每天一小段英语（10）

命运号角

Even if you feel like you have things memorized when you’re alone in your house, once you’re in front of the audience, all of these new factors come into play. Your adrenaline is pumping and super-charging your muscles, your nerves take a shit, and a million new things enter your consciousness—the faces of the audience, the clock ticking down with your time limit, your self-awareness of how you’re standing and what you’re doing with your hands, your regret over messing up a sentence 30 seconds ago. And that well-memorized talk is suddenly not coming to you so easily. 3B is all of the robotic-ness of 3A with none of the safety. Avoid.

⑤

When the stakes are high and you want to deliver your best talk—but you’re not a seasoned pro who can pull off Method 2—you’re left with only one option: 3C. You have to write a great script and memorize it

cold

. 3C gives everyone an option of basically

ensuring

that you give a great talk, with relatively low risk. You only have to do one thing: spend eternity prepping. 3C takes

forever

. Writing a great script means working on it a ton and carefully honing every sentence, and memorizing it to Happy Birthday level takes a huge amount more time. You’re essentially writing a play, casting yourself, and then learning the part well enough to act it on a stage with no fear of forgetting your lines. Preparing to this level is a nightmare—but if the stakes are high enough, it’s worth the time.

⑥

A quick note on wedding speeches. The best wedding speeches are usually Method 2 speeches, but most people are too scared to do that. But because they also don’t want to put

that

much effort into a wedding speech, most wedding speeches end up in 3A and 3B territory—which is why they’re usually pretty lame and boring and come along with a buzz of people quietly talking at the tables in the back. If you’re asked to give a wedding speech, don’t be a dick—it’s someone’s wedding. Either gather the guts to speak from the heart and go with Method 2, or put in the time it takes to get to 3C.

Back to my situation. Over the past couple years, I had begun to find a groove doing not-that-high-stakes 30-to-60-minute talks using the off-the-cuff Method 2, but TED is both

far

higher stakes than normal and has a strict 14-minute time limit

2

—meaning you need to be ultra concise and make every word count—so no way I was risking it with Method 2. I was scripting it and going to Happy Birthday land. I found that 90% of other TED speakers do the same thing.

This was gonna be a huge project.

就算你在演讲前你觉得全都准备好了，到时候也会出现很多影响因素。你的肾上腺素抽水般增多并作用在肌肉中；神经兴奋，脑海中出现100w张观众的脸；你的时间越来越少；你关心自己站的姿势，手的位置；你后悔30秒前讲的一句话。慢慢记不清准备的内容。3B是高风险，无生气的3A。最好不选3B。

⑤如果其他选择的风险太高，你想讲一个极棒的演讲，并且你不是一个能轻松搞定②的老手，那只剩3C（潜意识）了。你需要写一个好讲稿并把它牢牢地记住。3C是一个低风险的一讲成名的机会。你只需要做的是提前做好万全准备。3C永远有效。写一个好讲稿意味着你要做好大量的工作，仔细斟酌每一句话，花大量时间背稿子直到倒背如流。最好是写出一个模拟演讲场景，这样可以对忘词做出相应改变。准备到这个程度是噩梦级难度，但是如果要讲的题目很难，风险很高，这些都是值得的。

额外的⑥，婚礼演讲。最好的婚礼演讲是用模式②，但是太多人害怕用不好，所以选择了3A-3B，这就是为什么婚礼上司仪讲的差劲又无聊，下面的人都在窃窃而谈。如果你被邀请去主持婚礼，一定要认真对待，因为这是人家的婚礼。要么有勇气，用心地做好模式②，要么花点时间选择模式3C。

对我来讲，在过去的这些年里，通过大量即席式30-60分钟低风险演讲，我已经找到一些模式②的技巧，而TED风险更大一些。14分钟的限制要求演讲者的每句话超简洁，每个词有价值。所以我不会用模式②去冒险。我和90%的TED演讲者一样选择了3C。

这可是个大工程。

命运号角

每日一词
territory
n. 领土，领域；范围；地域；版图

命运号角

翻译至半，第一眼看到这篇文章感觉演讲也就那么回事，以前下了TED app看了一个又一个新奇又励志的演讲，感触颇深，打算了解一下TED和平时演讲的难点。至此，演讲真的是一门艺术，上至主席，下至百姓，都要学一下。