Staying Calm Under Stress

The talk by neuroscientist Dr. Daniel Levitin explores strategies to stay calm in high-stress situations. Levitin describes a situation in which he broke into his own house due to forgetting his keys, and discusses the negative impact of stress on the brain. He then shares insights on how to reduce stress by anticipating potential problems and taking preemptive measures to mitigate them, including designating a specific spot for easily misplaced items, taking photos of important documents and emailing them to oneself, and having pre-planned conversations with medical professionals about potential treatments and their risks and benefits. The talk emphasizes the importance of acknowledging that everyone is flawed and recognizing the role that stress plays in clouding judgment, and encourages taking steps to prepare for and minimize stress.

Here are my notes from this TED talk:

• The speaker tells a story of breaking into his own house due to forgetting his keys and how stress affects the brain’s performance.
• He introduces the concept of prospective hindsight, which is a pre-mortem approach that involves thinking about things that could go wrong and taking steps to prevent or minimize the damage.
• The hippocampus is a part of the brain that evolved to keep track of the location of important things, but it’s not good at keeping track of things that move around, which is why we often lose things like keys, glasses, and passports. Designating a spot for these items can help prevent this problem.
• When making medical decisions, people should ask their doctors for the number needed to treat, which is the number of people that need to take a drug or undergo a medical procedure before one person is helped. This information can help people weigh the risks and benefits of the treatment.
• Medical ethics requires doctors to provide patients with access to this kind of information to facilitate informed consent.
• People should also consider the side effects of a treatment and how it might affect their quality of life. Thinking about these things ahead of time can help people make better decisions in the moment of stress.
• Our brain releases cortisol under stress, which can lead to cloudy thinking and shut down certain systems. We need to train ourselves to think ahead and put systems in place that will help us in these situations.
• Organization is a gradual process, and people should work on it gradually.

Having Fun for a Healthier Life

The notes are a transcript of a TED Talk by Catherine Price, entitled “Why Having Fun Is the Secret to a Healthier Life”. In the talk, Price argues that people today are not necessarily living, but are simply doing, and suggests that the key to feeling alive is to have more fun. She presents a new definition of what fun is, which she argues consists of three factors: playfulness, connection, and flow. She explains that fun is energizing, makes us present, unites us, and makes us healthier. Price offers practical suggestions for how to increase fun in our lives, such as reducing distractions, interacting more with others, finding opportunities to rebel, and prioritizing fun. She concludes by urging people to treat fun as if it is important, and to make time for it in their lives.

My notes from this TED Talk

• Feeling truly alive is difficult and requires more than just keeping ourselves busy.
• We need to have more fun in our lives to feel truly alive and joyful.
• The word “fun” is often used to describe anything we do with our leisure time, even if it’s not actually enjoyable, and in fact, a waste of time.
• The dictionary’s definition of fun as amusement or enjoyment makes it sound like it’s frivolous and optional.
• Fun is not just lighthearted pleasure. It’s the secret to feeling alive.
• Fun is a feeling, not an activity. It’s a state of playfulness, connection, and flow.
• Playfulness is the lighthearted attitude of doing things for the sake of doing them and not caring too much about the outcome. It’s letting go of perfectionism.
• Connection refers to the feeling of having a special, shared experience, often involving another person.
• Flow is the state where we are so engaged and focused on whatever we’re doing that we can even lose track of time. It’s the feeling of being in the zone.
• Fun energizes us, makes us present, unites us, and makes us healthier.
• To have more fun, we need to focus on its ingredients – playfulness, connection, and flow – and do everything we can to fill our lives with more moments of these.
• To increase flow, we need to reduce distractions, especially our phones.
• To increase connection, we need to interact more with other human beings in real life, make eye contact, say hello, introduce ourselves, and ask thought-provoking questions.
• To increase playfulness, we need to find opportunities to rebel, but not in a dangerous or harmful way. We need to give ourselves permission to break the rules of responsible adulthood and get a kick out of our own lives.
• We need to prioritize fun in our lives and treat it as important because it is.
• Having more fun can make us more creative, productive, resilient, and better partners, parents, and friends.
• Fun is the distillation of life’s energy, and the more often we experience it, the more alive we will feel.