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How to stay calm when you know you'll be stressed | Daniel Levitin | TED
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How to stay calm when you know you'll be stressed | Daniel Levitin | TED

Breaking into My Own House: A Lesson in Stress and Decision-Making

The Incident

  • The speaker recounts a personal experience of breaking into their own house during a frigid Montreal winter night, emphasizing the extreme cold at minus 40 degrees.
  • Upon arriving home, the speaker realizes they forgot their keys, which are visible inside the house. Attempts to enter through other doors and windows prove futile.
  • Faced with desperation and freezing temperatures, the speaker breaks a basement window to gain entry, planning to fix it later.

Understanding Stress Responses

  • As a neuroscientist, the speaker explains how stress affects brain function by releasing cortisol, which raises heart rate and clouds thinking.
  • The next morning brings additional stressors: lack of sleep, worrying about the broken window, upcoming meetings in Europe, and forgetting their passport.

Consequences of Cloudy Thinking

  • At the airport check-in counter, the realization hits that they do not have their passport. This leads to a frantic race back home in poor weather conditions.
  • Despite making it back just in time for their flight, they end up with an undesirable seat due to being late.

Reflection on Preventative Measures

  • During an eight-hour flight with no sleep, the speaker contemplates systems that could prevent such mishaps or minimize damage when things go wrong.
  • A conversation with colleague Danny Kahneman introduces the concept of "prospective hindsight" or "pre-mortem," where one anticipates potential problems before they occur.

Implementing Pre-Mortems

  • The pre-mortem approach involves identifying possible future failures and strategizing ways to avoid them or lessen their impact.
  • Practical advice includes designating specific places for commonly lost items at home based on spatial memory science related to hippocampal function.

Strategies for Everyday Life

  • Suggestions include creating designated spots for keys and important documents like passports to reduce loss occurrences.
  • For travel safety, taking photos of essential documents (credit cards, licenses), storing them in cloud services can facilitate replacements if lost or stolen.

Recognizing Stress Effects

  • Emphasizes that under stress conditions—like medical decision-making—cognitive performance declines; thus implementing systems is crucial for better outcomes.

Understanding Medical Decision-Making

The Importance of Rational Assessment in Medical Decisions

  • Discusses the significance of making informed medical decisions for oneself or loved ones, emphasizing the need for rational assessment of facts.
  • Introduces a scenario where a doctor informs a patient about high cholesterol and suggests medication, highlighting common reactions to such news.

Understanding "Number Needed to Treat" (NNT)

  • Explains the concept of "number needed to treat" (NNT), which indicates how many people must take a drug before one person benefits from it.
  • Reveals that for statins, 300 individuals need to take the medication for one person to experience a positive outcome, challenging assumptions about medication efficacy.

Evaluating Risks vs. Benefits

  • Highlights that while patients may be eager to accept treatment, they should inquire about potential side effects associated with medications.
  • Notes that statin side effects occur in 5% of patients, leading to significant risks when considering treatment options.

Informed Consent and Ethical Considerations

  • Stresses the importance of having thorough discussions with healthcare providers regarding risks and benefits as part of informed consent.
  • Provides an example from prostate cancer surgery where 49 surgeries are performed for every one successful outcome, illustrating similar NNT concepts in surgical contexts.

Preparing for Difficult Conversations

  • Encourages proactive thinking about medical decisions and quality of life considerations ahead of time rather than under stress during consultations.
  • Suggests practicing these conversations with family members to ensure clarity and preparedness when faced with critical health decisions.

Cognitive Challenges Under Stress

  • Discusses how stress affects rational thinking due to cortisol release, impacting decision-making abilities during crucial moments.
  • References research by Danny Kahneman on cognitive biases under stress, reinforcing the need for preemptive planning in medical decision-making.

Strategies for Minimizing Decision-Making Errors

  • Emphasizes recognizing human flaws in decision-making processes and preparing systems that can help mitigate potential negative outcomes.
  • Shares a personal anecdote about installing a combination lock as a strategy to prevent future mistakes related to security and organization.
Channel: TED
Video description

Visit http://TED.com to get our entire library of TED Talks, transcripts, translations, personalized talk recommendations and more. You're not at your best when you're stressed. In fact, your brain has evolved over millennia to release cortisol in stressful situations, inhibiting rational, logical thinking but potentially helping you survive, say, being attacked by a lion. Neuroscientist Daniel Levitin thinks there's a way to avoid making critical mistakes in stressful situations, when your thinking becomes clouded — the pre-mortem. "We all are going to fail now and then," he says. "The idea is to think ahead to what those failures might be." The TED Talks channel features the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more. You're welcome to link to or embed these videos, forward them to others and share these ideas with people you know. Follow TED on Twitter: http://twitter.com/TEDTalks Like TED on Facebook: http://facebook.com/TED Subscribe to our channel: http://youtube.com/TED TED's videos may be used for non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons License, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives (or the CC BY – NC – ND 4.0 International) and in accordance with our TED Talks Usage Policy (https://www.ted.com/about/our-organization/our-policies-terms/ted-talks-usage-policy). For more information on using TED for commercial purposes (e.g. employee learning, in a film or online course), please submit a Media Request at https://media-requests.ted.com