Like everyone else, I am losing the attention war. I toggle over to my emails when I should be working. I text when I should be paying attention to the people in front of me. I spend hours looking at mildly diverting stuff on YouTube. ("Look, there's a bunch of guys who can play 'Billie Jean' on beer bottles!")
就像所有人一样，我也无法集中注意力。我在应该工作时，打开了邮件；应该关注面前的人时，我在发短信。我花几个小时的时间，在YouTube上观看一些还算有趣的视频。（“看，有一群人能用啤酒瓶演奏《比利·金》[Billie Jean]！”）
And, like everyone else, I've nodded along with the prohibition sermons imploring me to limit my information diet. Stop multitasking! Turn off the devices at least once a week!
就像所有人一样，对于那些禁令一般的说教，我点头同意——要减少接触的信息！不要再同时做几件事了！关掉那些设备，一周至少一次！

And, like everyone else, these sermons have had no effect. Many of us lead lives of distraction, unable to focus on what we know we should focus on. According to a survey reported in an Op-Ed article on Sunday in The Times by Tony Schwartz and Christine Porath, 66 percent of workers aren't able to focus on one thing at a time. Seventy percent of employees don't have regular time for creative or strategic thinking while at work.
就像所有人一样，这种说教没有效果。我们中的很多人都处于注意力涣散的状态，无法把注意力集中到应该关注的事情上。托尼·舒瓦茨(Tony Schwartz)和克里斯蒂娜·波拉特(Christine Porath)周日在《纽约时报》发表的一篇观点文章中提到了一项调查，调查显示66%的员工无法每次专注于一件事。70%的员工在工作时没有定期进行创新或战略思考的时间。
Since the prohibition sermons don't work, I wonder if we might be able to copy some of the techniques used by the creatures who are phenomenally good at learning things: children.
鉴于禁令式的说教没有效果，我在想我们能够借鉴儿童使用的技巧，毕竟他们非常善于学东西。
I recently stumbled across an interview in The Paris Review with Adam Phillips, who was a child psychologist for many years. First, Phillips says, in order to pursue their intellectual adventures, children need a secure social base:
我最近无意间看到了《巴黎评论》(Paris Review)对资深儿童心理学家亚当·菲利普斯(Adam Phillips)的采访。菲利普斯表示，首先，为了进行求知的探索之旅，儿童需要一个安全的社会基础：
"There's something deeply important about the early experience of being in the presence of somebody without being impinged upon by their demands, and without them needing you to make a demand on them. And that this creates a space internally into which one can be absorbed. In order to be absorbed one has to feel sufficiently safe, as though there is some shield, or somebody guarding you against dangers such that you can 'forget yourself' and absorb yourself, in a book, say."
“有人在场，但他又不会以自己的需求妨碍你，也不需要你向他提出要求——成长初期有这样的体验是十分重要的。这就创造了一个可以使人全神贯注的内心空间。要想全神贯注，人们必须感到足够安全，就好像有盾牌保护，或者有人帮你抵御危险，比如，你可以‘忘记自我'，完全沉浸在书中。”
Second, before they can throw themselves into their obsessions, children are propelled by desires so powerful that they can be frightening. "One of the things that is interesting about children is how much appetite they have," Phillips observes. "How much appetite they have — but also how conflicted they can be about their appetites. Anybody who's got young children ... will remember that children are incredibly picky about their food. ...
第二，在全身心投入之前，儿童会受到欲望的有力推动，这种欲望强大到让人惊恐。“关于儿童的一件趣事是，他们的胃口有多大，”菲利普斯说。“不仅是他们的胃口有多大，还有他们的胃口会在多大程度上让他们感到纠结。任何有小孩的人都会记得，儿童对食物非常挑剔……”
"One of the things it means is there's something very frightening about one's appetite. So that one is trying to contain a voraciousness in a very specific, limited, narrowed way. ... .An appetite is fearful because it connects you with the world in very unpredictable ways. ... Everybody is dealing with how much of their own alivenesss they can bear and how much they need to anesthetize themselves."
“这意味着一个人的欲望有非常令人害怕的地方。所以，人们会努力以一种非常具体的、受限的、偏狭的方式来克制欲望……之所以说欲望可怕，是因为它能以十分出人意料的方式将你和这个世界连接起来……每个人都需要面对这样的问题：自己可以拿出多大的活力，需要在多大程度上麻醉自己。”
Third, children are not burdened by excessive self-consciousness: "As young children, we listen to adults talking before we understand what they're saying. And that's, after all, where we start — we start in a position of not getting it." Children are used to living an emotional richness that can't be captured in words. They don't worry about trying to organize their lives into neat little narratives. Their experience of life is more direct because they spend less time on interfering thoughts about themselves.
第三，儿童没有自我意识过重的负担：“我们还是小孩的时候，在理解大人所说的话之前，需要先听他们讲话。这毕竟就是我们最初的处境——刚开始时，我们并不理解。”儿童习惯了体验到丰富的情感，但却无法用语言来表达。他们并不担心要把自己的生活组织起来，整理成简单的叙述。他们的生活体验更加直接，因为他们不会花那么多时间，触碰关于自己的想法。
The lesson from childhood, then, is that if you want to win the war for attention, don't try to say "no" to the trivial distractions you find on the information smorgasbord; try to say "yes" to the subject that arouses a terrifying longing, and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else.
童年的经历告诉我们，如果你想在注意力之战中获胜，就不要对信息大杂烩中发现的那些琐碎干扰说“不”；而是要试着对勾起那种可怕欲望的东西说“是”，然后让这种可怕的欲望将其他东西推开。
The way to discover a terrifying longing is to liberate yourself from the self-censoring labels you began to tell yourself over the course of your mis-education. These formulas are stultifying, Phillips argues: "You can only recover your appetite, and appetites, if you can allow yourself to be unknown to yourself. Because the point of knowing oneself is to contain one's anxieties about appetite."
发现一种可怕欲望的方式就是，把你自己从自我局限的标签中解放出来——你经常会在误解自己的过程中，给自己贴上各种标签。这些条条框框往往单调乏味，菲利普斯认为：“只有面对自己不为人知的一面，你才能找回自己的欲望（或许不止一个）。因为了解自己的意义就在于遏制因为欲望而产生的焦虑。”
Thus: Focus on the external objects of fascination, not on who you think you are. Find people with overlapping obsessions. Don't structure your encounters with them the way people do today, through brainstorming sessions (those don't work) or through conferences with projection screens.
所以：要关注能吸引你的外部事物，而不是你认为自己是怎样的人。去寻找一些与你有相同喜好的人。不要用人们现在常用的方式来与他们交流——比如“头脑风暴”（那没什么用）或者是挂着投影屏幕的会议。
Instead look at the way children learn in groups. They make discoveries alone, but bring their treasures to the group. Then the group crowds around and hashes it out. In conversation, conflict, confusion and uncertainty can be metabolized and digested through somebody else. If the group sets a specific problem for itself, and then sets a tight deadline to come up with answers, the free digression of conversation will provide occasions in which people are surprised by their own minds.
看看孩子们是如何通过小组进行学习的。他们会独自进行发现，但是会把自己的发现带到小组中去。然后小组成员会聚集起来，通过讨论来解决问题。在对话当中，我们可以通过他人来解决和消化冲突、困惑和不确定性。如果讨论组本身设定了一个具体的问题，同时也设置了一个得出解答的期限，那么人们在随意交谈的过程中，可能就会对自己的想法感到惊奇。
The information universe tempts you with mildly pleasant but ultimately numbing diversions. The only way to stay fully alive is to dive down to your obsessions six fathoms deep. Down there it's possible to make progress toward fulfilling your terrifying longing, which is the experience that produces the joy.
信息世界用适度的快乐引诱你，但这些东西根本上都是令人麻木的分神物。唯一能让你真正保持生机的办法，就是深入挖掘你痴迷的东西。在那里，你或许能朝满足自己可怖的欲望前进几步。这就是能带来愉悦的体验。