或许忙碌并不是对的：出奇放松的精英人士的生活

作者：Cal Newport

“柏林的研究”

在20世纪90年代早期，三位心理学家来到一所位于德国柏林西部中心的历史性艺术学院，对这所学院里的小提琴演奏家开展了研究。

正如他们后来发表在《心理评估》杂志所描述的一样，研究人员请音乐学院的教授帮助他们选出一组较普通学生更为出色的小提琴演奏者——一组在教授们看来未来将成为专业演奏家的学生。

我们将这一组称为精英演奏家。

为了形成比较，3个心理学家同时也从学校的教育学院选出了一批学生：这些学生正朝着音乐老师的方向发展。他们对待小提琴的态度也很认真，但是他们的教授却解释说，他们的能力达不到第一组学生（精英演奏家）的级别。

这一组将被称为普通演奏家。

三个研究人员接下来针对他们研究的这两组演奏家，进行了深度访谈。他们给了2组学生（精英演奏家&普通演奏家）每人一个日记本，它将每天的24个小时分成了由50分钟为一个时间板块组成的区间；学生们按照研究人员的要求，要认真的持续记录他们是如何度过每一天的每50分钟他们如何利用时间。

收集了充分的数据，研究人员尝试着弄清楚一个很基础关键的问题：为什么精英演奏家能够比普通演奏家要更优秀？

（对于这个问题的答案）传统上，我们很容易猜想的理由是：精英演奏家更专注，更致力于提升他们的技术。即他们愿意花更多的时间，就像中国妈妈训练孩子一样：“训练时间超长且耐久，而且孩子的时间全部用于学习”，而那些普通演奏家则是没有把学习特别当回事，而更多时候是投入时间在享受生活中。

但是，根据研究人员收集来的数据，却给出了一个完全不同的解释。

解译精英演奏家们的秘诀

我们首先要反驳“精英演奏家把更多的时间花在了音乐训练上”的观点。从学生在日记中记录的时间看来，两组学生平均每周投入在音乐训练上的时间是一样的（大约50小时）。

两组学生的不同之处在于，他们如何利用这些时间的。精英演奏家比一般演奏家几乎多花两倍的时间来进行有意识训练——一种尽管让人不舒服，讲究方法原理，但却能提升你能力的有效训练方法。

这也许并不让人觉得奇怪，因为有意识训练的重要性已经被多次重复报道了。

除了这个研究发现之外，研究人员还有其他发现。

他们还研究了这些学生是如何安排他们的工作的：普通演奏家会把工作安排散布到整整一天的所有时间。研究发现的文章中有一张图（图1），图中显示出这些普通演奏家们的某个小时的平均用于工作的时间对应着一天中的每小时的比例，基本上是没有变化的，扁平的。

相比之下，精英演奏家把他们的工作固定地安排在两个专门设置的时间区间段内。当你绘制出这些精英演奏家某个小时的平均用于工作的时间对应着一天中的每小时的比例图，会发现有两个显著的峰值：一个是早上，一个是下午。

事实上，越是优秀的演奏家，这两个峰值的分区就越显著。对于那些精英中的精英们--即那些被教授们认为将会去全德国最顶级的两个专业乐团之一的舞台上表演的精英演奏家——他们每天在这两个时间区间的工作安排几乎没有过变化。

图1

将“工作时间”和“休息时间”隔离分开的习惯，也深远地影响着演奏家们的生活的其它方面。

例如睡眠方面，精英演奏家比普通演奏家平均每晚多睡一小时。

休闲也是一个受影响的方面。研究人员统计了这2组学生们每周花费在休闲活动上的时间——这是评价他们主观上是否放松的一个重要指标。在这个研究环节，精英演奏家显示出比普通演奏家极为显著地更加放松，并且最杰出的精英演奏家是最为轻松的。

努力地工作不同于卖力地工作

总结上面提到的研究结果：

1.      普通演奏家和精英演奏家的工作时间是相等（量）的（每周大约工作50个小时）。

2.      但是他们没有将这些时间用于正确类别的工作(普通演奏家比精英演奏家花在至关重要的有意识训练的时间少了3倍)。

3.      此外,他们把每天的工作时间凌乱地安排到了整个一天里。所以尽管他们没有比精英演奏家做更多的工作,他们这种工作分配模式导致了睡觉的时间减少,压力也更大。更不用说他们的小提琴水平也得不到什么提高。

上述现象，已经一次又一次从我对成功人士（非凡成就者）的研究中得到了证明。并且，这种现象在我研究的优秀学生中也经常发生。我甚至给我的研究起了一个名字：“罗兹学者的放松悖论”。

这个柏林的研究为“罗兹学者的放松悖论”带来了启迪之光——它用实际的经验性的实例证明了：努力地工作同卖力地工作是有区别的。

努力的工作是关于有意识训练的工作。当你在努力工作（有意识训练）的时候很难获得享受、娱乐，但是你每天不需要很多时间在这个上面。（精英演奏家平均每天仅投入3.5小时来从事刻意练习，并且这3.5小时将分为两个时间段来完成）。这样不但为你的技能的成长提供了一个尺度衡量手段：它能让你产生强烈的满足感和动力。因此,虽然努力工作需要很努力，但它并不透支你的精力，而且能和一个轻松和愉快的一天结合的很棒。

相比之下，卖力地工作是吃透了你的精力。它致使你整天忙到疲于奔命，并进入一种错误性的毫无规律地忙碌，就像那些在柏林研究中的普通演奏家，卖力工作会让人感觉疲倦和压力巨大。并且也正如我们刚得出的结论，你很少能获得工作上的成就。

我们从这一分析中获得出一个重要的结论。不管你是学生还是在工作，,如果你的目标是建立令人瞩目的人生，那么忙碌和疲惫应该是你的敌人，而非朋友。如果你长期都处于工作到很晚并且觉得有压力的状态，那你一定有什么事情做错了。你就像柏林艺术大学的那些普通演奏家，而非精英群体。这说明，你已经将自己的人生建立在卖力工作上而不是依靠有意识训练的努力工作。

这个研究最后给出了，也包括我自己也赞成的建议，其实很简单：做少一点，但当你做的时候要100%并努力的专注于你所做的事。当你完成你做的事情后，去享受余下美好的一天吧。

原文：

If You’re Busy, You’re DoingSomething Wrong: The Surprisingly Relaxed Lives of Elite Achievers

The Berlin Study

In the early 1990s, a trio of psychologists descended on the Universit琀搀攀爀 Künste, a historic arts academy in the heart of West Berlin. They came tostudy the violinists.

As described in their subsequent publicationin Psychological Review, theresearchers asked the academy’s music professors to help them identify a set ofstand out violin players — the students who the professors believed would goonto careers as professional performers.

We’ll call this group the elite players.

For a point of comparison, they also selected a group of students from theschool’s education department. These were students who were on track to becomemusic teachers. They were serious about violin, but as their professorsexplained, their ability was not in the same league as the first group.

We’ll call this group the average players.

The three researchers subjected their subjects to a series of in-depthinterviews. They then gave them diaries which divided each 24-hour period into50 minute chunks, and sent them home to keep a careful log of how they spenttheir time.

Flush with data, the researchers went to work trying to answer afundamental question:Why are the elite players better than the averageplayers?

The obvious guess is that the elite players are more dedicated to theircraft. That is, they’re willing to put in the long,Tiger Mom-style hoursrequired to get good, while the average players are off goofing around andenjoying life.

The data, as it turns out, had a different story to tell…

Decoding the Patterns of the Elite

We can start by disproving the assumption that the elite players dedicatemore hours to music. The time diaries revealed that both groups spent,on average, the same number of hours on music per week (around 50).

The difference was in how they spent this time. The elite playerswere spending almost three times more hours than the average players ondeliberate practice — theuncomfortable, methodical work of stretching your ability.

This might not be surprising, as the importance of deliberate practice hadbeen replicated and reported many times (c.f., Gladwell).

But the researchers weren’t done.

They also studied how the students scheduled their work. Theaverage players, they discovered, spread their work throughout the day. Agraph included in the paper, which shows the average time spent working versusthe waking hours of the day, is essentially flat.

The elite players, by contrast, consolidated their workinto two well-defined periods. When you plot the average time spentworking versus the hours of the day for these players, there are two prominentpeaks: one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

In fact, the more elite the player, the more pronounced the peaks.For the best of the best — the subset of the elites who theprofessors thought would go on to play in one of Germany’s two bestprofessional orchestras — there was essentially no deviation from a rigidtwo-sessions a day schedule.

This isolation of work from leisure had pronounced effects in other areasof the players’ lives.

Consider, for example, sleep: the elite players slept an hour moreper night than the average players.

Also consider relaxation. The researchers asked the players to estimatehow much time they dedicated each week to leisure activities — an importantindicator of their subjective feeling of relaxation. By this metric, theelite players were significantly more relaxed than the average players, andthe best of the best were the most relaxed of all.

Hard Work is Different than Hard to Do Work

To summarize these results:

·        The average players are working just as many hours as theelite players (around 50 hours a week spent on music),

·        but they’re not dedicating these hours to the right typeof work (spending almost 3 times less hours than the elites on crucialdeliberate practice),

·        and furthermore, they spread this work haphazardlythroughout the day. So even though they’re not doing more workthan the elite players, they end up sleeping less and feeling more stressed.Not to mention that they remain worse at the violin.

I’ve seen this same phenomenon time and again in my study of highachievers. It came up so often in my study of top students, for example, that Ieven coined a name for it:the paradox of the relaxed RhodesScholar.

This study sheds some light on this paradox. It provides empiricalevidence that there’s a difference between hard work and hardto do work:

·        Hard work isdeliberate practice. It’s not fun while you’re doing it, but you don’t have todo too much of it in any one day (the elite players spent, on average, 3.5hours per day engaged in deliberate practice, broken into two sessions). Italso provides you measurable progress in a skill, which generates a strongsense of contentment and motivation. Therefore, although hard work is hard,it’s not draining and it can fit nicely into a relaxed and enjoyable day.

·        Hard to do work, by contrast, is draining.It has you running around all day in a state of false busyness that leaves you,like the average players from the Berlin study, feeling tired and stressed. Italso, as we just learned, has very little to do with real accomplishment.

This analysis leads to an important conclusion. Whether you’re a studentor well along in your career, if your goal isto build a remarkable life, thenbusyness and exhaustion should be your enemy. If you’rechronically stressed and up late working, you’re doing something wrong. You’rethe average players from the Universit琀 der Künste — not the elite.You’ve built a life around hard to do work, not hard work.

The solution suggested by this research, as well as my own, is as simpleas it is startling:Do less. But do what you do with complete and hard focus.Then when you’re done be done, and go enjoy the rest of the day.