【TED】如何掌控你的自由时间(中英文对照)

Ted演讲标题：如何掌控你的自由时间When people find out I write about time management,They assume two things.One is that I’m always on time,And I’m not.I have four small children,And I would like to blame them for my occasional tardiness,But sometimes it’s just not their fault.I was once late to my own speech on time management.We all had to just take a moment together and savor that irony.The second thing they assume is that I have lots of tips and tricks for saving bits of time here and there.Sometimes I’ll hear from magazines that are doing a story along these lines,generally on how to help their readers find an extra hour in the day.And the idea is that we’ll shave bits of time off everyday activities,add it up,and we’ll have time for the good stuff.And I question the entire premise of this piece,but I’m always interested in hearing what they’ve come up with before they call me.Some of my favorites:doing errands where you only have to make the right-hand turns;Being extremely judicious in microwave usage:it says three to three-and-a-half minutes on the package,we’re totally getting in on the bottom side of that.And my personal favorite,which makes sense on some level,is to DVR your favorite shows so you can fast-forward through the commercials.That way,you save eight minutes every half hour,so in the course of two hours of watching TV,you find32minutes to exercise.which is true.You know another way to find 32minutes to exercise?Don’t watch two hours of TV a day,right?Anyway,the idea is we’ll save bits of time here and there,add it up,we will finally get to everything we want to do.当人们发现我在写关于时间管理的内容时，他们总会假设两件事。

一件事是我总是很守时，但是我不是。

我有四个小孩，我倒是很想把偶尔的迟到怪到他们头上，但是有时候并不是他们的责任。

我有次连自己的时间管理讲座都迟到了。

当时大家只得一起体会了一下其中的讽刺意味。

第二件事就是他们觉得我有很多诀窍来节省各种零散的时间。

有时候我会收到杂志的来信说他们正在根据这样的思路写文章，通常是关于如何帮助读者在一天中抽出一个小时的时间。

这个想法是说我们从日常活动中省出零散的时间，加起来，这样我们就有足够的时间来做有意义的事了。

我对这个概念的整个前提保持怀疑，但我总是很感兴趣他们在给我打电话前想出了什么点子。

有几个是我很喜欢的：出去办事选择一路全是右转弯的地方；极其谨慎地使用微波炉：包装上说叮三到三分半钟，那就绝对只叮三分钟。

我个人最喜欢的，从某种程度来说还算有道理，就是把喜欢的节目录下来这样就能快进广告。

这样，每半小时能节省八分钟，那么在看两个小时电视的过程中，你就有32分钟来锻炼。

这倒是真的。

可你们知道找32分钟锻炼的另一种方法吗？就是一天不要看两小时电视，对吗？总之，这个理论就是我们节省零散的时间，加起来，最终我们就能做到我们想做的所有事情。

assume[əˈsju:m]假定occasional[əˈkeʒənəl]偶尔的tardiness['tɑ:dɪnəs]拖延savor['seɪvə]品尝irony[ˈaɪrəni]讽刺shave[ʃeɪv]刮毛premise['premɪs]前提errands[ˈerənd]差事judicious[dʒuˈdɪʃəs]明智的usage[ˈju:sɪdʒ]用法commercials[kə'mɜ:ʃlz]广告But after studying how successful people spend their time and looking at their schedules hour by hour,I think this idea has it completely backward.We don’t build the lives we want by saving time.We build the lives we want,and time saves itself.Here’s what I mean.I recently did a time diary project,looking at1,001days in the lives of the extremely busy women.They had demanding jobs,sometimes their own business,kids to care for,maybe parents to care for,community commitments....busy,busy people.I had them keep track of their time for a week.So I could add up how much they worked and slept,and I interviewed them about their strategies,for my book.One of the women whose time log I studied,she goes out on a Wednesday night for something.She comes home to find that her water heater has broken,and there is now water all over her basement.If you’ve had anything like this happen to you,you know it is a hugely damaging,frightening,sopping mess.So she’s dealing with the immediate aftermath thatnight,next day she’s got plumbers coming in,day after that,professional cleaning crew dealing with the ruined carpet.All this is being recorded on her time log.Winds up taking seven hours of her week.Seven hours.That’s like finding an extra hour in the day.But I’m sure if you had asked her at the start of the week,”Could you find seven hours to train for a triathlon?””Could you find seven hours to mentor seven worthy people?”I’m sure she would’ve said what most of us would’ve said,which is,”No,can’t you see how busy I am?”但是在研究了成功人士如何使用时间之后并且逐个小时审视了他们的日程表，我认为这个理论已经彻底落后了。

我们并不是通过节省时间创造想要的生活。

而是先创造想要的生活，然后时间就自动省下来了。

接下来我会进行说明。

我最近在做一个时间日记项目，观察那些非常繁忙的女性一千零一天的生活。

她们都有繁忙的工作，有些是自己创业，要照顾孩子，还要照顾老人，要做社区服务.....非常，非常忙。

我让她们每周做时间记录。

这样我就能计算她们工作和睡觉的时间总和，为了收集资料，我还询问她们的安排策略。

我研究了其中一位女士的时间日志，有个星期三晚上，她出门办了点儿事。

回家时发现家里的热水器坏了，地下室已经被水淹了。

如果你曾经历类似的事，就知道，这是一场巨大的破坏，淹得一塌糊涂。

那天晚上她就面临了这场突发灾难，第二天她找来了水管工，又隔一天，她找来专业的清理团队处理损毁的地毯。

这些都记录在她的时间日志上。

占用了她一周七个小时的时间。

七个小时，那就是每天多出一个小时。

但我相信如果那一周开始的时候我问她，“你能挤出七小时进行铁人三项运动吗？”“你能挤出七小时辅导七个值得辅导的人吗？”我相信她会和我们大多数人一样，说，“不能，你看不出我有多忙吗？”demanding[dɪˈmændɪŋ]要求高的community[kəˈmjunɪti]社区commitments[kə'mɪtmənts]承担的义务heater[ˈhitɚ]加热器frightening[ˈfraɪtnɪŋ]令人恐惧的sopping[ˈsɑ:pɪŋ]湿透的plumber[ˈplʌmɚ]水管工crew[kru]全体船员carpet[ˈkɑ:rpɪt]地毯wind up[wɪndʌp]结束triathlon[traɪ'æθlən]三项全能运动Mentor['mentɔ:r]指导Yet when she had to find seven hours because there is water all over her basement,she found seven hours.And what this shows us is that time is highly elastic.We cannot make more time,but time will stretch to accommodate what we choose put into it.And so the key to time management is treating our priorities as the equivalent of that broken water heater.To get at this,I like to use language from one of the busiest people I ever interviewed.By busy,I mean she was running a small business with12people on the payroll,she had six children in her spare time.I was getting in touch with her to set up an interview on how she“had it all”....that phrase.I remember it was a Thursday morning,and she was not available to speak with me.Ofcourse,right?But the reason she was unavailable to speak with me is that she was out for a hike,because it was a beautiful spring morning,and she wanted to go for a hike.So of course this makes me even more intrigued,and when I finally do catch up with her,she explains it like this.She says,”Listen,Laura,everything I do,every minute I spend,is my choice.”And rather than say,”I don’t have time to do x,y or z,”she’d say,”I don’t do x,y or z because it’s not a priority.””I don’t have time,”often means”It’s not a priority.”If you think about it,that’s really more accurate language.I mean I could tell you I don’t have time to dust my blinds,but that’s not true.If you offered to pay me$100,000to dust my blinds,I would get to it pretty quickly.Since that is not going to happen,I can acknowledge this is not a matter of lacking time,it’s that I don’t want to do ing this language reminds us that time is a choice.And granted,there may be horrible consequences for making different choices,I will give you that.But we are smart people,and certainly over the long run we have the power to fill our lives with the things that deserve to be there.可是当家里的地下室淹着水，她不得不因此挤出七小时，她挤出了七个小时。