill out on the couch also while updating a Google Doc or replying to email. We call it "getting shit done," but here's what neuroscientist Dr. Daniel Levitin says we're actually doing.

这是我的大脑在功能磁共振成像中的样子。我发现我们是在默认模式中将毫不相干的想法联系起来的。我们解决了一些最让人困扰的问题，我们还做了一件叫做“自传式规划”的事。我们回顾自己的一生，我们记录下那些重要的时刻，并且写下自己的旁白。然后我们设定目标，想好为了实现目标，我们每一步要做什么。但是现在我们躺在沙发上的时候，还在更新一篇谷歌文档，或者回复邮件。我们把这个叫做“把事情做完”，但是照神经学家DanielLevitin博士所说，我们做的事其实是这样的。

Dr. Daniel Levitin: Every time you shift your attention from one thing to another, the brain has to engage a neurochemical switch that uses up nutrients in the brain to accomplish that. So if you're attempting to multitask, you know, doing four or five things at once, you're not actually doing four or five things at once, because the brain doesn't work that way.Instead, you're rapidly shifting from one thing to the next, depleting neuralresources as you go.

Daniel Levitin博士：每次你将你的注意力从一件事情转移到另一件事情上，大脑都必须进行一次神经化学的转换，并且消耗掉大脑存储的营养。所以如果你想要同时处理多项任务，你知道吧，同时做四五件事，你不是真的在同时做四五件事，因为你的大脑不是这么工作的。你其实是在迅速地从这一件事转换到下一件事，同时将神经能源消耗殆尽。

MZ: So switch, switch, switch, you're using glucose,glucose, glucose.

DL: Exactly right, and we have a limited supply of that stuff.

MZ：转换来，转换去，再转换回来，你在消耗糖分，糖分，还是糖分。

DL：完全正确，而且我们能提供的糖分是有限的。

MZ: A decade ago, we shifted our attention at work every three minutes. Now we do it every 45 seconds, and we do it all day long.The average person checks email 74 times a day, and switches tasks on their computer 566 times a day. I discovered all this talking to professor of informatics, Dr. Gloria Mark.

MZ：十年前，我们在工作时每三分钟转换一次注意力。现在我们每45秒就要转换一次，而我们一整天都在这样做。一个正常人平均一天查看电子邮件74次，而在电脑上切换任务高达每天566次。这是我在和信息专家谈话的时候发现的。GloriaMark博士。

Dr. Gloria Mark: So we find that when people are stressed, they tend to shift their attention more rapidly. We also found,strangely enough, that the shorter the amount of sleep that a person gets, the more likely they are to check Facebook. So we're in this vicious, habitual cycle.

Gloria Mark博士：我们发现当人们压力很大时，他们容易更快地来回转换注意力。我们同时发现，非常奇怪的是，一个人的睡眠时间越少，他更容易去检查Facebook的动态。所以我们正处于这个习以为常的恶性循环中。

MZ: But could this cycle be broken? What would happen if we broke this vicious cycle? Maybe my listeners could help me find out. What if we reclaimed those cracks in our day? Could it help us jump-start our creativity? We called the project "Bored and Brilliant." And I expected, you know, a couple hundred people to play along, but thousands of people started signing up. And they told me the reason they were doing it was because they were worried that their relationship with their phone had grown kind of ... "codependent," shall we say.

MZ：但是我们如何打破这个循环呢？我们打破循环后又会发生什么呢？兴许我的听众们能帮我找到答案。如果我们重新找回那些空隙时间呢？这会帮助我们开启创造力吗？我们把这个叫做“无聊而美好”项目。我本来期望能有几百个人来参与，但是上千人开始报名参加。他们告诉我他们这么做的原因是他们担心自己和手机的关系变得“相互依赖”，暂且这么说。

Man: The relationship between a baby and its teddy bear or a baby and its binky or a baby that wants its mother's cradle when it's done with being held by a stranger -- that's the relationship between me and my phone.

男士：这种婴儿和他泰迪熊之间的关系，或者婴儿和他的口袋龙，或者一个想要母亲怀抱的婴儿，当他厌烦了被陌生人抱着的时候。这就是我和手机的关系。

Woman: I think of my phone like a power tool:extremely useful, but dangerous if I'm not handling it properly.

Woman 2: If I don't pay close attention, I'll suddenly realize that I've lost an hour of time doing something totally mindless.

女士：我把我的手机看做是力量的工具：非常有用，但是如果我错误地使用就非常危险。

女士2：如果我不注意，我就会突然发现我已经失去了一个小时的时间，用来做完全不动脑筋的事情。

MZ: OK, but to really measure any improvement, we needed data, right? Because that's what we do these days. So we partnered with some apps that would measure how much time we were spending every day on our phone. If you're thinking it's ironic that I asked people to download another app so that they would spend less time on their phones: yeah, but you gotta meet people where they are.

MZ：好的，但是要测量任何的进展，我们需要数据，对吧？因为我们现在就是这么做的。我们和一些应用程序合作来计算我们每天花在手机上的时间。如果你觉得这样很讽刺，我让人们下载另外一个程序来让他们减少玩手机的时间：没错，但是你得先看到他们的处境。

So before challenge week, we were averaging two hours a day on our phones and 60 pickups, you know, like, a quick check, did I get a new email? Here's what Tina, a student at Bard College, discovered about herself.

所以在挑战周开始前，我们平均每天在手机上花费两个小时，以及60次检查，就像这样，快速看一眼，我有新的邮件吗？这是Tina，一名巴德学院的学生对她自己的发现。

Tina: So far, I've been spending between 150 and 200minutes on my phone per day, and I've been picking up my phone 70 to 100 times per day. And it's really concerning, because that's so much time that I could have spent doing something more productive, more creative, more towards myself,because when I'm on my phone, I'm not doing anything important.

Tina：到目前为止，我每天都在手机上花费150到200分钟，而我每天拿起手机的次数有70到100次。这真的很让人担心，因为有这么多的时间，我本可以用来做更有效率、更有创意、更有利于我的事，因为我在看手机的时候，我并没有在做什么重要的事。

MZ: Like Tina, people were starting to observe their own behavior. They were getting ready for challenge week. And that Monday, they started to wake up to instructions in their inbox, an experiment to try.

MZ：就像Tina一样，人们开始看到他们自己的行为。他们慢慢准备好迎接挑战周了。从那个星期一开始，他们开始在收件箱中收到指示，试着完成一项实验。

Day one: "Put it in your pocket." Takethat phone out of your hand. See if you can eliminate the reflex to check itall day long, just for a day. And if this sounds easy, you haven't tried it.Here's listener Amanda Itzko.

第一天：“把手机放进口袋里。”把手机从手心里拿走。看看你能不能停下整天看手机的条件反射，哪怕就一天。如果这听起来很简单，你试试就知道了。这是Amanda Itzko说的话。

Amanda Itzko: I am absolutely itching. I feel a little bit crazy, because I have noticed that I pick up my phone when I'm just walking from one room to another, getting on the elevator, and even -- and this is the part that I am really embarrassed to actually say out loud -- in the car.

Amanda Itzko：我简直浑身发痒。我感觉自己有点发疯了，因为我发现连我从一间屋子走到另一间屋子去，都会拿起手机，还有走上电梯的时候，甚至——这是我觉得说出来非常尴尬的事——在车里的时候。

MZ: Yikes. Yeah, well, but as Amanda learned, this itching feeling is not actually her fault. That is exactly the behavior that the technology is built to trigger. I mean, right? Here's former Google designer, Tristan Harris.

MZ：说得对。没错，但是就像Amanda发现的，这种发痒的感觉不是她的错。这正是科技被创造出来时想要激发的行为。我说的没错吧？这是前谷歌设计师TristanHarris的话。

Tristan Harris: If I'm Facebook or I'm Netflix or I'm Snapchat, I have literally a thousand engineers whose job is to get more attention from you. I'm very good at this, and I don't want you to ever stop.And you know, the CEO of Netflix recently said, "Our biggest competitors are Facebook, YouTube and sleep." I mean, so there's a million places to spend your attention, but there's a war going on to get it.

Tristan Harris：如果我是Facebook、Netflix或者Snapchat公司，我会雇佣一千个工程师，他们的工作就是获取你更多的注意。我对此非常擅长，而且我根本不希望你停下。最近Netflix公司的首席执行官说，“我们最大的竞争者就是Facebook，YouTube和睡眠。”所以你有成千上万的地方可以投入你的注意力，但是为了获取你的注意，一场战争正在进行。

MZ: I mean, you know the feeling: that amazing episode of "Transparent" ends, and then the next one starts playing so you're like, eh, OK fine, I'll just stay up and watch it. Or the Linked Inprogress bar says you are this close to having the perfect profile, so you adda little more personal information. As one UX designer told me, the only people who refer to their customers as "users" are drug dealers andtechnologists.

MZ：我是说，你懂这种感觉的：一集精彩的《透明家族》结束了，然后下一集又开始播放了，所以你就觉得，呃，好吧，我就留下来看完吧。或者LinkedIn的进度条告诉你，你离完美的个人档案只有一步之遥的，然后你就加入了一点个人信息。就像一位用户体验设计师告诉我的，把客户叫做“用户”的人，除了毒贩就是科技人员了。

And users, as we know, are worth a lot of money.Here's former Facebook product manager and author, Antonio García Martínez.

而用户，如我们所知，值很多钱。这位是前Facebook产品经理和作家， Antonio Garcia Martinez。

Antonio García Martínez: The saying is, if any product is free then you're the product; your attention is the product. But what is your attention worth? That's why literally every time you load a page,not just on Facebook or any app, there's an auction being held instantly,billions of times a day, for exactly how much that one ad impression cost.

Antonio Garcia Martinez：俗话说，如果任何产品是免费的，那么你就是那个产品；你的注意力就是那个产品。但是你的注意力值多少钱呢？这就是为什么每次你打开一个网页，不只是在Facebook或者其他应用程序上，都有一场竞拍在进行，每天上亿次，针对一条广告留下印象的价格。

MZ: By the way, the average person will spend two years of their life on Facebook. So, back to challenge week. Immediately, we saw some creativity kick in. Here's New Yorker Lisa Alpert.

MZ：顺便一提，一个人的生命中会有两年时间花在Facebook上。所以，说回挑战周的事。我们立刻看到了一些创意的出现。这是来自纽约的LisaAlpert说的话。

Lisa Alpert: I was bored, I guess. So I suddenly looked at the stairway that went up to the top of the station, and I thought,you know, I had just come down that stairway, but I could go back up and then come back down and get a little cardio. So I did, and then I had a little more time, so I did it again and I did it again, and I did it 10 times. And I had a complete cardio workout. I got on that R train feeling kind of exhausted, but,like, wow, that had never occurred to me. How is that possible?

Lisa Albert：我很无聊，我猜。所以我突然看着一直通向车站顶上的台阶，然后我想，我刚刚从那条楼梯上走下来，但是我可以再走上去，然后再走下来，能做一点有氧运动。我就这么做了，然后我的时间还有一点，我就一遍又一遍地做，我走了十次，然后我就得到了一次完整的有氧锻炼。我走上那列R火车的时候感觉有点累，但是，哇，我从来没有这样过。这怎么可能呢？

MZ: So creativity, I learned, means different things to different people.

MZ：所以创造力，我发现，对于不同的人来说意味也不尽相同。

But everyone found day three's challenge the hardest. It was called "Delete that app." Take that app -- you know the one; that one that always gets you, it sucks you in -- take it off your phone, even if just for the day. I deleted the game Two Dots and nearly cried.

但是每个人都觉得第三天的挑战是最难的。这项挑战叫做“删除应用程序”。把那个应用——你知道哪个的；就是总是吸引你，把你吸进去的那个——把它从手机里删除，哪怕就这一天。我删掉《两点之间》的游戏，差点哭出来。

Yeah, Two Dots players know what I'm talking about.But my misery had good company.

是的，《两点之间》的玩家知道我在说什么。但是我的痛苦有人陪伴。

Man 2: This is Liam in Los Angeles, and I deleted Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat and Vine from my phone in one fell swoop. And it was kind of an embarrassingly emotional experience at first.It felt weirdly lonely to look at that lock screen with no new notifications on it. But I really liked deciding for myself when to think about or access my social networks, not giving my phone the power to decide that for me. So thank you.

男士2：我是来自洛杉矶的Liam。我删掉了从我手机里删掉了Twitter、Facebook、Instagram、Tumblr、Snapchat和Vine，一气呵成。一开始这是一种让人尴尬的情感体验。我看着锁屏感觉奇怪的孤单，没有任何新的通知。但是我很享受为自己决定什么时候去想或者去看我的社交网络，而不是让我的手机有权利为我决定。所以谢谢你们。

Woman 3: Deleting the Twitter app was very sad, andI feel I maybe, over the last year when I've been on Twitter, have developed an addiction to it, and this "Bored and Brilliant" challenge has really made me realize it. After a brief period of really horrible withdrawal feeling,like lack-of-caffeine headache, I now feel lovely. I had a lovely dinner with my family, and I hope to continue this structured use of these powerful tools.

女士3：删除Twitter的应用让我很难过，我觉得我可能，在过去的一年里使用Twitter，已经发展成一种上瘾了，而这个“无聊而美好”的挑战真的让我发现了这一点。在短暂的一段痛苦的戒断感受之后，就像没有咖啡因的头疼，我现在感觉好极了。我和家人一起吃了一顿美味的晚餐，我希望能继续这样有组织地使用这些强大的工具。

Woman 4: I don't have that guilty gut feeling I have when I know I'm wasting time on my phone. Maybe I'll have to start giving myself challenges and reminders like this every morning.

女士4：我没有那种内疚的感觉了，就是在我发现我在手机上浪费时间的时候那种内疚。可能我必须开始给自己一些像这样的挑战和提醒，在每天清晨的时候。

MZ: I mean, yes, this was progress. I could not wait to see what the numbers said at the end of that week. But when the data came in, it turned out that we had cut down, on average, just six minutes -- from120 minutes a day on our phones to 114. Yeah. Whoop-de-do.

MZ：是的，这就是进步。我等不及要看看在这一周结束时，数据是怎样的了。但是当我们收到数据时，我们发现我们平均下来，减少了仅仅六分钟——从每天在手机上花费120分钟到114分钟。是的，我的天。

So I went back to the scientists feeling kind of low, and they just laughed at me, and they said, you know, changing people's behavior in such a short time period was ridiculously ambitious, and actually what you've achieved is far beyond what we thought possible. Because more important than the numbers, were the people's stories. They felt empowered.Their phones had been transformed from taskmasters back into tools.

所以我有点低落，又去找那些科学家们，而他们就只是嘲笑我。他们说，你知道吗，改变人们的行为，在这么短的时间内，简直是愚蠢的野心，而且你所达到的成果已经远远超过我们的想象了。因为比数据更重要的，是人们自己的故事。他们感觉被赋予了权力。他们的手机从任务监工重新变成工具。

And actually, I found what the young people said most intriguing. Some of them told me that they didn't recognize some of the emotions that they felt during challenge week, because, if you think about it,if you have never known life without connectivity, you may never have experienced boredom. And there could be consequences. Researchers at USC have found -- they're studying teenagers who are on social media while they're talking to their friends or they're doing homework,

事实上，我发现年轻人说的话最有意思。一些年轻人告诉我，他们不知道在挑战周里他们感受的情绪是什么。因为如果你这样想，如果你从来没有过失去社交联通的生活，你可能从来没有经历过无聊。而这可能就是我们的下场。南加州大学的研究者们发现——他们在研究一些青少年，他们和朋友说话时一直在看社交软件，还有写作业的时候。

and two years down the road, they are less creative and imaginative about their own personal futures and about solving societal problems, like violence in their neighborhoods. And we really need this next generation to be able to focus on some big problems: climate change, economic disparity, massive cultural differences. No wonder CEOs in an IBM survey identified creativity as the number one leadership competency.

像这样过了两年以后，他们都对于他们自己的未来，缺乏创造力和想象力，以及解决社会问题的能力，比如邻里的暴力问题。我们非常需要我们的下一代能够专注于一些重大的问题：气候变化、经济差距、巨大的文化差异。怪不得一项IBM调查的首席执行官将创造力看做是领导力的第一竞争力。

OK, here's the good news, though: In the end, 20,000people did "Bored and Brilliant" that week. Ninety percent cut down on their minutes. Seventy percent got more time to think. People told me that they slept better. They felt happier. My favorite note was from a guy who said he felt like he was waking up from a mental hibernation.

不过，还是有好消息的：最终，在那个星期完成“无聊而美好”挑战的20,000人中，百分之九十的人都减少了玩手机的时间。百分之七十的人有了更多的时间思考。人们告诉我他们的睡眠好了很多，他们感觉更快乐了。我最喜欢的反馈是一个人说他感觉自己像从头脑冬眠中醒来。

Some personal data and some neuroscience gave us permission to be offline a little bit more, and a little bit of boredom gave us some clarity and helped some of us set some goals. I mean, maybe constant connectivity won't be cool in a couple of years. But meanwhile, teaching people, especially kids, how to use technology to improve their lives and to self-regulate needs to be part of digital literacy.

一些个人数据和神经科学允许我们多离线一会，而一点无聊让我们更清醒，帮助我们中的一些人设定目标。我是说，也许持续的联络再过几年就不流行了。但是同时，教会人们，尤其是孩子们，如何使用科技来提高他们的生活质量，并且实现自我管控，需要成为数字素养的一部分。

So the next time you go to check your phone,remember that if you don't decide how you're going to use the technology, the platforms will decide for you. And ask yourself: What am I really looking for?Because if it's to check email, that's fine -- do it and be done.

所以下次你想去看一下手机的时候，记住如果你不自己决定如果使用科技，科技平台会替你做决定。问问自己：我到底要看什么？因为如果我要去检查邮件，这没关系——看完了就完了。

But if it's to distract yourself from doing the hard work that comes with deeper thinking, take a break, stare out the window and know that by doing nothing you are actually being your most productive and creative self. It might feel weird and uncomfortable at first, but boredomtruly can lead to brilliance. Thank you.

但是如果这会让自己从努力工作中分心，你就得更认真地想想了。放松一下，看看窗外，你要知道什么也不做的时候，你其实是在做最有创意和效率的自己。这可能一开始有点奇怪，有点不舒服，但是无聊真的能带来美好。谢谢。