Stop Multitasking. No， Really— Just Stop It.
停止多任务处理。说真的，没开玩笑——停下吧。
By Oliver Burkeman
A few months ago， I was teetering on the brink of feeling overwhelmed by life’s responsibilities， afflicted by the ambient anxiety that seems to be an intrinsic part of life in the 2020s. In an effort to maintain my sanity， I embarked on a personal endurance challenge.
几个月前，我整个人濒临崩溃，被人生各种各样的责任压得喘不过气来，无处不在的焦虑让我备受折磨，而这种焦虑似乎成了2020年代生活的本质。于是，为了保持理智，我开启了一项个人耐力挑战。
I decided to give up listening to podcasts or music while running or driving or loading the dishwasher or doing almost anything else. To just focus， in other words， on what it was I was actually doing， one activity at a time.
我决定在跑步、开车、收拾碗筷到洗碗机，或者做其他几乎任何事情的时候，放弃听播客或者听音乐。换句话说，我要专注在当下我实际在做的事情上，一次只做一件事。
It was surprisingly hard. You may discover， as I did， that you were unwittingly addicted to not doing one thing at a time. You might even come to agree with me that restoring our capacity to live sequentially— that is， focusing on one thing after another， in turn， and enduring the confrontation with our human limitations that this inherently entails— may be among the most crucial skills for thriving in the uncertain， crisis-prone future we all face.
这一点出乎意料地难。你可能会和我一样，发现自己已经在不知不觉间沉迷于一次不止做一件事情。你甚至可能会同意我的观点，即在一个充满不确定性、危机四伏的未来里，恢复我们“按次序生活”的能力，也许是最关键的技能之一。也就是说，我们要专注于做完一件事再做下一件，并且忍受随之而来的、与人类局限性的正面对抗。
The uncomfortable truth is that the only way to find sanity in an overwhelming world is to surrender such efforts to escape the human condition and drop back down into the reality of our limitations.
一个令人难受的事实是，要想在这个不堪重负的世界中找回理智，唯一的办法就是不再做逃避人类现实的无用功，认清我们的局限性，回到现实中来。
There will always be too much to do， no matter what you do. But the ironic upside of this seemingly dispiriting fact is that you needn’t beat yourself up for failing to do it all， nor keep pressuring yourself to find ways to get on top of it all by means of increasingly extreme multitasking.
无论你做什么，总有太多的事情等着你去做。但这个看似让人沮丧的事实，却有一个略带讽刺的好处，那就是你不必因为没有完成所有任务而自责，也不必再不断地给自己施压，让自己想方设法地通过越来越极端的多任务处理方式来完成任务。
Instead， you can pour your finite time， energy and attention into a handful of things that truly count. You’ll enjoy things more in the bargain. My gratifying new ability to be here now while running or driving or cooking dinner isn’t the result of having developed any great spiritual prowess. Rather， it’s a matter of realizing I could only ever be here now anyway— so I might as well give up the stressful struggle to pretend otherwise.
相反，你可以把自己有限的时间、精力和注意力投入到少数真正重要的事情上。这样一来，你会更好地享受生活。我之所以能够在跑步、开车或者做晚饭时专注于当下，不是因为我培养出了超凡的精神力量，而是因为我意识到，无论如何，此刻我只能在这里，所以我不妨少一点紧绷，放弃假装自己不在这里的挣扎。