健康生活:怎樣做到心無旁騖?

Like everyone else, I am losing the attention war. I toggle over to my emails when I should be working. I text when I should be paying attention to the people in front of me. I spend hours looking at mildly diverting stuff on YouTube. ("Look, there's a bunch of guys who can play 'Billie Jean' on beer bottles!")

就像所有人一樣，我也無法集中注意力。我在應該工作時，打開了郵件；應該關注面前的人時，我在發短信。我花幾個小時的時間，在YouTube上觀看一些還算有趣的視頻。（“看，有一羣人能用啤酒瓶演奏《比利·金》[Billie Jean]！”）

And, like everyone else, I've nodded along with the prohibition sermons imploring me to limit my information diet. Stop multitasking! Turn off the devices at least once a week!

就像所有人一樣，對於那些禁令一般的說教，我點頭同意——要減少接觸的信息！不要再同時做幾件事了！關掉那些設備，一週至少一次！

And, like everyone else, these sermons have had no effect. Many of us lead lives of distraction, unable to focus on what we know we should focus on. According to a survey reported in an Op-Ed article on Sunday in The Times by Tony Schwartz and Christine Porath, 66 percent of workers aren't able to focus on one thing at a time. Seventy percent of employees don't have regular time for creative or strategic thinking while at work.

就像所有人一樣，這種說教沒有效果。我們中的很多人都處於注意力渙散的狀態，無法把注意力集中到應該關注的事情上。託尼·舒瓦茨(Tony Schwartz)和克里斯蒂娜·波拉特(Christine Porath)週日在《紐約時報》發表的一篇觀點文章中提到了一項調查，調查顯示66%的員工無法每次專注於一件事。70%的員工在工作時沒有定期進行創新或戰略思考的時間。

Since the prohibition sermons don't work, I wonder if we might be able to copy some of the techniques used by the creatures who are phenomenally good at learning things: children.

鑑於禁令式的說教沒有效果，我在想我們能夠借鑑兒童使用的技巧，畢竟他們非常善於學東西。

I recently stumbled across an interview in The Paris Review with Adam Phillips, who was a child psychologist for many years. First, Phillips says, in order to pursue their intellectual adventures, children need a secure social base:

我最近無意間看到了《巴黎評論》(Paris Review)對資深兒童心理學家亞當·菲利普斯(Adam Phillips)的採訪。菲利普斯表示，首先，爲了進行求知的探索之旅，兒童需要一個安全的社會基礎：

"There's something deeply important about the early experience of being in the presence of somebody without being impinged upon by their demands, and without them needing you to make a demand on them. And that this creates a space internally into which one can be absorbed. In order to be absorbed one has to feel sufficiently safe, as though there is some shield, or somebody guarding you against dangers such that you can 'forget yourself' and absorb yourself, in a book, say."

“有人在場，但他又不會以自己的需求妨礙你，也不需要你向他提出要求——成長初期有這樣的體驗是十分重要的。這就創造了一個可以使人全神貫注的內心空間。要想全神貫注，人們必須感到足夠安全，就好像有盾牌保護，或者有人幫你抵禦危險，比如，你可以‘忘記自我'，完全沉浸在書中。”

Second, before they can throw themselves into their obsessions, children are propelled by desires so powerful that they can be frightening. "One of the things that is interesting about children is how much appetite they have," Phillips observes. "How much appetite they have — but also how conflicted they can be about their appetites. Anybody who's got young children ... will remember that children are incredibly picky about their food. ...

第二，在全身心投入之前，兒童會受到慾望的有力推動，這種慾望強大到讓人驚恐。“關於兒童的一件趣事是，他們的胃口有多大，”菲利普斯說。“不僅是他們的胃口有多大，還有他們的胃口會在多大程度上讓他們感到糾結。任何有小孩的人都會記得，兒童對食物非常挑剔……”

"One of the things it means is there's something very frightening about one's appetite. So that one is trying to contain a voraciousness in a very specific, limited, narrowed way. ... appetite is fearful because it connects you with the world in very unpredictable ways. ... Everybody is dealing with how much of their own alivenesss they can bear and how much they need to anesthetize themselves."

“這意味着一個人的慾望有非常令人害怕的地方。所以，人們會努力以一種非常具體的、受限的、偏狹的方式來剋制慾望……之所以說慾望可怕，是因爲它能以十分出人意料的方式將你和這個世界連接起來……每個人都需要面對這樣的問題：自己可以拿出多大的活力，需要在多大程度上麻醉自己。”

Third, children are not burdened by excessive self-consciousness: "As young children, we listen to adults talking before we understand what they're saying. And that's, after all, where we start — we start in a position of not getting it." Children are used to living an emotional richness that can't be captured in words. They don't worry about trying to organize their lives into neat little narratives. Their experience of life is more direct because they spend less time on interfering thoughts about themselves.

第三，兒童沒有自我意識過重的負擔：“我們還是小孩的時候，在理解大人所說的話之前，需要先聽他們講話。這畢竟就是我們最初的處境——剛開始時，我們並不理解。”兒童習慣了體驗到豐富的情感，但卻無法用語言來表達。他們並不擔心要把自己的生活組織起來，整理成簡單的敘述。他們的生活體驗更加直接，因爲他們不會花那麼多時間，觸碰關於自己的想法。

The lesson from childhood, then, is that if you want to win the war for attention, don't try to say "no" to the trivial distractions you find on the information smorgasbord; try to say "yes" to the subject that arouses a terrifying longing, and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else.

童年的經歷告訴我們，如果你想在注意力之戰中獲勝，就不要對信息大雜燴中發現的那些瑣碎干擾說“不”；而是要試着對勾起那種可怕慾望的東西說“是”，然後讓這種可怕的慾望將其他東西推開。

The way to discover a terrifying longing is to liberate yourself from the self-censoring labels you began to tell yourself over the course of your mis-education. These formulas are stultifying, Phillips argues: "You can only recover your appetite, and appetites, if you can allow yourself to be unknown to yourself. Because the point of knowing oneself is to contain one's anxieties about appetite."

發現一種可怕慾望的方式就是，把你自己從自我侷限的標籤中解放出來——你經常會在誤解自己的過程中，給自己貼上各種標籤。這些條條框框往往單調乏味，菲利普斯認爲：“只有面對自己不爲人知的一面，你才能找回自己的慾望（或許不止一個）。因爲了解自己的意義就在於遏制因爲慾望而產生的焦慮。”

Thus: Focus on the external objects of fascination, not on who you think you are. Find people with overlapping obsessions. Don't structure your encounters with them the way people do today, through brainstorming sessions (those don't work) or through conferences with projection screens.

所以：要關注能吸引你的外部事物，而不是你認爲自己是怎樣的人。去尋找一些與你有相同喜好的人。不要用人們現在常用的方式來與他們交流——比如“頭腦風暴”（那沒什麼用）或者是掛着投影屏幕的會議。

Instead look at the way children learn in groups. They make discoveries alone, but bring their treasures to the group. Then the group crowds around and hashes it out. In conversation, conflict, confusion and uncertainty can be metabolized and digested through somebody else. If the group sets a specific problem for itself, and then sets a tight deadline to come up with answers, the free digression of conversation will provide occasions in which people are surprised by their own minds.

看看孩子們是如何通過小組進行學習的。他們會獨自進行發現，但是會把自己的發現帶到小組中去。然後小組成員會聚集起來，通過討論來解決問題。在對話當中，我們可以通過他人來解決和消化衝突、困惑和不確定性。如果討論組本身設定了一個具體的問題，同時也設置了一個得出解答的期限，那麼人們在隨意交談的過程中，可能就會對自己的想法感到驚奇。

The information universe tempts you with mildly pleasant but ultimately numbing diversions. The only way to stay fully alive is to dive down to your obsessions six fathoms deep. Down there it's possible to make progress toward fulfilling your terrifying longing, which is the experience that produces the joy.

信息世界用適度的快樂引誘你，但這些東西根本上都是令人麻木的分神物。唯一能讓你真正保持生機的辦法，就是深入挖掘你癡迷的東西。在那裏，你或許能朝滿足自己可怖的慾望前進幾步。這就是能帶來愉悅的體驗。