ted演讲稿4篇

last year when i was here, i was speaking to you about a swim which i did across the north pole.上年，在我站在这里的情况下，我还在讨论我跨过 北极圈的游水。

and while that swim took place three years ago, i can remember it as if it was yesterday.那还是产生在3年以前， 对于我则好像是昨日一般。

i remember standing on the edge of the ice, about to dive into the water, and thinking to myself, i have never ever seen any place on this earth which is just so frightening.还记得站在冰面的边沿， 就需要扎渗水里， 然后我自身想起，我从此再也 不必见到地球上的这个地方，这里是这般的令人害怕。

the water is completely black.the water is minus 1.7 degrees centigrade, or 29 degrees fahrenheit.it's flipping freezing in that water.

那边的水为全黑色。水的温度是负1.7℃， 华氏29度。那水里便是滚动的冰块儿。

and then a thought came across my mind: if things go pear-shaped on this swim, how long will it take for my frozen body to sink the four and a half kilometers to the bottom of the ocean?随后一个念头在我脑中掠过： 假如这一场泳出了点难题， 我这冷冻的身子要花多久时间 才可以沉到这4500米的底端呢?

and then i said to myself, i've just got to get this thought out of my mind as quickly as possible.然后我劝诫自己，我要把这一想法尽早的 抛在我的脑后。

and the only way i can dive into that freezing cold water and swim a kilometer is by listening to my ipod and really revving myself up,能要我扎进 这冰冷的水中 随后游了4公里的唯一方式 便是 听着我的ipod，让我自己全力以赴运行下去，

listening to everything from beautiful opera all the way across to puff daddy, and then committing myself a hundred percent -- there is nothing more powerful than the made-up mind --and then walking up to the edge of the ice and just diving into the water.

我听了所有的歌，从绮丽的歌舞剧 到吹牛老爹， 然后全心全意的资金投入 没有什么比下决心还需要强大的 --随后来到冰的边沿 扎进水中。

and that swim took me 18 minutes and 50 seconds, and it felt like 18 days.此次游水花了我 18分50秒， 但好像是18天一样。

and i remember getting out of the water and my hands feeling so painful and looking down at my fingers, and my fingers were literally the size of sausages because -- you know, we're made partially of water -- when water freezes it expands, and so the cells in my fingers had frozen and expandedand burst.

我还记得在我从水中出去时 我手时这般的痛疼 然后我看见我的手指， 我的手指真的像腊肠一样粗，由于--大家知道，大家人体一部分由水构成 -- 当水结冰的时候会澎涨， 那样我手指的里体细胞 就冰冻了，膨胀了爆裂了。and the most immediate thought when i came out of that water was the following: i'm never, ever going to do another cold water swim in my life again.我在水中成功的一瞬间的念头 时这种： 我一生中 从此再也不要去在冰冷的水里游泳了。

anyway, last year, i heard about the himalayas and the melting of the -- (laughter) and the melting of the glaciers because of climate change.就是这样，上年，我听到了阿尔卑斯山 及其那边溶化的--(笑) 由于气候问题 所融化的冰川。

i heard about this lake, lake imja.我听说了这一湖水，映佳湖。

this lake has been formed in the last couple of years because of the melting of the glacier.这一湖是几年前 因为冰山融化所生成的。

the glacier's gone all the way up the mountain and left in its place this big lake.这种冰河顺山而下 随后在这儿留下了这一山湖。

and i firmly believe that what we're seeing in the himalayas is the next great, big battleground on this earth.从而我坚信 我要去看见的喜马拉雅fm 便是我下一个在地球上的 竞技场。

nearly two billion people -- so one in three people on this earth -- rely on the water from the himalayas.接近20亿的人口数量 -- 全世界三分之一的地球人口 -- 借助着阿尔卑斯山的水资源。

and with a population increasing as quickly as it is, and with the water supply from these glaciers -- because of climate change --decreasing so much, i think we have a real risk of instability.而全球人口照这一速率发展趋势下来， 而冰河水资源的给予 -- 考虑到天气的变动 --降低的这般之快， 我像我们就得到一个十分不稳定的威协。

north, you've got china; south, you've india, pakistan, bangladesh, all these countries.北方地区，大家由中国;南方地区，大家有印度的，塔吉克斯坦，孟加拉国， 和其他所有国家。

and so i decided to walk up to mt. everest, the highest mountain on this earth, and go and do a symbolic swim underneath the summit of mt. everest.那样我决定了 走上珠穆朗玛峰， 地球上的最高点， 怎样在珠穆朗玛峰下 游一次具备寓意的泳。

now, i don't know if any of you have had the opportunity to go to mt. everest, but it's quite an ordeal getting up there.我也不知道，大家是不是还有机会去珠穆朗玛峰， 可是要去那得话，是一个磨练。

28 great, big, powerful yaks carrying all the equipment up onto this mountain -- i don't just have my speedo, but there's a big film crew who then send all the images around the world.28只很大的野牦牛 载着所有的仪器设备走上高山 -- 我不仅带这我的游泳裤。 还有一个拍摄精英团队这一拍摄精英团队，会向世界各国直播间。

the other thing which was so challenging about this swim is not just the altitude.此次游水的考验不仅仅有 海拔高度。

i wanted to do the swim at 5,300 meters above sea level.我想要做的是在5300米的水平面上游水。

so it's right up in the heavens.因此直通人间天堂。

it's very, very difficult to breath. you get altitude sickness.这儿吸气十分，十分困难。你会出现高反。

i feels like you've got a man standing behind you with a hammer just hitting your head all the time.你能觉得有一个人不断的那着一把锤子 在敲你的后脑壳。

that's not the worst part of it.这还不是最烂的。

the worst part was this year was the year where they decided to do a big cleanup operation on mt. everest.最糟糕的是，这一年她们决定 在珠穆朗玛峰上做一个清扫。

many, many people have died on mt. everest, and this was the year they decided to go and recover all the bodies of the mountaineers and then bring them down the mountain.很多人死在珠穆朗玛峰上， 随后2022年，她们决定 取回珠穆朗玛峰上所有的遗体然后把她们带出山。

and when you're walking up the mountain to attempt to do something which no human has ever done before, and, in fact, no fish -- there are no fish up there swimming at 5,300 meters --而当你想进山 做一些事情 一些没人做过的事情，实际上，鱼都没游过。 在5300米的平均海拔上，没有鱼在那里游过。

when you're trying to do that, and then the bodies are coming past you, it humbles you, and you also realize very, very clearly that nature is so much more powerful than we are.如果你尝试着去做这种事儿， 随后你看到这种遗体与你擦身而过， 这令人不免有一些灰心丧气， 也让你便会清楚的了解到 当然比我们要强劲多了。

and we walked up this pathway, all the way up.然后我们就顺着这条道路 一直踏入去。

and to the right hand side of us was this great khumbu glacier.随后在我们的右边 是很大的裙带菜冰河。

and all the way along the glacier we saw these big pools of melting ice.随后，大家在沿线通过所看见的冰河的 全是一大块融化的冰块。

and then we got up to this small lake underneath the summit of mt. everest, and i prepared myself the same way as i've always prepared myself,for this swim which was going to be so very difficult.然后我们抵达在珠穆朗玛峰下 的一个小湖这 然后我逐渐提前准备自身， 像往常一样提前准备自身，因为这样的游泳方式会是十分困难的。

i put on my ipod, i listened to some music, i got myself as aggressive as possible -- but controlled aggression -- and then i hurled myself into that water.我携带我的ipod, 我听听歌， 我让我能有多激奋就多激奋-- 但是是能够调节的激奋 -- 然后我把自己扎渗水里。

i swam as quickly as i could for the first hundred meters, and then i realized very, very quickly, i had a huge problem on my hands.我努力的游着 起码在前一百米， 随后，我忽然意识到， 我遭遇一个极大的难题。

i could barely breathe.我基本上不能呼吸。i was gasping for air.我喘了一口气。i then began to choke, and then it quickly led to me vomiting in the water.然后我逐渐呛水了， 这造成我还在水中恶心呕吐。

and it all happened so quickly: i then -- i don't know how it happened -- but i went underwater.这一切产生的这般之快 随后 -- 我不知到是怎么发生的 -- 但是我沉入水底。

and luckily, the water was quite shallow, and i was able to push myself off the bottom of the lake and get up and then take another gasp of air.但幸运的是，水较为的浅， 我能从湖中跳起 随后喘另一口气。

and then i said, carry on. carry on. carry on.然后我讲到，坚持不懈，坚持不懈，坚持不懈。

i carried on for another five or six strokes, and then i had nothing in my body, and i went down to the bottom of the lake.我继续划了五到六排水， 然后我就精疲力竭了， 我沉入湖底。

and i don't where i got it from, but i was able to somehow pull myself up and as quickly as possible get to the side of the lake.可是我不知从哪来的气力， 我能就是这样 把自身从湖中以最快的速度 弄到湖的岸上。

i've heard it said that drowning is the most peaceful death that you can have.我听说过落水 就是你能够死的最安祥的方法。

i have never, ever heard such utter bollocks.我从来没有听说过 这种胡说八道。

(laughter) it is the most frightening and panicky feeling that you can have.(笑) 这也是大家所体会过的 最害怕，最慌乱的觉得。

i got myself to the side of the lake.我将自己拽到湖岸。

my crew grabbed me, and then we walked as quickly as we could down -- over the rubble -- down to our camp.我的队友把握住了我， 然后我们以最快的速度 出山--在砂砾石中-- 抵达我们的基地。

and there, we sat down, and we did a debrief about what had gone wrong there on mt. everest.在那里，大家坐下来， 然后我们进行了一下在珠穆朗玛峰 哪儿出差错的汇报。

and my team just gave it to me straight.然后我的队友立即跟我说。

they said, lewis, you need to have a radical tactical shift if you want to do this swim.她们讲到，lewis, 你需要有一个 强烈的战略转变 如果你想进行这一游水。

every single thing which you have learned in the past 23 years of swimming, you must forget.你务必忘记 在23年来学过到的游水 里所有的东西。

every single thing which you learned when you were serving in the british army, about speed and aggression, you put that to one side.及其忘掉你在英国军队里 所了解的， 有关这些速率和激奋， 你要先放到一旁。

we want you to walk up the hill in another two days' time.大家想让你花二天踏入山。

take some time to rest and think about things.花一点时间歇息和思索。

we want you to walk up the mountain in two days' time, and instead of swimming fast, swim as slowly as possible.instead of swimming crawl, swim breaststroke.大家想让你花二天踏入山。 不必游的太快， 可是慢慢的游。无需自由泳，可是用蛙泳。

and remember, never ever swim with aggression.随后记牢，不必游太激奋。

this is the time to swim with real humility.现在是时候谦逊地 去游泳了。

and so we walked back up to the mountain two days later.所以我们又走回家 两天后返回高山下。

and i stood there on the edge of the lake, and i looked up at mt. everest -- and she is one of the most beautiful mountains on the earth --站在那 在湖的边沿， 随后望向珠穆朗玛峰 -- 她是地球上最美丽的高山之一 --

and i said to myself, just do this slowly.我便像这样慢慢的对自己讲到。

and i swam across the lake.然后我游过了这一湖水。

and i can't begin to tell you how good i felt when i came to the other side.我没法告诉你们 在我抵达湖的另一边时 我觉得有多好。

but i learned two very, very important lessons there on mt. everest, and i thank my team of sherpas who taught me this.但是我从珠穆朗玛峰学习培训到2个十分，十分 关键的经验教训。 我十分感谢我团队中的夏尔巴告知了我这种。

the first one is that just because something has worked in the past so well, doesn't mean it's going to work in the future.第一个便是 一个事情不管原先是怎样的， 并不代表在未来便会如何。

and similarly, now, before i do anything, i ask myself what type of mindset do i require to successfully complete a task.同样的， 如今，在我做一件事情以前， 我询问到自己，我需要 如何的一种态度 才能成功的进行我的任务。

and taking that into the world of climate change -- which is, frankly, the mt. everest of all problems -- just because we've lived the way we have lived for so long,just because we have consumed the way we have for so long and populated the earth the way we have for so long, doesn't mean that we can carry on the way we are carrying on.随后那样来想一想气候问题， 那就是，坦白说， 珠穆朗玛峰和别的所有的难题-- 不可以因为我们早已像这样生活了那么长期，不可以因为我们早已像这样交易了那样长期 不可以因为我们像这样人口数量增长了那么长期， 就代表我们可以那样像往常一样坚持到底。

the warning signs are all there.警示数据信号就在那。

when i was born, the world's population was 3.5 billion people.在我出生时，的世界的人口数量 仅有35亿。

we're now 6.8 billion people, and we're expected to be 9 billion people by 2050.如今有68亿 然后我们预估在2050年有 90亿。

and then the second lesson, the radical, tactical shift.这儿就会有第二个经验教训， 强烈的战略更改。

and i've come here to ask you today: what radical tactical shift can you take in your relationship to the environment, which will ensure我今日来到这里问大家： 你一直在你的自然环境里 能作出如何的猛烈的战略变化 才可以确保

that our children and our grandchildren live in a safe world and a secure world, and most importantly, in a sustainable world?我们的子孙后代 能定居在一个安全的 一个商业保险的世界， 最重要的是，一个可持续发展的全球?

and i ask you, please, to go away from here and think about that one radical tactical shift which you could make, which will make that big difference,然后我规定你，请你们，从这里出发 随后想像 你需要做什么样的 激进派的战略转变， 才可以作出极大的更改，

and then commit a hundred percent to doing it.怎样下决心去做。

blog about it, tweet about it, talk about it, and commit a hundred percent, because very, very few things are impossible to achieve if we really put our whole minds to it.些有关这种变动的博主，新浪微博，讨论一下， 随后全身心投入。 由于如果我们 全身心投入，仅有非常少事儿是不可能的。

so thank you very, very much.因此，十分感谢大家。

介绍：应对商场里五花八门的产品，你的选择困难症又犯了吗? 美国哥伦比亚大学商学院专家教授sheena iyengar科学研究怎样使你在做挑选时更容易。为了更好地让自身情况了节省成本，店家又会有什么技巧呢?

do you know how many choices you make in a typical day? do you know how many choices you make in typical week? i recently did a survey with over 2,000 americans, and the average number of choices that the typical american reports making is about 70 in a typical day. there was also recently a study done with ceos in which they followed ceos around for a whole week. and these scientists simply documented all the various tasks that these ceos engaged in and how much time they spent engaging in making decisions related to these tasks. and they found that the average ceo engaged in about 139 tasks in a week. each task was made up of many, many, many sub-choices of course. 50 percent of their decisions were made in nine minutes or less. only about 12 percent of the decisions did they make an hour or more of their time. think about your own choices. do you know how many choices make it into your nine minute category versus your one hour category? how well do you think you're doing at managing those choices?

today i want to talk about one of the biggest modern day choosing problems that we have, which is the choice overload problem. i want to talk about the problem and some potential solutions. now as i talk about this problem, i'm going to have some questions for you and i'm going to want to know your answers. so when i ask you a question, since i'm blind, only raise your hand if you want to burn off some calories. (laughter) otherwise, when i ask you a question, and if your answer is yes, i'd like you to clap your hands. so for my first question for you today: are you guys ready to hear about the choice overload problem? (applause) thank you.

so when i was a graduate student at stanford university, i used to go to this very, very upscale grocery store; at least at that time it was truly upscale. it was a store called draeger's. now this store, it was almost like going to an amusement park. they had 250 different kinds of mustards and vinegars and over 500 different kinds of fruits and vegetables and more than two dozen different kinds of bottled water -- and this was during a time when we actually used to drink tap water. i used to love going to this store, but on one occasion i asked myself, well how come you never buy anything? here's their olive oil aisle. they had over 75 different kinds of olive oil, including those that were in a locked case that came from thousand-year-old olive trees.

so i one day decided to pay a visit to the manager, and i asked the manager, "is this model of offering people all this choice really working?" and he pointed to the busloads of tourists that would show up everyday, with cameras ready usually. we decided to do a little experiment, and we picked jam for our experiment. here's their jam aisle. they had 348 different kinds of jam. we set up a little tasting booth right near the entrance of the store. we there put out six different flavors of jam or 24 different flavors of jam, and we looked at two things: first, in which case were people more likely to stop, sample some jam? more people stopped when there were 24, about 60 percent, than when there were six, about 40 percent. the next thing we looked at is in which case were people more likely to buy a jar of jam. now we see the opposite effect. of the people who stopped when there were 24, only three percent of them actually bought a jar of jam. of the people who stopped when there were six, well now we saw that 30 percent of them actually bought a jar of jam. now if you do the math, people were at least six times more likely to buy a jar of jam if they encountered six than if they encountered 24.

now choosing not to buy a jar of jam is probably good for us -- at least it's good for our waistlines -- but it turns out that this choice overload problem affects us even in very consequential decisions. we choose not to choose, even when it goes against our best self-interests. so now for the topic of today: financial savings. now i'm going to describe to you a study i did with gur huberman, emir kamenica, wei jang where we looked at the retirement savings decisions of nearly a million americans from about 650 plans all in the u.s. and what we looked at was whether the number of fund offerings available in a retirement savings plan, the 401(k) plan, does that affect people's likelihood to save more for tomorrow. and what we found was that indeed there was a correlation. so in these plans, we had about 657 plans that ranged from offering people anywhere from two to 59 different fund offerings. and what we found was that, the more funds offered, indeed, there was less participation rate.

so if you look at the extremes, those plans that offered you two funds, participation rates were around in the mid-70s -- still not as high as we want it to be. in those plans that offered nearly 60 funds, participation rates have now dropped to about the 60th percentile. now it turns out that even if you do choose to participate when there are more choices present, even then, it has negative consequences. so for those people who did choose to participate, the more choices available, the more likely people were to completely avoid stocks or equity funds. the more choices available, the more likely they were to put all their money in pure money market accounts. now neither of these extreme decisions are the kinds of decisions that any of us would recommend for people when you're considering their future financial well-being.

well, over the past decade, we have observed three main negative consequences to offering people more and more choices. they're more likely to delay choosing -- procrastinate even when it goes against their best self-interest. they're more likely to make worse choices -- worse financial choices, medical choices. they're more likely to choose things that make them less satisfied, even when they do objectively better. the main reason for this is because, we might enjoy gazing at those giant walls of mayonnaises, mustards, vinegars, jams, but we can't actually do the math of comparing and contrasting and actually picking from that stunning display. so what i want to propose to you today are four simple techniques -- techniques that we have tested in one way or another in different research venues -- that you can easily apply in your businesses.

the first: cut. you've heard it said before, but it's never been more true than today, that less is more. people are always upset when i say, "cut." they're always worried they're going to lose shelf space. but in fact, what we're seeing more and more is that if you are willing to cut, get rid of those extraneous redundant options, well there's an increase in sales, there's a lowering of costs, there is an improvement of the choosing experience. when proctor & gamble went from 26 different kinds of head & shoulders to 15, they saw an increase in sales by 10 percent. when the golden cat corporation got rid of their 10 worst-selling cat litter products, they saw an increase in profits by 87 percent -- a function of both increase in sales and lowering of costs. you know, the average grocery store today offers you 45,000 products. the typical walmart today offers you 100,000 products. but the ninth largest retailer, the ninth biggest retailer in the world today is aldi, and it offers you only 1,400 products -- one kind of canned tomato sauce.

now in the financial savings world, i think one of the best examples that has recently come out on how to best manage the choice offerings has actually been something that david laibson was heavily involved in designing, which was the program that they have at harvard. every single harvard employee is now automatically enrolled in a lifecycle fund. for those people who actually want to choose, they're given 20 funds, not 300 or more funds. you know, often, people say, "i don't know how to cut. they're all important choices." and the first thing i do is i ask the employees, "tell me how these choices are different from one another. and if your employees can't tell them apart, neither can your consumers."

now before we started our session this afternoon, i had a chat with gary. and gary said that he would be willing to offer people in this audience an all-expenses-paid free vacation to the most beautiful road in the world. here's a description of the road. and i'd like you to read it. and now i'll give you a few seconds to read it and then i want you to clap your hands if you're ready to take gary up on his offer. (light clapping) okay. anybody who's ready to take him up on his offer. is that all? all right, let me show you some more about this. (laughter) you guys knew there was a trick, didn't you. (honk) now who's ready to go on this trip. (applause) (laughter) i think i might have actually heard more hands.

all right. now in fact, you had objectively more information the first time around than the second time around, but i would venture to guess that you felt that it was more real the second time around. because the pictures made it feel more real to you. which brings me to the second technique for handling the choice overload problem, which is concretization. that in order for people to understand the differences between the choices, they have to be able to understand the consequences associated with each choice, and that the consequences need to be felt in a vivid sort of way, in a very concrete way. why do people spend an average of 15 to 30 percent more when they use an atm card or a credit card as opposed to cash? because it doesn't feel like real money. and it turns out that making it feel more concrete can actually be a very positive tool to use in getting people to save more.

so a study that i did with shlomo benartzi and alessandro previtero, we did a study with people at ing -- employees that are all working at ing -- and now these people were all in a session where they're doing enrollment for their 401(k) plan. and during that session, we kept the session exactly the way it used to be, but we added one little thing. the one little thing we added was we asked people to just think about all the positive things that would happen in your life if you saved more. by doing that simple thing, there was an increase in enrollment by 20 percent and there was an increase in the amount of people willing to save or the amount that they were willing to put down into their savings account by four percent.

the third technique: categorization. we can handle more categories than we can handle choices. so for example, here's a study we did in a magazine aisle. it turns out that in wegmans grocery stores up and down the northeast corridor, the magazine aisles range anywhere from 331 different kinds of magazines all the way up to 664. but you know what? if i show you 600 magazines and i divide them up into 10 categories, versus i show you 400 magazines and divide them up into 20 categories, you believe that i have given you more choice and a better choosing experience if i gave you the 400 than if i gave you the 600. because the categories tell me how to tell them apart.

here are two different jewelry displays. one is called "jazz" and the other one is called "swing." if you think the display on the left is swing and the display on the right is jazz, clap your hands. (light clapping) okay, there's some. if you think the one on the left is jazz and the one on the right is swing, clap your hands. okay, a bit more. now it turns out you're right. the one on the left is jazz and the one on the right is swing, but you know what? this is a highly useless categorization scheme. (laughter) the categories need to say something to the chooser, not the choice-maker. and you often see that problem when it comes down to those long lists of all these funds. who are they actually supposed to be informing?

my fourth technique: condition for complexity. it turns out we can actually handle a lot more information than we think we can, we've just got to take it a little easier. we have to gradually increase the complexity. i'm going to show you one example of what i'm talking about. let's take a very, very complicated decision: buying a car. here's a german car manufacturer that gives you the opportunity to completely custom make your car. you've got to make 60 different decisions, completely make up your car. now these decisions vary in the number of choices that they offer per decision. car colors, exterior car colors -- i've got 56 choices. engines, gearshift -- four choices. so now what i'm going to do is i'm going to vary the order in which these decisions appear. so half of the customers are going to go from high choice, 56 car colors, to low choice, four gearshifts. the other half of the customers are going to go from low choice, four gearshifts, to 56 car colors, high choice.

what am i going to look at? how engaged you are. if you keep hitting the default button per decision, that means you're getting overwhelmed, that means i'm losing you. what you find is the people who go from high choice to low choice, they're hitting that default button over and over and over again. we're losing them. they go from low choice to high choice, they're hanging in there. it's the same information. it's the same number of choices. the only thing that i have done is i have varied the order in which that information is presented. if i start you off easy, i learn how to choose. even though choosing gearshift doesn't tell me anything about my preferences for interior decor, it still prepares me for how to choose. it also gets me excited about this big product that i'm putting together, so i'm more willing to be motivated to be engaged.

so let me recap. i have talked about four techniques for mitigating the problem of choice overload -- cut -- get rid of the extraneous alternatives; concretize -- make it real; categorize -- we can handle more categories, less choices; condition for complexity. all of these techniques that i'm describing to you today are designed to help you manage your choices -- better for you, you can use them on yourself, better for the people that you are serving. because i believe that the key to getting the most from choice is to be choosy about choosing. and the more we're able to be choosy about choosing the better we will be able to practice the art of choosing.

thank you very much.

(applause)

介绍：一生中，大家有三分之一的时间段都是在睡眠中渡过。关于睡眠，你又知道是多少?睡眠质量权威专家russell foster为大家解释为什么要睡觉，及其睡眠质量对建康的危害。

what i'd like to do today is talk about one of my favorite subjects, and that is the neuroscience of sleep.

now, there is a sound -- (alarm clock) -- aah, it worked -- a sound that is desperately, desperately familiar to most of us, and of course it's the sound of the alarm clock. and what that truly ghastly, awful sound does is stop the single most important behavioral experience that we have, and that's sleep. if you're an average sort of person, 36 percent of your life will be spent asleep, which means that if you live to 90, then 32 years will have been spent entirely asleep.

now what that 32 years is telling us is that sleep at some level is important. and yet, for most of us, we don't give sleep a second thought. we throw it away. we really just don't think about sleep. and so what i'd like to do today is change your views, change your ideas and your thoughts about sleep. and the journey that i want to take you on, we need to start by going back in time.

"enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber." any ideas who said that? shakespeare's julius caesar. yes, let me give you a few more quotes. "o sleep, o gentle sleep, nature's soft nurse, how have i frighted thee?" shakespeare again, from -- i won't say it -- the scottish play. [correction: henry iv, part 2] (laughter) from the same time: "sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together." extremely prophetic, by thomas dekker, another elizabethan dramatist.

but if we jump forward 400 years, the tone about sleep changes somewhat. this is from thomas edison, from the beginning of the 20th century. "sleep is a criminal waste of time and a heritage from our cave days." bang. (laughter) and if we also jump into the 1980s, some of you may remember that margaret thatcher was reported to have said, "sleep is for wimps." and of course the infamous -- what was his name? -- the infamous gordon gekko from "wall street" said, "money never sleeps."

what do we do in the 20th century about sleep? well, of course, we use thomas edison's light bulb to invade the night, and we occupied the dark, and in the process of this occupation, we've treated sleep as an illness, almost. we've treated it as an enemy. at most now, i suppose, we tolerate the need for sleep, and at worst perhaps many of us think of sleep as an illness that needs some sort of a cure. and our ignorance about sleep is really quite profound.

why is it? why do we abandon sleep in our thoughts? well, it's because you don't do anything much while you're asleep, it seems. you don't eat. you don't drink. and you don't have sex. well, most of us anyway. and so therefore it's -- sorry. it's a complete waste of time, right? wrong. actually, sleep is an incredibly important part of our biology, and neuroscientists are beginning to explain why it's so very important. so let's move to the brain.

now, here we have a brain. this is donated by a social scientist, and they said they didn't know what it was, or indeed how to use it, so -- (laughter) sorry. so i borrowed it. i don't think they noticed. okay. (laughter)

the point i'm trying to make is that when you're asleep, this thing doesn't shut down. in fact, some areas of the brain are actually more active during the sleep state than during the wake state. the other thing that's really important about sleep is that it doesn't arise from a single structure within the brain, but is to some extent a network property, and if we flip the brain on its back -- i love this little bit of spinal cord here -- this bit here is the hypothalamus, and right under there is a whole raft of interesting structures, not least the biological clock. the biological clock tells us when it's good to be up, when it's good to be asleep, and what that structure does is interact with a whole raft of other areas within the hypothalamus, the lateral hypothalamus, the ventrolateral preoptic nuclei. all of those combine, and they send projections down to the brain stem here. the brain stem then projects forward and bathes the cortex, this wonderfully wrinkly bit over here, with neurotransmitters that keep us awake and essentially provide us with our consciousness. so sleep arises from a whole raft of different interactions within the brain, and essentially, sleep is turned on and off as a result of a range of

okay. so where have we got to? we've said that sleep is complicated and it takes 32 years of our life. but what i haven't explained is what sleep is about. so why do we sleep? and it won't surprise any of you that, of course, the scientists, we don't have a consensus. there are dozens of different ideas about why we sleep, and i'm going to outline three of those.

the first is sort of the restoration idea, and it's somewhat intuitive. essentially, all the stuff we've burned up during the day, we restore, we replace, we rebuild during the night. and indeed, as an explanation, it goes back to aristotle, so that's, what, 2,300 years ago. it's gone in and out of fashion. it's fashionable at the moment because what's been shown is that within the brain, a whole raft of genes have been shown to be turned on only during sleep, and those genes are associated with restoration and metabolic pathways. so there's good evidence for the whole restoration hypothesis.

what about energy conservation? again, perhaps intuitive. you essentially sleep to save calories. now, when you do the sums, though, it doesn't really pan out. if you compare an individual who has slept at night, or stayed awake and hasn't moved very much, the energy saving of sleeping is about 110 calories a night. now, that's the equivalent of a hot dog bun. now, i would say that a hot dog bun is kind of a meager return for such a complicated and demanding behavior as sleep. so i'm less convinced by the energy conservation idea.

but the third idea i'm quite attracted to, which is brain processing and memory consolidation. what we know is that, if after you've tried to learn a task, and you sleep-deprive individuals, the ability to learn that task is smashed. it's really hugely attenuated. so sleep and memory consolidation is also very important. however, it's not just the laying down of memory and recalling it. what's turned out to be really exciting is that our ability to come up with novel solutions to complex problems is hugely enhanced by a night of sleep. in fact, it's been estimated to give us a threefold advantage. sleeping at night enhances our creativity. and what seems to be going on is that, in the brain, those neural connections that are important, those synaptic connections that are important, are linked and strengthened, while those that are less important tend to fade away and be less important.

okay. so we've had three explanations for why we might sleep, and i think the important thing to realize is that the details will vary, and it's probable we sleep for multiple different reasons. but sleep is not an indulgence. it's not some sort of thing that we can take on board rather casually. i think that sleep was once likened to an upgrade from economy to business class, you know, the equiavlent of. it's not even an upgrade from economy to first class. the critical thing to realize is that if you don't sleep, you don't fly. essentially, you never get there, and what's extraordinary about much of our society these days is that we are desperately sleep-deprived.

so let's now look at sleep deprivation. huge sectors of society are sleep-deprived, and let's look at our sleep-o-meter. so in the 1950s, good data suggests that most of us were getting around about eight hours of sleep a night. nowadays, we sleep one and a half to two hours less every night, so we're in the six-and-a-half-hours-every-night league. for teenagers, it's worse, much worse. they need nine hours for full brain performance, and many of them, on a school night, are only getting five hours of sleep. it's simply not enough. if we think about other sectors of society, the aged, if you are aged, then your ability to sleep in a single block is somewhat disrupted, and many sleep, again, less than five hours a night. shift work. shift work is extraordinary, perhaps 20 percent of the working population, and the body clock does not shift to the demands of working at night. it's locked onto the same light-dark cycle as the rest of us. so when the poor old shift worker is going home to try and sleep during the day, desperately tired, the body clock is saying, "wake up. this is the time to be awake." so the quality of sleep that you get as a night shift worker is usually very poor, again in that sort of five-hour region. and then, of course, tens of millions of people suffer from jet lag. so who here has jet lag? well, my goodness gracious. well, thank you very much indeed for not falling asleep, because that's what your brain is craving.

one of the things that the brain does is indulge in micro-sleeps, this involuntary falling asleep, and you have essentially no control over it. now, micro-sleeps can be sort of somewhat embarrassing, but they can also be deadly. it's been estimated that 31 percent of drivers will fall asleep at the wheel at least once in their life, and in the u.s., the statistics are pretty good: 100,000 accidents on the freeway have been associated with tiredness, loss of vigilance, and falling asleep. a hundred thousand a year. it's extraordinary. at another level of terror, we dip into the tragic accidents at chernobyl and indeed the space shuttle challenger, which was so tragically lost. and in the investigations that followed those disasters, poor judgment as a result of extended shift work and loss of vigilance and tiredness was attributed to a big chunk of those disasters.

so when you're tired, and you lack sleep, you have poor memory, you have poor creativity, you have increased impulsiveness, and you have overall poor judgment. but my friends, it's so much worse than that.

(laughter)

if you are a tired brain, the brain is craving things to wake it up. so drugs, stimulants. caffeine represents the stimulant of choice across much of the western world. much of the day is fueled by caffeine, and if you're a really naughty tired brain, nicotine. and of course, you're fueling the waking state with these stimulants, and then of course it gets to 11 o'clock at night, and the brain says to itself, "ah, well actually, i need to be asleep fairly shortly. what do we do about that when i'm feeling completely wired?" well, of course, you then resort to alcohol. now alcohol, short-term, you know, once or twice, to use to mildly sedate you, can be very useful. it can actually ease the sleep transition. but what you must be so aware of is that alcohol doesn't provide sleep, a biological mimic for sleep. it sedates you. so it actually harms some of the neural proccessing that's going on during memory consolidation and memory recall. so it's a short-term acute measure, but for goodness sake, don't become addicted to alcohol as a way of getting to sleep every night.

another connection between loss of sleep is weight gain. if you sleep around about five hours or less every night, then you have a 50 percent likelihood of being obese. what's the connection here? well, sleep loss seems to give rise to the release of the hormone ghrelin, the hunger hormone. ghrelin is released. it gets to the brain. the brain says, "i need carbohydrates," and what it does is seek out carbohydrates and particularly sugars. so there's a link between tiredness and the metabolic predisposition for weight gain.

stress. tired people are massively stressed. and one of the things of stress, of course, is loss of memory, which is what i sort of just then had a little lapse of. but stress is so much more. so if you're acutely stressed, not a great problem, but it's sustained stress associated with sleep loss that's the problem. so sustained stress leads to suppressed immunity, and so tired people tend to have higher rates of overall infection, and there's some very good studies showing that shift workers, for example, have higher rates of cancer. increased levels of stress throw glucose into the circulation. glucose becomes a dominant part of the vasculature and essentially you become glucose intolerant. therefore, diabetes 2. stress increases cardiovascular disease as a result of raising blood pressure. so there's a whole raft of things associated with sleep loss that are more than just a mildly impaired brain, which is where i think most people think that sleep loss resides.

so at this point in the talk, this is a nice time to think, well, do you think on the whole i'm getting enough sleep? so a quick show of hands. who feels that they're getting enough sleep here? oh. well, that's pretty impressive. good. we'll talk more about that later, about what are your tips.

so most of us, of course, ask the question, "well, how do i know whether i'm getting enough sleep?" well, it's not rocket science. if you need an alarm clock to get you out of bed in the morning, if you are taking a long time to get up, if you need lots of stimulants, if you're grumpy, if you're irritable, if you're told by your work colleagues that you're looking tired and irritable, chances are you are sleep-deprived. listen to them. listen to yourself.

what do you do? well -- and this is slightly offensive -- sleep for dummies: make your bedroom a haven for sleep. the first critical thing is make it as dark as you possibly can, and also make it slightly cool. very important. actually, reduce your amount of light exposure at least half an hour before you go to bed. light increases levels of alertness and will delay sleep. what's the last thing that most of us do before we go to bed? we stand in a massively lit bathroom looking into the mirror cleaning our teeth. it's the worst thing we can possibly do before we went to sleep. turn off those mobile phones. turn off those computers. turn off all of those things that are also going to excite the brain. try not to drink caffeine too late in the day, ideally not after lunch. now, we've set about reducing light exposure before you go to bed, but light exposure in the morning is very good at setting the biological clock to the light-dark cycle. so seek out morning light. basically, listen to yourself. wind down. do those sorts of things that you know are going to ease you off into the honey-heavy dew of slumber.

okay. that's some facts. what about some myths?

teenagers are lazy. no. poor things. they have a biological predisposition to go to bed late and get up late, so give them a break.

we need eight hours of sleep a night. that's an average. some people need more. some people need less. and what you need to do is listen to your body. do you need that much or do you need more? simple as that.

old people need less sleep. not true. the sleep demands of the aged do not go down. essentially, sleep fragments and becomes less robust, but sleep requirements do not go down.

and the fourth myth is, early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. well that's wrong at so many different levels. (laughter) there is no, no evidence that getting up early and going to bed early gives you more wealth at all. there's no difference in socioeconomic status. in my experience, the only difference between morning people and evening people is that those people that get up in the morning early are just horribly smug.

(laughter) (applause)

okay. so for the last part, the last few minutes, what i want to do is change gears and talk about some really new, breaking areas of neuroscience, which is the association between mental health, mental illness and sleep disruption. we've known for 130 years that in severe mental illness, there is always, always sleep disruption, but it's been largely ignored. in the 1970s, when people started to think about this again, they said, "yes, well, of course you have sleep disruption in schizophrenia because they're on anti-psychotics. it's the anti-psychotics causing the sleep problems," ignoring the fact that for a hundred years previously, sleep disruption had been reported before anti-psychotics.

so what's going on? lots of groups, several groups are studying conditions like depression, schizophrenia and bipolar, and what's going on in terms of sleep disruption. we have a big study which we published last year on schizophrenia, and the data were quite extraordinary. in those individuals with schizophrenia, much of the time, they were awake during the night phase and then they were asleep during the day. other groups showed no 24-hour patterns whatsoever. their sleep was absolutely smashed. and some had no ability to regulate their sleep by the light-dark cycle. they were getting up later and later and later and later each night. it was smashed.

so what's going on? and the really exciting news is that mental illness and sleep are not simply associated but they are physically linked within the brain. the neural networks that predispose you to normal sleep, give you normal sleep, and those that give you normal mental health are overlapping. and what's the evidence for that? well, genes that have been shown to be very important in the generation of normal sleep, when mutated, when changed, also predispose individuals to mental health problems. and last year, we published a study which showed that a gene that's been linked to schizophrenia, which, when mutated, also smashes the sleep. so we have evidence of a genuine mechanistic overlap between these two important systems.

other work flowed from these studies. the first was that sleep disruption actually precedes certain types of mental illness, and we've shown that in those young individuals who are at high risk of developing bipolar disorder, they already have a sleep abnormality prior to any clinical diagnosis of bipolar. the other bit of data was that sleep disruption may actually exacerbate, make worse the mental illness state. my colleague dan freeman has used a range of agents which have stabilized sleep and reduced levels of paranoia in those individuals by 50 percent.

so what have we got? we've got, in these connections, some really exciting things. in terms of the neuroscience, by understanding the neuroscience of these two systems, we're really beginning to understand how both sleep and mental illness are generated and regulated within the brain. the second area is that if we can use sleep and sleep disruption as an early warning signal, then we have the chance of going in. if we know that these individuals are vulnerable, early intervention then becomes possible. and the third, which i think is the most exciting, is that we can think of the sleep centers within the brain as a new therapeutic target. stabilize sleep in those individuals who are vulnerable, we can certainly make them healthier, but also alleviate some of the appalling symptoms of mental illness.

so let me just finish. what i started by saying is take sleep seriously. our attitudes toward sleep are so very different from a pre-industrial age, when we were almost wrapped in a duvet. we used to understand intuitively the importance of sleep. and this isn't some sort of crystal-waving nonsense. this is a pragmatic response to good health. if you have good sleep, it increases your concentration, attention, decision-making, creativity, social skills, health. if you get sleep, it reduces your mood changes, your stress, your levels of anger, your impulsivity, and your tendency to drink and take drugs. and we finished by saying that an understanding of the neuroscience of sleep is really informing the way we think about some of the causes of mental illness, and indeed is providing us new ways to treat these incredibly debilitating conditions.

jim butcher, the fantasy writer, said, "sleep is god. go worship." and i can only recommend that you do the same.

thank you for your attention.

(applause)

介绍: 尝试做新鲜事儿，你能紧张害怕吗?本人高效率高手tim ferriss给大家产生一个令人振奋的方式。来问问自己“最坏的可能是什么?” 义无反顾，学海无涯。

this is tim ferriss circa 1979 a.d. age two. you can tell by the power squat, i was a very confident boy -- and not without reason. i had a very charming routine at the time, which was to wait until late in the evening when my parents were decompressing from a hard day's work, doing their crossword puzzles, watching television. i would run into the living room, jump up on the couch, rip the cushions off, throw them on the floor, scream at the top of my lungs and run out because i was the incredible hulk. (laughter) obviously, you see the resemblance. and this routine went on for some time.

when i was seven i went to summer camp. my parents found it necessary for peace of mind. and at noon each day the campers would go to a pond, where they had floating docks. you could jump off the end into the deep end. i was born premature. i was always very small. my left lung had collapsed when i was born. and i've always had buoyancy problems. so water was something that scared me to begin with. but i would go in on occasion. and on one particular day, the campers were jumping through inner tubes, they were diving through inner tubes. and i thought this would be great fun. so i dove through the inner tube, and the bully of the camp grabbed my ankles. and i tried to come up for air, and my lower back hit the bottom of the inner tube. and i went wild eyed and thought i was going to die. a camp counselor fortunately came over and separated us. from that point onward i was terrified of swimming. that is something that i did not get over. my inability to swim has been one of my greatest humiliations and embarrassments. that is when i realized that i was not the incredible hulk.

but there is a happy ending to this story. at age 31 -- that's my age now -- in august i took two weeks to re-examine swimming, and question all the of the obvious aspects of swimming. and went from swimming one lap -- so 20 yards -- like a drowning monkey, at about 200 beats per minute heart rate -- i measured it -- to going to montauk on long island, close to where i grew up, and jumping into the ocean and swimming one kilometer in open water, getting out and feeling better than when i went in. and i came out, in my speedos, european style, feeling like the incredible hulk.

and that's what i want everyone in here to feel like, the incredible hulk, at the end of this presentation. more specifically, i want you to feel like you're capable of becoming an excellent long-distance swimmer, a world-class language learner, and a tango champion. and i would like to share my art. if i have an art, it's deconstructing things that really scare the living hell out of me. so, moving onward.

swimming, first principles. first principles, this is very important. i find that the best results in life are often held back by false constructs and untested assumptions. and the turnaround in swimming came when a friend of mine said, "i will go a year without any stimulants" -- this is a six-double-espresso-per-day type of guy -- "if you can complete a one kilometer open water race." so the clock started ticking. i started seeking out triathletes because i found that lifelong swimmers often couldn't teach what they did. i tried kickboards. my feet would slice through the water like razors, i wouldn't even move. i would leave demoralized, staring at my feet. hand paddles, everything. even did lessons with olympians -- nothing helped. and then chris sacca, who is now a dear friend mine, had completed an iron man with 103 degree temperature, said, "i have the answer to your prayers." and he introduced me to the work of a man named terry laughlin who is the founder of total immersion swimming. that set me on the road to examining biomechanics.

so here are the new rules of swimming, if any of you are afraid of swimming, or not good at it. the first is, forget about kicking. very counterintuitive. so it turns out that propulsion isn't really the problem. kicking harder doesn't solve the problem because the average swimmer only transfers about three percent of their energy expenditure into forward motion. the problem is hydrodynamics. so what you want to focus on instead is allowing your lower body to draft behind your upper body, much like a small car behind a big car on the highway. and you do that by maintaining a horizontal body position. the only way you can do that is to not swim on top of the water. the body is denser than water. 95 percent of it would be, at least, submerged naturally.

so you end up, number three, not swimming, in the case of freestyle, on your stomach, as many people think, reaching on top of the water. but actually rotating from streamlined right to streamlined left, maintaining that fuselage position as long as possible. so let's look at some examples. this is terry. and you can see that he's extending his right arm below his head and far in front. and so his entire body really is underwater. the arm is extended below the head. the head is held in line with the spine, so that you use strategic water pressure to raise your legs up -- very important, especially for people with lower body fat. here is an example of the stroke. so you don't kick. but you do use a small flick. you can see this is the left extension. then you see his left leg. small flick, and the only purpose of that is to rotate his hips so he can get to the opposite side. and the entry point for his right hand -- notice this, he's not reaching in front and catching the water. rather, he is entering the water at a 45-degree angle with his forearm, and then propelling himself by streamlining -- very important. incorrect, above, which is what almost every swimming coach will teach you. not their fault, honestly. and i'll get to implicit versus explicit in a moment. below is what most swimmers will find enables them to do what i did, which is going from 21 strokes per 20-yard length to 11 strokes in two workouts with no coach, no video monitoring. and now i love swimming. i can't wait to go swimming. i'll be doing a swimming lesson later, for myself, if anyone wants to join me.

last thing, breathing. a problem a lot of us have, certainly, when you're swimming. in freestyle, easiest way to remedy this is to turn with body roll, and just to look at your recovery hand as it enters the water. and that will get you very far. that's it. that's really all you need to know.

languages. material versus method. i, like many people, came to the conclusion that i was terrible at languages. i suffered through spanish for junior high, first year of high school, and the sum total of my knowledge was pretty much, "donde esta el bano?" and i wouldn't even catch the response. a sad state of affairs. then i transferred to a different school sophomore year, and i had a choice of other languages. most of my friends were taking japanese. so i thought why not punish myself? i'll do japanese. six months later i had the chance to go to japan. my teachers assured me, they said, "don't worry. you'll have japanese language classes every day to help you cope. it will be an amazing experience." my first overseas experience in fact. so my parents encouraged me to do it. i left.

i arrived in tokyo. amazing. i couldn't believe i was on the other side of the world. i met my host family. things went quite well i think, all things considered. my first evening, before my first day of school, i said to my mother, very politely, "please wake me up at eight a.m." so, (japanese) but i didn't say (japanese). i said, (japanese). pretty close. but i said, "please rape me at eight a.m." (laughter) you've never seen a more confused japanese woman. (laughter)

i walked in to school. and a teacher came up to me and handed me a piece of paper. i couldn't read any of it -- hieroglyphics, it could have been -- because it was kanji, chinese characters adapted into the japanese language. asked him what this said. and he goes, "ahh, okay okay, eehto, world history, ehh, calculus, traditional japanese." and so on. and so it came to me in waves. there had been something lost in translation. the japanese classes were not japanese instruction classes, per se. they were the normal high school curriculum for japanese students -- the other 4,999 students in the school, who were japanese, besides the american. and that's pretty much my response. (laughter)

and that set me on this panic driven search for the perfect language method. i tried everything. i went to kinokuniya. i tried every possible book, every possible cd. nothing worked until i found this. this is the joyo kanji. this is a tablet rather, or a poster of the 1,945 common-use characters as determined by the ministry of education in 1981. many of the publications in japan limit themselves to these characters, to facilitate literacy -- some are required to. and this became my holy grail, my rosetta stone.

as soon as i focused on this material, i took off. i ended up being able to read asahi shinbu, asahi newspaper, about six months later -- so a total of 11 months later -- and went from japanese i to japanese vi. ended up doing translation work at age 16 when i returned to the u.s., and have continued to apply this material over method approach to close to a dozen languages now. someone who was terrible at languages, and at any given time, speak, read and write five or six. this brings us to the point, which is, it's oftentimes what you do, not how you do it, that is the determining factor. this is the difference between being effective -- doing the right things -- and being efficient -- doing things well whether or not they're important.

you can also do this with grammar. i came up with these six sentences after much experimentation. having a native speaker allow you to deconstruct their grammar, by translating these sentences into past, present, future, will show you subject, object, verb, placement of indirect, direct objects, gender and so forth. from that point, you can then, if you want to, acquire multiple languages, alternate them so there is no interference. we can talk about that if anyone in interested. and now i love languages.

so ballroom dancing, implicit versus explicit -- very important. you might look at me and say, "that guy must be a ballroom dancer." but no, you'd be wrong because my body is very poorly designed for most things -- pretty well designed for lifting heavy rocks perhaps. i used to be much bigger, much more muscular. and so i ended up walking like this. i looked a lot like an orangutan, our close cousins, or the incredible hulk. not very good for ballroom dancing.

i found myself in argentina in , decided to watch a tango class -- had no intention of participating. went in, paid my ten pesos, walked up -- 10 women two guys, usually a good ratio. the instructor says, "you are participating." immediately: death sweat. (laughter) fight-or-flight fear sweat, because i tried ballroom dancing in college -- stepped on the girl's foot with my heel. she screamed. i was so concerned with her perception of what i was doing, that it exploded in my face, never to return to the ballroom dancing club. she comes up, and this was her approach, the teacher. "okay, come on, grab me." gorgeous assistant instructor. she was very pissed off that i had pulled her from her advanced practice. so i did my best. i didn't know where to put my hands. and she pulled back, threw down her arms, put them on her hips, turned around and yelled across the room, "this guy is built like a god-damned mountain of muscle, and he's grabbing me like a fucking frenchman," (laughter) which i found encouraging. (laughter) everyone burst into laughter. i was humiliated. she came back. she goes, "come on. i don't have all day." as someone who wrestled since age eight, i proceeded to crush her, "of mice and men" style. and she looked up and said, "now that's better." so i bought a month's worth of classes. (laughter)

and proceeded to look at -- i wanted to set competition so i'd have a deadline -- parkinson's law, the perceived complexity of a task will expand to fill the time you allot it. so i had a very short deadline for a competition. i got a female instructor first, to teach me the female role, the follow, because i wanted to understand the sensitivities and abilities that the follow needed to develop, so i wouldn't have a repeat of college. and then i took an inventory of the characteristics, along with her, of the of the capabilities and elements of different dancers who'd won championships. i interviewed these people because they all taught in buenos aires. i compared the two lists, and what you find is that there is explicitly, expertise they recommended, certain training methods. then there were implicit commonalities that none of them seemed to be practicing. now the protectionism of argentine dance teachers aside, i found this very interesting. so i decided to focus on three of those commonalities. long steps. so a lot of milongueros -- the tango dancers will use very short steps. i found that longer steps were much more elegant. so you can have -- and you can do it in a very small space in fact. secondly, different types of pivots. thirdly, variation in tempo. these seemed to be the three areas that i could exploit to compete if i wanted to comptete against people who'd been practicing for 20 to 30 years.

that photo is of the semi-finals of the buenos aires championships, four months later. then one month later, went to the world championships, made it to the semi-final. and then set a world record, following that, two weeks later. i want you to see part of what i practiced. i'm going to jump forward here. this is the instructor that alicia and i chose for the male lead. his name is gabriel misse. one of the most elegant dancers of his generation, known for his long steps, and his tempo changes and his pivots. alicia, in her own right, very famous. so i think you'll agree, they look quite good together. now what i like about this video is it's actually a video of the first time they ever danced together because of his lead. he had a strong lead. he didn't lead with his chest, which requires you lean forward. i couldn't develop the attributes in my toes, the strength in my feet, to do that. so he uses a lead that focuses on his shoulder girdle and his arm. so he can lift the woman to break her, for example. that's just one benefit of that. so then we broke it down. this would be an example of one pivot. this is a back step pivot. there are many different types. i have hundreds of hours of footage -- all categorized, much like george carlin categorized his comedy. so using my arch-nemesis, spanish, no less, to learn tango.

so fear is your friend. fear is an indicator. sometimes it shows you what you shouldn't do. more often than not it shows you exactly what you should do. and the best results that i've had in life, the most enjoyable times, have all been from asking a simple question: what's the worst that can happen? especially with fears you gained when you were a child. take the analytical frameworks, the capabilities you have, apply them to old fears. apply them to very big dreams.

and when i think of what i fear now, it's very simple. when i imagine my life, what my life would have been like without the educational opportunities that i had, it makes me wonder. i've spent the last two years trying to deconstruct the american public school system, to either fix it or replace it. and have done experiments with about 50,000 students thus far -- built, i'd say, about a half dozen schools, my readers, at this point. and if any of you are interested in that, i would love to speak with you. i know nothing. i'm a beginner. but i ask a lot of questions, and i would love your advice. thank you very much. (applause)