生活之中别为思考定指标

How much of their time should managers spend thinking? Tim Armstrong believes the correct answer is 10 per cent — and has instructed all his underlings at AOL to spend one-tenth of each working week deploying their grey matter.

经理们应该花多长时间思考？蒂姆•阿姆斯特朗(Tim Armstrong)认为正确答案是10%，并且指示他在美国在线(AOL)的所有下属，每周拿出工作时间的十分之一用用他们的脑子。

Last week I emailed the company to see if I could find out more about this peculiar policy. A curt reply came back stating that 10 per cent Think Time was something “Tim believes in and urges us to do”, although it was not compulsory.

上周，我给美国在线发了封邮件，想看看能不能发现这项特别的政策的更多信息。对方给出了非常简短的回复，称“10%思考时间”是“蒂姆相信是对的，并敦促我们去做”的事情，尽管不是强制性的。

In the absence of any further facts, I have been wondering if Mr Armstrong’s initiative is one of the smartest or one of the most brainless to have emerged from corporate America in 2014.

没有进一步的事实依据，我一直在想，阿姆斯特朗的倡议究竟是2014年美国企业界最聪明的主意之一，还是最愚蠢的主意之一。

Edward Hallowell, an ADD expert (whose book Driven to Distraction at Work I reviewed last week), sees it as a stroke of genius. He thinks we are all so frazzled and distracted that we have stopped thinking altogether. If managers could only be encouraged to clear their mental decks for a few hours a week and engage in a little clear thought, that would be a jolly good thing.

注意力缺陷综合症(ADD)专家爱德华•哈洛韦尔（Edward Hallowell，我前段时间为他的著作《工作中分心不是我的错》(Driven to Distraction at Work)撰写了书评）认为，这是一个天才的想法。他认为我们所有人都太过疲倦，精神太过涣散，以至于我们完全停止了思考。如果能够鼓励经理每周花几个小时清空大脑，进行一点思路清楚的思考，是一件非常好的事情。

Yet to me, the policy seems more like a jolly bad one. If it is deemed highly desirable to spend 10 per cent of the time thinking, that amounts to admitting it is perfectly acceptable to spend 90 per cent of the day not thinking. And that doesn’t sound right at all.

然而在我看来，这个政策似乎更像是一件非常糟糕的事情。如果花10%的时间思考被视为一件非常值得鼓励的事情，那相当于承认在90%的时间里不思考完全是可接受的，而事实上这听起来毫无道理。

I’m a fan of thinking. Indeed I’m such a big fan that I see no reason why everyone shouldn’t spend 100 per cent of the working day with their brains more or less in the “on” position. Or, if that is a little ambitious, then at least 90 per cent, with the balance being made up by such activities as filling in forms sent by HR, which require no active engagement by the mind at all.

我很喜欢思考。事实上，我如此热爱思考，以至于我觉得，人们没有什么理由不应该把100%的工作时间用于使自己的大脑保持基本“活动”状态。或者如果说100%的目标过于高远，那么至少也要花90%的时间这样做，剩余的时间可以用来做填写人力资源部门送来的表格之类的事情来换脑筋——做这些事情完全不需要动脑子。

I am not saying that for 90 per cent of the time in the office we should all be straining to have great thoughts, as most of us don’t have the wherewithal for that, and there are only so many great thoughts that any company can bear. All I’m saying is that we should aim to pass our days at work relatively alert, ready for whatever comes our way.

我不是在说，在办公室的90%的时间里，我们都应该竭尽全力构思一些伟大的想法，因为我们大多数人并没有这个能力，任何一家企业能消化的伟大的想法也是有限的。我的意思是，我们应该设立目标，以一种相对警醒的状态度过我们的工作日，准备好迎接脑海中冒出来的任何想法。

If everyone signed up to my ambitious 90 per cent thinking goal, office life would become better — and far more productive — overnight. All sorts of useless activities that require no thought would have to be eliminated. For a start, almost all meetings would need to go. The reason that perfectly intelligent people feel the need to play illicit games of Candy Crush during them is only partly because such games are addictive. The more worrying reason is that meetings are insufficiently interesting. Far from encouraging us to think, they forbid us from doing so.

如果每个人都能接受我这个90%思考时间的高远目标，那么办公室生活一夜之间能就能变得更好，效率也会大大提高。所有不需要动脑筋的无用活动都不应该存在。首先，几乎所有的会议都必须取消。一些非常聪明的人们在会议期间会忍不住违反规定玩糖果粉碎传奇(Candy Crush)，这些游戏让人上瘾只是部分原因，更令人担忧的原因是这些会议不够有趣，不仅没有鼓励我们思考，反而禁止我们思考。

Yet even though I’ve just suggested a 90 per cent Think Time policy, I’m not entirely in favour of it — because I can’t see any sense in targets for thinking at all. To mark off dedicated times for thought is simply not how my brain functions — and not how any office I’ve ever been in works either.

不过，虽然我刚才建议实行90%思考时间政策，我也并非完全赞同这个政策，因为我觉得设定思考时间目标完全没有意义。划定专门的时间思考违反我大脑的运作机理，也不符合我曾任职的任何一个地方的工作方式。

If I sat down to think for an hour a day I have no doubt that within seconds my mind would have strayed to wondering what I did with the receipts for the Christmas presents I’ve just bought in a last minute panic and which I realise are so hopeless they will almost certainly end up being taken back.

如果我每天坐下来思考1个小时，那么毫无疑问，在数秒钟内，我的思绪就会飘到别处，开始琢磨我把圣诞节礼物的收据放在哪儿了，那些礼物都是刚刚在最后一刻抢着买的，我意识到，这些东西买得如此失败，最后几乎肯定得退货。

Instead, the thoughts that really matter come to me when I am doing something else, like talking to someone, riding my bike, or even — sometimes — reading emails. The only time they never come is when I’m sitting there twiddling my thumbs waiting for them.

相反，那些真正重要的想法是我在做别的事情时冒出来的，比如在与别人聊天时、骑自行车时、有时甚至是读邮件时。只有一种时候，它们绝对不会出现，那就是当我坐在那里，一边百无聊赖地摆弄着手指一边等它们的时候。

The final problem with Think Time policies is they assume that the fruits of dedicated thinking are going to be positive. In the corporate world, most of the “thoughts” that people come up with are no good whatsoever. Proof of this plops into my inbox at work at least every hour. The most recent piece of evidence bore the subject line “Make your Christmas Special . . .” — an acceptable and inoffensive start — until it went on “ . . . with 30% off on PMP Course”.

思考时间政策最后的问题是，这种政策假定，专门进行思考的成果都将是有益的。在企业界，人们提出的大多数“想法”根本就不是什么好点子。关于这一点的证据，在我工作的时候，至少每个小时都会扑通一声光临我的收件箱。最新一份证据的标题是“让你有个特别的圣诞节……”，这个开头可以接受，也不讨人厌，直到我看见了“项目管理课程7折……”

Most people’s idea of making Christmas special includes such things as ice skating on frozen lakes and cold magnums of champagne. It does not include being given a 30 per cent discount on a management course that leads to a certification in project management.

要过一个特别的圣诞节，大多数人会想到的主意有：在冰冻的湖面滑冰，或者畅饮大瓶冰镇香槟，等等。以7折的价格学习一门管理课程、最后拿到项目管理的证书，跟“特别的圣诞节”不沾边。

So what is the answer to such boneheadedness? The Armstrong solution might be to give the person responsible for such an idiotic idea a little more dedicated time to ponder. Maybe that would have helped, although I can’t help thinking a better answer would be to take the job of dreaming up new special offers away from him or her and give it to someone with a greater aptitude for thinking instead.

那么面对这种愚蠢的想法，我们该怎么办？阿姆斯特朗的解决方案可能是，让那个该为这个愚蠢主意负责的人多花一点时间专心思考。或许这能有所帮助，尽管我情不自禁地想，更好的方法可能是，不再让他（或她）负责构思“产品优惠方案”，而把这项工作交给那些对思考更有天赋的人。