“少而精”的新年目標

Typically, people start a new year resolved to achieve more than the previous year.

通常情況下，人們會在新年伊始躊躇滿志，決心實現比上一年更多的成就。

How, though? Some people make what I have always thought is a frankly strange commitment to “say yes to everything”. Others do the opposite, resolving to say no more frequently. In reality, either of those extremes could lead to bad outcomes.

然而怎麼去做到這一點呢？有些人決心“對一切都說可以”——我始終認爲這種決心相當古怪。其他人則相反，決心更頻繁地說不。在現實中，這兩種極端都可能導致糟糕的結果。

Take the commitment to be busy, busy, busy all the time. Workaholism beckons for those who cannot turn down requests. Being absorbed in the task can mitigate workaholism’s worst effects, according to an Academy of Management Discoveries study published last year, but still anxiety about the job or obsessive ambition paves a pathway to health problems.

拿一直保持忙碌狀態的決心來說。“工作狂”召喚着那些無法拒絕請求的人。根據去年發表在《管理學會發現》(Academy of Management Discoveries)上的一篇研究報告，專注於任務可能減輕工作狂的最糟糕影響，但對崗位憂心忡忡或者過於野心勃勃仍然可能導致健康問題。

Accumulating multiple commitments poses other risks, too. If you try to do more than one thing, you will not be as efficient as if you concentrated on a single task. A 2001 paper found that people toggling between tasks took longer to solve complex maths problems than those who concentrated on one job. A separate 2015 study of Milanese judges determined that those who tried to handle several cases simultaneously took longer to complete them.

決心做多件事情還會帶來其他風險。如果你嘗試做不止一件事情，那麼你就不會像專注於一項任務那樣達到高效率。2001年發表的一篇論文發現，與那些致力於一項工作的人相比，忙於在多項任務之間切換的人，要花費更長時間來解決複雜的數學問題。2015年對米蘭法官的另一項研究表明，那些試圖同時處理多宗案件的法官，結果花費了更長時間才完成審理。

Still, the cult of busyness is a powerful one. If you started this year with a view to doing less, you will quickly have felt guilty about the jobs you turned down — and the possible missed opportunities. I am always reminded of overachieving sitcom shrink Frasier’s retort, when his brother Niles reminds him that “less is more”: “Yes — but if less is more, think how much more ‘more’ will be!”

話雖如此，人們對忙碌的崇拜是強大的。如果你在新的一年以減少工作爲目標，你很快就會對自己拒絕的工作、以及由此可能錯失的機遇感到內疚。我總是想起情景喜劇中過於進取的心理醫生弗萊澤(Frasier)的反駁，當他的兄弟奈爾斯(Niles)提醒他“更少就是更多”的時候，他脫口而出道：“沒錯——但如果更少就是更多，那麼想想‘更多’將會多出多少吧！”