So I'm going to talk about work; specifically, why people can't seem to get work done at work, which is a problem we all kind of have. But let's sort of start at the beginning.
我要來談工作 精確的說,為什麼上班時 沒辦法完成工作 這情形大家應該都遇過 我們從頭開始
So, we have companies and non-profits and charities and all these groups that have employees or volunteers of some sort. And they expect these people who work for them to do great work -- I would hope, at least. At least good work, hopefully, at least it's good work -- hopefully great work. And so what they typically do is they decide that all these people need to come together in one place to do that work. So a company, or a charity, or an organization of any kind, unless you're working in Africa, if you're really lucky to do that -- most people have to go to an office every day.
很多公司、非營利企業、慈善機構 等等公司行號 都有員工 或是志工之類的 主管們會希望員工 好好工作 至少努力工作 這是基本要求,能拿出優秀的成績 是最好的 所以他們通常會決定 員工通通要到同一地點 上班工作 所以公司行號、各大機構 除非你住非洲,會比較幸運 否則通常都會被要求 每天進辦公室
And so these companies, they build offices. They go out and they buy a building, or they rent a building, or they lease some space, and they fill this space with stuff. They fill it with tables, or desks, chairs, computer equipment, software, Internet access, maybe a fridge, maybe a few other things, and they expect their employees, or their volunteers, to come to that location every day to do great work. It seems like it's perfectly reasonable to ask that.
所以這些公司 需要辦公室存在 用買的或租下辦公大樓 或是租個地方 放滿東西,將就著用 辦公室放滿桌椅、 電腦設備、 軟體、 網路連線 或許加個冰箱等等東西 老闆們希望員工,或志工們 能每天上班,做出一番成果 聽起來是個合理要求
However, if you actually talk to people and even question yourself, and you ask yourself, where do you really want to go when you really need to get something done? You'll find out that people don't say what businesses think they would say. If you ask people the question: Where do you need to go when you need to get something done? Typically, you get three different kinds of answers. One is kind of a place or a location or a room. Another one is a moving object, and a third is a time.
但如果你親自訪問這些人 甚至問問自己 問自己: 你真想把事情做好的時候,會去哪裡? 通常你會聽到的回答 都不是這些公司們所想的 你如果問:你真想把事情做好的時候, 會去哪裡? 通常有三類答案 第一:地點 第二:移動的物體 第三:時間
So here are some examples. I've been asking people this question for about 10 years: "Where do you go when you really need to get something done?" I'll hear things like, the porch, the deck, the kitchen. I'll hear things like an extra room in the house, the basement, the coffee shop, the library. And then you'll hear things like the train, a plane, a car -- so, the commute. And then you'll hear people say, "Well, it doesn't really matter where I am, as long as it's early in the morning or late at night or on the weekends." You almost never hear someone say, "The office." But businesses are spending all this money on this place called the office, and they're making people go to it all the time, yet people don't do work in the office.
我舉例一下 這問題我已經問十幾年了 我問:你想把事情做好的時候,會去哪裡? 我得到的答案有:門廊、桌前、 廚房、 房子裡額外的小房間、 地下室、 咖啡店、圖書館 還有像是火車、 飛機上、車裡,關於交通的答案 也有人回答 「其實跟地點沒關係,」 「只要是在清晨、深夜、週末的時候就可以」 幾乎沒人講辦公室 但公司花大錢設置辦公室 還要求大家一定要進辦公室 但員工卻無法在辦公室內完成工作
What is that about?
搞什麼?
(Laughter)
為什麼?
Why is that? Why is that happening? And what you find out is, if you dig a little bit deeper, you find out that people -- this is what happens: People go to work, and they're basically trading in their work day for a series of "work moments" -- that's what happens at the office. You don't have a work day anymore. You have work moments. It's like the front door of the office is like a Cuisinart, and you walk in and your day is shredded to bits, because you have 15 minutes here, 30 minutes there, and something else happens, you're pulled off your work, then you have 20 minutes, then it's lunch, then you have something else to do ... Then you've got 15 minutes, and someone pulls you aside and asks you a question, and before you know it, it's 5 p.m., and you look back on the day, and you realize that you didn't get anything done. We've all been through this. We probably went through it yesterday or the day before, or the day before that. You look back on your day, and you're like, "I got nothing done today. I was at work. I sat at my desk. I used my expensive computer. I used the software they told me to use. I went to these meetings I was asked to go to. I did these conference calls. I did all this stuff. But I didn't actually do anything. I just did tasks. I didn't actually get meaningful work done."
為什麼會這樣? 如果你深究的話 會發現 通常 大家上班時 一個工作天其實 是分很多片段的 這就是辦公室的情況 已經不是工作「天」,而是工作「片刻」 進辦公室好像走進榨汁機一樣 一天就這樣被榨成片段 這邊15分鐘,那邊30分鐘的拼湊 常常有什麼事,就得分神去處理 跑去做別的事之後,再專心個20分鐘,就中餐時間了 然後又有別的事要做, 再專心15分鐘,然後有人跑來問你的問題 等你回神,就五點下班時間了 然後回顧一整天 發現你根本什麼也沒做 我們應該都遇過這種情況 也許昨天就是這樣 前天也是、大前天也是 每天回顧,恍然發現什麼事也沒做 我進了辦公室 我坐在電腦前,打著昂貴電腦 用著他們裝的軟體 開上頭要我參加的會議 打打電話之類的事 但其實什麼都沒做 我做「瑣事」而已 其實正經事都沒做
And what you find is that, especially with creative people -- designers, programmers, writers, engineers, thinkers -- that people really need long stretches of uninterrupted time to get something done. You cannot ask somebody to be creative in 15 minutes and really think about a problem. You might have a quick idea, but to be in deep thought about a problem and really consider a problem carefully, you need long stretches of uninterrupted time. And even though the work day is typically eight hours, how many people here have ever had eight hours to themselves at the office? How about seven hours? Six? Five? Four? When's the last time you had three hours to yourself at the office? Two hours? One, maybe? Very, very few people actually have long stretches of uninterrupted time at an office. And this is why people choose to do work at home, or they might go to the office, but they might go to the office really early in the day, or late at night when no one's around, or they stick around after everyone's left, or go in on the weekends, or they get work done on the plane, in the car or in the train, because there are no distractions.
尤其你會發現,有創意的人-- 設計師、程式設計師、 作家、工程師、 工作必須思考的人 都需要 連續、不被打擾的時間才能將事情做好 你不能要求一個人,用15分鐘時間想創意 或想出辦法解決問題 可能會有很快的一個想法 但真想要徹底想出解決方案 就一定需要長時間、不被打擾的時間 正常一個工作天是八小時 你們有多少人在辦公室,八小時都是自己的時間? 七小時? 六?五?四? 你什麼時候真的在辦公室獨處過完整3小時? 兩小時?或許一小時? 很少人在辦公室真的有 長時間、不被打擾的時間 這就是為什麼大家選擇在家工作 他們也許可能會進辦公室 但都是在很早的時候 或是很晚,大家都離開時 等到沒人,或是周末進辦公室 又或是在飛機上把工作做完 或是在車上、火車上 因為這樣才不會被打擾
Now there are different kinds of distractions, but not the really bad distractions, which I'll talk about in a minute. And this whole phenomenon of having short bursts of time to get things done reminds me of another thing that doesn't work when you're interrupted, and that is sleep. I think that sleep and work are very closely related -- not because you can work while you're sleeping and sleep while you're working. That's not really what I mean. I'm talking specifically about the fact that sleep and work are phase-based, or stage-based, events. Sleep is about sleep phases, or stages -- some people call them different things. There are five of them, and in order to get to the really deep ones, the meaningful ones, you have to go through the early ones. If you're interrupted while you're going through the early ones -- if someone bumps you in bed, or there's a sound, or whatever happens -- you don't just pick up where you left off.
干擾有很多種 但有些並非不好 我們等會兒再談 這種短暫工作時刻的 整個現象 讓我想到另一件事 當你做這件事的時候也不能被打擾 就是睡覺 睡覺跟工作習習相關 不是因為睡覺時無法工作 工作時不能睡覺 我不是要講這個 我要講的是 睡覺和工作 都是階段性的 或稱做時期性的 所以睡覺也是很多階段、時期 -- 說法有很多種 總共有五個階段 為了進到最深沉的階段 就必須從最初那一階開始 如果你第一階段就被打擾 可能有人翻身碰到你 或許是有什麼聲音之類的 你沒辦法回到原本階段繼續睡
If you're interrupted and woken up, you have to start again. So you have to go back a few phases and start again. And what ends up happening -- you might have days like this where you wake up at eight or seven in the morning, or whenever you get up, and you're like, "I didn't sleep very well. I did the sleep thing -- I went to bed, I laid down, but I didn't really sleep." People say you go "to" sleep, but you don't go to sleep, you go towards sleep; it takes a while. You've got to go through phases and stuff, and if you're interrupted, you don't sleep well. So does anyone here expect someone to sleep well if they're interrupted all night? I don't think anyone would say yes. Why do we expect people to work well if they're being interrupted all day at the office? How can we possibly expect people to do their job if they go to the office and are interrupted? That doesn't really seem like it makes a lot of sense, to me.
如果被打擾後醒來 就必須重頭開始 就得回到前幾個階段重來 很常發生的情況是 -- 有時候你會發現 當你八點起床,或七點起床 隨便幾點 起床後就想,天哪,我沒睡好 我有睡阿 -- 我爬上床、躺下 但沒有真的睡著 我們說去睡覺 其實不是一倒下就睡著,而是進入夢鄉 是需要時間的,一階一階慢慢來 如果被干擾,當然就睡不好 整夜一直被打擾 能睡的好嗎? 應該不行吧 在辦公室裡不斷被打擾 是要怎麼把工作做好啊? 在辦公室裡一直被打擾 要員工怎麼把事情做好? 對我來說,一點也不合理
So what are the interruptions that happen at the office but not at other places? Because in other places, you can have interruptions like the TV, or you could go for a walk, or there's a fridge downstairs, or you've got your own couch, or whatever you want to do. If you talk to certain managers, they'll tell you that they don't want their employees to work at home because of these distractions. They'll sometimes also say, "If I can't see the person, how do I know they're working?" which is ridiculous, but that's one of the excuses that managers give. And I'm one of these managers. I understand. I know how this goes. We all have to improve on this sort of thing. But oftentimes they'll cite distractions: "I can't let someone work at home. They'll watch TV, or do this other thing." It turns out those aren't the things that are distracting, Because those are voluntary distractions. You decide when you want to be distracted by the TV, when you want to turn something on, or when you want to go downstairs or go for a walk. At the office, most of the interruptions and distractions that really cause people not to get work done are involuntary. So let's go through a couple of those.
那這些干擾只發生在辦公室 其他地方不會發生嗎? 其他地方也是會有干擾 或許會跑去看電視 或是散個步 到樓下冰箱拿個飲料 躺一下沙發等等 如果你和一些主管談過 他們會說,他們不喜歡員工在家工作的原因 是因為容易受干擾 他們也說 偶爾會這樣說 "如果我看不到人影,怎麼知道他在工作?" 這理由很荒繆,但他們都用這藉口 我也是經理 所以我懂 但我們要改善這情形 可是他們常會舉例 "我不能讓員工在家工作" "因為他們會看電視、做別的事" 但其實這些讓你分心的事,並不是真的干擾 因為這些干擾是自願性的 你自己決定什麼時候看電視 開什麼、關什麼、用什麼 決定什麼時候下樓、散步 而辦公室裡的大多數干擾 讓人們無法好好工作的 都是非自願的 我來解釋一下
Now, managers and bosses will often have you think that the real distractions at work are things like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and other websites, and in fact, they'll go so far as to actually ban these sites at work. Some of you may work at places where you can't get to certain sites. I mean, is this China? What the hell is going on here? You can't go to a website at work, and that's the problem? That's why people aren't getting work done, because they're on Facebook and Twitter? That's kind of ridiculous. It's a total decoy. Today's Facebook and Twitter and YouTube, these things are just modern-day smoke breaks. No one cared about letting people take a smoke break for 15 minutes 10 years ago, so why does anyone care if someone goes to Facebook or Twitter or YouTube here and there? Those aren't the real problems in the office.
所以,上司、老闆們 常會告訴你,工作時真正會讓你分心的是 Facebook和Twitter 還有Youtube等其他網站 他們甚至會完全禁止 上班瀏覽這些網站 你們有些人的公司可能會擋某些網站 這是中國嗎? 搞什麼? 上班時候不能逛某些網站 因為逛了之後員工會不想工作? 是因為他們玩Facebook或Twitter? 大瞎了吧,根本是胡扯 今日的Facebook、Twitter、YouTube 等於是以前的抽菸時間而已 十年前,上班時間溜出去15分鐘抽個菸 根本沒人管 現在為什麼偶爾上個Facebook、Twitter、YouTube 就意見一大堆? 這些根本不是真正的問題
The real problems are what I like to call the M&Ms, the Managers and the Meetings. Those are the real problems in the modern office today. And this is why things don't get done at work, it's because of the M&Ms. Now what's interesting is, if you listen to all the places that people talk about doing work, like at home, in the car, on a plane, late at night, or early in the morning, you don't find managers and meetings. You find a lot of other distractions, but not managers and meetings. So these are the things that you don't find elsewhere, but you do find at the office. And managers are basically people whose job it is to interrupt people. That's pretty much what managers are for. They're for interrupting people. They don't really do the work, so they make sure everyone else is doing work, which is an interruption. We have lots of managers in the world now, and a lot of people in the world, and a lot of interruptions by these managers. They have to check in: "Hey, how's it going? Show me what's up." This sort of thing. They keep interrupting you at the wrong time, while you're actually trying to do something they're paying you to do, they tend to interrupt you. That's kind of bad.
真正的問題我稱做是 M&M's 經理(managers)和會議(meetings) 這才是現今辦公室裡最大的問題 員工沒辦法順利完成工作 就是因為M&M's 有趣的事來了 很多人說他們工作的地方-- 在家、車上、飛機上、 深夜、清晨 通常都沒有經理和會議 也許有很多其他干擾,但沒有經理和會議 這兩樣其他地方沒有 唯有辦公室裡會出現 經理的工作基本上 就是去打擾別人 他們的工作大概就這樣,打擾別人 沒有真正要做的事 所以只好確保大家都在做事,變成干擾 現在世上很多經理 世界上也很多人 因為這些經理,所以很多干擾 他們很愛跑來「嘿,還好嗎?」 「報告你的進度」等等 而且都會在錯誤時機來打擾 正當你要好好做正事時 他們就會跑來煩你 蠻糟的吧
But what's even worse is the thing that managers do most of all, which is call meetings. And meetings are just toxic, terrible, poisonous things during the day at work.
經理們會做的另一件更糟的事 就是會議 會議根本就有毒 很糟、劇毒的東西 會在工作時毒死你
(Laughter)
我們心知肚明
We all know this to be true, and you would never see a spontaneous meeting called by employees. It doesn't work that way. The manager calls the meeting so the employees can all come together, and it's an incredibly disruptive thing to do to people -- to say, "Hey look, we're going to bring 10 people together right now and have a meeting. I don't care what you're doing, you've got to stop doing it, so you can have this meeting." I mean, what are the chances that all 10 people are ready to stop? What if they're thinking about something important, or doing important work? All of a sudden you tell them they have to stop doing that to do something else. So they go into a meeting room, they get together, and they talk about stuff that doesn't really matter, usually. Because meetings aren't work. Meetings are places to go to talk about things you're supposed to be doing later.
會議不會是員工隨意召開 不可能的 所以經理召開會議 讓員工聚在一起 然後無敵煩的事情發生了 "嘿,聽著" "馬上找十個人來開會" "我不管你在幹麻" "放下手邊工作開會就是了" 有可能剛好十個人都有空開會嗎? 如果他們在想重要的事呢? 或者在做重要的事呢? 突然間你就叫他們停下手邊工作 改做其他事 被叫到會議室,坐下來 討論無關緊要的事 開會是行不通的 開會通常都是要討論之後做的事 不只如此,會議還會繁殖
But meetings also procreate. So one meeting tends to lead to another meeting, which leads to another meeting. There's often too many people in the meetings, and they're very, very expensive to the organization. Companies often think of a one-hour meeting as a one-hour meeting, but that's not true, unless there's only one person. If there are 10 people, it's a 10-hour meeting, not a one-hour meeting. It's 10 hours of productivity taken from the rest of the organization to have this one-hour meeting, which probably should have been handled by two or three people talking for a few minutes. But instead, there's a long scheduled meeting, because meetings are scheduled the way software works, which is in increments of 15 minutes, or 30 minutes, or an hour. You don't schedule an eight-hour meeting with Outlook; you can't. You can go 15 minutes or 30 minutes or 45 minutes or an hour. And so we tend to fill these times up when things should go really quickly.
一個會開完再衍生出另一個會議 然後沒完沒了 而且開會的人多 對公司成本來說是個損失 我們通常覺得一小時的會議就是一小時 但這是錯的,因為會議不只有一個人 如果有十個人去開會,加起來就十小時了,而非一小時 十小時的生產力就這樣沒了 就為這一小時的會議 而開會本來就可以兩三個人用幾分鐘時間 就能完成的 取而代之的是又臭又長的會 因為會議安排就像軟體一樣 以15、30、60分增加 你不會跟Outlook開八小時的會吧 根本不可能 大概就以15、30、45、60分鐘 我們會將這些時間填滿 但其實事情很快就能解決
So meetings and managers are two major problems in businesses today, especially at offices. These things don't exist outside of the office. So I have some suggestions to remedy the situation. What can managers do -- enlightened managers, hopefully -- what can they do to make the office a better place for people to work, so it's not the last resort, but it's the first resort, so that people start to say, "When I really want to get stuff done, I go to the office." Because the offices are well-equipped; everything is there for them to do the work. But they don't want to go there right now, so how do we change that? I have three suggestions to share with you. I have about three minutes, so that'll fit perfectly.
所以經理和會議是現今公司的兩大問題 特別是在辦公室裡 他們不存在於辦公室外 所以我有個建議 可以解決這問題 經理們可以-- 希望是理智的經理-- 他們可以替員工創造好一點的工作環境 成為他們工作的第一選擇 讓員工說 "我想把工作做好時,我會進辦公室" 因為辦公室設備充足 需要用到的東西都有了 可是他們還不這麼想,要怎麼改變呢? 我有三個建議,與各位分享 大概還剩三分鐘,很剛好
We've all heard of the Casual Friday thing. I don't know if people still do that. But how about "No-talk Thursdays?"
大家都聽過"週五便服日"吧 不曉得還有沒有公司採用 那各位覺得"無言星期四"如何?
(Laughter)
就這樣好了
Pick one Thursday once a month, and cut it in half, just the afternoon -- I'll make it easy for you. So just the afternoon, one Thursday. First Thursday of the month, just the afternoon, nobody in the office can talk to each other. Just silence, that's it. And what you'll find is that a tremendous amount of work gets done when no one talks to each other. This is when people actually get stuff done, is when no one's bothering them or interrupting them. Giving someone four hours of uninterrupted time is the best gift you can give anybody at work. It's better than a computer, better than a new monitor, better than new software, or whatever people typically use. Giving them four hours of quiet time at the office is going to be incredibly valuable. If you try that, I think you'll agree, and hopefully you can do it more often. So maybe it's every other week, or every week, once a week, afternoons no one can talk to each other. That's something that you'll find will really, really work.
隨便挑一個月裡的星期四 再簡單一點,那個星期四下午就好 就那星期四的下午 假設就第一個週四的下午 大家在辦公室都不要講話 完全靜默 你會發現 完成的工作量有多驚人 因為沒有人聊天講話 要真的把事情做好 就不能有人隨時來煩、叨擾 當你可以給人四小時不受打擾的上班時間 會是最好的禮物 比電腦還棒 比新的螢幕、新的軟體還好 總之比什麼都好 給他們安靜的四小時上班時間 會是十分寶貴的 試過就知道 然後,或許可以多增加點安靜時間 也許是每兩週、 或每週、一週一次 整個下午都不講話 你會發現這真的很有效
Another thing you can try, is switching from active communication and collaboration, which is like face-to-face stuff -- tapping people on the shoulder, saying hi to them, having meetings, and replace that with more passive models of communication, using things like email and instant messaging, or collaboration products, things like that. Now some people might say email is really distracting, I.M. is really distracting, and these other things are really distracting, but they're distracting at a time of your own choice and your own choosing. You can quit the email app; you can't quit your boss. You can quit I.M.; you can't hide your manager. You can put these things away, and then you can be interrupted on your own schedule, at your own time, when you're available, when you're ready to go again. Because work, like sleep, happens in phases. So you'll be going up, doing some work, and then you'll come down from that work, and then maybe it's time to check that email or I.M. There are very, very few things that are that urgent, that need to happen, that need to be answered right this second. So if you're a manager, start encouraging people to use more things like I.M. and email and other things that someone can put away and then get back to you on their own schedule.
你可以試的另一件事 就是將主動的 通訊與合作 像是面對面、 拍肩、打招呼、開會等等 改為被動的通訊 像是email或即時通 這些合作通訊工具之類的 有人可能會覺得email很煩 即時通很煩 還有其他雜七雜八很煩的東西 但這些東西都可以自己決定什麼時候做 你可以關掉email,但你關不掉老闆 你可以關掉即時通 但你躲不了你的上司 你可以把東西收起來 等到行程空出來、有時間了 再做這些事 因為工作,如睡覺,都是階段式的 所以,進辦公室先開始專心工作 把工作完成之後 再收發email、開個即時通 因為很少有事情是緊急到 需要馬上得到回覆的 如果你的經理 開始鼓勵員工多用即時通或email 讓另一個人可以先專心作手邊的事 等到有時間在回覆你
And the last suggestion I have is that, if you do have a meeting coming up, if you have the power, just cancel it. Just cancel that next meeting.
我的最後一個建議是 如果你正巧有個會議要開 而你權力夠大 就取消這場會議吧
(Laughter)
今天是週五,那就把下星期一的會議
Today's Friday, usually people have meetings on Monday. Just don't have it. I don't mean move it; I mean just erase it from memory, it's gone. And you'll find out that everything will be just fine. All these discussions and decisions you thought you had to make at this one time at 9 a.m. on Monday, just forget about them, and things will be fine. People will have a more open morning, they can actually think. You'll find out all these things you thought you had to do, you don't actually have to do.
取消吧 我不是說調時間 而是直接從記憶刪除 你發現事情還是一切安好 這些你本來計畫週一早上九點 要做的決定、討論 就忘掉吧,事情一樣會好好的 讓員工有個自由的早晨,可以思考 你會發現你本來打算做的事 根本沒這個必要
So those are just three quick suggestions I wanted to give you guys to think about. I hope that some of these ideas were at least provocative enough for managers and bosses and business owners and organizers and people who are in charge of other people, to think about laying off a little bit, and giving people more time to get work done. I think it'll all pay off in the end.
以上就是我的三個小建議 讓各位想想 我希望我所分享的一些點子 足夠煽動 能讓經理、老闆、 頂頭上司、主管等等 試著稍微放手 給員工多一點空間來完成工作 我想最終會是值得的
So, thanks for listening.
謝謝各位
(Applause)
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