拖延症患者注意 這個APP可以幫你克服"懶癌"

Human beings waste an awful lot of time. Consider my process for writing this article: Begin writing, check email, make coffee, write some more, drink coffee, peruse Facebook, take a meaningless personality quiz (only to confirm what I already knew), tell myself I shouldn’t procrastinate, write more, check email again, respond to a non-pressing message, and finally, get up to make more coffee. Believe it or not, at some point I actually finished writing the thing.

人類把很多時間都浪費在了無謂的事情上。拿我寫這篇文章的過程爲例：我先是寫下幾個句子，然後收收電子郵件，泡杯咖啡，再寫兩句，喝口咖啡，然後上上Facebook，再做一個毫無意義的個性測試（只是爲了確認一些我已經知道的事實），然後我告訴自己不能再拖延了，然後再一鼓作氣寫下兩段，然後再收收郵件，回一兩條無關緊要的消息，最後起身再泡一杯咖啡。不管你信不信，我最後居然還是寫完了這篇文章。

I have plenty of guilt about my shameful time management skills, but I’m afraid that I may have also contributed to what Dan Ariely, the DukeUniversity professor and renowned behavioral economist, describes as his “marginal depression” about humans’ wasted potential.

我對自己糟糕的時間管理能力感到非常羞愧。杜克大學（Duke University）教授、知名行爲經濟學家丹o艾瑞里曾經把人類浪費時間的傾向稱爲“邊緣抑鬱症”，恐怕我就是患者之一。

“You think about the amount of human creativity and human ability to do good and the amount of progress we can make and you see what people end up doing,” Ariely told me in an interview last week. “They’re just kind of squandering their time in all sorts of terrible ways and not fulfilling their own happiness, not doing anything useful. The human stupidity really weighs on me. It’s like a depression—a marginal depression.”

艾瑞里在上週的一次採訪中對我說：“我們不妨思考一下，人類有多少創意，有多少幹正經事的能力，有多少進步的空間，再看看人們最後都在做什麼。他們把大量的時間花在各種糟糕的事情上，而沒有去追求自己的幸福，沒有去做任何有用的事。人類的愚蠢的確讓我很苦惱。它就像某種抑鬱症——邊緣抑鬱症。”

Ariely, whose first book Predictably Irrational highlighted how painfully incompetent we are at making optimal financial decisions (and poked holes in the theory of supply and demand), has been researching human fallibility for years. (No wonder the guy is a little despondent.) But there is reason for a small, newfound source of hope. Along with Stanford University computer science professor Yoav Shoham and Jacob Bank, a Stanford doctoral candidate, Ariely has co-founded a company that aims to help people make better use of their most precious resource—time.

艾瑞里研究人類不靠譜的行爲已經很多年了（難怪這哥們兒有點鬱悶）。他的第一本書《怪誕行爲學》（Predictably Irrational）揭示了我們在做最佳財務決策方面是多麼的無能（並且該書還找到了供需理論的漏洞）。他的研究給治癒“拖延症”帶來了一絲小小的希望。他與斯坦福大學（Stanford University）計算機科學教授約阿夫o肖漢姆和斯坦福大學博士研究生雅各布o班克一道，創辦了一家公司，旨在讓人們更好地利用他們最寶貴的資源——時間。

The trio’s first product is an application called Timeful, a name that their Mountain View, Calif-based company shares. At first glance, the iOS app seems like a slightly souped-up calendar tool: it automatically synchronizes with existing calendars and has a familiar interface. But the app also instructs users to pick from a list of health- and happiness-minded tasks—running, flossing, calling Mom or Dad—in addition to the usual personal or work-related to-do list. It then incorporates all of that data, which can include sleep patterns and designated productive times of the day, to suggest time slots for everything. “Figuring out what to do with your time is a really complex computational problem,” Ariely says.

這家公司的總部位於加州的山景城，它的第一款產品是一個名叫Timeful的應用，可以在iOS平臺上下載。第一眼看過去，Timeful有點像一個加強版的日曆應用：它可以自動與你的現有日曆同步，而且界面也和普通日曆應用差不多。不過這款應用會要求用戶列出一張與健康或幸福有關的任務清單，比如跑步、用牙線清潔牙齒、給父母打電話等等，此外也有與工作或生活有關的日常任務清單。此外它還包含了睡眠模式，並且你還可以指定一天的某個時間段爲最有效率的時間。整合了以上所有信息之後，這款應用便會提供一份日程建議表，將一天的每件事安排得井井有條。艾瑞里表示：“要確定怎樣合理安排你的時間，的確是個非常複雜的計算問題。”

Much to my relief, Ariely posits that we are pretty much all unable to take all factors into account when deciding what to do, and when. Faced with myriad big tasks and smaller to-do list items, plus the difficulty of estimating how long it will take us to complete something and which time of day we’re best able to focus, we often turn to the easiest task at hand: re-reading unanswered emails or updating one’s Facebook status.

讓我頗感安慰的是，艾瑞里指出，人們在決定何時做什麼事時，很少會把所有因素都考慮進去。人們一想到前頭還有千頭萬緒的大事小情等着自己，往往就開始頭痛。再加上我們經常搞不清幹完某件事需要多長時間，也不知道自己在一天的幾點到幾點幹事最專心，因此我們往往會先做手頭上最簡單的任務——再看一遍還沒回復的電子郵件，或是更新一下Facebook。

Translation: We procrastinate. A lot.

換句話說：我們都是嚴重的拖延症患者。

Making matters worse is the fact that most of today’s digital calendars aren’t well-equipped to remind us of the kinds of things we typically do outside of work but could possibly do during work—like calling Mom and Dad, running, or even flossing. In other words, today’s calendar apps seem to lack the smarts or focus in providing a more holistic view of our day, incorporating both what we need to do (like writing an article) and what we should aspire to do (like go for a lunchtime run).

有些事情我們通常放在工作以外的時間做，但忽視了它們也有在工作時間做的可能，比如給父母打電話、跑步甚至是清潔牙齒。但是如今的大多數電子日曆，並沒有先進到能夠見縫插針地替我們把這些事安排到工作時間裏。換句話說，現有的電子日曆應用依然不夠智能，無法通盤考慮如何利用一整天的時間，無法把我們需要做的事情（比如寫材料）和我們應該想要做的事情（比如利用午休時間跑步）結合起來。

“The calendar is great to represent meetings,” Ariely says. “But we want to achieve many more things in life than meetings.” And yet, when we see an open slot in our calendar, he says, we think we can fill it with yet another meeting.

艾瑞利也指出：“日曆應用在提醒會議安排上表現得很好，但是除了會議之外，我們在生活中想要完成的事情還有很多。”可現在我們一看到日曆上有空閒的時間，首先想到的就是再安排一個會議。

Teaching someone how to make better use of their time doesn’t seem to work—so if an app automatically finds time for you to do the things you need to, want to, and should do, you are more likely to actually get them done. Therein lies the behavioral science at work in Timeful, with a few technological twists to help facilitate it.

教別人如何更好地利用他們的時間是不管用的。如果一款應用可以自動爲你安排時間，告訴你何時去做你需要做的事、想要做的事和應該做的事，那麼你真正完成這些事的可能性就會更高，這就是Timeful背後的行爲科學原理。當然，要真正實現這些功能，也離不開技術上的一些“絕活”。

“The system needs to capture all of the things that are vying for your time,” says Bank, who serves as the company’s chief executive. “And it needs to help you make time for them.” According to the company, Timeful’s scheduling suggestions are based on a so-called Intention Rank, an algorithm that uses machine learning to rank activities within time slots. Underneath it is a data model—Timeful calls it its “Intention Genome”—that breaks down intentions to basic components and classifies them.

該公司的首席執行官班克表示：“首先，系統需要捕捉所有佔用我們時間的事情，然後它要幫你安排做這些事的時間。”據該公司表示，Timeful的日程安排主要是根據一種叫做“意向排名”的算法計算出來的，這種算法使用了機器學習技術來在時間空窗內安排活動。“意向排名”的基礎是所謂的“意向基因”，它會把我們的意向分解成基本的元素並進行分類。

“With many [other] productivity tools, you work for the system rather than the system working for you,” says Shoham, who has co-founded (and sold) two previous startups. He adds that the Timeful calendar is just the first app for the company, which raised nearly $7 million in Series A funding earlier this year. Down the road, Timeful could integrate data from wearables and other information in order to make more informed suggestions to users.

公司的另一名創始人肖漢姆表示：“Timeful還包含了很多其它的效率工具，可以說是你爲系統工作，而不是系統爲你工作。”肖漢姆還表示，Timeful日曆應用只是該公司開發的第一款應用。該公司今年年初剛從第一輪融資中籌集到700萬美元。未來Timeful還可以整合可穿戴設備和其它渠道的數據，以便爲用戶提供更合理的建議。

Like any new productivity tool, there is a bit of a time-consuming learning curve with Timeful. The app doesn’t take long to set up, but it does take a while for the user to get used to having an interface that incorporates both a traditional calendar and a suggested list of tasks, some of which don’t have a clear beginning and end (such as laundry). The more information and preferences you feed the app—which, incidentally, takes more time—the better it will theoretically make suggestions tailored to you.

像其它效率工具一樣，Timeful也有一條學習曲線，需要一定的時間才能得心應手地使用。這款應用安裝起來並不麻煩，但是它既有傳統電子日曆的界面，又有一個系統建議的任務清單，有些任務並沒有明確的開始和結束時間（比如洗衣服），用戶要想適應這款應用還是要花些時間的。你爲這款應用提供的信息和參數越多（這些需要花時間），理論上講它爲你建議的任務清單就更適合你的實際情況。

Here’s another downer: Timeful arrives in a category bursting with calendar and productivity apps. And really, who has time to evaluate them based on algorithmic superiority? We’re all too busy tackling much more important tasks—like which pizza topping most closely matches our personality.

艾瑞里短期內可能還難以從他的“邊緣抑鬱症”恢復過來，他表示：“一個人要想學會管理好自己的時間，本身就需要很長時間。”說這話時，聲音中還帶着一絲挫敗感。（雖然憑藉這款應用，艾瑞里可能成功地幫助人們解決了時間管理問題，但人性中的其他弱點仍然讓他整夜憂思難眠。他喜歡指出，人類有44%的死亡是由糟糕的決策直接或間接導致的。）

Inexplicably, I got mushrooms—about the only food that I hate with a passion. I’m sure there’s good reason for it, but I’ve got another pot of coffee brewing, and I’m pretty sure I just saw another email come in.

另外還有一點也比較令人沮喪：Timeful所在的領域早已充斥了大量的日曆和效率應用。說真的，誰有時間來比較它們的算法誰好誰壞呢？我們都忙着幹更重要的事——比如在心理測試中研究在匹薩餅上放哪種食材更符合我們的性格。