硅谷是个很奇怪的地方，每个人都无条件相信：跑出去见人，就能收获 “机会”；但这里的人，也比世上任何一个地方的人都吝啬自己时间，大量有经验的人会一再和企业家分享：对那些无意义“社交”说不。信息安全管理专家 David Grady 关于类似话题的 TED 演讲引起了 300 多万浏览分享。

David Grady 演讲稿对照版

　　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).

　　这是一个礼拜一的早上，你正呆在办公室，准备为这天工作做安排。然后呢，有个你好像只是在楼下大厅见过一面的家伙，正好逛到你办公室，随手就拿走了你的椅子。

　　他也不说一句话，也没给你任何解释。你就觉得很奇怪：周围那么多椅子，他怎么就偏偏选了我这把呢?甚至完全不管我今天是否可能用到这把椅子的事实。

　　你可能就受不了了，想和他大吵一架。但真实情况是?你一路尾随他，跟他走到了他办公室，然后，你要他给你一个解释。

　　好了，十几个小时过去，周二早上到了。你又在办公室，日历上，突然弹出一个想和你见面的邀请。

　　有个女人说，她想和你聊个事，这事和一个项目有关，而你对这个项目其实不是很了解。然后，邀请也没啥明确议程，甚至都没为啥你得去的原因。

　　但出于各种各样的考虑，你接受了。

　　对，去吧，去和她见面。然后呢?当这种高度没生产力的“见面”结束后，你一脸沮丧回到办公室，懊恼至极。

　　每一天，我们几乎都在允许我们“同事”偷走我们时间，尽管，他们在很多方面，都是很好很好的人。是，我在说的，不是你被偷走的那把椅子，而是一些比你办公室家具更重要的东西。

　　我在说的是时间，是你的时间。

　　事实上，我认为我们每个人都患上了一种可怕的新型全球传染病“MAS”(Mindless Accept Syndrome)，这种“盲目接受综合症”的初期症状就是：你在日程表上突然跳出的“见面邀请”的那一瞬间，你几乎就已经接受了。

　　这是一种无意识反射，“Ding、Click(点击)、Bing”，眨眼间，会议已经在你日程。接下来，你几乎每天都大呼小叫奔出门去：“我得走了，我真的得走了，我要迟到了~~。”

　　各种各样的见面很重要，对吧?对企业家来说，“协作”简直就是成功运作企业的关键。大家都知道：一个运行良好的见面，能得到对双方都非常积极的结果，但我要说的是：全球化和信息技术无所不在的双重夹击下，过去几年，我们的工作方式其实有了翻天覆地的变化。我的意思是：我们其实很悲催，而我们的悲催，不是因为别人不能好好运作一个见面会谈，而是因为，MAS 盲目接受综合征这个病，已经造成了我们的一种自我伤害。

　　我真的能证明MAS是一种全球性传染病，让我告诉你为啥。

　　几年前，我曾在YouTube上放了段视频，这视频，我把你们曾遇到过的所有糟糕电话会议都演绎了出来。视频大概只有5分钟，里面包括了我们痛恨的那种非常差劲的会谈，比如完全对会谈没什么想法的主持人，还有，完全不知道自己为啥会出现在这个地方的参与者。

　　这整件事情，基本可以理解为是以“合作”为开始缘由的火车事故，但当火车旅程结束，我们却发现只收获了一堆残骸。事实上，每个人离开时都挺生气。这真是有点搞笑。

　　这视频制作几周后，我把它放到了网上，几十个国家的50万人次观看了，真的是几十个国家。而三年后呢，它每个月还是有几千点击量。现在，它累计点击量已经大概有100万。

　　事实上，世界上一些你曾听说但我不能说出名字的公司，都曾问过我能不能在他们培训新员工时用这段视频，他们想让新员工理解，应该怎么在公司里运作会议。

　　如果说，这100多万点击量，和这些申请要求得到我授权的大公司数量之多还不能证明全球都有“会谈”问题的话，你还可以看，视频下面的那些评论。

　　成千上万人在那里喊：“我的妈呀，我今天就是这么过的!”“我每天都是这么过的!”“这就是我的生活!”

　　还有个家伙说：“这视频很好玩，是因为它真实。一种很奇怪的，让我觉得悲伤，又难过的真实。事实上这视频，把我给逗笑，直到我突然想哭。然后，我就哭了，结果越哭越大声。”这个可怜的家伙还写道：“我每天的生活就是这样，一直到我退休或者我死的时候，哎。”

　　这就是他的原话，这也是真正的悲哀。

　　所有这些评论，都有着一个共同主题，那就是：每天，我们都是这样无能为力地去参加各种差劲会议，熬过去，然后周而复始新一天又开始。而事实上，解决MAS盲目接受综合症的方法就在我们自己手中，就在我们自己的指尖上，我把它叫做类似“No MAS!”的东西。

　　如果我还记得我高中学的西班牙语，那就有点类似：“够了，你可以停下来了!”

　　以下是“No MAS”的一些运行原理，非常简单，我希望它能对你有所帮助：

　　首先，下次等你再接到一个没有任何明确议题和信息量的邀请时，单击“暂停”按钮。这其实真没什么，你完全有权这么做，这事实上也是为什么电脑世界有“暂停键”的原因。

　　或者是：某个按钮，无论一个什么可以让你不需要马上做出接受动作的按钮。

　　然后，你和这个让你去见面的人联系一下，告诉他，你非常高兴能够支持他的工作，但是请明确告诉你，这次见面的目标，并且你也有兴趣学习如何帮助他们以实现他们的目标。

　　如果你这样做的次数足够多，并且是以一种尊敬别人的方式去做，那么，这些人可能就会学会开始反思：自己做出的各种各样邀请动作，是否可以再慎重一点，而你也能够，对要不要接受邀请有更多考虑。

　　甚至，人们很可能就因此学会了在见面前发个“书面议程”的东西;或者，可能其实只需要一封邮件就能解决的问题，他们就不会搞出个要12个人规模来参与的电话会议。

　　记住：人们只可能改变他们的行为方式，在你改变你行为方式之后，而且很可能，也是因为你的这种改变，他们就把你的椅子还给了你……

　　没事你就玩个小游戏呀~