辦公室文化:別讓電子郵件偷走你的時間大綱
If you'd like a jarring experience sometime, try reading the famous children's book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Alex and his family go pick up Dad at the office, causing all sorts of mischief, but what's strangest to the modern reader is the illustration of Dad's desk. He has a phone. Paper. Books. But, since Judith Viorst's story was first published in 1972, no computer.
大和家人去爸爸辦公室接他，結果在那裏製造了一大堆麻煩。但今天的讀者感到最奇怪的應該是爸爸辦公桌的插圖。上面有電話、文件、書籍，但就是沒有電腦，因爲朱迪思•維奧斯特的這本書首次出版是在1972年。
In 1972, you realize, office workers spent zero percent of their time on email. Forty years later, though, checking email has become synonymous with working, to the point where it seems to be taking over our working lives.
所以，我們知道，在1972年，上班族在電子郵件上不會花一丁點時間。然而，四十年過去了，如今，查看電子郵件已經成了工作的代名詞，甚至似乎要成爲我們工作生活的全部。
According to a July 2012 McKinsey Global Institute report on "the social economy, " the average knowledge worker now spends 28% of her work time managing email. If you work 50 hours per week, that's 14 hours stuck in the inbox. McKinsey's report suggested that workers could improve their email productivity by 25-30% through better use of social collaboration platforms, buying back 7-8.5% of their workweek. But even if your company isn't investing in such platforms, here's some low-hanging fruit for getting your head out of your inbox for a few of those 14 hours:
2012年7月，麥肯錫全球研究所（McKinsey Global Institute）公佈的“社交經濟”報告中指出，普通知識型員工28%的上班時間都在處理電子郵件。如果你每週工作50個小時，則代表有14個小時花在了處理郵件上。麥肯錫的報告顯示，通過充分利用社交協作平臺，員工可以將處理電子郵件的效率提高25% - 30%，進而節省約7% - 8.5%的時間用於其他工作。但如果你所在的公司不打算在這類平臺上花錢，本文將爲提供一些可操作的方法，讓你不至於在電子郵件上面花費那麼多時間：
1. Unsubscribe.
1. 取消郵件訂閱。 According to an analysis of 5 million emails from Baydin, an email management service, the average email user gets 147 messages per day and deletes 71 (48%). Deletion takes an average of 3.2 seconds. That doesn't sound like much -- about 4 minutes per day -- but if you're deleting 350 emails per workweek, that takes around 20 minutes per week, which adds up to more than 16 hours per year.
電子郵件管理服務提供商Baydin分析了500萬封電子郵件後發現，普通電子郵件用戶平均每天收到147條信息，其中會刪除71條（48%）。每刪除一條平均需要3.2秒。聽起來並不算多，也就是每天4分鐘而已，但如果你每週工作時間刪除350封郵件，則需要花費20分鐘，全年累加起來超過16個小時。
Or look at it this way: According to the American Time Use Survey, the average married, employed father who has children under age 6 spends just 2.4 minutes per day reading to them -- which is less time than the average email user spends deleting emails. Play offense with your inbox by getting yourself off any lists you don't read, and unsubscribing to commercial messages.
或許，我們可以換個角度來看：據“美國人時間使用情況調查”（American Time Use Survey）顯示，孩子不滿六歲的已婚在職父親每天給孩子讀書的時間平均僅有2.4分鐘，還不到普通電子郵件用戶用於刪除電子郵件的時間。要想擺脫收件箱帶給你的麻煩，就得取消你不會閱讀的列表，停止訂閱任何商業信息。
2. Don't use folders.
2. 停止使用文件夾。 One paper from Carnegie Mellon University found that 32% of email users agree with the statement, "I file my messages into folders as soon as I have read them." Filing seems productive, but according to Alex Moore, CEO of Baydin, creating files associated with different projects or people is the least efficient way to find emails you might need again in the future -- less efficient, in fact, then scrolling back through your inbox trying to remember roughly when the needed email came in. You can create one "archive" folder if you like to keep your inbox empty, but use the search function to find any information you need.
卡耐基梅隆大學（Carnegie Mellon University）的一篇論文指出，32%的電子郵件用戶同意一種說法：“只要讀完的信息，我就會立即把它歸類到文件夾中。”歸類似乎很有效率，但Baydin公司CEO亞歷克斯•摩爾認爲，未來需要再次查找郵件時，你會發現，根據不同項目或聯繫人創建文件夾是效率最低的一種方式，即便是憑藉自己對收件時間的模糊記憶，在收件箱中滾動查找的效率，也比之高出不少。如果你想清空收件箱，可以創建一個“歸檔”文件夾，但如果需要查找信息，則可以使用郵箱的搜索功能。
3. Send email at the right time.
3. 在正確的時間發送電子郵件。
According to Baydin's analysis, the average email user writes 40 messages a day, but there's no point writing these emails if they don't get read. A message sent at 6 a.m. is more likely to be opened than one sent later in the day, Moore reports, though there's also a small bump in reading after lunch. "If you need to ask someone to do something, you're more likely to get what you want after their blood sugar is up," he says.
根據Baydin的分析，普通電子郵件用戶每天會寫40條信息，但如果沒人讀這些信息，它們就沒有任何作用。比如，摩爾發現，早上六點鐘發送的信息與之後任何時間發送的信息相比，被打開的機率更高。另外，午飯後也是閱讀信息的一個小高潮期。他說：“如果你想請求某人做某事，在對方血糖升高之後，你便越有可能實現自己的目的。”
4. Don't check email so often.
4. 不要過於頻繁查看電子郵件。 Peter Bregman, author of 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done, notes that there's a reason email management has grown from zero hours per week to 28% of a person's time in a generation. "Email is such a seductress in terms of distraction because it poses as valid work," he says. You're supposed to be working on a proposal, but you don't feel like working on the proposal, so you check your inbox. "If you could get away with watching TV, you probably would instead of writing that proposal, but you probably can't, so instead you check email," he says.
《18分鐘法則：心無旁騖，做正確的事》（ 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done）一書的作者彼得•佈雷格曼認爲，僅僅經過一代人，處理電子郵件的時間便從零增長到佔個人時間的28%，其中是有原因的。他說：“因爲電子郵件造成一種有效工作的假象，所以特別容易讓人分心。”比如，你本應該專心做提案，但你不想這麼做。於是，你跑去查看自己的收件箱。他說：“如果看電視不被懲罰，你或許也會去看電視，而不是寫提案。可是你看不了電視，於是你就跑去查看電子郵件了。”
A better solution? Batch process. Bregman checks three times per day, and finds this saves him many hours per week. "No one's ever complained they haven't gotten an email back fast enough," he says. If three checks per day won't work for you, try checking just once an hour instead, doing 40 minutes of focused work, then 20 minutes of inbox management. Chances are, you'll get a lot more done.
有更好的解決方法嗎？有，那就是分批處理法。佈雷格曼每天查看三次電子郵件，並且發現這種方式可以每週節省多個小時。他說：“從沒人抱怨沒有及時收到回信。”如果每天查看三次不適合，可以嘗試每一個小時查看一次，集中精力工作40分鐘，然後用20分鐘處理收件箱。如此一來，你會發現自己的工作效率將會大大提高。
