加班文化適得其反 浪費人的才能

When engineers talk about asset integrity, what they usually refer to is the good practice of servicing and repairing equipment before it breaks.

當工程師談到資產完整性的時候，他們通常指的是在設備損壞前維護和修理設備的良好做法。

Companies that use a lot of machinery take this very seriously; companies that mostly just use people rarely do.

使用大量機器的企業非常重視這一點；而主要只使用人力的公司則鮮少重視此事。

Although to my knowledge no other nation than Japan has a word for death by overwork — karoshi — we probably need one.

儘管據我所知，除日本以外，沒有哪個國家有專門指代工作過度勞累所致死亡的詞語——Karoshi（過勞死），我們很可能需要一個這樣的詞。

For while it is tempting to imagine the phenomenon is unique to Japan, it may simply be that it is the first country to look deeply enough to identify it.

因爲儘管人們很容易以爲這種現象是日本獨有的，實情可能是日本是第一個看得足夠深入從而認識到這個問題的國家。

Coined in the 1970s, the word returned to Japanese newspapers last month when the Tokyo Labour bureau ruled that the suicide of Matsuri Takahashi, a young employee of the advertising agency Dentsu, had been caused by overwork.

這個在上世紀70年代發明的詞語上個月重現於日本報端，東京勞動局(Tokyo Labour bureau)裁定，廣告公司電通(Dentsu)的年輕僱員Matsuri Takahashi自殺是因工作過度勞累導致。

She had worked 105 hours of overtime in a single month.

她生前曾在一個月里加班了105個小時。

Most of the chief executives I know — predominantly in the US and UK — routinely work a 12 or 15-hour day, six or seven days a week.

我認識的大多數首席執行官——主要是在美國和英國——通常每天工作12或者15個小時，每週工作6天或者7天。

Few of them are familiar with studies that routinely show that productivity is not linear.

其中很少有人熟悉通常表明工作效率並非線性的研究。

After about 40 hours a week fatigue sets in, provoking mistakes.

在一週工作約40個小時以後，人就會開始感到疲勞，導致人出錯，然後又需要花時間來收拾爛攤子：

Any extra hours spent are needed to clear up the mess: reversing poor decisions, soothing ruffled feathers.

修正錯誤的決定，平復憤怒的情緒——到頭來是白忙活一場。

The classic, but comic, expression of this was produced by the efficiency expert, Frank Gilbreth.

有關這一點，效率專家弗蘭克.吉爾佈雷思(Frank Gilbreth)有一個經典又好笑的描述。

He found he could shave faster if he used two razors but then wasted all the time he saved covering the cuts with plasters.

他發現如果他同時使用兩片刀片刮鬍子，颳得會更快，但之後他不得不把節省出來的全部時間，浪費在用創口貼處理刀片留下的小傷口上。

While a few chief executives love to boast of their powers of endurance, many insist their jobs simply require long days, weeks and months.

儘管有少數首席執行官喜歡吹噓自己的忍耐力，很多首席官都堅稱，他們的崗位就是需要長時間工作。

They acknowledge it sets a poor example and a few have learnt to keep weekend emails stored in their outbox.

他們承認，這樹立了一個糟糕的榜樣，有少數首席執行官已經學會把在週末擬好的電子郵件儲存在發件箱裏。

But the speed with which the death, in 2013, of a Bank of America intern working in the City of London was interpreted as death by overwork showed how fully everyone knew that the economic crisis and relative scarcity of good jobs was taking its toll on those at the bottom of the heap.

但2013年在倫敦金融城(City of London)工作的那名美國銀行(Bank of America)實習生的死，如此快地被理解爲過勞死，表明每個人都完全清楚，經濟危機和好工作的相對稀缺正在摧殘那些處於金字塔底層的人。

This mirrors what Professor Michael Marmot, the British epidemiologist, discovered when he conducted a longitudinal study of 10,000 Whitehall civil servants: that stress tended to concentrate at the top and the bottom of the pyramid.

這與英國流行病學家邁克爾.馬爾莫(Michael Marmot)教授對1萬名白廳公務員進行的縱向研究的發現一致：壓力似乎集中於金字塔的頂端和底層。

But when Marianna Virtanen continued the study to look at the long-term consequences of that stress, she found working 11 or more hours a day doubled the risk of a major depressive episode.

但當瑪麗安娜.弗塔嫩(Marianna Virtanen)繼續研究這種壓力的長期後果時，她發現每天工作11個小時或者更久，會使人出現重度抑鬱期的風險加倍。

A lifetime of long hours was also associated with cognitive loss in middle years: reasoning, problem solving, creativity were all poorer.

一輩子長時間工作也與中年時期認知能力下降（推理能力、解決的問題能力和創造力都出現退化）存在相關性。

All of this damage is invisible.

這些損害都是看不見的。

If it were not — if some of the wear and tear resulted in visible injury — perhaps companies would take more care.

如果並非如此，也就是說，如果一些損害會導致可見的傷害，也許企業會更加註意。

But it is very hard for most people to accept that thinking is a physical activity, performed by the brain — which, like every organ, has limits to its capacity.

但大多數人很難接受這一觀點，即思維活動是由大腦完成的一種生理活動，而大腦，就像每一個器官一樣，它的能力是有限度的。

We can see machinery break down, we notice broken arms and legs.

我們可以看到機械損壞，我們可以注意到斷胳膊斷腿。

We do not see broken minds — until it is too late.

我們看不到破碎的心靈——直到已經爲時太晚。

A proliferation of supposed antidotes to overwork — mindfulness, resilience training — may promise some respite but few of these programmes are any kind of a cure.

正念、韌性訓練等人們以爲可以消除過勞的項目的流行，或許能帶來一些暫時的緩解，但這些項目很少能稱得上治本的對策。

Designed to increase endurance, they perpetuate the problem.

這些項目旨在提高人的忍耐力，反而會讓問題持續得更久。

We know machines have limits; we like to imagine that we do not.

我們知道機器有極限；但我們卻喜歡想象我們自身沒有極限。

Tough corporate cultures that measure performance by the hour inevitably lead to fatigue and tunnel vision, and adversely affect problem-solving.

靠工作時間來衡量員工表現的嚴酷企業文化不可避免地會導致疲勞和視野狹窄，不利於解決問題。

They are efficient in the sense that they reduce costs but dangerous in spheres where reputation and judgment count.

從減少成本的角度來看，這樣的企業文化是有效的，但在聲譽和判斷很重要的領域，這樣的企業文化很危險。

If we want creativity, originality and mastery of complex problems, we must accept the physical limitations of the human brain.

如果我們想要創造性、原創性以及掌握複雜問題，我們必須接受人腦存在生理極限。

As long as we ignore more than 100 years of research into human productivity and manage people as though they were robots with faulty batteries, we waste talent and sacrifice our own integrity.

如果我們無視100多年來對人類工作效率的研究，把人當做配備着有缺陷的電池的機器人一樣去管理，我們就浪費了人的才能，犧牲了我們自身的健康。