我们的生活变得 [英语演讲:如何使我们的生活变得更好]

For example, see this piece of fruit? See this little sticker? That sticker wasn"t there when I was a kid. But somewhere as the years passed, someone had the pight idea to put that sticker on the fruit. Why? So it could be easier for us to check out at the grocery counter.

01:22

Well that"s great, we can get in and out of the store quickly. But now, there"s a new problem. When we get home and we"re hungry and we see this ripe, juicy piece of fruit on the counter, we just want to pick it up and eat it. Except now, we have to look for this little sticker. And dig at it with our nails, damaging the flesh. Then rolling up that sticker -- you know what I mean. And then trying to flick it off your fingers. (Applause) It"s not fun, not at all.

01:58

But something interesting happened. See the first time you did it, you probably felt those feelings. You just wanted to eat the piece of fruit. You felt upset. You just wanted to dive in. By the 10th time, you started to become less upset and you just started peeling the label off. By the 100th time, at least for me, I became numb to it. I simply picked up the piece of fruit, dug at it with my nails, tried to flick it off, and then wondered, "Was there another sticker?"

02:34

So why is that? Why do we get used to everyday things? Well as human beings, we have limited pain power. And so our pains encode the everyday things we do into habits so we can free up space to learn new things. It"s a process called habituation and it"s one of the most basic ways, as humans, we learn.

03:37

So there"s a good reason why our pains habituate things. If we didn"t, we"d notice every little detail, all the time. It would be exhausting, and we"d have no time to learn about new things. 03:51

But sometimes, habituation isn"t good. If it stops us from noticing the problems that are around us, well, that"s bad. And if it stops us from noticing and fixing those problems, well, then that"s really bad.

04:54

See this, this person, this is Mary Anderson. In 1902 in New York City, she was visiting. It was a cold, wet, snowy day and she was warm inside a streetcar. As she was going to her destination, she noticed the driver opening the window to clean off the excess snow so he could drive safely. When he opened the window, though, he let all this cold, wet air inside, making all the passengers miserable. Now probably, most of those passengers just thought, "It"s a fact of life, he"s got to open the window to clean it. That"s just how it is." But Mary didn"t. Mary thought, "What if the diver could actually clean the windshield from the inside so that he could stay safe and drive and the passengers could actually stay warm?" So she picked up her sketchbook right then and there, and began drawing what would become the world"s first windshield wiper. 05:55

I try to learn from people like Mary to try to see the world the way it really is, not the way we think it is. Why? Because it"s easy to solve a problem that almost everyone sees. But it"s hard to solve a problem that almost no one sees.

09:41

My first tip is to look poader. You see, when you"re tackling a problem, sometimes, there are a lot of steps that lead up to that problem. And sometimes, a lot of steps after it. If you can take a

step back and look poader, maybe you can change some of those boxes before the problem. Maybe you can combine them. Maybe you can remove them altogether to make that better. 11:49

For my second tip, it"s to look closer.

13:36

If we focus on those tiny details, the ones we may not see and we look at them as we say, "Are those important or is that the way we"ve always done it? Maybe there"s a way to get rid of those."

15:07

We all saw the world more clearly when we saw it for the first time, before a lifetime of habits got in the way. Our challenge is to get back there, to feel that frustration, to see those little details, to look poader, look closer.

15:55

It"s not easy. It requires us pushing back against one of the most basic ways we make sense of the world. But if we do, we could do some pretty amazing things. For me, hopefully, that"s better product design. For you, that could mean something else, something powerful.

16:17

Our challenge is to wake up each day and say, "How can I experience the world better?" And if we do, maybe, just maybe, we can get rid of these dumb little stickers.