如果时间就是金钱,那我们便彻底破产

If Time Is Money, We’re Broke: How We Waste Hours on End
如果时间就是金钱，那我们便彻底破产：我们竟然在不断浪费时间。

The first of my many, many time-wasting activities takes place each morning with repeated manipulations of the snooze button on my alarm clock, followed by a dilly-dallying shower and an untoward amount of time spent perusing the offerings of my closet. The snooze button alone gains me (according to my rudimentary math skills) roughly 106 more hours of sleep per year, which is great. But I’m also usually late for work and wearing an outfit that, despite the fifteen minutes I spent ruminating about it, is not really all that cute.
在众多浪费时间的活动中，每天早上我重复做的第一件事就是按下那该死的闹钟然后继续赖床。起床后，照常洗个早，然后便漫无目的地看着衣橱里的衣服。每天赖床的时间加起来（用我退化得差不多的计算水平算了下），一年大概多睡了106个小时，多得有点难以想象了 。但可笑的是，我依然迟到，而且尽管我出门前总会花15分钟左右去思索该穿怎样的套装，但最后出来的效果却不尽人意。

And that’s just the morning. If I add up all the time I spend doing one semi-useless thing or another, I’m sure I would be horrified that I have blithely let slip away precious hour upon precious hour of my one and only earthly life. Seize the day, indeed. I’m sure if I had spent that time more constructively, I would have cured cancer, written the great American novel, negotiated peace in the Middle East, and finally gotten caught up on reading my New Yorkers—or at least figured out how Lost will end. Alas, life is simply too full of tantalizing time-sucks.
那仅仅是个开始呢。如果将我花在那些诸如半无用的东西上的时间加起来，我肯定会被这个事实吓一大跳：在我仅有一次的人生中，自己竟然让那无比宝贵的一个个小时在漫不经心中溜走。事实上，我们得把握每一天。我相信，如果我当初能把时间花在更有建设性的事情上的话，我能治愈癌症，能写本出色的美国小说，能在中东进行和平谈判，最后，通过对我们这些纽约人的理解，改变自己的看法----或者至少找出结束战争的方法。哎！生活的可悲仅在于太多的时间被浪费了。

The Closet Vortex
隐形的漩涡

What girl doesn’t long for a Carrie Bradshaw–style closet, replete with the most fashionable offerings her budget will allow (and then some)? Such closets, and even smaller, simpler ones, are major culprits in terms of lost time. The average American woman spends sixty-one minutes contemplating her outfits during the course of a week. An hour, ladies. An hour. Just think of what you could accomplish if you got even half of those 3,172 minutes per year back. Where would the human race be if we were even slightly more decisive about what to wear?
女孩们并不渴望得到的像《欲望都市》里Carrie Bradshaw式的，被无数时尚衣服饰品装满的衣橱，而且她们能支付得起吗？像这种衣橱，或者说小点的，简单点的，是浪费时间的罪魁祸首。在美国，女性一周平均花51分钟在思忖“自己该穿什么”的问题上。乖乖，1个小时啊。试想一下，即使你仅仅用这一年你浪费的3172分钟一半的时间，你能完成多少有用的事情？试想一下，如果我们在穿衣服问题上更加犹豫不决的话，人类的明天会变成什么样子？

Fantasy Land
充满幻想的国度

For the average person, daydreaming consumes 15 to 50 percent of each day. My aforementioned rudimentary math skills prevent me from breaking that down into actual hours and minutes, but even at the lower, 15–20 percent range, we’re still talking about a good chunk of our days’ being spent woolgathering—fantasizing about how we’d spend our imaginary lottery winnings, envisioning the moment when our boyfriends are finally going to pop the long-awaited question. Happily, some studies have suggested that daydreaming is actually a sign of creativity and intelligence, and many psychologists regard it as a healthy mental exercise, much like meditation, so it would seem to be a worthy undertaking. However, that doesn’t remove the necessity of greeting the grindstone for at least part of each day.
平常人一天大约有15%-50%花在做白日梦上。我前面提到我那差劲的计算能力阻止我将这些时间拆分成精确地小时和分钟，但甚至再低一些，在15%-20%的范围里，我们依然谈论着一天当中有一整块的时间都用来神游-----幻想着我们怎么用着想象的中彩票的奖金，展望我们的男朋友最后成为了名父亲。令人愉快的是，一些研究证明，做白日梦的确是富有创造力与智慧的表现，是许多心理学家把做白日梦当做是让心灵更加健康的锻炼，这和冥想很相似， 所以，这看上去是一向值得知性的任务。但是，这些都不能改变一个事实，那便是它的确占据了一天中一定的时间。