If time is money, we’re broke: how we waste hours on end.
如果时间就是金钱，那我们便将破产：我们竟然在不断浪费时间。
The first of my many, many time-wasting activities takes place each morning with repeated manipulations1 of the snooze button2 on my alarm clock, followed by a dilly-dallying shower and an untoward amount of time spent perusing the offerings of my closet. The snooze button alone gains me (according to my rudimentary math skills) roughly 106 more hours of sleep per year, which is great, But I’m also usually late for work and wearing an outfit that, despite the fifteen minutes I spent ruminating about it, is not really all that cute.
在所发生的众多浪费时间的活动中，第一件事就是每天早上我都要重复按下 那该死的闹钟，然后继续赖床。起床后，磨磨蹭蹭地洗个澡,接着便漫无目的地看向 衣橱里的衣服。每天赖床的时间累积起来(根据我初级的计算水平），一年大概多睡 了 106个小时,有点太多了。但可笑的是，我上班通常都会迟到,而且，不管在离家前 的15分钟我怎样思索该穿怎样的套装，最后的效果却总不尽人意。
And that’s just the morning. If I add up all the time I spend doing one semi-useless thing or another, I’m sure I would be horrified that I have blithely9 let slip away precious hour upon precious hour of my one and only earthly life. Seize the day, indeed. I’m sure if I had spent that time more constructively, I would have cured cancer, written the great American novel, negotiated peace in the Middle East, and finally gotten caught up on reading my New Yorkers — or at least figured out how Lost will end. Alas, life is simply too full of tantalizii^4 time-sucks.
那还仅仅是早上。如果将我花在这件或那件无用东西上的时间都加在一起，我 确信自己会被那个结果吓住:在我这仅有一次的人生中，自己竟然很愉快地让那无 比宝贵的一个个小时轻松溜走。事实上，我应该抓住每一天。我相信，如果我当初能 更有建设性地使用时间的话，那我将能治愈癌症，能写出本优秀的美国小说，能在 中东进行和平谈判，最后得出我们这些纽约人的理解——或者至少找出结束战争 的方法。唉！生活到处充满了稍纵即逝的时间啊。
The Closet Vortex
壁橱漩涡
What girl doesn’t long for a Carrie Bradshaw style closet, replete with the most fashionable offerings her budget will allow (and then some)? Such closets, and even smaller, simpler ones, are major culprits in terms of lost time. The average American woman spends sixty-one minutes contemplating her outfits during the course of a week. An hour, ladies. An hour. Just think of what you could accomplish if you got even half of those 3,172 minutes per year back. Where would the human race be if we were even slightly more decisive about what to wear?
女孩们并不渴望得到的像《欲望都市》里卡丽?布拉德肖式的,装满了无数最新 潮服饰的衣橱，何况各自的财政预算能允许她们这样想吗(还有其他的一些东西)? 像这种衣橱,和即使比这小点的,简单点的,都是浪费时间的罪魁祸首。在美国，平均 每位女性一周里都要花61分钟思考“自己该穿什么” 1个小时啊，女性们，1个小时！ 想想看，即使你仅仅用这一年中你浪费的3172分钟一半的时间，你能完成多少有用 的事情？如果我们在穿衣服问题上稍微更果断的话,人类的明天将会走向哪里？
Fantasy Land
幻想的国度
For the average person, daydreaming consumes 15 to 50 percent of each day. My aforementioned6 rudimentary math skills prevent me from breaking that down into actual hours and minutes, but even at the lower, 15 — 20 percent range, we’re still talking about a good chunk of our days’ being spent woolgathering 一 fantasizing about how we’d spend our imaginary lottery winnings, envisioning the moment when our boyfriends are finally going to pop the long-awaited question. Happily, some studies have suggested that daydreaming is actually a sign of creativity and intelligence, and many psychologists regard it as a healthy mental exercise, much like meditation, so it would seem to be a worthy undertaking. However, that doesn’t remove the necessity of greeting the grindstone for at least part of each day.
一个人每天会花费15% ~ 50%的时间来做白日梦。我前面提到的我那差劲的计算能力阻止我将这些时间拆分成精确的小时和分钟，但即使再低一些，在15% ~ 20%的范围内，我们依然谈论着一天当中都用来神游的一整块的时间——我们幻 想着怎么用想象的中彩票的奖金消费，想象着期待已久的我们的男朋友最后成为 了名父亲的美妙时刻。令人愉快的是，一些研究证明，做白日梦的确是富有创造力 与智慧的表现，而许多心理学家就是把做白日梦当做是让心灵更加健康的锻炼，这 和冥想很相似。所以,这看上去是一项值得从事的事业。但是，这些都不能改变一个 事实，它的确消磨了一天中一定的时间。