No Time to Think

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One of the biggest complaints in modern society is being overscheduled, overcommitted and overextended. Ask people at a social gathering how they are and the stock answer is“super busy,” “crazy busy” or “insanely busy.” Nobody is just “f i ne” anymore.

现代社会中人们抱怨最多的就是日程太满，负担过重，劳累过度。社交寒暄中你问候一声“最近咋样？”，得到的回应绝对是清一色的“超忙”“忙晕了”，要不然就是“忙疯了”，再也难听到简单的一声“还好”。

[2] When people aren’t super busy at work, they are crazy busy exercising,entertaining or taking their kids to Chinese lessons. Or maybe they are insanely busy playing fantasy football, tracing their genealogy or churning their own butter.

[3] And if there is ever a still moment for ref l ective thought—say, while waiting in line at the grocery store or sitting in traff i c—out comes the mobile device.So it’s worth noting a study published last month in the journalScience, which shows how far people will go to avoid introspection.

[2]即便是不忙于工作，人们也一定在忙于锻炼、玩乐，或者忙着带孩子去上中文课。再不然，他们就可能在疯狂地忙着玩梦幻足球，忙着对自家宗谱追根溯源，或者忙着自己在家炼制黄油。

[3]如果有那么一个平静的片刻可以用来反思，比如，在商场排队等候或者堵车的时候，移动设备又冒出来了。因此上个月发表在《科学》杂志上的一篇研究论文便值得在此处一提了。这篇文章向我们展示了人们为了逃避自省究竟可以做到何种程度。

[4] “We had noted how wedded to our devices we all seem to be and that people seem to fi nd any excuse they can to keep busy,” said Timothy Wilson, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia and lead author of the study.“No one had done a simple study letting people go off on their own and think.”

[4]文章的第一作者、弗吉尼亚大学心理学教授蒂莫西·威尔逊表示：“我们早就发现人们有多么沉迷于电子设备，而且不遗余力地寻找理由使自己陷于忙碌之中，只是从没有人研究过如何让人们自己摆脱忙碌，静下心来思考。”

[5] The results surprised him and have created a stir in the psychology and neuroscience communities. In 11 experiments involving more than 700 people, the majority of participants reported that they found it unpleasant to be alone in a room with their thoughts for just 6 to 15 minutes.

[6] Moreover, in one experiment, 64 percent of men and 15 percent of women began self-administering electric shocks when left alone to think. These same people, by the way, had previously said they would pay money to avoid receiving the painful jolt.

[7] It didn’t matter if the subjects engaged in the contemplative exercise at home or in the laboratory, or if they were given suggestions of what to think about, like a coming vacation; they just didn’t like being in their own heads.

[5]研究的结果不仅令威尔逊教授感到惊讶，而且还在心理学与神经科学领域引起了轰动。在超过700人参与的11组实验中，大多数参与者表示，让他们独自待在一间房子里思考只要6到15分钟就会感觉不适。

[6]不仅如此，在一组实验中，64%的男性和15%的女性参与者在独自思考时甚至开始实施自我电击。而恰恰就是这些人，在实验前信誓旦旦，说宁愿罚钱也不愿遭受电击这样的痛苦。

[7]其实无论这项沉思实验的地点是在家还是实验室，也不管是否收到了关于思考内容的建议，比如即将来临的假期，这些都无关紧要，实验的参与者们只是单纯地不喜欢思考罢了。

[8] It could be because human beings,when left alone, tend to dwell on what’s wrong in their lives. We have evolved to become problem solvers and meaning makers. What preys on our minds,when we aren’t updating our Facebook page or in spinning class, are the things we haven’t figured out—difficult relationships, personal and professional failures, money trouble, health concerns and so on. And until there is resolution,or at least some kind of understanding or acceptance, these thoughts reverberate in our heads. Hello rumination.Hello insomnia.

[8]这可能是因为人类在独处的时候，容易去琢磨人生中哪里出了问题。我们已经进化出解决问题的能力，也会思考事情的意义所在。当我们没在刷脸书或者上动感单车课的时候，心头萦绕的便是那些没解决的问题——情感上的困境，生活和工作上的失意，经济上的窘迫，以及身体上的病痛，等等。除非这些难题有了解决方案，或者多少能够想得通，否则它们就会一直缠绕在我们的脑中，挥之不去。紧接着，忧虑就随之降临了。然后，失眠也就接踵而至了。

[9] “One explanation why people keep themselves so busy and would rather shock themselves is that they are trying to avoid that kind of negative stuff,” said Ethan Kross, director of the Emotion and Self-Control Laboratory at the University of Michigan. “It doesn’t feel good if you’re not intrinsically good at ref l ecting.”

[9]“这就可以解释为什么人们总是使自己保持忙碌，宁愿自我电击也不愿思考了，因为人们一直在试着避免那些烦心事的出现，”密歇根大学情绪与自控研究实验室负责人伊桑·克罗斯说道，“而如果你不是天生喜欢的话，那这感觉可不太好受。”

[10] The comedian Louis C.K. has a riff that’s been watched nearly eight million times on YouTube in which he describes that not-good feeling.“Sometimes when things clear away and you’re not watching anything and you’re in your car and you start going,oh no, here it comes, that I’m alone, and it starts to visit on you, just this sadness,” he said. “And that’s why we text and drive. People are willing to risk taking a life and ruining their own because they don’t want to be alone for a second because it’s so hard.”

[10]喜剧演员路易斯C.K.在YouTube上有一段视频点击量近800万次，视频中他描述了那种糟糕的感受。“有时，你也没什么事，什么都不关注，只是在自己的车里坐着，正要发动油门，孤独便开始向你袭来，你没法抗拒，就是这种悲伤。”他说道，“这就是为什么人们要边开车边发短信，宁愿去冒着生命危险，因为他们一刻也不想独自待着，独处是如此的艰难。”

[11] But you can’t solve or let go of problems if you don’t allow yourself time to think about them. It’s an imperative ignored by our culture, which values doing more than thinking and believes answers are in the palm of your hand rather than in your own head.

[12] “It’s like we’re all in this addicted family where all this busyness seems normal when it’s really harmful,”said Stephanie Brown, a psychologist in Silicon Valley and the author of “Speed:Facing Our Addiction to Fast and Faster—and Overcoming Our Fear of Slowing Down.” “There’s this widespread belief that thinking and feeling will only slow you down and get in your way, but it’s the opposite.”

[13] Suppressing negative feelings only gives them more power, she said,leading to intrusive thoughts, which makes people get even busier to keep them at bay. The constant cognitive strain of evading emotions underlies a range of psychological troubles such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety,depression and panic attacks, not to mention a range of addictions. It is also associated with various somatic problems like eczema, irritable bowel syndrome, asthma, inf l ammation, impaired immunity and headaches.

[11]但是如果你不给自己时间去思考，你就永远也无法解决和摆脱这些问题。思考是必要的，只不过我们的文化忽略了它，因为我们的文化认为行动胜于思考，而且深信解决问题的答案是在手中而非脑中。

[12]“而我们就好像都处在一个‘忙碌成瘾’的家庭中，在这里所有的忙碌都是正常的，即便实际上它是非常有害的，”硅谷的心理学家、《速度：直面快速上瘾症——克服慢速恐惧症》的作者斯蒂芬妮·布朗指出，“人们普遍认为思考和感受只会拖慢步伐，阻挡前进的道路，但事实上恰好相反。”

[13]她表示，刻意去抑制这些消极情绪只会让其愈发强烈，让人滋生出更消极的念头，最后导致你为了躲避它们而不得不使自己变得更加忙碌。而逃避情绪带来的持续认知紧张正是造成一系列心理问题的根源所在，譬如强迫症、焦虑、抑郁以及恐惧症，更不用说各种瘾性疾病了。与此同时，这种认知紧张还会引发诸多身体问题，比如湿疹、肠道易激综合征、哮喘、炎症、免疫力受损和头痛等。

[14] Studies further suggest that not giving yourself time to reflect impairs your ability to empathize with others.“The more in touch with my own feelings and experiences, the richer and more accurate are my guesses of what passes through another person’s mind,”said Giancarlo Dimaggio, a psychiatrist with the Center for Metacognitive Interpersonal Therapy in Rome, who studies the interplay of self-ref l ection and empathy. “Feeling what you feel is an ability that atrophies if you don’t use it.”

[15] Researchers have also found that an idle mind is a crucible of creativity.A number of studies have shown that people tend to come up with more novel uses for objects if they are fi rst given an easy task that allows their minds to wander, rather than a more demanding one.

[16] “Idle mental processing encourages creativity and solutions because imagining your problem when you aren’t in it is not the same as reality,”said Jonathan Smallwood, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of York,in England. “Using your imagination means you are in fact rethinking the problem in a novel way.”

[14]研究进一步表明，不给自己思考的时间还会损害你对他人的同理心。“我们越是能够正视和接纳自身的情绪和经历，对于其他人想法的猜测就会越丰富、越准确。”詹卡罗·迪玛乔说道，他是罗马元认知人际关系治疗中心的精神科医师，主要研究反省和同理心的相互作用。“感受自己的感受也是一种能力，不用的话这种能力就会退化。”

[15]同时，研究人员还发现，放松的大脑是炼制创造力的熔炉。许多研究已经证明，如果人们一开始接受的是一项允许他们思维自由发散的简单任务，而不是要求苛刻的任务，他们更容易想出事物的更多新奇用途。

[16]“放松的心理过程能够促生创造力和解决方案，因为旁观者清，跳出问题去思考与身处其中是不一样的，”英国约克大学的认知神经学家乔纳森·斯莫伍德认为，“发挥想象意味着你实际上是在以一种新奇的方式重新思考这个问题。”

[17] Perhaps that’s why Google offers its employees courses called “Search Inside Yourself” and “Neural Self-Hacking,” which include instruction on mindfulness meditation, where the goal is to recognize and accept inner thoughts and feelings rather than ignore or repress them. It’s in the company’s interest because it frees up employees’otherwise embattled brain space to intuit end users’ desires and create products to satisfy them.

[17]这也许就是谷歌公司为其员工们开设名为“探索自己的内心”“自我神经窥探”两门课程的原因了。这两门课包含了对正念冥想的指导，而正念冥想的目的就是辨识和接纳自己内心的思绪和感受，而不是刻意忽视或者压制。对公司而言这是大有利处的，因为这解放了员工原本设防的大脑空间，让他们能够凭直觉感受终端用户的需求并创造出产品来满足其需求。

[18] “I have a lot of people who come in and want to learn meditation to shut out thoughts that come up in those quiet moments,” said Sarah Griesemer, a psychologist in Austin, Tex., who incorporates mindfulness meditation into her practice. “But allowing and tolerating the drifting in of thoughts is part of the process.” Her patients, mostly hardcharging professionals, report being more productive at work and more energetic and engaged parents.

[18]得克萨斯州奥斯汀的一位心理学家萨拉·格里瑟将正念冥想融入了她的医疗实践中，她说：“许多人想学习冥想，想借此摒弃安静时大脑产生的杂念。但是允许并容忍杂念的进进出出，其实也是冥想的一部分。”她的患者，大多都是强势的职业人士，称练习冥想后工作上变得更高效，在家庭育儿上也变得更加精力充沛，乐于投入。

[19] To get rid of the emotional static,experts advise not using first-person pronouns when thinking about troubling events in your life. Instead, use thirdperson pronouns or your own name when thinking about yourself. “If a friend comes to you with a problem it’s easy to coach them through it, but if the problem is happening to us we have real difficulty, in part because we have all these egocentric biases making it hard to reason rationally,” said Dr. Kross of Michigan. “The data clearly shows that you can use language to almost trick yourself into thinking your problems are happening to someone else.”

[19]要想摆脱“情绪静电”的困扰，专家建议：在思考生活中的烦心琐事时，不要使用第一人称，可用第三人称或自己的名字替代。“如果一个朋友来向你咨询某个问题，你会觉得很容易去开导他。但是如果问题发生在我们自己身上，事情就变得困难多了，部分原因是我们有自我为中心的偏见，这种偏见让我们无法理性思考。”密歇根大学的克洛斯教授说道，“数据很清楚地表明，你完全可以用语言令自己相信，问题不是发生在自己身上而是发生在他人身上。”

[20] Hard as they sometimes are, negative feelings are a part of everyone’s life, arguably more so if you are crazy busy. But it’s those same deep and troubling feelings, and how you deal with them, that make you the person you are.While busyness may stanch welling sadness, it may also limit your ability to be overcome with joy. ■

[20]尽管有时候会很艰难，但负面情绪确实是每个人生活无法避免的一部分。尤其是我们超级忙的时候，可能负面情绪更甚。但另一方面，也就是这些深居内心的、令人不安的情绪，以及你处理这些情绪的方式，决定了你成为什么样的人。或许忙碌可以平复汹涌而出的悲伤情绪，但与此同时它也限制了你使自己开心快乐的能力。 □