忙得來不及思考 你可能得了匆忙病

Eating lunch at your desk while also checking emails and talking on the phone is one symptom. So is doing something else while on conference calls, or even while brushing your teeth. We all find ourselves multitasking now and then, but what about habitually interrupting someone who is talking, or always getting frustrated in a checkout line or in traffic, even when it’s moving along smoothly? When microwaving something for 30 seconds, do you feel the urge to find something else to do while you wait?

一邊在辦公桌前吃午餐，一邊查看電子郵件和接電話，是一種症狀。開電話會議甚至刷牙時還在做其他事也是。我們經常發現自己在同時處理多項任務，但你是否會習慣性地打斷別人談話，或者在等待付款或遇上交通擁堵時變得沮喪，即便前面的車輛正在平順前行？當你用微波爐將食物熱30秒鐘的時候，你是否覺得應該找些別的事情邊等邊做？

If one or more of these sounds all too familiar, you probably have a bad case of a malady that psychologists have dubbed “hurry sickness.” A sure sign is “repeatedly pushing the door-close button on an elevator,” says Richard Jolly, a London Business School professor and executive coach. “Half the time, those buttons aren’t even connected to anything but a light bulb — they’re what’s called a ‘mechanical placebo.’ But even if they worked, how much time would they save? Five seconds?”

如果你也有一種或多種上述症狀，你或許已經患上了一種被心理學家稱爲“匆忙症”的疾病。倫敦商學院教授，高管教練理查德o喬利表示：“匆忙症的一種明確症狀就是不停按電梯的關門按鈕”。“通常情況下，這些按鈕除了讓燈泡閃爍一下，沒有任何作用——這就是爲什麼將它們稱爲‘機械安慰劑’。但即便按這些按鈕有效，你又能節省多少時間呢？五秒鐘？”

To the hurry-sick, five seconds can seem like forever. About 95% of managers Jolly has studied over the past 10 years, both in his MBA classes and his coaching practice, suffer from the ailment, defined as the constant need to do more, faster, even when there’s no objective reason to be in such a rush. Eventually, hurry sickness really can make you sick, since it increases the body’s output of the stress hormone cortisol, which suppresses the immune system and has been linked with heart disease.

對於匆忙症患者們來說，五秒鐘非常漫長。過去十年，喬利對參加其MBA課程和接受指導的管理人員進行了研究，其中約95%的管理者患有這種疾病，他們總是需要做得更多更快，即便很多時候並沒有客觀原因要求他們如此着急。最後，匆忙症確實會讓你生病，因爲它會增加身體釋放的壓力荷爾蒙皮質醇，這種物質會抑制免疫系統，甚至有可能誘發心臟病。

What’s more, despite the fact that “many executives see it as a badge of honor,” Jolly says, hurry sickness can also damage your career even before it wrecks your health, because being in an incessant hurry has a way of making people miss the forest for the trees.

此外，喬利表示，儘管“許多高管將匆忙症視爲榮譽勳章”，但事實上，它在破壞你的健康之前，首先會毀掉你的事業，因爲總是匆忙地趕時間工作，會讓人只見樹木不見森林。

“We’re losing the ability to stand back and think, and to work smarter rather than harder,” Jolly observes. “Technology often gets the blame, but technology isn’t really the culprit. It’s just that being ‘connected’ every minute of the night and day means people are easily distracted by minutiae instead of taking time to slow down a bit and ask the big, important questions.”

喬利說道：“我們正在喪失退後一步進行思考的能力，我們變得更加努力，卻失去了更聰明地工作的能力。人們通常會將矛頭指向科技，但科技並非元兇。無刻不停息的‘在線生活’意味着我們很容易被細枝末節分心，無法拿出些時間放慢腳步，思考一些重大問題。”

One unhappy result is that hurry-sick employees and managers often get pigeonholed as “anxious overachievers, a type that is useful, indeed indispensable, in organizations,” he adds. “But they become increasingly bitter when more thoughtful — and perhaps less ‘hard-working’ — managers get the top jobs.”

他補充道，匆忙症令人不快的結果之一是，這類員工和管理者通常被定義爲“焦慮的高成就者，在公司裏，他們是有用的，甚至是不可替代的。但如果身邊某位更擅長思考，並且可能不怎麼‘努力工作’的管理者升入高層，他們就會變得愈發痛苦。”

Overcoming the condition is deceptively simple, but it usually takes some determination. First, identify which goals are essential, either for succeeding in your current job or for taking the next step up. Then, carve out time in your day to focus your attention exclusively on them, with no distractions.

克服這種疾病看起來很容易，但通常需要有堅定的決心。首先，確定對你當前工作的成功或者未來發展至關重要的目標。然後，每天拿出時間排除干擾，集中精力爲這些目標而努力。

In coaching sessions with hurry-sick managers, Jolly asks them to write down their two or three most important priorities. Then, he asks them to go back over their calendars for the past six months to a year and pinpoint how much time they had spent on achieving those goals. “One CEO realized that he had actually spent about 1% of his time and energy on the things he really needed to accomplish,” Jolly says. “The ideal is more like 50%.”

在指導患有“匆忙症”的管理者時，喬利要求他們寫下兩三項最重要的任務。之後，他要求他們查看過去六個月到一年內的日程，計算出自己爲實現這些目標所花的時間。喬利說道：“一位CEO意識到在那些真正需要完成的事情上面，他僅投入了1%的時間和精力。理想情況下，這個比例應該在50%左右。”

Of course, finding uninterrupted time can be a challenge, but it can be done. Jolly knows one executive who invented a fictitious client named Mr. Smith. “He regularly books two-hour appointments with Mr. Smith,” Jolly says. “Then he goes off somewhere, with no laptop or smartphone, and thinks. Other people protect their thinking time by taking long bike rides.”

當然，找到一段不受打擾的時間也極具挑戰性，但並非完全不可能。喬利認識的一名高管便創造出一位名叫史密斯先生的虛擬客戶。喬利說道：“他會定期預約與史密斯先生進行兩個小時的會面。然後他會到一個沒有筆記本或智能手機的地方，靜心思考。也有一些高管採用長時間騎自行車的方法來保護自己的思考時間。”

Letting go of trivial details at the office while on vacation is especially helpful — and especially difficult — for the hurry-sick, Jolly adds. One of his coaching clients came up with a novel approach. “He put a standard auto-reply message on his email, saying the usual ‘I’ll be away on vacation on such-and-such dates’ and so on, except for one difference,” Jolly says. “He had first set up a separate email account, which he gave as the way to contact him in a genuine emergency. The address wasgoaheadandruinmyvacation@…com.” No one took him up on it.

喬利補充道，在度假時放下辦公室裏的那些瑣碎小事，對於匆忙症患者同樣很有幫助，但也是很難做到的。有位客戶想出了一種奇妙的方法。喬利說道：“他給電子郵件設定了標準的自動回覆信息，信息的內容都是比較程式化的‘我將在某月某日去度假’等等，但有一點區別。他首先會設置一個單獨的電子郵件賬戶，告訴對方在真正緊急的情況下可以通過這個賬戶聯繫他。郵件的地址是goaheadandruinmyvacation@…com（意思是，繼續毀掉我的假期吧）。”沒有人用這個郵箱聯繫過他。（財富中文網）