如果時間就是金錢,那我們便徹底破產大綱

If Time Is Money, We’re Broke: How We Waste Hours on End
如果時間就是金錢，那我們便徹底破產：我們竟然在不斷浪費時間。

The first of my many, many time-wasting activities takes place each morning with repeated manipulations of the snooze button 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.
在衆多浪費時間的活動中，每天早上我重複做的第一件事就是按下那該死的鬧鐘然後繼續賴牀。起牀後，照常洗個早，然後便漫無目的地看着衣櫥裏的衣服。每天賴牀的時間加起來（用我退化得差不多的計算水平算了下），一年大概多睡了106個小時，多得有點難以想象了 。但可笑的是，我依然遲到，而且儘管我出門前總會花15分鐘左右去思索該穿怎樣的套裝，但最後出來的效果卻不盡人意。

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 blithely 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 tantalizing time-sucks.
那僅僅是個開始呢。如果將我花在那些諸如半無用的東西上的時間加起來，我肯定會被這個事實嚇一大跳：在我僅有一次的人生中，自己竟然讓那無比寶貴的一個個小時在漫不經心中溜走。事實上，我們得把握每一天。我相信，如果我當初能把時間花在更有建設性的事情上的話，我能治癒癌症，能寫本出色的美國小說，能在中東進行和平談判，最後，通過對我們這些紐約人的理解，改變自己的看法----或者至少找出結束戰爭的方法。哎！生活的可悲僅在於太多的時間被浪費了。

The Closet Vortex
隱形的漩渦

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?
女孩們並不渴望得到的像《慾望都市》裏Carrie Bradshaw式的，被無數時尚衣服飾品裝滿的衣櫥，而且她們能支付得起嗎？像這種衣櫥，或者說小點的，簡單點的，是浪費時間的罪魁禍首。在美國，女性一週平均花51分鐘在思忖“自己該穿什麼”的問題上。乖乖，1個小時啊。試想一下，即使你僅僅用這一年你浪費的3172分鐘一半的時間，你能完成多少有用的事情？試想一下，如果我們在穿衣服問題上更加猶豫不決的話，人類的明天會變成什麼樣子？

Fantasy Land
充滿幻想的國度

For the average person, daydreaming consumes 15 to 50 percent of each day. My aforementioned 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—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.
平常人一天大約有15%-50%花在做白日夢上。我前面提到我那差勁的計算能力阻止我將這些時間拆分成精確地小時和分鐘，但甚至再低一些，在15%-20%的範圍裏，我們依然談論着一天當中有一整塊的時間都用來神遊-----幻想着我們怎麼用着想象的中彩票的獎金，展望我們的男朋友最後成爲了名父親。令人愉快的是，一些研究證明，做白日夢的確是富有創造力與智慧的表現，是許多心理學家把做白日夢當做是讓心靈更加健康的鍛鍊，這和冥想很相似， 所以，這看上去是一向值得知性的任務。但是，這些都不能改變一個事實，那便是它的確佔據了一天中一定的時間。

Retail Therapy
購物療法

It all seems harmless enough: making a quick stop for coffee on your way to the office; grabbing a bite at the salad place and perhaps running an errand at the pharmacy during your lunch hour; doing a little grocery shopping or making other necessary stops after work. Add all that up and mix it in with more discretionary retail outings, and that’s nearly six and half hours per week that the average woman spends buying stuff. (Unsurprisingly, men roll in at a lazy four hours weekly in the shopping category.) And that doesn’t even take into account the immeasurable hours we spend browsing and fondling and mulling over and justifying various buys; this is simply the time we spend making purchases at cash registers. I’ll not touch on the financial implications of this particular statistic—let’s just say it’s a miracle economic recovery is still described as sluggish.
這看上去沒什麼壞處：比如，在你去辦公室的路上稍作停留，買杯咖啡；趁着中午用餐的時間品嚐一下沙拉，或者跑到藥店買藥什麼的；下班之後到雜貨店買點東西，或者停下來做些其他事情而不馬上回家。將上述所說的加起來，再將他們和更多的隨意的購物參觀放鬆和在一起，大概一週花上6.5個小時，這世間大概就是女性一週平均買東西的時間。

The Idiot Box
電視機

Nothing drains our time reserves like the television. We’ve all been guilty of turning on the TV to catch the last quarter of the game or check to see who’s still on the island and who isn’t—and next thing you know, it’s 2 a.m. That seems like an extreme scenario—or maybe not, if you consider that the average American spends three hours a day watching TV. Twenty-four hours in a day have officially become twenty-one—I thought we needed more time, not less.
沒有什麼能比電視機更能榨乾我們的時間。我們帶着罪惡感打開電視機去看最新一季的遊戲，或者去看看島上誰生存誰死亡----下一件事你知道的，便是：天啊，已經凌晨2點了！這是個相對極端的場景，或者說，也很平常了，如果你相信美國人平均一天看3小時電視。那實際上24小時的一天已被縮成21小時了---我覺得我們需要更多的時間，而不是更少。

Something to Cry About
呼籲一下

You may not have shed many tears in the last few days, but on average, women over the age of nineteen cry for two hours a week. What sets us off? Just about anything, apparently—without even taking into account the usual hormonal fluctuations that often cause us to weep if we look at a puppy from the right angle. The top causes of tearful female outbursts are weepy movies, relationship worries, breaking up, and the death of a loved one—and, of course, plain and simple exhaustion can weaken our tear ducts’ strongholds.
也許你不會花太多的眼淚去度過最後的幾天，但女性在19歲的時候平均一週得哭上2小時左右。什麼惹我們了？任何事情都有可能，很明顯的-----如果我們從正確，公正的角度看待一個幼小的動物，我們甚至不會考慮荷爾蒙激素引起我們心情起伏，隨即哭泣等問題。能讓一位女性的淚腺瞬間崩潰的“主犯”是催人落淚的電影，緊張的關係，和男朋友分手，愛人去世----當然，疼痛和筋疲力盡的感覺也能削弱也能讓女性的淚腺變得脆弱。

Between the TV, Facebook, deciding what to wear, shopping, daydreaming, and weeping, it’s a wonder we get anything done at all. My rudimentary math skills suggest that the average American woman spends roughly 3,311 hours each year indulging in all of these activities at least to some extent. There are 8,766 hours in a year. That means that almost half our time is “wasted,” sucked into the vortex of our modern world and all of its tempting distractions. Or you could just call it “living.” Tomato, tomahto.
穿梭在電視，facebood，決定穿什麼，購物，做白日夢，哭泣的循環之中，如果我們能做成任何事情，還真是一個奇蹟。我蹩腳的計算告訴我，美國女性平均一年（從某種程度上最少）花上3311小時沉浸在上述這些活動中。1年有8766個小時。這意味着一年又一半的時間是被白白浪費的，被無情地捲入現代社會和充滿誘惑力的精神散漫的漩渦中。或者，你姑且能將它成爲“生存”。美女們啊，美女們。