雙語財經新聞 第52期:如果時間就是金錢(1)
If time is money, we’re broke: how we waste hours on end.
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.
在所發生的衆多浪費時間的活動中，第一件事就是每天早上我都要重複按下 那該死的鬧鐘，然後繼續賴牀。起牀後，磨磨蹭蹭地洗個澡,接着便漫無目的地看向 衣櫥裏的衣服。每天賴牀的時間累積起來(根據我初級的計算水平），一年大概多睡 了 106個小時,有點太多了。但可笑的是，我上班通常都會遲到,而且，不管在離家前 的15分鐘我怎樣思索該穿怎樣的套裝，最後的效果卻總不盡人意。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 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.
那還僅僅是早上。如果將我花在這件或那件無用東西上的時間都加在一起，我 確信自己會被那個結果嚇住:在我這僅有一次的人生中，自己竟然很愉快地讓那無 比寶貴的一個個小時輕鬆溜走。事實上，我應該抓住每一天。我相信，如果我當初能 更有建設性地使用時間的話，那我將能治癒癌症，能寫出本優秀的美國小說，能在 中東進行和平談判，最後得出我們這些紐約人的理解——或者至少找出結束戰爭 的方法。唉！生活到處充滿了稍縱即逝的時間啊。
The Closet Vortex
壁櫥漩渦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》裏卡麗?布拉德肖式的,裝滿了無數最新 潮服飾的衣櫥，何況各自的財政預算能允許她們這樣想嗎(還有其他的一些東西)? 像這種衣櫥,和即使比這小點的,簡單點的,都是浪費時間的罪魁禍首。在美國，平均 每位女性一週裏都要花61分鐘思考“自己該穿什麼” 1個小時啊，女性們，1個小時！ 想想看，即使你僅僅用這一年中你浪費的3172分鐘一半的時間，你能完成多少有用 的事情？如果我們在穿衣服問題上稍微更果斷的話,人類的明天將會走向哪裏？Fantasy Land
幻想的國度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.
一個人每天會花費15% ~ 50%的時間來做白日夢。我前面提到的我那差勁的計算能力阻止我將這些時間拆分成精確的小時和分鐘，但即使再低一些，在15% ~ 20%的範圍內，我們依然談論着一天當中都用來神遊的一整塊的時間——我們幻 想着怎麼用想象的中彩票的獎金消費，想象着期待已久的我們的男朋友最後成爲 了名父親的美妙時刻。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，而許多心理學家就是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,這看上去是一項值得從事的事業。但是，這些都不能改變一個 事實，它的確消磨了一天中一定的時間。
