当早起鸟更好还是夜猫子更好？
文摘
2024-06-26 14:52
美国
英国经济学人网站于2024年6月6日发表题为《当早起鸟更好还是夜猫子更好？》的文章。以下观点不代表任何译者立场，现将全文翻译如下：Is it better to be an early bird or a night owl?The promise and perils of waking before sunriseRare is the chief executive who extols the virtues of a lie-in. Tim Cook, boss of Apple, maker of the iPhone, wakes between 4am and 5am. So does Bob Iger, his counterpart at Disney, a media giant. According to one survey, two-thirds of the chief executives of large American companies are up by 6 o’clock; for average Americans the share is less than one in three. For those aspiring to corporate greatness, the message seems clear: you snooze, you lose.鲜有 CEO 宣扬赖床的优点。苹果公司掌门人蒂姆·库克每天凌晨四五点醒来，传媒巨头迪士尼的掌舵人鲍勃·艾格也是如此。一项调查显示，三分之二的美国大型企业 CEO 在早上 6 点前就已起床；而普通美国人中，这一比例不到三分之一。对于那些渴望走向人生巅峰的人来说，这似乎传递出一个明确的信息：睡懒觉就会失败。Your guest Bartleby harbours no such ambitions. But he has, in the past, experimented with early starts, and can confirm that their benefits go beyond the smug sense of satisfaction that comes from arriving at your desk before your editor. Inboxes can be cleared and tricky problems mulled over before the onslaught of emails and meetings begins, leaving you feeling well prepared for the day ahead.作为专栏作者的我并无此等野心。然而，我曾尝试过早起，并且我很清楚，早起的好处不仅是能够赶在主编到岗前就坐在办公桌前的洋洋自得。在新邮件轰炸和开会之前，你就可以清空收件箱并仔细考虑棘手的难题，这回让你感觉为即将到来的一天做足了准备。Those quiet hours of the morning need not be spent solely on work. In a popular genre of TikTok videos, influencers film themselves performing elaborate morning routines in which they submerge themselves in ice baths, recite affirmations and mindfully prepare nootropic coffees. In one widely pilloried video, Kris Krohn, a business coach, details how he wakes at 4 in the morning to “align the pharmacy of the body and over-dopamine the mind”.清晨那段宁静时光不必全部用于工作。抖音上有种走红的视频类型，网红们拍摄自己精心设计的晨间仪式，包括冰浴、念诵鸡汤、用心冲泡提神醒脑的咖啡。在一段广受抨击的视频中，商业教练克里斯·克罗恩详细介绍了他如何在凌晨4点起床，“调整身体的化学系统，刺激大脑过度分泌多巴胺”。Although Mr Krohn’s routine may lack scientific rigour, plenty of research finds merit in early rising. In a study conducted in 2012 by Renée Biss and Lynn Hasher, then both at the University of Toronto, early birds reported feeling happier and healthier. Night owls, their nocturnal opposites, tend to have less sleep, which can weigh on their mood and health—as well as their productivity. Andrew Conlin of the University of Oulu, in Finland, and co-authors found that men who rose late made 4% less money than those who were up early (they did not test whether an extra 4% is enough to entice slumberers to throw off their duvets).尽管克罗恩的说法缺乏科学依据，但大量研究都发现早起确实有好处。2012年，多伦多大学的瑞妮·比斯和林恩·哈舍尔进行的一项研究表明，早起族自称感觉更快乐、更健康。与之相反，夜猫子往往睡眠不足，这会影响他们的情绪、健康以及工作效率。芬兰奥卢大学的安德鲁·康林和同事发现，晚起的男性比早起的收入少4%（但他们没有研究这4%的收入差距是否足以诱使赖床者离开被窝）。Early birds are certainly held in higher regard. Rolling into the office late continues to be frowned upon in most workplaces. A study published in 2022 by Jessica Dietch of Oregon State University and her co-authors found that night owls were perceived by respondents as being “lazy”, “undisciplined” and “immature”. To pile on the the stereotypes, they are fatter, too, according to research by Lap Ah Tse of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and colleagues.早起族无疑更受人尊敬。在大多数工作场所，迟到仍被视作不当行为。俄勒冈州立大学的杰西卡·迪奇和同事于2022年发表的一项研究发现，受访者认为夜猫子“懒惰”、“缺乏自律”且“不成熟”。香港中文大学谢立亚和同事的研究进一步印证了刻板印象：夜猫子往往更胖。Rising early is not, though, all upside. Those ready and waiting to receive work when the boss arrives may be given more of it. If the early bird gets the worm, the clever worm stays in bed. Urgent tasks often come up during the day, meaning that those who come in early may end up working just as late as their dawn-averse colleagues. And the more emails you send in the morning, the more responses you are bound to get back.不过，早起并非全是好处。那些在老板到来前就已经准备就绪的员工可能会被分配更多工作。如果早起的鸟儿有虫吃，聪明的虫子就应该躲在床上。紧急任务通常会在白天出现，这意味着早到的人可能最终会和那些讨厌早起的同事一样加班到很晚。而且，你早上发出的邮件越多，收到的回件就会越多。Waking before sunrise also risks turning you into a bore. Some larks cannot resist describing how much they got done while owls bashed the snooze button. Others go home early to tuck themselves in rather than socialise after hours. Night owls, by contrast, let loose. Research shows they drink more and take more drugs. They also have more sex. Christoph Randler and colleagues at the Heidelberg University of Education found that men who stayed up later had “higher mating success”. In the eyes of many, late nights are the preserve of youth, whereas early mornings are the domain of the geriatric.在日出前起床还可能让你变成一个无趣的人。有些早起鸟忍不住炫耀自己在夜猫子还在赖床时就已经完成了多少工作。还有些早起鸟则早早回家睡觉，而不是下班后社交。相比之下，夜猫子则更松弛。研究表明，他们私生活放得更开。海德堡教育大学的克里斯托弗·兰德勒和同事发现，晚睡的男性“交配成功率”更高。在许多人看来，深夜是年轻人的专属，而清晨是老年人的领域。Efforts to alter your circadian rhythm are likely to end in sleepy frustration. A person’s chronotype, to use the scientific lingo, is largely a product of their genes. Dimming your lights at night and buying a special alarm clock will not magically transform you into a morning person. Those early hours will be of little use if they are spent staring blankly at a screen through bleary eyes. This Bartleby abandoned his efforts at early starts after growing alarmed at the quantities of caffeine he required to stay awake. Early birds, for their part, lose out by never being the life of the party after the sun goes down. If nothing else, that gives them one fewer thing to feel smug about.试图改变自己的生物钟可能会以困倦沮丧告终。从科学的角度来说，一个人的生物钟主要由基因决定。晚上调暗灯光、购买特殊闹钟并不能神奇地让你变成一个早起族。如果你用布满血丝的眼睛睡眼惺忪地盯着屏幕，那些早起的时光将毫无用处。我本人也曾尝试早起，但发现自己需要大量咖啡因才能保持清醒，最终不得不放弃。同样的，早起族则错过了日落后成为派对灵魂人物的机会。至少，这也让他们少了一件可以沾沾自喜的理由。Perhaps the best advice, then, is to stop worrying about your body clock. Most people are neither early birds nor night owls, but in between. They do not perform well first thing in the morning or late in the evening. Many, including your columnist, get sleepy in the afternoon, too. That is why most offices operate between 9 and 5—and why they ought to have nap rooms.那么，最好的建议也许是不要过分在意自己的生物钟。大多数人既不是早起族也不是夜猫子，而是介于两者之间，起太早或者熬太晚都表现糟糕，包括笔者在内的许多人下午也会犯困。这就是为什么大多数公司选择朝九晚五，也是为什么公司应该设置午休室。■
