How to stay calm when you know you'll be stressed | Daniel Levitin | TED · TED
视频讲述在压力情境下如何避免犯错，通过一个亲身经历的故事展示压力对大脑的影响，并提供实用建议。适合练习应对压力和逻辑思维。
A few years ago, I broke into my own house.
几年前，我闯入了自己家的房子。
I had just driven home, it was around midnight in the dead of Montreal winter, I had been visiting my friend,
我刚开车回到家，当时已经是午夜时分，正值蒙特利尔冬季最寒冷的时期。我之前去拜访了我的朋友。
Jeff, across town, and the thermometer on the front porch read minus 40 degrees -- and don't bother asking if that's Celsius or Fahrenheit,
杰夫住在城另一头，他家前门廊上的温度计显示温度为零下40度。别费心去问这是摄氏度还是华氏度了……
minus 40 is where the two scales meet -- it was very cold.
当温度降至零下40度时，两种温度计量标准所显示的数值才会重合；那时的天气确实非常寒冷。
And as I stood on the front porch fumbling in my pockets, I found I didn't have my keys.
当我站在前门廊上、在口袋里翻找东西时，发现我的钥匙不见了。
In fact, I could see them through the window, lying on the dining room table where I had left them.
事实上，我可以通过窗户看到它们；它们还躺在餐厅的桌子上，就在我之前把它们放那里的地方。
So I quickly ran around and tried all the other doors and windows, and they were locked tight.
于是我迅速跑过去，试了试其他所有的门和窗户，发现它们都被锁得紧紧的。
I thought about calling a locksmith -- at least I had my cellphone,
我考虑过打电话叫锁匠来帮忙；至少我还有手机。
but at midnight, it could take a while for a locksmith to show up, and it was cold.
但是到了午夜，锁匠可能需要一段时间才能赶到，而且天气非常寒冷。
I couldn't go back to my friend Jeff's house for the night because I had an early flight to Europe the next morning,
我无法在那个晚上再去我的朋友杰夫家过夜，因为第二天早上我需要早起赶往欧洲的航班。
and I needed to get my passport and my suitcase.
我需要去取我的护照和行李箱。
So, desperate and freezing cold, I found a large rock and I broke through the basement window, cleared out the shards of glass,
于是，在绝望与严寒中，我找到了一块大石头，砸碎了地下室的窗户，清理掉了玻璃碎片。
I crawled through, I found a piece of cardboard and taped it up over the opening, figuring that in the morning,
我爬了过去，找到一块硬纸板，然后把它用胶带粘在那个开口处。心想等到早上……
on the way to the airport, I could call my contractor and ask him to fix it.
在去机场的路上，我可以给我的承包商打电话，让他来把问题解决掉。
This was going to be expensive, but probably no more expensive than a middle-of-the-night locksmith, so I figured,
这肯定会花费不少钱，但应该不会比半夜叫锁匠来修锁的费用更高吧。所以我就这么决定了。
under the circumstances, I was coming out even.
在这种情况下，我算是打了个平手（即没有亏也没有赚）。
Now, I'm a neuroscientist by training and I know a little bit about how the brain performs under stress.
我是一名神经科学家，因此对大脑在压力下的运作机制有所了解。
It releases cortisol that raises your heart rate, it modulates adrenaline levels and it clouds your thinking.
它会释放皮质醇，从而提高心率；同时调节肾上腺素的水平，并使人的思维变得混乱（即难以清晰地思考）。
So the next morning, when I woke up on too little sleep, worrying about the hole in the window,
于是第二天早上，我在睡眠不足的情况下醒来，心里还在为窗户上的那个洞而担忧……
and a mental note that I had to call my contractor, and the freezing temperatures, and the meetings I had upcoming in Europe,
我还做了个心理上的记录：我必须给我的承包商打电话；此外，气温低得令人难以忍受，而且我还有即将在欧洲举行的会议要参加。
and, you know, with all the cortisol in my brain, my thinking was cloudy, but I didn't know it was cloudy because my thinking was cloudy.
你知道的，由于我大脑中分泌了大量的皮质醇，我的思维变得混乱不堪。但我当时并没有意识到自己的思维确实处于混乱状态——因为我的思维本身就是混乱的。
And it wasn't until I got to the airport check-in counter, that I realized I didn't have my passport.
直到我来到机场的登机柜台前，我才意识到自己忘记带护照了。
So I raced home in the snow and ice, 40 minutes, got my passport, raced back to the airport,
于是我在冰雪覆盖的路面上飞快地赶回家（用了40分钟），拿上了护照，然后又立刻赶回了机场。
I made it just in time, but they had given away my seat to someone else, so I got stuck in the back of the plane,
我刚好及时赶到，但他们已经把我的座位让给了别人，所以我只能坐在飞机的后排。
next to the bathrooms, in a seat that wouldn't recline, on an eight-hour flight.
在一场长达八小时的航班上，我坐在浴室旁边的一排座位上；那排座位的座椅无法向后倾斜。
Well, I had a lot of time to think during those eight hours and no sleep.
嗯，在那八个小时里，我有很多时间来思考，而且一整夜都没有睡觉。
And I started wondering, are there things that I can do, systems that I can put into place,
于是我开始思考：是否有一些事情我可以去做，或者有哪些系统我可以建立起来？
that will prevent bad things from happening?
那样就能防止坏事发生吗？
Or at least if bad things happen, will minimize the likelihood of it being a total catastrophe.
或者至少，如果真的发生了不好的事情，也能将事情演变成彻底灾难的可能性降到最低。
So I started thinking about that, but my thoughts didn't crystallize until about a month later.
于是我开始思考这个问题，但直到大约一个月后，我的想法才终于清晰起来。
I was having dinner with my colleague, Danny Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winner, and I somewhat embarrassedly told him about having broken my window,
我和我的同事丹尼·卡尼曼（诺贝尔奖得主）一起吃晚餐时，有些尴尬地告诉他我打破了自家窗户的事。
and, you know, forgotten my passport, and Danny shared with me that he'd been practicing something called prospective hindsight.
你知道的，我把护照忘在家里了。丹尼告诉我，他一直在练习一种叫做“事后诸葛亮”的思维方式（即通过回顾过去的事情来预测未来的结果）。
It's something that he had gotten from the psychologist Gary Klein, who had written about it a few years before,
这是他从心理学家加里·克莱因那里学到的知识；加里·克莱因几年前就写过相关的内容。
also called the pre-mortem.
也被称为“尸检”（即对死亡原因的详细分析）。
Now, you all know what the postmortem is.
现在，你们都应该知道什么是“事后分析”（或“事后评估”）了吧。
Whenever there's a disaster, a team of experts come in and they try to figure out what went wrong, right?
每当发生灾难时，总会有一支专家团队赶来，试图查明到底出了什么问题，对吧？
Well, in the pre-mortem, Danny explained, you look ahead and you try to figure out all the things that could go wrong,
嗯，在事前分析（即“pre-mortem”分析）中，丹尼解释说：你需要提前考虑所有可能出错的情况。
and then you try to figure out what you can do to prevent those things from happening, or to minimize the damage.
然后你就会试图想出办法，防止这些事情的发生，或者将造成的损害降到最低。
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.
今天我想和大家讨论的是一些我们可以通过“事后分析”（即对已经发生的事情进行深入剖析）的方式来做的事情。
Some of them are obvious, some of them are not so obvious.
其中一些显而易见，而另一些则不那么明显。