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We're increasingly facing burnout.
我们面临着越来越多的崩溃。
How is it possible to do work that you're proud of and not feel like your job is encroaching on all parts of your life?
如何才能让你既从事为之自豪的工作，同时又不让工作侵占你生活的全部呢？
Because it's no longer you just see me in my office looking vaguely busy.
因为现在已经不单单是你能在办公室看到我忙来忙去的样子。
You can actually see every email I'm sending and how active I am in a Slack chat.
而是你能清晰地看到我发送了多少封电子邮件，看到我在Slack聊天中的活跃程度。
I could do this on the way to work, on the way home from work, at home, on the weekends.
不管是在上班路上，下班回家路上，在家里，还是周末，我都可以做这些事。
Enough is enough. We're increasingly exhausted.
够了，真的够了。我们越来越疲惫。
We have a faulty definition of productivity that we've been following, and what we need to do instead is shift our focus onto outcomes.
我们一直遵循的对生产力的定义是有缺陷的，我们需要将注意力转移到结果上。
I'm Cal Newport. I'm a computer scientist and writer. My most recent book is "Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout."
我是卡尔·纽波特。我是一名计算机科学家和作家。我最近的一本书是《慢生产力：无需崩溃便能取得成就的失落艺术》。
So the knowledge sector emerges in the mid-twentieth century.
知识部门在20世纪中叶出现。
When it emerges, our best understanding of productivity came from manufacturing.
它出现时，我们对生产力的最佳理解来自制造业。
Manufacturing, this is something that we could measure very precisely.
制造业，是我们可以精准衡量的东西。
For example, how many Model Ts are we producing per labor hour going in as input?
例如，我们每输入一小时的劳动，会生产多少辆Model T汽车？
And we had a number we could look at.
还有数据可供查看。
Knowledge work emerges. These type of metrics don't work anymore.
知识工作出现了。这类指标不再适用。
Because in knowledge work, we're not producing one thing.
因为在知识工作中，我们不是在生产一样东西。
I might be working on seven or eight different things at the same time.
我可能同时在做七八件不同的事情。
This could be different than the seven or eight things that the person right next to me is working on.
而且它还可能与我旁边的人正在做的七八件事不同。
Our solution to this was to introduce a rough heuristic that I call pseudo-productivity that said we can use visible activity as a crude proxy for useful effort.
对此，我们的解决方案是，引入一个粗略的启发式方法，我称之为伪生产率，即我们可以用可见的活动粗略代表我们付出的有效努力。
So if I see you doing things, that's better than you not doing things.
所以，如果我看到你在做事，这总比你什么都不做要好。
Come to an office and we watch you work.
到办公室来，我盯着你工作。
If we need to be more productive, come earlier, stay later.
如果我们需要提高效率，那就早点来，晚点走。
We'll just use activity as our best marker that you're probably doing something useful.
我们只能用活动来代表你可能在做一些有用的事。
More and more of our time is focused on performing this busyness, which means less of our time is spent actually doing things that matter.
我们把越来越多的时间花在了表演忙碌上，这意味着用来做重要事情的时间会更少。
So what's the solution?
那解决方案是什么呢？
Slow productivity is a way of measuring useful effort that is now much more focused on the quality things you produce over time as opposed to your visible activity in the moment, and I define it to be built on three main principles.
慢生产力是一种衡量有效努力的方法，它更关注的是随着时间的推移你所产生的高质量的东西，而不是你当下肉眼可见的活动，我把它的定义建立在三个主要原则之上。
The first is to do fewer things.
首先就是少做事。
Now this idea scares a lot of people when they first hear it because they interpret do fewer things to mean accomplish fewer things.
很多人第一次听到这个说法都会吓一跳，因为他们认为“做更少的事”就意味着“完成更少的事”。
What I really mean is do fewer things at once.
我真正的意思是，一次少做点事。
We know this from neuroscience and organizational psychology that when you turn the target of your attention from one point to another, it takes a while for your brain to reorient.
根据神经科学和组织心理学，当你将注意力的目标从一个点转移到另一个点时，你的大脑需要一段时间来重新定向。
The things you're thinking about over here leaves what's known as attention residue.
你原本思考的事情，会留下所谓的注意力残留。
This is a self-imposed reduction of cognitive capacity, so you're producing worse work.
这是一种自我强加的认知能力的降低，所以你的工作会做的更差。
Even worse, it's a psychological state that is exhausting and frustrating, so the experience of work itself just becomes subjectively very negative.
更糟糕的是，这种心理状态会让人疲惫和沮丧，于是工作体验也会让人在主观上变得很消极。
So what happens if I'm working on fewer things at once?
那如果我一次只做更少的事，会是什么样呢？
More of my day can actually be spent trying to complete commitments, which means I'm going to complete them faster.
我每天就可以花更多时间去努力兑现承诺，这意味着我将更快地完成它们。
And probably the quality level is going to be higher as well because I can give them uninterrupted concentration.
而且，质量水平可能也会更高，因为我可以全心全意地专注于这件事。
The second principle is to work at a natural pace.
第二个原则是按照自然的节奏去工作。
One of the defining features of human economic activity for the last several hundred thousand years is that the seasons really matter.
人类在过去几十万年的经济活动中，有一个决定性的特征，那就是季节真的很重要。
There was migration seasons when we were hunting.
有迁徙季，那时候我们要狩猎。
There was planting seasons. We were planting, and harvest seasons when we're harvesting, and seasons where neither of those activities were going on.
有种植季，我们要播种，也有收获季，还有既不种植也不收获的季节。
We had a lot of variety throughout the year in terms of how hard we were working.
我们在一年中的工作程度是一直在变化的。
I think in knowledge work, if certain times of year are more intense than others, this will lead to overall better and more sustainable outcomes.
我认为在知识工作中，如果一年中某些时候的工作比其他时候更紧张，这将导致整体上更好和更可持续的结果。
So the principle of working at a natural pace says it's okay to not redline it fifty weeks a year, five days a week.
所以，按照自然节奏工作的原则意味着，你不需要一年50周，一周5天，都把自己逼到极致。
We can have busy days and less busy days.
我们可以有很忙碌的日子，也可以有清闲点的日子。
We can have busy seasons and less busy seasons.
可以有繁忙的季节，也可以有悠闲的季节。
The third principle of slow productivity is to obsess over quality.
慢生产力的第三个原则是，痴迷质量。
And what this means is you should identify the things you do in your work that produce the most value and really care about getting better at that.
这意味着，你需要确定工作中那些能产生最大价值的事，以及你最希望能有所改进的事。
Any quest towards obsessing over quality has to start with a perhaps pretty thorough investigation of your own job.
想要追求质量至上，就得先对自己的工作有个彻底的摸排。
And then once you figure that out, start giving that activity as much attention as you can.
等你弄清楚后，就主要聚焦于那件事。
For example, invest in better tools so that you can signal to yourself that you're invested in doing this thing well.
例如，投资更好的工具，这样你就可以暗示自己，要致力于把这件事做好。
I did this myself as a postdoc. I was at MIT, didn't have a ton of money at that time, but I bought a fifty-dollar lab notebook.
我做博士后的时候也是这样。当时我在麻省理工学院，手上缺钱，但我还是买了一本50美元的实验笔记本。
And my idea was this is going to make me take the work I'm doing in this notebook more seriously, and it did.
当时我想的是，这会让我更认真地对待我记在这个笔记本上的工作，事实也确实如此。
So something about having this more quality tool pushed me towards more quality thinking.
所以，拥有更高质量的工具，在某种程度上促使我进行更高质量的思考。
So this idea that you want to slow down, that you want to do fewer things, that you want to have a more natural pace, this becomes very natural when you're really focused on doing what you do well.
所以，当你真正专注于做好自己擅长的事情时，你会想要放慢脚步，想要少做一些事情，想要拥有一个更自然的节奏，这一切都是水到渠成。
You begin to see all of those meetings and the email and the overstuffed task list not as a mark of productivity, but obstacles to what you're really trying to do.
当你再看到会议、电子邮件和过度冗长的任务清单时，不会再把它们当做生产力的标志，而是妨碍你去做真正想做的事情的障碍。
If you are embracing these principles, a few things are going to happen.
如果你正在接受这些原则，那么会发生一些事情。
The pace at which important things are finished is going to go up.
重要的事情完成的速度将会加快。
The quality of what you're producing is going to go up, and the happiness is also going to go up.
你所生产的产品的质量将会提高，并且幸福感也会上升。
This is going to become a much more sustainable work environment, and you're going to be doing the work that's going to make you better.
这样的工作环境会更有可持续性，你所做的工作也会让你变得更好。
