英语演讲：环境对人生的影响

So I'm going to talk about work; specifically, why people can't seem to get work done at work, which is a problem we all kind of have. But let's sort of start at the beginning. So, we have companies and non-profits and charities and all these groups that have employees or volunteers of some sort. 
我要来谈一谈工作这件事，主要是关于大家在上班时为什么不能完成相应的工作这件事，这种情况我们大家都遇到过。我们就从最开始的讲起。我们有很多的公司、非营利性企业和慈善机构等等所有的这些企业团体都有员工或者是志愿者之类的。 

And they expect these people who work for them to do great work -- I would hope, at least. At least good work, hopefully, at least it's good work -- hopefully great work. And so what they typically do is they decide that all these people need to come together in one place to do that work. 

而团体的老板们总希望员工们都能好好工作。至少，我是这样认为的。他们希望员工们努力工作，做出优秀的成绩，希望一切都好。因此，他们往往要求所有的员工都必须聚集到同一个地方来展开工作。

So a company, or a charity, or an organization of any kind, unless you're working in Africa, if you're really lucky to do that -- most people have to go to an office every day. And so these companies, they build offices. They go out and they buy a building, or they rent a building, or they lease some space, and they fill this space with stuff. 

所以不管是在公司，慈善机构还是各大组织，除非你足够的幸运，你是在非洲工作，那么大多数的人都需要每天到办公室去工作。于是，各个公司就建造了办公楼。他们或买或是租用办公大楼，腾出一些空间用来放满各种东西。 

They fill it with tables, or desks, chairs, computer equipment, software, Internet access, maybe a fridge, maybe a few other things, and they expect their employees, or their volunteers, to come to that location every day to do great work. It seems like it's perfectly reasonable to ask that.

办公桌，书桌，椅子，电脑设备，软件，网络连接器，也许还有冰箱等其他一些东西，他们还要求员工们，或者志愿者们，每天都到这指定的地方，好好工作。这看起来非常的合理。 

However, if you actually talk to people and even question yourself, and you ask yourself, where do you really want to go when you really need to get something done? You'll find out that people don't say what businesses think they would say. If you ask people the question: Where do you need to go when you need to get something done? 

但是，如果你接触这些员工或是问问你自己，你问你自己：当你真想把事情做好的时候，你会愿意去哪里工作？你会发现大家的回答都不会是公司老板们所想的。如果你询问别人：他们需要工作的时候他们真真想去哪里？

Typically, you get three different kinds of answers. One is kind of a place or a location or a room. Another one is a moving object, and a third is a time. So here are some examples. I've been asking people this question for about 10 years: "Where do you go when you really need to get something done?" I'll hear things like, the porch, the deck, the kitchen. 

一般来说，你会得到三种不同的回答。一种回答是到某个地方或者是房间。另外一种回答是移动的物体。还有第三种答案工作的时间。我在这里举些例子。当我询问大家──这个问题我已经问了10年了──我问他们：“当你想做些事情的时候，你一般会想去哪里做。”我听到的答案有诸如门廊，桌前，厨房。

I'll hear things like an extra room in the house, the basement, the coffee shop, the library. And then you'll hear things like the train, a plane, a car -- so, the commute. And then you'll hear people say, "Well, it doesn't really matter where I am, as long as it's early in the morning or late at night or on the weekends." 

我也会听到如房间里额外的小房间，储物室，咖啡馆，图书馆。此外，你还会听到火车，飞机，汽车这种关于行程的回答。最后，你会听到大家说，“恩，其实在哪里工作并不重要，只要是在清晨，午夜或是周末，我办公效率就好。” 

You almost never hear someone say, "The office." But businesses are spending all this money on this place called the office, and they're making people go to it all the time, yet people don't do work in the office. What is that about?

你会发现，大家几乎不会提到办公室。但是公司企业把所有的钱都用于办公室的建造，并规定员工每天到办公室工作，然而，大家在办公室里几乎不怎么工作。这意味着什么？ 

Why is that? Why is that happening? And what you find out is, if you dig a little bit deeper, you find out that people -- this is what happens: People go to work, and they're basically trading in their work day for a series of "work moments" -- that's what happens at the office. You don't have a work day anymore. You have work moments.

为什么会这样？原因又是什么呢？如果你深入的分析一下，你就会发现原因，你发现大家，事实情况就是这样发生的--大家去上班，基本上工作日的各个时间段都是以工作瞬间来计算。这就是办公室的情况。你工作已经不是按“整工作日”算，而是被拆分成“工作瞬间”。 

It's like the front door of the office is like a Cuisinart, and you walk in and your day is shredded to bits, because you have 15 minutes here, 30 minutes there, and something else happens, you're pulled off your work, then you have 20 minutes, then it's lunch, then you have something else to do ... 

这就好比当你走过办公室的前门，一跨入办公室，你的工作日就被分成一段段的瞬间。因为你这边忙15分钟，那边忙30分钟，然后突发什么事的时候，你还得分神去处理，再工作个20分钟，就是午餐时间了，然后你就又有别的事要做了......

Then you've got 15 minutes, and someone pulls you aside and asks you a question, and before you know it, it's 5 p.m., and you look back on the day, and you realize that you didn't get anything done. We've all been through this. We probably went through it yesterday or the day before, or the day before that. 

你刚专心15分钟后，又有人跑来问你问题。当你回过神来的时候，已经是下班时间5点了，当你回顾这一天，就会发现你根本什么都没有做。我想我们都应该有过这种经历。也许昨天就是这样度过的，或者是前天，大前天。 

You look back on your day, and you're like, "I got nothing done today. I was at work. I sat at my desk. I used my expensive computer. I used the software they told me to use. I went to these meetings I was asked to go to. I did these conference calls. I did all this stuff. But I didn't actually do anything. I just did tasks. I didn't actually get meaningful work done."

每天回顾，差不多都像这样，“我发现我什么事都没做。在应该工作的时间里，我坐在书桌前，用着昂贵的电脑，用着他们叫我用的软件。我参加各种上头要求参加的会议。我打电话会议，做各种杂事。但事实上，我什么都没有做。我只是做些“琐事”而已。我几乎没做什么有意义的工作。” 

And what you find is that, especially with creative people -- designers, programmers, writers, engineers, thinkers -- that people really need long stretches of uninterrupted time to get something done. You cannot ask somebody to be creative in 15 minutes and really think about a problem.

同时，你会发现，尤其是当你跟一些有创造力的人在一起的时候，比如设计师，工程师，作家，程序工程师，思想家，这些人真得需要用很长的一段不受干扰的时间来做些事情。你不能要求这些搞创造力的人在15分钟的时间就想到创意还能认真地思考问题。 

You might have a quick idea, but to be in deep thought about a problem and really consider a problem carefully, you need long stretches of uninterrupted time. And even though the work day is typically eight hours, how many people here have ever had eight hours to themselves at the office? How about seven hours? Six? Five? Four?搞创造的人可能会有灵感，但是如果想要深入、仔细的思考问题，他们就需要很长的一段不受干扰的时间。尽管一天的工作日是8个小时，有多少人是真真的把这8个小时用在工作上？有7个小时吗？6个？5个？还是4个？ 

When's the last time you had three hours to yourself at the office? Two hours? One, maybe? Very, very few people actually have long stretches of uninterrupted time at an office. And this is why people choose to do work at home, or they might go to the office, but they might go to the office really early in the day, or late at night when no one's around, or they stick around after everyone's left, or go in on the weekends, or they get work done on the plane, in the car or in the train, because there are no distractions. Now there are different kinds of distractions, but not the really bad distractions, which I'll talk about in a minute. 

你什么时候有过在办公室里独立完成工作3个小时过？2个小时？也许只有一个小时吧。很少人真的有过在办公室长时间不受干扰的工作。这也是为什么大家情愿在家工作，他们可能会去办公室上班，但是他们可能会很早就去，或者到很晚，没有一个人的时候才离开，或者等到大家都离开后，他们会留下来工作，或者是周末的时候加班，或者在飞机上也工作，还有汽车上，火车上的工作，这是因为这些时候，人们都不会被打扰。打扰的方式有各种各样的，这里，我就不列举那些恶劣的打扰方式了。 

And this whole phenomenon of having short bursts of time to get things done reminds me of another thing that doesn't work when you're interrupted, and that is sleep. I think that sleep and work are very closely related -- not because you can work while you're sleeping and sleep while you're working.

这个现象用一段段零碎的时间来完成工作这个现象，让我想起了一件事-它就是睡觉，当你睡觉被打扰时，你就很难再入睡。睡觉跟工作是互有关联的。不是因为睡觉的时候无法工作或者工作的时候不能睡觉。 

That's not really what I mean. I'm talking specifically about the fact that sleep and work are phase-based, or stage-based, events. Sleep is about sleep phases, or stages -- some people call them different things. There are five of them, and in order to get to the really deep ones, the meaningful ones, you have to go through the early ones. 

这不是我要讲的。我要讲的是工作和睡觉都是分阶段的、分时段的状态。睡觉分各个阶段、时段--不同的阶段有不同的名字。总共有五个阶段，为了进到最深的、最有意义的阶段，你必须经历最初的那些阶段。

If you're interrupted while you're going through the early ones -- if someone bumps you in bed, or there's a sound, or whatever happens -- you don't just pick up where you left off. If you're interrupted and woken up, you have to start again. So you have to go back a few phases and start again. 

如果你在前面的阶段就被打扰了，可能有人翻身碰到你，或者是有什么声音，或其他什么事，你没办法回到这个阶段继续睡。如果你被打扰了，醒了过来，你又得重头开始。你就得重回到睡眠的前几个阶段。 

And what ends up happening -- you might have days like this where you wake up at eight or seven in the morning, or whenever you get up, and you're like, "I didn't sleep very well. I did the sleep thing -- I went to bed, I laid down, but I didn't really sleep." People say you go "to" sleep, but you don't go to sleep, you go towards sleep; it takes a while.

结果就是，有的时候，你可能有几天在早上8点就醒来，有时是7点，或者是当你起来的时候，或者是当你起来的时候，你会觉得，“我睡得不太好。虽然我睡了——我上床睡觉，躺下，但我没有真正入睡。”我们说去睡觉，其实不是一倒下就睡着，而是进入梦境；这是需要时间的。

You've got to go through phases and stuff, and if you're interrupted, you don't sleep well. So does anyone here expect someone to sleep well if they're interrupted all night? I don't think anyone would say yes. Why do we expect people to work well if they're being interrupted all day at the office? 

你得一个阶段一个阶段的慢慢来，如果你被干扰了，当然就睡不好了。这样我们还怎么希望能睡好呢──如果一整晚都被打扰的话，有人觉得你能睡得好吗？我觉得应该没人会说睡得好。如果在办公室里不断地被打扰，我们为什么还希望大家好好工作呢？

How can we possibly expect people to do their job if they go to the office and are interrupted? That doesn't really seem like it makes a lot of sense, to me. So what are the interruptions that happen at the office but not at other places? Because in other places, you can have interruptions like the TV, or you could go for a walk, or there's a fridge downstairs, or you've got your own couch, or whatever you want to do. If you talk to certain managers, they'll tell you that they don't want their employees to work at home because of these distractions. They'll sometimes also say, "If I can't see the person, how do I know they're working?" which is ridiculous, but that's one of the excuses that managers give.

如果他们总是被打扰，我们又怎能要求他们好好工作呢？对我来说，这很不合理。那么为什么在其他地方工作的时候，就不会被打扰了呢？因为其他地方，会有干扰，比如会跑去看电视或者是散个步，到楼下冰箱拿个东西，或者你赖在自己的沙发上，想要什么就有什么。如果你这样跟你的经理讲，他们会要求你不要在家里工作，由于有这样那样的干扰因素的存在。他们还会说，有时也会这样说，“恩，我甚至看不见他们的身影，我怎样知道他们在工作呢？”这个理由是很荒唐的，但是很多经理人总会拿这一点来做借口。 

And I'm one of these managers. I understand. I know how this goes. We all have to improve on this sort of thing. But oftentimes they'll cite distractions: "I can't let someone work at home. They'll watch TV, or do this other thing." It turns out those aren't the things that are distracting, Because those are voluntary distractions. 

我也是这样的经理。所以我对这些都了解。但是我们要改善这种情形，尽管他们常常会举例。“我不会允许员工在家里工作。他们会看电视，干其他与工作无关的事。”但其实这些事并不会真的干扰你。因为这些事都是自愿分心。 

You decide when you want to be distracted by the TV, when you want to turn something on, or when you want to go downstairs or go for a walk. At the office, most of the interruptions and distractions that really cause people not to get work done are involuntary. So let's go through a couple of those.

你可以自己决定什么时候看电视；决定什么时候打开冰箱；决定什么时候下楼、散步。而在办公室里，大多数打搅到工作的干扰因素都是被动产生的。让我来举些例。 

Now, managers and bosses will often have you think that the real distractions at work are things like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and other websites, and in fact, they'll go so far as to actually ban these sites at work. Some of you may work at places where you can't get to certain sites. I mean, is this China? What the hell is going on here? You can't go to a website at work, and that's the problem?

现在，上司、老板们会经常认为，工作的时候真真让你分心的是Facebook和twitteryoutube等网站。事实上，他们也会完全的禁止上班时游览这些网页。有些办公地甚至打开不了这些网站。这是在中国吗？这到底是怎么了？工作的时候竟然不能上这些网，难道这就是问题的所在之处？ 

That's why people aren't getting work done, because they're on Facebook and Twitter? That's kind of ridiculous. It's a total decoy. Today's Facebook and Twitter and YouTube, these things are just modern-day smoke breaks. No one cared about letting people take a smoke break for 15 minutes 10 years ago, so why does anyone care if someone goes to Facebook or Twitter or YouTube here and there? Those aren't the real problems in the office.

这就是大家无法在工作时间里完成工作的原因，是因为他们在上Facebook,twitter吗?这真得很可笑，很荒谬。今天的Facebook、twitter还有youtube等上网时间就等于是当代的抽烟时间而已。从10年前起，人们在上班时间溜出去抽15分钟的烟，根本就没人在乎，那么为什么现在偶尔上个Facebook、twitter、youtube就会有一大堆的意见？这些根本不是问题的关键所在。 

The real problems are what I like to call the M&Ms, the Managers and the Meetings. Those are the real problems in the modern office today. And this is why things don't get done at work, it's because of the M&Ms. Now what's interesting is, if you listen to all the places that people talk about doing work, like at home, in the car, on a plane, late at night, or early in the morning, you don't find managers and meetings.问题出在于被我称之为M&M's上，经理和会议的这两者。这些才是现今办公室里问题的所在，也是员工没法顺利完成工作的原因，因为M&M's的存在。有趣的是当你听到大家谈论各自的高效工作的地点时，比如在家里、汽车里、飞机上，或者在深夜或清晨的讨论，但就是不会听到关于经理和会议的谈论。 

You find a lot of other distractions, but not managers and meetings. So these are the things that you don't find elsewhere, but you do find at the office. And managers are basically people whose job it is to interrupt people. That's pretty much what managers are for. They're for interrupting people. They don't really do the work, so they make sure everyone else is doing work, which is an interruption.

你会发现很多别的干扰因素，但是不会归咎到经理和会议的干扰因素上。经理和会议只会是办公室办公的干扰因素，它们不会在别处出现。某种意义上来说，经理的工作就是打扰员工。这也是经理喜欢干的，他们喜欢打扰别人工作。他们本身不需要工作，他们监督下属工作的行为，实际上就是构成了干扰。