What do the men and women who govern us do all day? They sit in front of their screens and gawp at Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, YouTube, Amazon, eBay, Flickr and TripAdvisor. A list released last year of the websites most visited by British MPs reveals that what they get up to at work makes them no different to the rest of the population: they cyberloaf.
那些为我们当家做主的男士和女士们整天在做什么？答案是他们整天呆坐在屏幕前，盯着推特(Twitter)、Facebook、Gmail、YouTube、亚马逊(Amazon)、eBay、Flickr、以及TripAdvisor等网站。就在去年，有人公布了一个英国议员最常去网站的清单。该清单披露了一个事实：这些英国议员上班时所做的事和其他人没什么两样——他们也在同样网上闲逛。
Even the young bankers who work such long hours that their employers have started banning them from coming to the office for the entire weekend seem to do more loafing than lending. At a recent conference I heard the heads of HR at two top investment banks complaining that data from these bankers’ computers show that less than half of their time in the office was spent on work. A study from Kansas State University backs this up: the average US worker spends 60-80 per cent of their time online at work doing things that are quite unrelated to their jobs.
再看看另一个群体——年轻的银行家。这些银行家的工作时间如此之长，以至于他们的雇主已开始禁止他们在周末上班。然而即使对于他们来说，花在网上溜达的时间似乎也比花在借贷业务上的时间长。在最近的一次会议上，我曾听到两家顶级投资银行人力资源部门的主管抱怨说，从这些银行家的电脑中获得的数据表明，他们上班时只有不到一半的时间用于工作。堪萨斯州立大学(Kansas State University)的研究也支持这一结论：美国员工平均有60%到80%的上班时间被用于在网上做与工作没什么关系的事。
David Ryan Polgar, a US pundit and lawyer, has come up with a metaphor to describe our new affliction. He says we are getting mentally obese: we binge on junk information, with the result that our brains become so sluggish they are good for nothing except more bingeing.
身为律师的美国专家戴维•瑞恩•波尔格(David Ryan Polgar)曾用一个比喻来形容我们所受的新式折磨。他表示，我们正患上一种心理肥胖症：对垃圾信息的疯狂摄入令我们的大脑变得如此迟钝，以至于除了继续摄入更多垃圾信息，其他什么事都做不了。
The obvious answer is to go on a crash diet, reducing the amount of junk information we consume. Having tried – and failed – over the past couple of years to resist the temptation of Twitter through mere willpower, I’m in search of something stronger. Various readers and colleagues have pointed me towards the hundreds of apps that are supposed to help with the addiction, but until now I have resisted on the grounds that the answer to technology overload surely cannot be still more technology.
对于这个问题，显而易见的答案是实行一次强力“节食计划”，减少我们对垃圾信息的消费量。过去几年，我曾试图只依靠意志力抵御推特的诱惑，结果没能成功。所以，我开始寻找更有效戒除网瘾的办法。读者和同事们向我推荐了几百种旨在帮人戒除网瘾的应用。不过，到目前为止我一直在抵制这些工具，因为我认为对于技术过载的问题，解决办法当然不能是依赖更多技术工具。
Now recognising myself as mentally obese, I have decided to give them a go. The target is simple: to maximise work done in the office and minimise time spent looking at pictures on Twitter of people carrying dogs in baby slings. I don’t want to go cold turkey on cyberloafing, as tests have shown that in small quantities it perks you up. I just want to learn moderation.
如今，在认识到我患上心理肥胖症之后，我决定试试这些工具。我的目标很简单：一方面尽可能提升我上班时的工作量；另一方面则是要把我在推特上观看无聊照片（比如某人用婴儿背带背小狗之类的照片）的时间压缩到最短。我并不想突然之间完全戒除上网闲逛的习惯，我只想学会有节制地上网。因为有测试表明，人只要上网逛一小会就能感觉精神饱满。
To this end I started 2014 by downloading five apps: Workrave, Rescue Time, Nanny for Google Chrome, Focus Booster and Remember The Milk. The initial result was disappointing. The computer wouldn’t sync to my BlackBerry and I kept forgetting the login details for the different sites. Worse still, a whole new way of being unproductive opened up to me: I started obsessively checking my progress on the productivity apps.
出于这个目标，2014年伊始我下载了五款应用：Workrave、Rescue Time、Nanny for Google Chrome、Focus Booster和Remember The Milk。初步实验结果令人失望。电脑无法与我的黑莓(BlackBerry)同步，我总是忘记不同网站的登陆信息。更糟糕的是，我又出现了一种全新的低效行为：我开始着魔似地查看那些增效应用，看自己取得了多大进步。
Nanny for Google Chrome
“Nanny for Google Chrome”
The first one I tried was Nanny for Google Chrome – which does for information what the Atkins or the Dukan diet did for food, by outlawing or restricting certain websites. My own Bermuda triangle of productivity is Twitter, email and eBay, and so I told the app to allow me respectively 15, 30 and five minutes on each. Alas such limits were broken almost at once, causing a message to flash up that said in huge, shouty type: “Shouldn’t you be working? The site you are attempting to access has been blocked by Chrome Nanny.” My wrist thus slapped, I became at once a bolshie teenager. How dare my computer tell me what to do? After some searching, I found a button to disable it, which I clicked with glee. Twitter seemed more tempting than ever.
我测试的第一个应用是Nanny for Google Chrome。对于信息的摄入来说，这个应用的做法就像阿特金斯减肥法(Atkins diet)和杜坎减肥法(Dukan diet)对人们摄取的食物所做得那样，它禁止或限制人们对特定网站的访问。对我来说，降低工作效率的三大敌人是推特、电子邮件和eBay，因此我把该应用设置为使用这三者的时间上限分别为15分钟、30分钟和5分钟。时间上限差不多要突破时，一条消息闪耀着蹦出来，用震耳欲聋的声音吼道：“还不工作么？您要上的网站已被Chrome Nanny封禁。”于是，我就像是挨了板子，一瞬间就变成了一个不听话的十几岁小孩。我的电脑怎么敢指使我该做什么？于是我找了半晌，总算找到一个能禁用该软件的按钮。接着，我欣然点击这个按钮。就这样，推特似乎又变得前所未有地吸引人。
Workrave
“Workrave”
The next kind of information diet works by getting you off the screen altogether. Workrave is a bit like the 5:2 diet – which forces you to fast two days a week. It features a cute little lightbulb with a smiley face that warns: “Time for a micro-break”, followed by increasingly shrill and distracting warnings, culminating in the whole system freezing up so you have to take a break, like it or not. This is maddening, especially when it happens at the very moment you had finally stopped skiving and were getting down to some work.
第二种信息节食方案的思路是让你干脆离开屏幕。Workrave的原理有点像5比2节食法(5:2 diet)，它迫使你每周保证两天的高效率工作。该应用的一大特性，是一个带有笑脸的可爱小灯泡，该灯泡会警告说：“休息一会吧”。接着，就是越来越刺耳、越来越扰乱人心的警告，直到将整个系统冻结。于是，不论你喜欢不喜欢，你都不得不休息一会。这种做法让人完全无法接受，而如果这种状况就出现在你刚刚停止闲逛，正要干点活儿的时候，就更加令人疯狂了。
Remember The Milk
“Remember The Milk”
Having decided that apps which rely on stick were not my thing, I turned to those that use carrot. Remember The Milk is a glorified system of online lists, which invites you to write down everything you want to get done and set a deadline. When you have done them you tick them off, and send bragging tweets about how well you are doing.
在确信“大棒”式应用不是我的菜之后，我开始试用“胡萝卜”式应用。Remember The Milk是网上各种推荐清单里备受推崇的一个系统，它会让你写下每件想做的事，并设置一个截止日期。每完成一件事就划掉一项，并发出一条夸耀自己成就的推特消息。
Remember The Milk is a relatively sound concept, though not as sound as writing a list on a piece of paper – which requires no password or logging on, and the action of crossing something off a list with a pencil is much more satisfying than clicking a box on the computer. A list has the even bigger advantage that you cannot automatically shower your followers with junk tweets that say: “I completed 2,401 tasks with @rememberthemilk in 2013.”
Remember The Milk的理念听上去比较合理，不过它的可行性不如一纸清单——往纸上写字不需要登录和输入密码，而且在纸上划掉一项比在电脑上点击方格能产生更大的满足感。比起该应用，纸制清单更大的优势在于，你不能自动刷屏、让粉丝们看到“2013年我用@rememberthemilk完成了2401项任务”之类垃圾推特消息。
Rescue Time
“Rescue Time”
More promising is Rescue Time, which is the Weight Watchers of information diets. It is a data-gathering system with targets, which monitors everything you do on the computer and displays the results on a pretty dashboard. A “productivity pulse” records how hard you work at different times during the day, and how well you are doing compared with your targets and with previous days’ performance. Thus I discover that I am unproductive in the early afternoon – which I knew anyway – and that today I did better than yesterday, which I also knew already. The app encourages you to spend too long poring over the data, which is not terribly productive. Also, the data show if I am emailing, but do not know whether I am doing productive emailing or gossiping with a friend.
相比之下更有戏的应用是Rescue Time，该应用是慧俪轻体(Weight Watchers)节食计划的信息版。该应用是一个设立了目标的数据收集系统，它会监控你在电脑上做的所有事，并把结果显示在一个漂亮的面板上。在一个名为“效率脉搏(prudctivity pulse)”的项目下，记录着你在一天不同时段工作的努力程度，把它与你的目标以及你头一天的表现相比较，并记录下比较的结果。就这样，我发现我在下午早些时候效率很低——不过这一点我已经知道了。我还了解到我今天比昨天表现好——这一点我同样已经知道了。这个应用会鼓励你花大量时间仔细审视统计数据，这不利于提高效率。此外，这些数据能显示出我是否在发送电子邮件，却无法判断我是在发送与工作有关的电子邮件，还是在与朋友闲聊。
Focus Booster
“Focus Booster”
Having rejected four diets, I have at last found one that works for me. Focus Booster is beautifully simple and involves neither stick nor carrot.
在拒绝了以上四种“节食计划”之后，我最终找到了一个适合我的应用。Focus Booster是一个非常简单的应用，它与大棒和胡萝卜都不沾边儿。
It is a little timer that sits at the top of the screen and runs for 25 minutes, after which you can take a five minute break. You press start, and a line slowly advances across the screen reminding you that during that time you should be focusing. Even I can concentrate for 25 minutes, and for some reason I cannot explain I have not cheated once. Strange though it seems, my cyber skiving problem appears to be miraculously solved.
这个应用会在屏幕顶端显示一个小计时器，它每走动25分钟之后，都你可以休息5分钟。当你点击开始按钮之后，屏幕上会缓慢飘过一句话，提醒你在这段时间内应该集中注意力。有了这个应用，连我这样的人都能在25分钟里集中注意力，而且出于某种无法解释的理由，我一次也没有作弊过。尽管该应用看起来似乎有点奇怪，我上网闲逛的问题确实奇迹般地得到了解决。
However, it is early days, and miracle diets tend not to work for long; in time I may slip backwards and start gaining mental flab again. Mr Polgar warns that curing mental obesity is tougher than physical obesity because you cannot tell how you are doing by looking in the mirror.
不过，现在还只是开头，那种神效节食计划往往都不能长久有效。随着时间的推移，我可能会重蹈覆辙，再次出现心理“赘肉”。波尔格警告说，治疗心理肥胖症比治疗生理肥胖症更难，因为你无法通过照镜子判断自己做得如何。
Yet he says technology will soon make this easier. Various wearable products – including a headband called Melon – are about to come to market that measure brain waves and display the data on your screen, telling you when your brain has got so torpid from excessive YouTubing that action is needed.
但他表示，不久以后，技术进步将令这一过程变得更容易。多种即将上市的可穿戴产品（其中包括一种名为Melon的头部饰带）能测量人的脑电波，并在屏幕上显示相关数据。当你因为看多了YoutTube网站视频而头脑迟钝时，这些产品会提醒你需要采取行动了。
Possibly that will make a difference. Yet I suspect a better answer lies not with technology but with people.
也许这类设备能起到明显效果。不过，我怀疑这个问题更好的答案不在于技术，而在于人。
A highly efficient young acquaintance tells me that neither apps nor alarms on her phone are powerful enough to make her stop work at 6.30pm.
一位和我相熟的高效率年轻人告诉我，不论是手机上的应用还是闹钟，都不足以让她在下午6点半停下手头工作。
The only thing that succeeds is a call from the woman she uses as her occasional personal assistant. It does not matter that she has paid the woman to phone her; it is the sound of a human voice that makes the difference.
唯一能做到这一点的，是偶尔当她私人助理的一位女士给她打来的电话。这位女士给她打电话是因为收了她的钱，不过这一点并不重要。真正起作用的，是这样真人发出的声音。
Equally, when I told a friend that Focus Booster was changing my life, she looked unmoved. With a boss who was forever looking over her shoulder, the need for an app to keep her mentally fit was zero.
同样，当我告诉一位朋友Focus Booster正在改变我的生活时，她对此无动于衷。这位朋友成天在老板眼皮底下活动，她完全没必要借助某款应用来维持良好的心理状态。