| Even though it’s a weekday and during working hours, I’m in bed. The reason for such slovenliness is that I’m not feeling my best. Too unwell to feel like getting up, yet not so unwell that I can’t move my fingers over a keyboard. | 盡管今天是工作日，現(xiàn)在是工作時間，我卻呆在床上。之所以如此懶散，是因為我感覺狀態(tài)不佳。身體非常不舒服以至于不想起床，但又還沒到敲不動鍵盤的地步。 |
| From this position I have been peering at the world of work through my laptop screen and found two things of note. | 在這種狀態(tài)下，我一直在通過手提電腦屏幕盯著工作世界，并且發(fā)現(xiàn)了兩個值得注意的東西。 |
| The first is a video clip from TED (the groovy organisation that devotes itself to “Ideas Worth Spreading”). It shows Jason Fried, a young web entrepreneur in jeans and black | 第一個是來自TED（那個致力于“值得傳播的思想”的很棒的組織）的視頻剪輯——身著牛仔褲與黑色T恤的年輕網(wǎng)絡(luò)企業(yè)家詹森•弗里德(Jason Fried)告訴觀眾，辦公室是世界上最不適合干工作的地方。 |
| T-shirt telling an audience that the office is the worst place in the whole world for doing any work. | 第二個是互聯(lián)網(wǎng)上轉(zhuǎn)發(fā)次數(shù)最多、并非來自維基解密(Wikileaks)的文件——瑞銀(UBS)的新著裝規(guī)定。這份40頁的文件帶有漂亮的插圖，內(nèi)容包括珠寶、縫紉細節(jié)及錚亮的黑皮鞋。在這份文件中，瑞銀詳細規(guī)定了其瑞士銀行家們應(yīng)如何著裝，甚至包括了最私密的細節(jié)：女性須穿肉色內(nèi)衣，衣領(lǐng)不能有任何襯底；男性須佩戴與臉形相襯的領(lǐng)帶。 |
| The second is the most forwarded document on the internet not to have come from Wikileaks – the new UBS dress code. In 40 gloriously illustrated pages – featuring pearls and stitching details and shiny black shoes – it tells its Swiss bankers precisely how to dress, down to the most intimate detail: women must wear flesh coloured underwear and not get any foundation on their collars and men must wear ties to match the bone structure in their faces. | 分開來看，這兩樣?xùn)|西都頗為令人驚奇。但結(jié)合在一起，它們描繪了全方位的現(xiàn)代辦公室生活——從極度嚴格的管理（已經(jīng)管到了口紅），到極度的寬松（管理者任何強加秩序的努力，都只會抑制員工的內(nèi)在創(chuàng)造力）。 |
| Both exhibits are quite something individually. But together they represent the full spectrum of contemporary office life – from extreme managerial uptightness, where command and control | 從我臥床的角度來看，弗里德反辦公室的激情演講似乎更切題。他說，辦公室的問題在于無止境的干擾，主要是會議與經(jīng)理。他說，這些干擾是一場災(zāi)難，因為工作就像睡眠，如果被打斷了，就無法找回狀態(tài)。 |
| extends to lipstick, to extreme | 你也許認為他是對的。我此時此地的進展就支持這個論點：我已經(jīng)開始以在工作中更難以復(fù)制的專注程度打這篇文章。 |
| hang-looseness, where all attempts by managers to impose order merely hamper the inner creativity of the workforce. | 他也有邏輯上的支持。辦公室早在多年前就失去了意義。在使用紙張、文件柜及“格林小姐，你可以做口授記錄嗎？”的時代，它曾是有意義的，但現(xiàn)在已毫無意義可言。它成本高昂，效率低下，會愚蠢地浪費精力，尤其是在想到所有那些交流的時候。 |
| Viewed from the perspective of my bed, Mr Fried’s anti-office tirade might seem the more germane. He says the problem with offices are the endless interruptions, which mainly come in the form of meetings and managers. These interruptions are a disaster because work, he says, is like sleep. If you get interrupted you can’t go back to where you were. | 但實際上，弗里德徹底錯了——不管是關(guān)于辦公室、關(guān)于干擾的本質(zhì)，還是關(guān)于發(fā)表演講時的著裝。 |
| You might think he’s right. My progress here and now supports the thesis: I’ve started typing this article with a dogged focus that is harder to replicate at work. | 公司是人的群體，為了興旺發(fā)展，他們必須要花很多時間在一起。這意味著，迄今最明智的做法就是將所有人都趕到辦公室里面。 |
| He also has logic on his side. The office has been quite pointless for many years now. It used to make sense in the age of paper and filing cabinets and can-you-take-dictation-Ms Green? But now there is no point to it at all. It is jolly expensive and inefficient and a ludicrous waste of effort, especially when you think of all that commuting. | 弗里德辯稱，辦公室是一個不友善的工作環(huán)境，因為其他人會干擾你，而在家，任何干擾通常都是出于自己的選擇，因此是善意的。 |
| But in practice Mr Fried is utterly wrong – about offices, about the nature of interruptions and about what to wear when giving a speech. | 這證明他的意志比我堅定。我所有最嚴重的時間浪費都是自己造成的。我最近迷上了iPad上的Boggle游戲——如果不是iPad沒電了，而充電器又不在樓下，我現(xiàn)在就會在玩。 |
| Companies are groups of people and in order to thrive they need to spend an inordinately large amount of time holed up together. Which means by far the most sensible thing is to herd everyone into offices. | 當(dāng)我在家工作時，第一個小時效率會非常高，而后便開始精神松懈。就好象我受到一條內(nèi)在的浪費時間定律的控制，即我每天浪費的時間總量是恒定的。如果別人不浪費我的時間，我自己就會想法浪費。區(qū)別在于，在家的時間浪費質(zhì)量很低——Boggle不會令任何人受益，但在辦公室，時間浪費更具社交性質(zhì)，有時還會迸發(fā)出好的創(chuàng)意。 |
| Mr Fried argues that the office is a hostile environment in which to work because the interruptions are imposed by others, whereas at home any interruptions tend to be by choice and are therefore benign. | 較之Boggle，在床上工作更令人意志消沉的是糟糕的衣著。我裹著肥大的法蘭絨睡衣和羊毛家居服，再次瀏覽了瑞銀的著裝手冊，想象著那些可愛的襯衫看上去有多么干凈利落，對建議中蘊含的智慧肅然起敬。不允許穿短袖襯衣；襪子上不允許帶卡通圖案。裙子不能太短也不能太緊。絲巾要扎得一絲不茍。 |
| This proves that he is made of sterner stuff than I. All my worst time-wasting is self-inflicted. My latest addiction is Boggle on the iPad, which I would be playing right now if the thing hadn’t run out of juice and if the charger weren’t downstairs. | 《華爾街日報》(The Wall Street Journal)的博客說，這本手冊有點“老大哥”的味道。事實上，它更像老大姐，而且是一位熱心、樂于助人的老大姐。我現(xiàn)在最想做的，就是從我這不受干擾的破床上坐起來，起床，穿上一身可以讓自己產(chǎn)生良好工作心境的制服，趕去辦公室，在一個受到他人干擾的環(huán)境中，任由我在繁忙的工作之余干點輕松些的活。 |
| What happens when I work at home is that the first hour is productive and then I start going to pieces. It is as if I am governed by an internal time-wasting law that says the amount of time wasted in any day is constant. If others aren’t wasting my time, then I find ways of wasting my own. The difference is that at home time-wasting is very low grade – Boggle benefits no one – while at work it is more sociable and sometimes a good idea materialises as a by-product. | |
