TED学院 | 怎么克服走神的问题，变得更专注？

小芳老师 2022-04-24

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珍品收藏 | 2018年TED演讲视频合集

走神是大脑的一种自然状态，它大大削弱了我们的专注力，让我们无法集中精力在重要的事情上。专注力低下已经成了信息时代的普遍问题，那么怎么才能提高我们的注意力，把自己从一次次的神游中拉回来呢？

演讲部分摘录（中英对照）：

So what do all of these studies tell us? They tell us that attention is very powerful in terms of affecting our perception. Even though it's so powerful, it's also fragile and vulnerable. And things like stress and mind-wandering diminish its power.

那么，我们可以从以上的实验中得到什么样的启示？那就是，注意力对于认知的影响是巨大的。虽然注意力能带来强大的正面效益，但它也很脆弱，很容易受影响。比如压力和走神都会影响注意力。

But a growing body of literature suggests that we mind-wander, we take our mind away from the task at hand, about 50 percent of our waking moments. These might be small, little trips that we take away, private thoughts that we have. And when this mind-wandering happens, it can be problematic.

但当这场演讲的时间越来越长时，我们就很容易会走神。我们每天清醒的时间里边，有50%都在走神。像是走神、沉浸在自己的想法里边的这些情况，事情虽小，但是当我们注意力不在的时候，很可能会出现问题。

So we might ask why do we do this? Why do we mind-wander so much?

所以我们不禁要问，为什么会这样？为什么我们这么容易走神？

Well, part of the answer is that our mind is an exquisite time-traveling master. It can actually time travel very easily. If we think of the mind as the metaphor of the music player, we see this. We can rewind the mind to the past to reflect on events that have already happened, right? Or we can go and fast-future, to plan for the next thing that we want to do. And we land in this mental time-travel mode of the past or the future very frequently. And we land there often without our awareness, most times without our awareness, even if we want to be paying attention.

一部分原因是我们的思维是一位时间旅行大师，我们的思维很容易就会开始进行时间旅行。如果把我们的思维比作音乐播放器，就像这样，我们可以倒带回到过去，冥想过去发生过的事情，也可以快进到未来，计划我们未来要做的事情。像这样，我们的思维会非常频繁地进入时间旅行模式，而且通常是无意识的。当我们想要集中注意力的时候，也经常会无意识的走神。

This happens to us. And when this happens, when we mind-wander without an awareness that we're doing it, there are consequences. We make errors. We miss critical information, sometimes. And we have difficulty making decisions. What's worse is when we experience stress. When we're in a moment of overwhelm. We don't just reflect on the past when we rewind, we end up being in the past ruminating, reliving or regretting events that have already happened. Or under stress, we fast-forward the mind.

走神这件事在我们每个人身上都经常发生。当我们无意识的走神的时候，会有一些后果。我们会出错，有时我们会忽略了重要的信息，我们会变得抉择困难，更有甚者，当我们在压力之下的时候，当我们临近崩溃的时候，一方面我们容易会沉湎于过去，我们不断的反省、重现、后悔过去的事情。在压力之下，我们也容易陷于未来。

Not just to productively plan. But we end up catastrophizing or worrying about events that haven't happened yet and frankly may never happen. So at this point, you might be thinking to yourself, OK, mind-wandering's happening a lot. Often, it happens without our awareness. And under stress, it's even worse -- we mind-wander more powerfully and more often.

不是在制定未来的计划，而是在担心、惧怕未来尚未发生的事情，甚至有些事情其实根本就不会发生。到目前为止，你们应该都理解了，走神经常发生，而且是在我们不经意之间。在压力之下会更糟糕—— 我们可能会更频繁、更严重的走神。

Is there anything we can possibly do about this? And I'm happy to say the answer is yes. From our work, we're learning that the opposite of a stressed and wandering mind is a mindful one. Mindfulness has to do with paying attention to our present-moment experience with awareness. And without any kind of emotional reactivity of what's happening. It's about keeping that button right on play to experience the moment-to-moment unfolding of our lives. And mindfulness is not just a concept. It's more like practice, you have to embody this mindful mode of being to have any benefits.

那么我们有什么应对策略吗？我很高兴地说，有。通过我们的工作，我们了解到，压力和走神的对立面是专注。专注力能帮助我们将注意力集中在现在，并且排除不良的情绪的影响。专注力是活在当下，充分的的感受和体验生活中的一点一滴，一分一秒。专注力也并不仅仅是一个概念，它更是一种实践。你需要将这种专注深深植入灵魂，才能获得它所带来的好处。

So I want to actually end by sharing my call to action to all of you. And here it is. Pay attention to your attention. Alright? Pay attention to your attention and incorporate mindfulness training as part of your daily wellness toolkit, in order to tame your own wandering mind and to allow your attention to be a trusted guide in your own life.

留心你的的注意力。明白吗？留心你的注意力，让专注力练习成为你的日常练习之一来帮你驯服自己走神的大脑，让你的注意力成为你人生中值得信赖的向导。谢谢。（掌声）