TED英语演讲:Why work doesn’t happen at work

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TED Technology, Entertainment, Design在英语中的缩写,美国的一家私有非营利机构,以它组织的TED大会著称;将”用思想的力量来改变世界”作为宗旨。事实上,除了科技、娱乐、设计的主题,这场盛会涉及的领域还在不断扩展,展现着涉及几乎各个领域的各种见解,TED的演讲简短且深刻,参加者们称它为 “超级大脑SPA”。

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. 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. So a company, or a charity, or an organization of any kind, they typically — 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 the space with stuff. 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.

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。 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。 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。 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 really need to go when you need to get something done? 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.

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,你真真会去哪里工作? 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? 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。

So here’s some examples. When I ask people — and I’ve been asking people this question for about 10 years — I ask them, “Where do you go when you really need to get something done?” I’ll hear things like, the porch, the deck, the kitchen. 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 really early in the morning or really late at night or on the weekends.” 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.

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。 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。” 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。

What is that about? Why is that? Why is that happening? And what you find out is that, 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 workday for a series of “work moments.” That’s what happens at the office. You don’t have a workday anymore. You have work moments. 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 and 30 minutes there, and then something else happens and you’re pulled off your work, and you’ve got to do something else, then you have 20 minutes, then it’s lunch. Then you have something else to do. Then you’ve got 15 minutes, and someone pulls you aside and asks you this 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. I mean, we’ve all been through this. We probably went through it yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that. 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.

这意味着什么? 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”。 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; 你跑去做别的事之后,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, 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。 每天回顾,发现什么事都没做。 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, 参见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. 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 workday 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? 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 they go in on the weekends, or they get work done on the plane, or they get work done in the car or in the train because there are no distractions.

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。 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? 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。

Now, there are different kinds of distractions, but there aren’t the really bad kinds of distractions that I’ll talk about in just a minute. And this sort of 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, and it’s not just that you can work while you’re sleeping and you can sleep while you’re working. That’s not really what I mean. I’m talking specifically about the fact that sleep and work are phased-based, or stage-based, events. So sleep is about sleep phases, or stages — some people call them different things. There’s five of them, and in order to get to the really deep ones, the really meaningful ones, you have to go through the early ones. And if you’re interrupted while you’re going through the early ones — if someone bumps you in bed, or if there’s a sound, or whatever happens — you don’t just pick up where you left off.

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。 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。 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。 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。

If you’re interrupted and woken up, you have to start again. So you have to go back a few phases and start again. And what ends up happening — sometimes you might have days like this where you wake up at eight in the morning, or seven in the morning, or whenever you get up, and you’re like, man, I didn’t really 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 really don’t go to sleep, you go towards sleep. It just takes a while. You’ve got to go through these phases and stuff, and if you’re interrupted, you don’t sleep well. So how do we expect — 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? How can we possibly expect people to do their job if they’re going to the office to be interrupted? That doesn’t really seem like it makes a lot of sense to me.

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。 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, 你会觉得一夜没睡好。 你又去睡觉,上了床,然后躺下, 但是你却不能入睡。 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,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? 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。

So what are these interruptions that happen at the office that don’t happen at other places? Because in other places, you can have interruptions, like, you can have 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. And 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 also say — sometimes they’ll also say, “Well, if I can’t see the person, how do I know they’re working?” which is ridiculous, of course, but that’s one of the excuses that managers give. 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. They’ll do this other thing.” It turns out that those aren’t the things that are really distracting. Because those are voluntary distractions. You decide when you want to be distracted by the TV. You decide when you want to turn something on. You decide 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.

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。 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。 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 these 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, that’s why people aren’t getting work done, because they’re going to Facebook and they’re going to Twitter? That’s kind of ridiculous. It’s a total decoy. And 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 everyone care about someone going to Facebook here and there, or Twitter here and there, or YouTube here and there? Those aren’t the real problems in the office.

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 twitter youtube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,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, or in a car, or on a plane, or late at night, or early in the morning — you don’t find managers and meetings. You find a lot of other distractions, but you don’t find 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 have to make sure everyone else is doing the work, which is an interruption. And we have a lot of managers in the world now, and there’s a lot of people in the world now, and there’s a lot of interruptions in the world now because of these managers. They have to check in: “Hey, how’s it going? Show me what’s up,” and this sort of thing and they keep interrupting you at the wrong time, while you’re actually trying to do something they’re paying you to do, they tend to interrupt you.

问题出在于被我称之为 M&M’s上 经理(managers)和会议(meetings)的身上。 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; 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。 目前世界上有很多经理, 也有很多的员工。 由于经理而造成的干扰就有很多。 为了调查工作进度,他们会问:“工作做得怎么样了? 给我展示一下。”等类似的话。 他们还总是会在不恰当的时间来打扰你, 当你正在努力完成他们分配的任务的时候, 他们往往在关键时候来打扰你。

That’s kind of bad. But what’s even worse is the thing that managers do most of all, which is call meetings. And meetings are just toxic, terrible, poisonous things during the day at work. We all know this to be true, and you would never see a spontaneous meeting called by employees. It doesn’t work that way. The manager calls the meeting so the employees can all come together, and it’s an incredibly disruptive thing to do to people — is to say, “Hey look, we’re going to bring 10 people together right now and have a meeting. I don’t care what you’re doing. Just, you’ve got to stop doing what you’re doing, so you can have this meeting.” I mean, what are the chances that all 10 people are ready to stop? What if they’re thinking about something important? What if they’re doing important work? All of a sudden you’re telling them that they have to stop doing that to do something else. So they go into a meeting room, they get together, and they talk about stuff that doesn’t really matter usually. Because meetings aren’t work. Meetings are places to go to talk about things you’re supposed to be doing later.

这是很糟糕的。 但是还有比这更糟糕的呢, 那就是开会。 开会的时候是一天中最无聊 又烦人、又浪费时间 的事。 我们都知道这一点事实。 你也不会看到以后有员工组织的会议; 这根本不会发生。 经理开会的时候 所有的员工都聚集起来, 这真的是一件很具干扰性质的事。 经理们会说:“记住, 我们现在要召集10个人开会。 我不关心你们现在在做什么。 你们要做的就是停下一切手头上的事,然后来开这个会。” 这10个人就这么突然停下来去开会? 要是他们正在思考重要的事情呢? 做重要的工作呢? 就这么突然,你告诉他们,必须停下来手边的工作 来开会。 他们进入会议室,聚在一起, 并谈论一些根本无关紧要的事。 事实上,会议根本起不了任何的作用。 开会是为了商讨公司以后的计划。

But meetings also procreate. So one meeting tends to lead to another meeting and tends to lead to another meeting. There’s often too many people in the meetings, and they’re very, very expensive to the organization. Companies often think of a one-hour meeting as a one-hour meeting, but that’s not true, unless there’s only one person in that meeting. If there are 10 people in the meeting, it’s a 10-hour meeting; it’s not a one-hour meeting. It’s 10 hours of productivity taken from the rest of the organization to have this one one-hour meeting, which probably should have been handled by two or three people talking for a few minutes. But instead, there’s a long scheduled meeting, because meetings are scheduled the way software works, which is in increments of 15 minutes, or 30 minutes, or an hour. You don’t schedule an eight-hour meeting with Outlook. You can’t. I don’t even know if you can. You can go 15 minutes or 30 minutes or 45 minutes or an hour. And so we tend to fill these times up when things should really go really quickly.

但是开会有时也是为了提前安排事宜。 一个又一个 开不完的会议。 开会的时候,总是有那么多人, 对于组织来说,这是很贵的。 公司老板总是想着开个1小时的会议, 但是这个是不现实的,除非会议室里只有一个人。 如果有10个人参加了会议,那这就是10小时的会议,不是1小时会议。 这个10小时的会议是挪用了其他组织或其他人的时间, 这才有了这1小时的会议, 这会议本该是由2个或3个组织者 简短的发言组成。 但事实上,最后却变成了一个议程繁多的会议, 因为议程是按软件运行的方式安排的, 延长15分钟,半小时或者1个小时。 你用Outlook不会安排一个8小时的会议。 你也不能。当然,我是不知道你能不能。 你可以延长15分钟,半小时,45分钟或者1个小时。 当事情紧急的时候, 我们不得不充分利用时间。

So meetings and managers are two major problems in businesses today, especially to offices. These things don’t exist outside of the office. So I have some suggestions to remedy the situation. What can managers do — enlightened managers, hopefully — what can they do to make the office a better place for people to work, so it’s not the last resort, but it’s the first resort? It’s that people start to say, “When I really want to get stuff done, I go to the office.” Because the offices are well equipped, everything should be there for them to do their work, but they don’t want to go there right now, so how do we change that? I have three suggestions I’ll share with you guys. I have about three minutes, so that’ll fit perfectly.

因此会议和经理是现今商务事业中的主要问题, 尤其是在办公室里。 这些情况不会在办公室以外的地方发生。 因此,我有以下几条建议 来纠正,解决这些问题。 经理们可以这样做。 我指的是开明的经理们。 他们可以把办公室进一步改造成适合员工工作的地方, 使得办公室成为大家工作的首选之地。 大家都开始说: “当我真的想工作的时候,我会去办公室。” 因为办公室里设备齐全, 所有涉及工作的东西都一应俱全, 但是,现在大家还不想去办公室工作,那么我们该如何来改变这种现状呢? 我有三条建议,现在就来跟你们分享一下。 只需要大约3分钟的时间,就能解释清楚。

We’ve all heard of the casual Friday thing. I don’t know if people still do that. But how about “no-talk Thursdays?” How about — pick one Thursday once a month and cut that day in half and just say the afternoon — I’ll make it really easy for you. So just the afternoon, one Thursday. The first Thursday of the month — just the afternoon — nobody in the office can talk to each other. Just silence, that’s it. And what you’ll find is that a tremendous amount of work actually gets done when no one talks to each other. This is when people actually get stuff done, is when no one’s bothering them, when no one’s interrupting them. And you can give someone — giving someone four hours of uninterrupted time is the best gift you can give anybody at work. It’s better than a computer. It’s better than a new monitor. It’s better than new software, or whatever people typically use. Giving them four hours of quiet time at the office is going to be incredibly valuable. And if you try that, I think you’ll find that you agree. And maybe, hopefully you can do it more often. So maybe it’s every other week, or every week, once a week, afternoons no one can talk to each other. That’s something that you’ll find will really, really work.

我们都听过星期五是随意工作日。 我不知道大家是否还在这么做。 那么不妨设定星期四为无交谈日? 就这样好了, 随便挑一个月里的一个星期四, 再简单一点,那就取个半天,星期四下午好了。 那就星期四下午。 假设就这月第一个星期四的下午, 办公室里不准有任何的交谈。 有的只能是安静。 然后,你会发现 没有人交谈的时候, 很多工作很快就会完成。 所有的工作都完成的时候, 正是没有任何干扰的时候。 4个小时的无干扰工作时间 是给需要工作的人最好的礼物。 这比电脑还要好, 比调制解调器,软件都要高效, 比大家平常用的任何的东西都要好。 给他们4个小时安静的办公时间- 这将会成为珍贵的事。 如果你试着做了,你会同意这一点。 也许,你可以多实行几次。 也许是每隔一个星期一次, 或者是每个星期一次, 下午的时候,都不准许有任何的交谈。 你会发现这真得很有效。

Another thing you can try is switching from active communication and collaboration, which is like face-to-face stuff, tapping people on the shoulder, saying hi to them, having meetings, and replace that with more passive models of communication, using things like email and instant messaging, or collaboration products — things like that. Now some people might say email is really distracting and I.M. is really distracting, and these other things are really distracting, but they’re distracting at a time of your own choice and your own choosing. You can quit the email app; you can’t quit your boss. You can quit I.M.; you can’t hide your manager. You can put these things away, and then you can be interrupted on your own schedule, at your own time, when you’re available, when you’re ready to go again. Because work, like sleep, happens in phases. So you’re going to be kind of going up and doing some work, and then you’re going to come down from that work, and then maybe it’s time to check that email, or check that I.M. And there are very, very few things that are that urgent that need to happen, that need to be answered right this second. So if you’re a manager, start encouraging people to use more things like I.M. and email and other things that someone else can put away and then get back to you on their own schedule.

另外你也可以试试 从主动 交流和协作的方式, 也就是从面对面的交谈, 拍拍他们的肩膀,说声你好,包括开会的主动交流, 转变为更被动地交流方式 比如电子邮件,即时通讯, 或者是协作产品等类似的被动交流。 有人可能会说,电子邮件非常的干扰人, 即时通讯也很让人头疼, 这些都是干扰因素, 但是这些干扰因素产生与否在于你自己的选择。 你可以不用电子邮件的功能,但你不能不回复你老板的电邮。 你可以不用即时通讯, 但你离不开你的经理。 一旦你不用这些交流工具, 当你有空的时候,你个人时间也会被打乱; 或者当你准备好出发的时候,你的行程又会被打乱。 因为工作就像睡觉一样,它是分阶段的。 你要先做一些其它的事,慢慢铺垫, 然后才能完成后续工作, 那么也许,有时你就得检查电邮,看看即时通讯。 很少有紧急的事 同时发生,需要你立刻去解决。 因此如果你的经理 开始鼓励你多使用像即时通讯和电子邮件的工具, 还有做其他一些可有可无的事, 然后让你的步调跟他们的一致。

And the last suggestion I have is that, if you do have a meeting coming up, if you have the power, just cancel. Just cancel that next meeting. Today’s Friday — so Monday, usually people have meetings on Monday. Just don’t have it. I don’t mean move it; I mean just erase it from memory, it’s gone. And you’ll find out that everything will be just fine. All these discussions and decisions you thought you had to make at this one time at 9 a.m. on Monday, just forget about them, and things will be just fine. People have a more open morning, they can actually think, and you’ll find out that maybe all these things you thought you had to do, you don’t actually have to do.

我的最后一条建议是 如果你将要开一个会议, 如果你有这个权利, 就把会议取消掉,取消掉下一个会议。 今天是星期五,一般来说,会议会在星期一召开。 就取消会议吧! 我不是说调动会议, 而是忘记这会议,会议没了。 你会发现一切都很顺利。 所有这些你觉得你必须在星期一早上9点做的 商讨和决定, 就忘记他们吧,一切都会是顺利的。 这样,大家会觉得,他们将会有一个更加开放的早晨, 你也会发现,也许这些你觉得你必须要做的事情 事实上,你不一定要做。

So those are just three quick suggestions I wanted to give you guys to think about this. And I hope that some of these ideas were at least provocative enough for managers and bosses and business owners and organizers and people who are in charge of other people to think about laying off a little bit and giving people some more time to get some work done. And I think it’ll all pay off in the end.

这就是我的三条建议, 我希望你们能够好好思考一下。 同时,我也希望这些建议 相当挑衅但至少是有用的 不管是对经理,老板还是商务人士 组织者还是管理人员来说, 大家都能想着,与其裁员, 还不如给大家更多的时间来做些实质工作。 这样,我觉得最后一定会有收获的。

So thanks for listening.

谢谢各位的聆听。

(Applause)

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