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Business Bartleby
商业版块，巴托比专栏
Unlokcing Creativity
释放创造力
Forget drug use and hammocks. Try tedium instead
忘掉毒品和吊床，试试无聊放空
Academics do not contend to write the most entertaining research paper of the year.
学者们不会争相写出年度最具娱乐性的研究论文。
But Yu Tse Heng, now at the University of Virginia, Christopher Barnes of the University of Washington and Kai Chi Yam of the National University of Singapore should take a bow nonetheless.
但目前在弗吉尼亚大学任职的余泽恒(音译)、华盛顿大学的克里斯托弗·巴恩斯和新加坡国立大学的任启智应该鞠躬接受掌声。
In a study published in 2022, the trio tested the widespread notion that cannabis increases creativity.
在2022年发表的一项研究中，三人测试了大麻提高创造力这一广为流传的说法。
The researchers recruited a bunch of Americans who take the drug recreationally, and asked them to take some standardised tests of creativity (from thinking of novel uses for a brick to coming up with money-spinning ideas for a music band).
研究者招募了一群为娱乐目的服用大麻的美国人，并要求他们接受一些标准化的创造力测试(包括想出砖块的新奇用途，以及为乐队想出赚钱的点子)。
Some participants underwent the test immediately after taking cannabis; a control group only did so if 12 hours had elapsed since they last indulged.
一些参与者在服用大麻后立即接受了测试，对照组则在他们吸食大麻12小时后才进行测试。
Independent evaluators assessed the innovativeness of their ideas.
独立评审员评估了他们想法的创新性。
The researchers found that cannabis increased users’ joviality, which is thought to encourage lateral thinking.
研究人员发现，大麻增加了吸食者的快乐感，这被认为可以鼓励横向思维。
Drug use also led people to rate their own creativity, and that of other participants, more highly.
吸食大麻还让人们对自己和其他参与者的创造力给予更高的评价。
The problem is that the independent assessors could discern no effect on the actual quality of people’s thoughts.
问题是，独立评审员并未看出大麻对人们想法的实际好坏产生影响。
Cannabis users got high and duly found everything mind-blowing, regardless of whether it was or not.
吸食大麻的人变得兴奋起来，自然发现一切都令人兴奋，无论是不是确实如此。
“Leaders may want employees to be sober, especially while evaluating ideas” is one of the paper’s dry conclusions.
“领导者可能希望员工保持清醒，尤其是在评估想法时”，这是这篇论文的枯燥结论之一。
You might think that doesn’t need saying.
你可能认为这是不言而喻的。
But the search for ways to unleash creativity seems to scramble executives’ brains.
但寻找释放创造力的方法似乎让高管们绞尽脑汁。
There is rising interest in the use of psychedelics in the workplace, not simply as a health-care perk but also as a way of stimulating innovative thinking.
人们对在工作场所使用迷幻剂的兴趣与日俱增，不仅把它看作一种医疗福利，也看作一种刺激创新思维的方式。
But before you submit your book pitch for “The Smartest Guys on the Mushroom”, take a minute.
但在你提交《蘑菇上最聪明的人》的图书宣传方案之前，先等一等。
A study published last year in Nature, a scientific journal, tested the effects of taking low doses of psilocybin and reached a similar conclusion to the cannabis paper:
去年发表在科学期刊《自然》上的一项研究测试了服用低剂量致幻剂的效果，并得出了与研究大麻的论文类似的结论：
participants may have gone on a trip but there wasn’t much evidence to suggest it ended in a creative destination.
参与者可能产生了幻觉而飘飘然，但没有太多证据表明他们最后飘到了一个更有创意的地方。
Drug use is at the extreme end of a range of techniques whose purpose is to jolt people into a more innovative mindset.
在激励人们进行创新性思维的各种办法之中，吸食毒品是极端之举。
There are specific exercises designed to encourage “divergent thinking”, such as sketching the person next to you or designing a unique sandwich (how about tripe and a dash of sour grapes?).
有专门鼓励“发散性思维”的练习，比如描绘你旁边的人，或者设计一个独特的三明治(牛百叶加少许酸葡萄怎么样？)。
There are team-building activities, from plate-spinning and karaoke to escape rooms and fire-walking (safety warning: if you have a brainwave during this exercise, never stop to write it down).
还有团建活动，从转盘子、卡拉OK到密室逃生和赤脚走火炭(安全警告：如果你在走火炭时灵机一动，千万不要停下来记录你的灵感)。
And there is a near-universal obsession with turning bits of offices into playrooms: brightly coloured furniture, hammocks, blackboards, chairs that are far too low to the ground for adults.
还有几乎所有人都痴迷于将办公室的一小块地方变成游戏室：色彩鲜艳的家具、吊床、黑板、对成年人来说过于低矮的椅子。
The idea is that using an unconventional space can help stimulate innovative thoughts.
他们的想法是，非常规空间可以帮助激发创新思维。
But much depends on the task at hand.
但这在很大程度上取决于手头的任务是什么。
In an experiment conducted by Manuel Sosa of insead business school and Sunkee Lee of Carnegie Mellon University, participants were given a sheet of paper with 40 circles on it and asked to draw real-world objects that contained that shape.
在欧洲工商管理学院的曼努埃尔·索萨和卡内基梅隆大学的桑基·李进行的一项实验中，参与者拿到一张有40个圆圈的纸，并要求他们画出这个形状的现实世界中的物体。
People who had been put in an unconventional workspace performed worse than those in a bog-standard office because they became fixated on the circular objects in their vicinity (they did better than cubicle-dwellers on tests that could not be influenced by their surroundings in this way).
那些被安排在非常规工作空间的人比在标准办公室里的人表现得更差，因为他们只专注于附近的圆形物体(他们在一些测试中表现得比格子间里的人更好，这些测试不会像这样受到周围环境的影响)。
Group activities undoubtedly have their place: it’s called hell.
集体活动无疑有其一席之地：这个地方被称为地狱。
But desperate efforts to induce creativity can be self-defeating, in the same way that telling yourself that you must get to sleep is bound to keep you awake.
但是，不顾一切地激发创造力的努力可能会弄巧成拙，就像告诉自己必须睡觉一定会让你保持清醒一样。
Plenty of evidence suggests that doing absolutely nothing is a better option.
大量证据表明，什么都不做是更好的选择。
Allowing the mind to wander is a good way to unlock bright ideas.
让大脑走神是解锁好点子的好方法。
Aaron Sorkin, a celebrated screenplay writer, showered multiple times a day as a way of getting around writer’s block.
著名编剧亚伦·索尔金每天洗澡好几次，以此来对付文思枯竭的情况。
Tedium itself can be a useful spur to inspiration.
单调乏味本身就是一种有用的灵感刺激。
In a study presented in 2013 researchers found that people who had copied telephone numbers out—or, even better, just read them—before taking a creative test outperformed those who had not.
在2013年公布的一项研究中，研究人员发现，在参加创造性测试之前，抄写过电话号码的人——或者更绝的，只是朗读电话号码的人——比没有做过这些事的人表现更好。
Boredom, reckoned Friedrich Nietzsche, is that disagreeable “windless calm” of the soul that precedes a happy voyage and cheerful breeze.
弗里德里希·尼采认为，无聊是快乐航行和愉悦微风到来之前，一种令人不快的灵魂上的“风平浪静”。
There is nothing like boredom to make you write, agreed a young Agatha Christie.
没有什么比无聊更能让你动笔写作了，年轻的阿加莎·克里斯蒂对此表示同意。
Maybe she could have achieved much more if she had a beanbag, some Lego and a zoot.
如果她有豆子袋、乐高积木和佐特套装，也许她会取得更大的成就。
Or maybe creativity is just a bit less formulaic than that.
或者，创造力只是没有那么程式化而已。
