FOR many it is a reflex as unconscious as breathing. Hit a stumbling-block during an important task (like, say, writing a column)? The hand reaches for the phone and opens the social network of choice. A blur of time passes, and half an hour or more of what ought to have been productive effort is gone. A feeling of regret is quickly displaced by the urge to see what has happened on Twitter in the past 15 seconds. Some time after the deadline, the editor asks when exactly to expect the promised copy. Distraction is a constant these days; supplying it is the business model of some of the world’s most powerful firms. As economists search for explanations for sagging productivity, some are asking whether the inability to focus for longer than a minute is to blame.

很多人不在意到这个问题，就如同不会在意呼吸一样。在一项重要的任务完成过程中（比如写一篇专栏文章）踢掉一块绊脚石？手不由自主地拿起手机，打开社交网站的首选。时间就这样一点点流逝，一个小时或者更多的有效工作时间偷偷溜走。后悔的情绪迅速地冲动所掩盖，要看看推特过去15秒发生了什么的事。在结稿日期过了一段时间之后，编辑问到底什么时候才能说好了要给的文章。现在，你一直处于分心的状态； 提供分心状态是一些世界上影响力最大的企业的经营模式。经济学家开始寻找这种低效率工作的原因，一些人认为对事物缺乏超过一分钟的注意力或许是罪魁祸首。

The technological onslaught has been a long time building. Bosses no doubt found the knock of the telegraph boy or the clack of the ticker-tape machine an abominable interruption. Fixed-line desk phones were an intrusion in their day, before the mobile phone brought work interruptions into the home. But the web is different, with its unending news cycle, social networks humming with constant conversation, and news feeds algorithmically structured to keep users scrolling and sharing. The louder the din, the greater the distraction—and the harder to tune it out for fear of missing important information.

长期以来，科技的一直在迅猛发展。企业大佬们毫无疑问发现电信设备或者自动收报机纸条是一个使人分心的祸害。在移动手机进入人们的家庭之前，桌上固定电话机是人们日常工作的闯入者。但是，网络颠覆了一切，网络里有着无休止的新闻播送，社交网络里充斥着即时交流，算法推送的新闻流让用户不断地刷屏和转发。消息提示音越响，人们就越是分心——同时也就越难关闭这种声音，害怕错过任何重要的信息。

Distractions clearly affect performance on the job. In a recent essay, Dan Nixon of the Bank of England pointed to a mass of compelling evidence that they could also be eating into productivity growth. Depending on the study you pick, smartphone-users touch their device somewhere between twice a minute to once every seven minutes. Conducting tasks while receiving e-mails and phone calls reduces a worker’s IQ by about ten points relative to working in uninterrupted quiet. That is equivalent to losing a night’s sleep, and twice as debilitating as using marijuana. By one estimate, it takes nearly half an hour to recover focus fully for the task at hand after an interruption. What’s more, Mr Nixon notes, constant interruptions accustom workers to distraction, teaching them, in effect, to lose focus and seek diversions.

注意力分心的的确确影响到了人们的工作表现。最近发表的一篇论文中，英格兰银行的丹·尼克松拿出了大量的证据证明了注意力不集中会极大地不利于提升生产力。不管什么研究，智能手机的用户会以一分钟两次到七分钟一次不等的频率触摸手机。相比于不受干扰的工作，一边工作，一边接收电子邮件或者接听手机的电话，这样会降低工作者的10分的智商。这与通宵熬夜是一样的效果，而第二次就会像吸了大麻一样使人上瘾。有估计称，在受到打扰之后，人们需要将近半个小时的时间才能完全恢复集中注意力，重新投入工作。此外，尼克松还指出，不断地受到打扰会使员工习惯于注意力不集中，这些实际上是在告诉他们不集中注意力，要分心。

Could this explain the rich world’s productivity slowdown? In a paper published in 2007, Sinan Aral and Erik Brynjolfsson, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Marshall Van Alstyne, of Boston University, analysed firms’ use of information technology and its effects on labour productivity and revenue growth. They found an inverted U-shape pattern associated with multitasking and productivity. An initial increase in multitasking from the increased use of IT seems to raise productivity. But later, the accumulation of balls to be juggled reduces performance and increases the incidence of error.

这能解释发达世界的生产力下降的问题吗？在2007年发表的一份论文中，麻省理工学院的思南·安 44 35436 44 15794 0 0 6351 0 0:00:05 0:00:02 0:00:03 6350，艾瑞克·布林约尔松与波士顿大学的马歇尔·范阿尔斯泰恩就分析了企业对信息科技的使用，以及对劳动生产效率和收入的增长的影响。他们发现多重任务工作和劳动效率之间的一个倒U型相关性模型。最初，随着信息科技的使用，多重任务量增长，然后到达生产效率的顶峰。但此后，雪球滚得越来越大之后，也使人们的工作表现受到了影响，使得出错率加大。

IT does help workers in all sorts of ways. It speeds communication and allows documents to be shared remotely. The web makes finding information far simpler and quicker than it was in a world of paper archives. Productivity surged in the late 1990s and early 2000s as e-mail, digital databases and the web spread. The benefits technology brought, at that time, seemed to outweigh the cost of distraction. Since the mid-2000s, however, productivity growth has tumbled, perhaps because the burden of distraction has crossed some critical threshold.

信息科技确实以各种各样的方式帮助了工作者，加快了人们之间的交流，能让人们远程分享文件。比起在浩如烟海的纸质文献中找资料，互联网也使得寻找信息变得更加快捷简单。从上世纪90年代开始，劳动生产率开始迅猛提高，到了21世纪随着电子邮件，电子数据库和互联网的普及，劳动生产率又得到了提高。在彼时，科技带来的好处貌似是超过了分心带来的代价。然而，自从21世纪中期开始，劳动生产量的增长开始受挫，也许是因为分心带来的负担遇到了不得不面对的障碍。

But this is surely not the whole story. Performance across industries does not fit very well with the idea that distraction is the main cause of weak productivity. Over the past decade, labour-productivity growth in both manufacturing and construction has been particularly disappointing—and the problem can hardly be desk jockeys frittering away time on Pinterest.

但是，这显然不是全部。不同行业员工的工作表现并不完全符合这种观点，即分心是劳动生产率变得疲软的主要原因。在过去的十年中，不论是在工业制造领域还是建筑行业，劳动生产率的增长都有其令人失望和沮丧，这个问题不可能是因为文案人员把时间浪费在了看Pinterest上。

Weak productivity is also a consequence of the reallocation of workers from industries with relatively high rates of growth to more stagnant ones. In America health care and education, where labour productivity is persistently low, account for more than half of total employment growth since 2000.

生产力增长乏力也是劳动力从高增长行业向增长停滞行业的重新分配的结果。在美国的医疗卫生和教育行业，自2000年起，这些行业的劳动生产就持续地保持低迷，占总就业增长的比例超50%。

How then to reconcile evidence of the toll taken by new technologies with the difficulty in detecting a productivity cost? One possibility is that firms have not been as strenuous as might be expected in maximising output per worker. Employment does not fall much in response to minimum-wage rises because output per worker goes up. That is partly because workers try harder and partly because firms, faced with a new cost, focus more on tracking worker performance. Similarly, productivity leapt in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, and not because firms laid off less productive workers. Rather, workers appear to have upped their game to convince bosses not to sack them. After a decade of low wages and high profits, firms may be feeling complacent. That, and their consequent failure to invest, may be a better explanation of weak productivity than workers’ distraction.

那么，如何协调新技术所带来的损失和检测生产率成本的困难呢?一种可能性是，企业没有像人们期望的那样，在每个工人的产出最大化上达到预期的那样高强度。对于最低工资的提高，就业率并没有下降多少，因为每个工人的产出增加了。这在一定程度上是因为工人们更努力地工作，一个原因是企业面临着新的成本，更多地关注于跟踪工人的表现。相似地，在金融危机之后，生产率迅速上升，而不是因为企业解雇了生产率较低的工人。相反，工人们似乎提高了他们的表现能力，以说服老板们不要解雇他们。在经历了十年的低工资和高利润之后，企业可能会感到自满。这一点，以及随之而来的投资失败，或许是对生产率疲弱的一个更好的解释，而不是工人们的分心。

Tweet dreams are made of this

推特梦塑造了这一切。

Whether or not brains fried by constant interruption are slowing growth, the digital deluge takes a toll. Mr Nixon reckons that distracted workers become less empathetic, a serious side-effect in an economy where human connections with customers are cast as a defence against automation. Distraction also appears to reduce reported happiness, and that effect may be magnified if it means that fewer tasks are completed to the workers’ satisfaction—or if the source of the distraction is another distressing news alert. So this is yet another reason to yearn for a truly tight labour market: when firms cannot spare an idle moment they might get serious about trimming productivity-sapping intrusions from the workplace, to everyone’s benefit. Right, time for a tweet.

无论是否是因为大脑被不断地打扰而降低了生产的速度，过度使用电子产品的确应该受到批判。尼克松认为，注意力不集中的工人变得缺乏同理心，这在一个与客户建立人际关系的经济体系，作为对自动化的防御的经济体系中，是一种严重的负面影响； 此外，分心也使人变得没有以前开心，如果这意味着更少的任务完成让工人对自己的满意度降低，抑或者如果分心的由头是另一篇令人沮丧的新闻快讯，这种影响也许还会被放大。因此，这也是人们渴望一个真正紧密的劳动力市场的另一个原因:当公司不能腾出空闲的时候，他们可能会认真考虑削减工作的生产力，这对每个人都有利。好了，现在，是时候发一个推文了。

编译：YINGXIAO

编辑：翻吧君

来源：经济学人（2017.12.07）