硅谷是個(gè)很奇怪的地方，每個(gè)人都無條件相信：跑出去見人，就能收獲 “機(jī)會(huì)”；但這里的人，也比世上任何一個(gè)地方的人都吝嗇自己時(shí)間，大量有經(jīng)驗(yàn)的人會(huì)一再和企業(yè)家分享：對(duì)那些無意義“社交”說不。信息安全管理專家 David Grady 關(guān)于類似話題的 TED 演講引起了 300 多萬瀏覽分享。

David Grady 演講稿對(duì)照版

　　Picture this: It's Monday morning, you're at the office, you're settling in for the day at work, andthis guy that you sort of recognize from down the hall, walks right into your cubicle and he stealsyour chair. Doesn't say a word — just rolls away with it. Doesn't give you any information aboutwhy he took your chair out of all the other chairs that are out there. Doesn't acknowledge the factthat you might need your chair to get some work done today. You wouldn't stand for it. You'dmake a stink. You'd follow that guy back to his cubicle and you'd say, "Why my chair?"

　　Okay, so now it's Tuesday morning and you're at the office, and a meeting invitation pops up inyour calendar. (Laughter) And it's from this woman who you kind of know from down the hall, andthe 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. And yet you accept themeeting invitation, and you go. And when this highly unproductive session is over, you go back toyour desk, and you stand at your desk and you say, "Boy, I wish I had those two hours back, likeI wish I had my chair back." (Laughter)

　　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 illnessknown as MAS: Mindless Accept Syndrome. (Laughter) The primary symptom of Mindless AcceptSyndrome 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 ameeting." (Laughter)

　　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 pervasiveinformation technology, the way that we work has really changed dramatically over the last fewyears. And we're miserable. (Laughter) And we're miserable not because the other guy can't run agood meeting, it's because of MAS, our Mindless Accept Syndrome, which is a self-inflicted wound.

　　Actually, I have evidence to prove that MAS is a global epidemic. Let me tell you why. A couple ofyears ago, I put a video on Youtube, and in the video, I acted out every terrible conference callyou've ever been on. It goes on for about five minutes, and it has all the things that we hate aboutreally bad meetings. There's the moderator who has no idea how to run the meeting. There arethe participants who have no idea why they're there. The whole thing kind of collapses into thiscollaborative train wreck. And everybody leaves very angry. It's kind of funny. (Laughter) Let'stake a quick look. (Video) Our goal today is to come to an agreement on a very importantproposal. As a group, we need to decide if — bloop bloop — Hi, who just joined? Hi, it's Joe. I'mworking from home today. (Laughter) Hi, Joe. Thanks for joining us today, great. I was justsaying, we have a lot of people on the call we'd like to get through, so let's skip the roll call and I'mgonna dive right in. Our goal today is to come to an agreement on a very important proposal. As agroup, we need to decide if — bloop bloop — (Laughter) Hi, who just joined? No? I thought Iheard a beep. (Laughter)

　　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 threeyears 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 Iwon't name, have asked for my permission to use this video in their new-hire training to teach theirnew employees how not to run a meeting at their company. And if the numbers — there are amillion views and it's being used by all these companies — aren't enough proof that we have aglobal problem with meetings, there are the many, many thousands of comments posted onlineafter 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." 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 quotesand it's real sad

　　A common theme running through all of these comments online is this fundamental belief that weare powerless to do anything other than go to meetings and suffer through these poorly runmeetings and live to meet another day. But the truth is, we're not powerless at all. In fact, the curefor MAS is right here in our hands. It's right at our fingertips, literally. It's something that I call ?NoMAS! (Laughter) Which, if I remember my high school Spanish, means something like, "Enoughalready, make it stop!"

　　Here's how No MAS works. It's very simple. First of all, the next time you get a meeting invitationthat 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 whateverbutton is there for you not to accept immediately. Then, get in touch with the person who askedyou to the meeting. Tell them you're very excited to support their work, ask them what the goalof the meeting is, and tell them you're interested in learning how you can help them achieve theirgoal. And if we do this often enough, and we do it respectfully, people might start to be a little bitmore thoughtful about the way they put together meeting invitations. And you can make morethoughtful decisions about accepting it. People might actually start sending out agendas. Imagine!Or they might not have a conference call with 12 people to talk about a status when they couldjust do a quick email and get it done with. People just might start to change their behaviorbecause you changed yours. And they just might bring your chair back, too. (Laughter) No MAS!Thank you. (Applause).

　　這是一個(gè)禮拜一的早上，你正呆在辦公室，準(zhǔn)備為這天工作做安排。然后呢，有個(gè)你好像只是在樓下大廳見過一面的家伙，正好逛到你辦公室，隨手就拿走了你的椅子。

　　他也不說一句話，也沒給你任何解釋。你就覺得很奇怪：周圍那么多椅子，他怎么就偏偏選了我這把呢?甚至完全不管我今天是否可能用到這把椅子的事實(shí)。

　　你可能就受不了了，想和他大吵一架。但真實(shí)情況是?你一路尾隨他，跟他走到了他辦公室，然后，你要他給你一個(gè)解釋。

　　好了，十幾個(gè)小時(shí)過去，周二早上到了。你又在辦公室，日歷上，突然彈出一個(gè)想和你見面的邀請(qǐng)。

　　有個(gè)女人說，她想和你聊個(gè)事，這事和一個(gè)項(xiàng)目有關(guān)，而你對(duì)這個(gè)項(xiàng)目其實(shí)不是很了解。然后，邀請(qǐng)也沒啥明確議程，甚至都沒為啥你得去的原因。

　　但出于各種各樣的考慮，你接受了。

　　對(duì)，去吧，去和她見面。然后呢?當(dāng)這種高度沒生產(chǎn)力的“見面”結(jié)束后，你一臉沮喪回到辦公室，懊惱至極。

　　每一天，我們幾乎都在允許我們“同事”偷走我們時(shí)間，盡管，他們?cè)诤芏喾矫?，都是很好很好的人。是，我在說的，不是你被偷走的那把椅子，而是一些比你辦公室家具更重要的東西。

　　我在說的是時(shí)間，是你的時(shí)間。

　　事實(shí)上，我認(rèn)為我們每個(gè)人都患上了一種可怕的新型全球傳染病“MAS”(Mindless Accept Syndrome)，這種“盲目接受綜合癥”的初期癥狀就是：你在日程表上突然跳出的“見面邀請(qǐng)”的那一瞬間，你幾乎就已經(jīng)接受了。

　　這是一種無意識(shí)反射，“Ding、Click(點(diǎn)擊)、Bing”，眨眼間，會(huì)議已經(jīng)在你日程。接下來，你幾乎每天都大呼小叫奔出門去：“我得走了，我真的得走了，我要遲到了~~。”

　　各種各樣的見面很重要，對(duì)吧?對(duì)企業(yè)家來說，“協(xié)作”簡(jiǎn)直就是成功運(yùn)作企業(yè)的關(guān)鍵。大家都知道：一個(gè)運(yùn)行良好的見面，能得到對(duì)雙方都非常積極的結(jié)果，但我要說的是：全球化和信息技術(shù)無所不在的雙重夾擊下，過去幾年，我們的工作方式其實(shí)有了翻天覆地的變化。我的意思是：我們其實(shí)很悲催，而我們的悲催，不是因?yàn)閯e人不能好好運(yùn)作一個(gè)見面會(huì)談，而是因?yàn)椋琈AS 盲目接受綜合征這個(gè)病，已經(jīng)造成了我們的一種自我傷害。

　　我真的能證明MAS是一種全球性傳染病，讓我告訴你為啥。

　　幾年前，我曾在YouTube上放了段視頻，這視頻，我把你們?cè)龅竭^的所有糟糕電話會(huì)議都演繹了出來。視頻大概只有5分鐘，里面包括了我們痛恨的那種非常差勁的會(huì)談，比如完全對(duì)會(huì)談沒什么想法的主持人，還有，完全不知道自己為啥會(huì)出現(xiàn)在這個(gè)地方的參與者。

　　這整件事情，基本可以理解為是以“合作”為開始緣由的火車事故，但當(dāng)火車旅程結(jié)束，我們卻發(fā)現(xiàn)只收獲了一堆殘骸。事實(shí)上，每個(gè)人離開時(shí)都挺生氣。這真是有點(diǎn)搞笑。

　　這視頻制作幾周后，我把它放到了網(wǎng)上，幾十個(gè)國(guó)家的50萬人次觀看了，真的是幾十個(gè)國(guó)家。而三年后呢，它每個(gè)月還是有幾千點(diǎn)擊量。現(xiàn)在，它累計(jì)點(diǎn)擊量已經(jīng)大概有100萬。

　　事實(shí)上，世界上一些你曾聽說但我不能說出名字的公司，都曾問過我能不能在他們培訓(xùn)新員工時(shí)用這段視頻，他們想讓新員工理解，應(yīng)該怎么在公司里運(yùn)作會(huì)議。

　　如果說，這100多萬點(diǎn)擊量，和這些申請(qǐng)要求得到我授權(quán)的大公司數(shù)量之多還不能證明全球都有“會(huì)談”問題的話，你還可以看，視頻下面的那些評(píng)論。

　　成千上萬人在那里喊：“我的媽呀，我今天就是這么過的!”“我每天都是這么過的!”“這就是我的生活!”

　　還有個(gè)家伙說：“這視頻很好玩，是因?yàn)樗鎸?shí)。一種很奇怪的，讓我覺得悲傷，又難過的真實(shí)。事實(shí)上這視頻，把我給逗笑，直到我突然想哭。然后，我就哭了，結(jié)果越哭越大聲?！边@個(gè)可憐的家伙還寫道：“我每天的生活就是這樣，一直到我退休或者我死的時(shí)候，哎?！?/p>

　　這就是他的原話，這也是真正的悲哀。

　　所有這些評(píng)論，都有著一個(gè)共同主題，那就是：每天，我們都是這樣無能為力地去參加各種差勁會(huì)議，熬過去，然后周而復(fù)始新一天又開始。而事實(shí)上，解決MAS盲目接受綜合癥的方法就在我們自己手中，就在我們自己的指尖上，我把它叫做類似“No MAS!”的東西。

　　如果我還記得我高中學(xué)的西班牙語(yǔ)，那就有點(diǎn)類似：“夠了，你可以停下來了!”

　　以下是“No MAS”的一些運(yùn)行原理，非常簡(jiǎn)單，我希望它能對(duì)你有所幫助：

　　首先，下次等你再接到一個(gè)沒有任何明確議題和信息量的邀請(qǐng)時(shí)，單擊“暫停”按鈕。這其實(shí)真沒什么，你完全有權(quán)這么做，這事實(shí)上也是為什么電腦世界有“暫停鍵”的原因。

　　或者是：某個(gè)按鈕，無論一個(gè)什么可以讓你不需要馬上做出接受動(dòng)作的按鈕。

　　然后，你和這個(gè)讓你去見面的人聯(lián)系一下，告訴他，你非常高興能夠支持他的工作，但是請(qǐng)明確告訴你，這次見面的目標(biāo)，并且你也有興趣學(xué)習(xí)如何幫助他們以實(shí)現(xiàn)他們的目標(biāo)。

　　如果你這樣做的次數(shù)足夠多，并且是以一種尊敬別人的方式去做，那么，這些人可能就會(huì)學(xué)會(huì)開始反思：自己做出的各種各樣邀請(qǐng)動(dòng)作，是否可以再慎重一點(diǎn)，而你也能夠，對(duì)要不要接受邀請(qǐng)有更多考慮。

　　甚至，人們很可能就因此學(xué)會(huì)了在見面前發(fā)個(gè)“書面議程”的東西;或者，可能其實(shí)只需要一封郵件就能解決的問題，他們就不會(huì)搞出個(gè)要12個(gè)人規(guī)模來參與的電話會(huì)議。

　　記?。喝藗冎豢赡芨淖兯麄兊男袨榉绞?，在你改變你行為方式之后，而且很可能，也是因?yàn)槟愕倪@種改變，他們就把你的椅子還給了你……

　　沒事你就玩?zhèn)€小游戲呀~