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of Remote Work and Writing: the Written Word will Flourish in the Post-pandemic Workplace
远程办公与写作：书面文字将在疫情后的工作场所中蓬勃发展
The pandemic has given a big shove to all forms of digital communication. Video-conferencing platforms have become verbs. Venture capitalists make their bets after watching virtual pitches.
疫情极大地推动了各种形式的数字交流。视频会议平台已经演变成了动词。风投资本家在观看虚拟推介后做出选择。
Products like Loom and mmhmm help workers send pre-recorded video messages to their colleagues. More than a third of Slack users each week are now "huddling" -- using the product's new audio feature to talk to each other. And all this is before the metaverse turns everyone into an avatar.
像Loom和mmhmm这样的产品可以帮助员工将预先录制的视频信息发送给同事。每周都有超过三分之一的Slack用户“聚在一起”，通过该产品新推出的音频功能互相交谈。这一切都发生在元宇宙将每个人变成虚拟化身之前。
A workplace dominated by time on screens may seem bound to favour newer, faster and more visual ways of transmitting information. But an old form of communication -- writing -- is also flourishing.
一个被屏幕时间支配的工作场所似乎注定会青睐更新、更快、更直观的信息传递方式。但是“写作”这种古老的交流方式也在蓬勃发展。
And not just dashed-off emails and entries on virtual whiteboards, but slow, time-intensive writing. The strengths of the written word have not been diminished by the pandemic era. In some ways they are ideally suited to it.
不仅仅是匆忙写成的电子邮件和虚拟白板上的事项记录，还有缓慢、耗时的写作。书面文字的力量并没有被疫情时代减弱。在某些方面，它们最适合疫情时代。
The value of writing is a staple in management thinking. "The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen," reckoned Lee Iacocca, a quotable titan of the American car industry.
写作的价值是管理思维的重要组成部分。“把事情写下来是实现它的第一步，”美国汽车行业的著名巨头李·艾柯卡如是说道。
Jeff Bezos banned slide decks from meetings of senior Amazon executives back in 2004, in favour of well-structured memos. "PowerPoint-style presentations somehow give permission to gloss over ideas," he wrote.
早在2004年，杰夫·贝索斯就禁止亚马逊高管在会议上使用幻灯片，而是赞成使用条理分明的备忘录。他写道：“幻灯片形式的演示在某种程度上会允许人们掩饰自己的想法。”
Some executives write for themselves. Andrew Bosworth, a bigwig at Meta (formerly Facebook), has a blog in which he muses interestingly on many topics, including on writing itself: "In my experience, discussion expands the space of possibilities while writing reduces it to its most essential components."
一些高管会自己写作。Meta（前身为Facebook）的大人物安德鲁·博斯沃思有一个博客，他在播客中对许多话题进行了有趣的思考，包括写作本身：“根据我的经验，讨论扩大了可能性的空间，而写作则将其缩减为最重要的组成部分。”
Others do so to reach an audience. Shareholder letters from Larry Fink and Warren Buffett are the corporate equivalent of a blockbuster book launch.
还有人用书写来吸引观众。拉里·芬克和沃伦·巴菲特写给股东的信相当于一场轰动的新书发布会。
But the move to remote working has enhanced the value of writing to the entire organisation, not just the corner office.
不过，转向远程工作不仅提高了写作对于高管的价值，对整个组织来说也是如此。
When tasks are being handed off to colleagues in other locations, or people are working on a project "asynchronously", meaning at a time of their choosing, comprehensive documentation is crucial.
当任务被移交给在其他地方的同事，或者是当人们在自己选择的时间“异步”处理一个项目时，准备好一份详实的文档是至关重要的。
When new employees start work on something, they want the back story. When veterans depart an organisation, they should leave knowledge behind.
当新员工开始做某项工作时，他们需要知道之前的进展。当老员工离开组织时，他们应该将自己所了解的信息留下。
Writing everything down sounds like an almighty pain. But so is turning up to a meeting and not having the foggiest what was decided last time out.
把所有的东西都写下来听起来是一件万分痛苦的事情。但出席会议时对上次会议作出的决定一头雾水也很痛苦。
Software developers have already worked out the value of the written word. A research programme from Google into the ingredients of successful technology projects found that teams with high-quality documentation deliver software faster and more reliably.
软件开发者已经弄清楚了书面文字的价值。谷歌对成功技术项目要素的研究发现，拥有高质量文档的团队能够更快、更可靠地交付软件。
Gitlab, a code-hosting platform whose workforce is wholly remote, frames the secret of successful asynchronous working thus: "How would I deliver this message, present this work, or move this project forward right now if no one else on my team (or in my company) were awake?"
Gitlab是一个所有人员都远程办公的代码托管平台，它指出了成功进行异步工作的秘诀：“如果我的团队（或公司）中没有其他人醒着，我该如何传递信息、展示工作，或者就在此刻推进这个项目？”
Gitlab's answer is "textual communication". Its gospel is a handbook that is publicly available, stretches to more than 3,000 pages and lays out all of its internal processes.
Gitlab给出的答案是“文本交流”。它的准则是一本公开可得的3000多页的手册，列出了公司的所有内部流程。
The deliberation and discipline required by writing is helpful in other contexts, too. "Brainwriting" is a brainstorming technique, used by Slack among others, in which participants are given time to put down their ideas before discussion begins.
写作所需要的审慎和自律在其他场景中也很有帮助。“书面头脑风暴”是一种包括Slack在内的公司都在使用的头脑风暴技巧。在讨论开始前，参与者有时间来把自己的想法写下来。
