“少而精”的新年目标

Typically, people start a new year resolved to achieve more than the previous year.

通常情况下，人们会在新年伊始踌躇满志，决心实现比上一年更多的成就。

How, though? Some people make what I have always thought is a frankly strange commitment to “say yes to everything”. Others do the opposite, resolving to say no more frequently. In reality, either of those extremes could lead to bad outcomes.

然而怎么去做到这一点呢？有些人决心“对一切都说可以”——我始终认为这种决心相当古怪。其他人则相反，决心更频繁地说不。在现实中，这两种极端都可能导致糟糕的结果。

Take the commitment to be busy, busy, busy all the time. Workaholism beckons for those who cannot turn down requests. Being absorbed in the task can mitigate workaholism’s worst effects, according to an Academy of Management Discoveries study published last year, but still anxiety about the job or obsessive ambition paves a pathway to health problems.

拿一直保持忙碌状态的决心来说。“工作狂”召唤着那些无法拒绝请求的人。根据去年发表在《管理学会发现》(Academy of Management Discoveries)上的一篇研究报告，专注于任务可能减轻工作狂的最糟糕影响，但对岗位忧心忡忡或者过于野心勃勃仍然可能导致健康问题。

Accumulating multiple commitments poses other risks, too. If you try to do more than one thing, you will not be as efficient as if you concentrated on a single task. A 2001 paper found that people toggling between tasks took longer to solve complex maths problems than those who concentrated on one job. A separate 2015 study of Milanese judges determined that those who tried to handle several cases simultaneously took longer to complete them.

决心做多件事情还会带来其他风险。如果你尝试做不止一件事情，那么你就不会像专注于一项任务那样达到高效率。2001年发表的一篇论文发现，与那些致力于一项工作的人相比，忙于在多项任务之间切换的人，要花费更长时间来解决复杂的数学问题。2015年对米兰法官的另一项研究表明，那些试图同时处理多宗案件的法官，结果花费了更长时间才完成审理。

Still, the cult of busyness is a powerful one. If you started this year with a view to doing less, you will quickly have felt guilty about the jobs you turned down — and the possible missed opportunities. I am always reminded of overachieving sitcom shrink Frasier’s retort, when his brother Niles reminds him that “less is more”: “Yes — but if less is more, think how much more ‘more’ will be!”

话虽如此，人们对忙碌的崇拜是强大的。如果你在新的一年以减少工作为目标，你很快就会对自己拒绝的工作、以及由此可能错失的机遇感到内疚。我总是想起情景喜剧中过于进取的心理医生弗莱泽(Frasier)的反驳，当他的兄弟奈尔斯(Niles)提醒他“更少就是更多”的时候，他脱口而出道：“没错——但如果更少就是更多，那么想想‘更多’将会多出多少吧！”