工作不堪重負？學學華爾街之王怎么度假
leigh Gallagher
2017-09-20
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今年夏天只剩下幾周了，我跟往常一樣在辦公室忙工作，一邊為夏季休假做準備。我準備去海灘休息兩周，感覺真的很有必要：今年忙了大半年，秋天只會更忙。唉，就可憐可憐我吧，去年為了趕稿寫書一天假都沒放。所以今年休假我特別興奮。 我在學習提高效率，收集了不少妙招、訣竅和策略想把工作做得更好。今年我比以往更看重休假，一開始盤算就回憶起一句我最喜歡的有關度假的名言。這句名言來自華爾街鼎鼎大名的金融家與銀行家約翰·皮爾龐特·摩根。19世紀末20世紀初，他曾掌控美國公司金融領域，著名的摩根大通集團正是以他的名字命名，目前摩根大通首席執行官為杰米·戴蒙。 摩根以充滿個性且工作狂著稱，真實的他比傳聞還要強大。20世紀初，他領導下的銀行曾推動整個美國經濟轉型，幾乎憑一己之力將全球金融中心從倫敦轉移到紐約。此外，讓·斯特勞斯1999年出版的傳記《美國銀行家：摩根傳》稱，摩根對工作和休息有一套獨特的個人哲學。具體來說，他堅信自己“九個月就可能做完一年的工作，用不了12個月?！睋Q句話說，如果一年休息不到三個月，其他時間也沒法高效工作。 摩根特別看重休假。傳記寫到，1912年末，他按照慣例準備了三個月的假期，次年年初先去了埃及，看看他支持的考古發掘。第二站是羅馬，參觀了在美國人文與科學院任職時資助修建的建筑。接下來，他趕赴法國南部小鎮艾克斯萊班，開始一年一度的溫泉之旅。摩根就是在那次度假期間離開人世的。1913年3月，他在羅馬下榻的大酒店入睡，再也沒有醒來，只差幾天就是他的76歲壽辰。每年他都認真安排假期。盡管要去美國國會作證，面對普約委員會對他和其他少數金融家——所謂“貨幣托拉斯”是否過多操控全國金融的調查，他仍然安排了1913年的度假?？瓷先ナ裁炊疾荒軘r住他休假三個月。這也是他成功的關鍵。 摩根的休假觀是相當先進的，哪怕從現代角度看，他的觀念也不過時。他可能是喜歡冥想的人。今時今日，這位金融業傳奇人物的休息哲學比以往還要重要。現在勞動力大軍日漸縮減，科技又十分進步經?？梢噪S時隨地辦公，不分晝夜也不分周末，甚至可以通過手環工作。根本不可能完全擺脫電子設備。（再加上近來美國政界頻傳勁爆新聞，我們更是離不開各種設備。） 然而，只有休息好才能更好地工作。偶爾放空大腦，刻意留白，讓繁忙的工作日程送一送，哪怕只是片刻閑暇，才有可能想出最棒的點子。洗澡的時候創意多可不是陳詞濫調，科學研究已經證明（我最近聽說，有人因此在浴室里放白板）。研究證明，做一些相對輕松的事情時，迸發創意火花的可能性會增加。美國暢銷休閑雜志Mental Floss的文章稱，高負荷的大腦暫停運轉時，腦部的前額葉皮層就會感到輕松，潛意識開始自由發揮，盡情徜徉，“產生清醒時不會留意的創造性聯想。”當然，還有大量研究顯示，良好的睡眠也對大腦休息和提升業績有幫助（這方面問題可以咨詢熱心宣傳睡眠好處的《赫芬頓郵報》創始人阿里安娜·赫芬頓，她一直認為，人類深陷睡眠不足的危機。） 當然，現在大多數員工無法請三個月假，整日忙碌無比的首席執行官就更別提了。很難想象摩根如果在世，休假時如何應付互聯網和電子交易。他會不會帶著iPhone度假？會不會通過助理處理工作？會不會在電郵里設置措辭強硬的自動回復宣布他正在休假？我們沒了解，只能暢想一下他多么幸運，不必面對種種困難的決定。 對我們一般人來說，還是盡可能從摩根身上汲取一點靈感吧，即使只是少用點手機，少查看幾次工作。我不會環游歐洲，去法國泡溫泉，只能選擇沒什么異國風情的紐約長島海灘度假。但我還是盡可能在內心深處學習摩根。大家都可以做到。首先，不要把休假當成公司福利或者帶孩子的任務，要當成照顧自己的方式，如此剩下的幾個月里才能把工作干得更好。說到這要抱歉一下，我去休假了。就算要找我，我也不會（經常）查看電郵的。（財富中文網） 譯者：Pessy 審校：夏林 |
It’s the final few weeks of summer, and like many others this month, I’m wrapping up things at the office to get ready for a summer vacation. I’m taking two weeks to go to the beach and it feels much needed: It’s been a busy year, the fall promises to be busier still, and—yes, I know, play me a violin—I didn’t take a vacation last year because I crash-wrote a book. So I’m particularly excited for this one. I am a student of productivity, and tend to collect hacks, tactics and strategies to be able to work better. But this year, way more than in years past, planning this summer sojourn has brought to mind over and over my all-time favorite quote about vacation. It comes from, of all people, John Pierpont Morgan, the financier and banker who dominated corporate finance in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and in whose name Jamie Dimon now toils as the CEO of JPMorgan Chase. Morgan was a larger than life personality and a well-known workaholic, and by the early 1900s, his bank helped transform the U.S. economy and almost single handedly shifted the global center of finance from London to New York. And yet, as documented in Jean Strause’s 1999 biography, Morgan: American Financier, Morgan had a particular philosophy about work and rest. Specifically, he firmly believed that he “could do a year’s work in nine months—but not in twelve months.” Without three months of rest, in other words, he wouldn’t be able to do what he did during the rest of the year. Morgan was obsessive about that rest. The book describes him in late 1912 getting ready for his ritualistic three-month recess, which in early 1913 would take him first to Egypt, where he had underwritten archaeological excavations, then to Rome to see buildings he’d funded at the American Academy, and after that he’d set off for his annual visit to the springs at Aix-les-Bains in France. Morgan died during this trip—passing away in his sleep in the Grand Hotel in Rome in March of 1913, just shy of his 76th birthday. But he was religious about taking this trip every year—he was planning out his 1913 itinerary even as he was testifying in front of the Pujo Committee, the congressional subcommittee investigating whether Morgan and a small group of financiers—the so called “money trust"—had too much control over the nation’s finances. Nothing, it seemed, could come in the way of three-month trip; it was the key to his success. It was quite an evolved philosophy even for the time; were he around today, Morgan might be a meditator. But the legendary financier’s rest doctrine is more critical today than ever before. Between workforces being leaner than ever and technology now enabling us to carry the workplace in our pockets—or even on our wrists—at night and on weekends, there is no time for unplugging. (Add in the firehose of shocking news coming out of Washington these days and it’s even harder.) And yet doing so can enable great things to happen. The best ideas tend to come to us when we shut down our brains, create white space and let a little bit of air in our schedules, even for a few moments. It’s not just a cliché that good ideas come to us in the shower; studies have shown it (I heard tell recently of someone who kept a whiteboard in their bathroom for this reason). Research has proven that we’re more likely to have creative epiphanies when we’re doing things that don’t require much thought. When we shut off our brains, the prefrontal cortex relaxes and our unconscious is freed up to wander and roam and “make creative connections that your conscious mind would have dismissed,” writes Mental Floss (and they would know.) And there is of course also an ample body of research showing what good sleep does to our brain and our performance. (Just ask sleep evangelist Arianna Huffington, who maintains we are in the midst of a sleep deprivation crisis). Of course, most employees can’t take a three-month vacation. What CEO could even get away with doing so today? It’s also hard to know how Morgan would have incorporated the Internet and electronic trading into his annual rite of passage. Would he have carried an iPhone? Checked in with an assistant? Put on a strongly-worded out-of-office reply? We’ll never know. We can only fantasize about how lucky he was that he never had to make those decisions. For the rest of us, let’s try to take a little bit of inspiration from him, even if that only means stepping away from the phone and checking in a little less. I won’t be touring Europe and lounging in hot springs of France—I’ll be on the much less exotic beaches of Long Island—but I’m still going to do my best to try to channel my inner John Pierpont. We’d all do well to do the same. Let’s start to see vacation as more than just a part of our comp package or a way to occupy the kids—and as a way to take care of ourselves so that we can perform better for the rest of the year. Now if you'll excuse, I'm off, and if you need me, I won't be checking email (that much). |
