如何转变我们的工作方式：上四歇三是否可行？

The worst time in the world to get anything done is on a Friday afternoon. Shoulders drop, spirits rise, thoughts inexorably start drifting towards a sunny beer garden. Suddenly, nothing seems so urgent that it couldn’t probably wait. Wise employers have long learned not to fight the Friday feeling.

世界上完成任何一项任务最糟糕的时刻就是在周五下午了。肩膀下垂，精神飞扬，思绪无情地开始漂向阳光明媚的啤酒花园。突然间，似乎没有什么比这更急不可待的了。明智的雇主早就学会了不要和周五的感觉作斗争。

Even in the workaholic 1980s, Fridays used to be dress-down days, the one-time buttoned-up bankers were free to wear their chinos. And despite the fact that millions no longer work Monday to Friday, they’re still the day of choice in many offices for working from home – the one time you can reliably get a seat on a commuter train, or a space in a railway car park.

即使在工作狂热的20世纪80年代，周五一度是人们着便装的日子，一贯衣着考究的银行家可以自由穿着斜纹棉布裤。尽管数百万人已不再从周一到周五一直工作，周五依然是许多办公室员工选择在家工作的一天-这天你可以放心地在通勤列车上找到座位，或在铁路汽车公园找到空位。

Meanwhile the cereal giant Kellogg’s is into its 15th year of “summer hours”, an ingenious scheme that allows office-based staff to knock off at lunchtime on Fridays in July and August. It’s more than worth the company’s while, apparently, thanks to savings from reduced absenteeism and the fact staff tend to work twice as hard on Friday mornings to get everything done before the weekend. But what if a four-day week could one day become the norm, all year round?

与此同时，谷物巨头Kellogg’s进入“夏令时”的第15个年头，这是一个精巧的计划，允许办公室工作人员在7月和8月的周五午餐时间下班。显然，公司是非常值得这么做的，在于旷工下降会带来节省，也基于工作人员在周五早上倾向于比平时勤勉两倍的工作态度在周末前完成所有工作。 但是，如果全年一周只工作四天成为常态会怎样呢？

Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand company managing wills and estate planning, made headlines around the world this week by offering hundreds of staff?just that. Those taking part in the experiment were paid for a five-day week, but allowed to clock up only four days’ work so long as they got an agreed amount done in the time.

Perpetual Guardian是一家管理遗嘱和财产规划的新西兰公司，本周允诺其数百名员工一周只用工作四天，成为轰动世界的头条新闻。那些参加实验的人每周都拿到五天的薪水，但他们只要完成额定任务，就只需工作四天。

Unsurprisingly the number of employees who felt they had a good work-life balance shot up from just more than half to over three-quarters: stress levels fell; feelings of stimulation and commitment at work rose; and staff felt generally happier with their lives. But crucially, the firm reckons productivity also grew by 20%, thanks to staff working more efficiently while they were actually there. At any rate it seems to have worked out well enough for the company’s founder, Andrew Barnes, to announce that he wants to see the experiment extended throughout the company.

不出所料，那些认为自己能很好平衡工作与生活的员工人数从仅仅过半上升到四分之三有余：压力水平下降; 工作中的激励感和承诺感上升; 员工普遍的生活幸福感强了。但至关重要的是，该公司承认其生产率也提高了20％，这要归功于员工在实际工作时更有效率。无论如何，对于该公司创始人安德鲁·巴恩斯（Andrew Barnes）而言，这似乎已经做得很好了，他宣布他希望这个实验进而可以跟进到全公司。

And who doesn’t dream, in the dead zone that is a hot Friday afternoon, of something like this? One in 10 Britons not only want to work fewer hours but would take a pay cut to do it, according to the Office for National Statistics – a trade-off that is particularly alluring for working parents. Somehow four days feels just part-time enough to ease the nagging guilt about not seeing the kids, but not so part-time that you’re out of the work loop.

在周五下午炎热的死亡区，谁不梦想这样的事情？十分之一的英国人不仅希望减少工作时间，而且不惜以减薪为代价，据国家统计局的数据显示—这对于在职父母来说尤其具有吸引力。不知何故，工作四天感觉像是兼职，足以缓解因为没有看到孩子而感到烦人的内疚感，而又不至于让你感觉已脱离了工作周期。

But this goes much further than parents, or indeed Fridays. Older people who don’t want, or can’t afford, to stop working completely are often looking for a way of gradually tapering off their hours. Four-day weeks are taking off too among doctors, teachers and other well-paid professionals juggling impossible demands all day long, who use them as a way of coping with stress and avoiding burnout.

但这不仅仅是对于父母而言或简单的周五工作了。不想或不能承受完全停止工作的老年人经常在寻找逐渐减少工作时间的方法。 医生、教师和其他整天都在处理不可能要求的高薪教授都在要求为期四天的工作，用作应对压力和避免倦怠的方法。

Even if you have to mark papers or chase up hospital referral letters on your day off, that still beats working five days and through the weekend. When the King’s Fund surveyed trainee doctors recently, it found only a third were planning to work full-time even straight after qualifying; they’d seen how intense older doctors’ working days had become, and worried about making mistakes under that kind of pressure. No wonder the New Zealand experiment has touched a nerve.

即使你必须在休息日标记文件或追查医院推荐信，仍然好过工作五天甚至周末加班。King’s Fund最近调查实习医生时发现，只有三分之一的人计划在直接取得任职资格后全职工作; 他们看到了老医生工作日的紧张程度，并担心在这种压力下会犯错误。难怪说新西兰实验已经触到了关键话题。

The old dream of more time, meanwhile, now comes tinged with a new economic urgency. What we now think of as a “normal” weekend is at least in part a legacy of the Great Depression, which created an urgent need to share out what paid labour there was and helped shrink what had previously been a six-day standard working week into five. If doomsday predictions about machines gobbling up human jobs faster than they can be replaced are borne out, governments may soon be faced with equally pressing reasons to spread work around rather than let resentment fester between those who have too much of it, and those who don’t have nearly enough.

与此同时，渴望拥有更多时间的旧时梦想如今看来略带新的经济紧迫性。我们现在认为的“正常”周末至少部分是大萧条的遗产，其创造了一种对有偿劳动力进行分配并帮助缩短之前为期六天的标准工作周为五天的迫切需要。如果世界末日关于机器取代人类工作的速度超过机器能被取代的预测得到证实，那么政府很快就会面临同样迫切的理由来推广工作，而不是在那些有太多工作的人和那些几乎没有足够工作的人之间累积更多怨恨。

But if the optimists are right, and technological advances do eventually unlock the sort of increased prosperity they sometimes have in the past, then arguably the case for using that wealth to open up new choices is even greater. (And it is all about choices, of course; nothing’s stopping anyone from spending weekends in the office if that’s what they really want.)

但是，如果乐观主义者是正确的，技术进步最终会释放他们过去不时出现的那种日益繁荣，那么可以说利用这些财富开辟新选择的情况就更多了。（当然，这完全关乎个人选择;如果在办公室度过周末就是他们真正想要的，那没有什么可以阻止他们那样做。）

Key to the success of the New Zealand experiment was employees coming up with suggestions for working more efficiently, including automating some tasks that had previously been done manually.

新西兰实验成功的关键是员工提出了让工作更有效率的建议，包括自动化一些他们之前手动完成的任务。

It’s a timely reminder that technology doesn’t always have to be the enemy – that if used wisely it may sometimes allow humans to do more interesting things with their lives both at home and at work. Stripping routine, boring chores out of otherwise interesting jobs could at least free up those lucky enough to have them to spend more time doing the things machines don’t excel at but humans find satisfying – such as exercising complex judgments or interacting face to face. We could use the insights provided by big data, meanwhile, to work smarter rather than harder.

这是一个及时的提醒，即科技并不总是必须成为敌人-如果明智地使用科技，它有时可以让人类在家庭和工作生活中做更多有趣的事情。免去例行公事和无聊杂务，转而就可以称为有趣的工作至少可以让那些足够幸运的人腾出时间，进而可以花更多的时间去做机器不擅长但人类觉得令人满意的事情-比如去做复杂的判断或面对面交流。与此同时，我们可以利用大数据提供的见解来更聪明地而不是更努力地工作。