5分钟提高效率:拯救你繁忙的一整天

Here's a simple way to potentially save hours of your time each week, by investing a total of about five minutes.
介绍一种能够帮助你每周都能预先节约下好多时间的简单方法，总共仅仅需要投入约5分钟的时间。

First thing one morning, take a piece of paper and write a column of numbers representing each hour from the time you wake up until you go to sleep. For me, the list would start 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 1 and go all the way back to 12. (So far, you have invested about fifteen seconds.)
在早晨做的第一件事，找一张纸，写下一列数字代表你从醒来到睡着的每个小时。对我来说，这列数字会是6,7,8,9,10,11,12,1然后再回到12（到目前为止你总共花了15秒）。

For this single day, at the top of every hour stop for 20 seconds and consider how happy you are with the way you spent your time. Did you invest it wisely? If the answer is yes, don't write anything.
在这天中，每个小时的开始花20秒思考一下你是否对过去1个小时的时间利用感到满意。你是否合理地利用了？假如答案是肯定的，不要写任何东西。

But if you wouldn't repeat the way you spent the last hour, next to the number representing that hour write a few words that describes what you did. On one of my lists, for example, at 3 o’clock I wrote "pointless to talk with Ralph; doesn't listen," meaning that it was a waste of my time to meet with him.
但要是你不愿重复你过去1个小时的过法，在代表那个小时的数字旁边写下几个字来描述你做了些什么。以我的一份列表举例：在3点时我写了“和拉尔夫说话毫无意义，他根本没听”，这代表我和他会面根本就是浪费时间。

Stick with this exercise all day; it takes very little time, just the discipline to stop every hour for a few seconds. But at the end of the day, you'll have a list of activities you wish you avoided. If the list has more than one or two items, you might want to continue the practice for a while.
整天都按照这个方法来做，这不会花太多时间，只需要每个小时花那么几秒钟。但是当一天结束时，你将会获得一张你希望避免的事情的列表。假如这张列表中有超过2个项目的话，你或许就想要继续保持这么做了。

If you make this a habit, you'll soon start to spot patterns. It will be easier to recognize ways in which you are wasting time and effort, and you'll do a better job of avoiding these.
假如你把它当成一种习惯，你很快就会找出规律了。这样做能更好地找出一天中你浪费时间和精力的那些事，假如你能避免做那些事，你就能把时间利用得更好。

You can also use this technique across an entire department to help all involved make better use of their time. To avoid offending people, I wouldn't suggest pooling the results. You can simply introduce the test and allow people to draw their own conclusions.
你也可以在整个部门推行这种方法以帮助所有人更好地利用时间。为了避免冒犯到别人，我不建议你收集结果。你可以仅仅将这种办法介绍给他们并且让他们自己得出结论。

Encourage people to not only list the problems that wasted their time, but to also write down solutions for using their time more wisely. For example, at the end of a long meeting, you might realize that while your initial strategy of barking out orders did not work, that once you took the time to listen to others, they became more willing to listen to you.
鼓励别人不仅仅是把那些浪费时间的问题列出来，还要写下如何更好地利用时间的方法。比如，在一次漫长会议的结尾，你或许会发现你最初计划的强压政策并没有奏效，因为当你更乐意花时间聆听别人时，别人也更乐意听你的话。