可以毀掉你日常生活的10件事情(上)

Bad habits are easy to form and difficult to break, as the saying goes. And judging by the latest scientific research, nearly all of us are sleepwalking along in a zombie states of incessant bad habits that are threatening to completely ruin our lives.

壞習慣是很容易養成的，而且很難改變。根據最新的科學研究顯示，我們所有人幾乎都遊離在壞習慣之中，這些壞習慣足以毀壞我們的生活。

We don't mean stuff like sleeping in late and having one too many coffees, either. We mean each and every one of us is doing simple, everyday-seeming stuff that research says is killing us. Don't believe us? Take a look at the following list of deadly behaviors, and you might recognize more on there than you're comfortable with.

我們並不是在說晚睡和喝大量的咖啡這樣類似的事情。我們的意思是說我們每個人所做的一件簡單的事情都有可能會使我們喪命。難道你不相信嗎？看看下面的致命行爲的名單，你會認出許多你自己感覺比較舒服的行爲方式。

rastination

10.拖延

Hands up, those of you who are reading this while they should be working. Don't feel bad. We all do it. What's more fun: chilling out on a Top 10 website or getting those figures ready for your boss, amiright? But get a little too far into the procrastination matrix, and you'll find putting stuff off isn't just lazy. It's actively wrecking your future chances of happiness.

把手舉起來，你們之中這些此時應該工作而卻在閱讀的人。不要覺得不好。我們很多人都這樣做過。更有趣的是：在前十網站或是將得到的數據提交給你的老闆時沉住氣，你準備好了嗎？ 雖然這有點算不上是拖延症，但你會發現它不僅僅只是懶惰而已。它正在自主的破壞你未來的幸福機遇。

The 'procrastination matrix' is a term coined by Tim Urban, who recently did an entire TED Talk about procrastination. He's considered something of an expert in this field, having written countless articles and given countless talks on it. And he's convinced it's holding people back so badly, it's basically an illness.

拖延症這個詞來自於蒂姆-厄班的術語，他最近在TED做了一個有關拖延的演講。他被認爲是這個領域的專家，寫了許多篇文章和做了許多相關的會談。他堅信拖延會使人們變得糟糕，這基本上算是一種疾病。

See, Urban's theory is that procrastination can creep in and affect your whole life, even while you're supposedly being productive. So you might think you're watching cat gifs while you build up the energy to tackle that report for the job you hate, but Urban would see that as double procrastination. In his 'matrix,' doing the job you hate is also procrastination – putting off looking for a job that you might love. By wasting time at work, you're ensuring that you also waste too much time eventually doing the work; meaning you never have time to get on in life and realize your potential.

厄班的理論說拖延可以混進並影響你的整個生活，甚至是在當你有所成功的時候。所以當你打起精神來處理你的工作報告時你可能會認爲你是在看貓的插圖，而厄班則把這視作雙重拖延。在他的理念中，做自己討厭的工作也是一種拖延—— 推薦你找一份自己喜歡的工作。在工作中浪費時間，也使得你需要浪費更多的時間來完成這份工作；這意味着你從未在生活中通過時間發揮自己的才能。

Put it this way, when you finally get before St. Peter, would you rather say: "I did a job I loved and had time to raise a family" or "I spent my whole life rage-reading articles on the internet"?

換而言之，在你最終到達聖彼得之前，你會說：“我在做一份自己喜歡的工作，並且有時間養家”或“我把我的一生都用在了網上閱讀文章”。

ying about the Future

9.擔憂未來

Sometimes, we take a leap of faith and wind up falling flat on our faces. It's embarrassing, and most of us learn very early on to 'look before you leap'. But that kind of foresight can easily go from being something we deploy only when we need to, to something that consumes our waking lives. So, so many of us spend hours upon hours planning for future contingencies that will never come to pass. And science says it's leading us straight into horrific depression.

有時候，我們滿懷信心地進行一次飛躍，結果卻是臉先着地。這是很讓人窘迫的，從小我們就被教育：做事情要“三思而後行”。但是隻有當我們需要某種用來消遣清醒的人生的東西時，這種遠見會讓我們很容易得到所需的東西。因此，我們中有許多人要花幾個小時的時間來規劃未來的突發事件，這是永遠行不通的。科學研究表明它會使我們陷入可怕的抑鬱症之中。

Human minds like patterns. It's astonishingly easy to train yourself into a pattern of thinking, especially in your formative years. The trouble is, this means we can start spending more and more time planning for the future, to the extent that we slide into worrying. And worrying has been proven to underlie a whole host of negative disorders, from anxiety, to depression, to eating disorders.

人類的思維類似於一種模式。訓練你的思維模式是相當容易的，特別是在你的成長階段。可問題是，這意味着我們需要開始花費更多的時間來計劃未來，而且在一定程度上我們可能會變得焦慮。而且焦慮已被證實是一系列消極疾病的誘因，從焦慮到抑鬱再到飲食失調。

In short, by obsessively picking over possible future events, you can train yourself into a lasting mental illness.

總而言之，過度的執著於未來可能發生的事情，你有可能會把自己變成一個長期性的精神疾病患者。

thinking the Past

8.回憶過去

It's the most-natural trait in the world. Thinking about the past. Nearly all of us do it on a daily basis. Sometimes, those memories might be happy ones we hold dear. At other times, we may find ourselves ruminating on an instance of loss or failure. Unfortunately, we've got some bad news for you. Scientists have found that looking to the past can be just as bad for your mental health as obsessing over the future.

回憶是世界上最自然的特質，我們幾乎每天都會回憶過去。有時，這些記憶可能是我們珍視的快樂。也有些時候，我們會反思自己的過錯和失敗。但不幸的是，我們給你帶來了一些壞消息。科學家們發現像沉迷於未來一樣耽溺過去對你的心理健康是有危害的。

As with worrying, rumination can easily train our brain into obsessive behavior. We get to the point that the simplest things trigger a slew of negative memories, and that in turn can create a cycle of endless dwelling on the past. Like worrying, this rumination has been linked to depression and anxiety and even poor performance at work. Frighteningly, you can accidentally train yourself into it with astonishing ease.

正如我們所擔憂的，反思會讓我們的大腦陷入強迫性的運轉。我們得出一個觀點，越是簡單的事情越容易觸發一系列消極記憶，反過來它又會產生一個無休止的耽溺過去的循環。讓人比較擔心的是這種反思會引發抑鬱、焦慮，甚至是工作狀態不佳。而且令人恐懼的是，你有可能在不經意之間就做了這件事。

Ed Watkins at the University of Exeter has previously asked subjects dealing with depression to ruminate for five minutes. He found that simply asking them to dwell on the past for a brief time period worsened their symptoms noticeably. In fact, the link between thinking about the past and future depression is so strong researchers can use it as a predictor of future mental health.

埃克塞特大學的艾德沃特金斯曾讓治療抑鬱症的受試者回憶過去五分鐘。他發現，這樣會使受試者的病情明顯惡化。事實上，回憶過去和誘發抑鬱症之間是有很強烈的聯繫的，研究人員會把它作爲預測未來心理健康的一種方式。

ing the News

7.看新聞

For those of us who work with internet connections – or simply like to keep up with the world – reading the news is a basic part of any day. Maybe you visit the Guardian website, or scroll through the BBC, or pick up a print copy of the LA Times, or something else entirely. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that you should probably stop. Now. Because research has shown that the news is probably killing you.

我們的一些工作與互聯網息息相關——或是單純的想和世界保持一致——閱讀新聞成爲了每天必不可少的一部分。也許你會訪問《衛報》網站、瀏覽BBC，或是閱讀洛杉磯時報報紙。但這都無關緊要。重要的是你應該停止這一行爲。因爲現在已有研究得出結論，而這個信息也可能會扼殺了你。

The issue arises from both the sensationalism of modern news and the age we live in. Every day, we read headlines about airliners crashing into the Mediterranean, or ISIS exploding a bomb in a Belgian airport, or rioters cutting loose in America's inner-cities. Although these things likely don't affect us directly (at least hopefully), our bodies nonetheless act like they represent an immediate danger. A scary story triggers your limbic system, sending your entire body out of whack. You can wind up as tense and physically compromised as someone suffering chronic stress.

這個嚴重問題來自於現代新聞的轟動效應和我們生活的時代。每天，我們都會閱讀到信息，客機墜入地中海、ISIS組織在比利時機場引爆一枚炸彈、暴徒在美國市中心製造騷亂。雖然這些事情可能不會直接影響我們（至少希望如此），但我們的身體卻本能的體現出遇到危險的特徵。一個恐怖事件會激發你的大腦邊緣系統，讓你的全身感到失常。你會像遭受慢性壓力的人一樣，緊張感和危機感加劇。

Our bodies haven't evolved to keep up with a 24/7 global news cycle. We're still biologically at the stage where hearing about a disaster meant it was probably heading your way. As a result, news can instill in us anything from anxiety, to a compromised immune system, to excess aggression.

我們的身體還沒有進化到可以跟上全天候全球新聞週期。從生物學角度說我們會將從其他地方聽到的災難當作自己可能會遇到的。因此，新聞會給我們灌輸一些憂慮的信息，對免疫系統造成損害，增大壓力。

g Email

6.使用電子郵件

By this point, virtually every single person in the developed world has an active email address. Most jobs are impossible without one, and social interactions are becoming increasingly harder. Yet just because something is everywhere doesn't mean it's healthy. After all, it's not so long ago that 90 percent of people smoked cigarettes. While email won't give you lung cancer, it totally can screw up your brain.

有關這一點，在發達國家幾乎每個人都擁有一個十分活躍的電子郵件地址。大多數的工作不可能不使用電子郵件，社會的相互作用變得越來越難。然而，不能因爲一些東西的廣泛性就意味着它是健康的。畢竟，不久之前90%的人都吸菸。雖然電子郵件不會讓你患上肺癌，但它完全可以毀壞你的大腦。

Email – and most social media updates – follow the same pattern as slot machines, known as 'variable interval reinforcement schedule.' In both cases, they reward you when an action is performed. With email, by giving you a brand new message from your friends to open; with slot machines, by dispensing money. But with each case, the initial behavior is only rewarded at random, unpredictable times. In other words, email activates the same areas of your brain as gambling. And if you've ever witnessed a gambling addict freak out at a losing streak, you know this isn't a good thing.

電子郵件和大多數社交媒體的更新一樣，都遵循着如老虎機一樣的相同模式，被稱爲“變時距強化方式”。在這兩種情況下，當某一行爲被執行時他們會給你獎勵。電子郵件是給你一個你的朋友公開的全新的信息；老虎機是發放錢。但是每一種情況，最初的行爲都是未知時間的隨機獎勵。換句話說，電子郵件就像賭博一樣激活了你的大腦區域。假如你曾經目睹過一個連敗的賭徒，你就會知道這並不是一件好事。

Because of this, people who constantly check social media updates or their emails are prone to the same irritability, loss of concentration and anxiety as gamblers. Way back in 2008, it was estimated that this causes obsessive people a loss of 8.5 working hours per week. With the emergence of smartphones and so-on since then, we imagine it's only gotten worse.

正因爲如此，經常檢查更新社交媒體或電子郵件的人很容易像賭徒一樣易惱怒、缺乏注意力和焦慮。早在2008年，據估計它就導致沉迷的人每週損失8.5小時工作時間。隨着智能手機的出現，並且從發那時起，我們推測這種情況只會變得更糟。