On time management

原文作者：陶哲軒

原作鏈接：On time management

之前看到陶哲軒有一篇08年的關於時間管理的文章，抽出時間來簡單翻譯了下，希望給那些時間焦慮的人提供一點不同的看法。籠統的來說，這不是一篇好文章，我也不想解釋它差在哪裡，但是有些地方值得學習。

為了方便閱讀，我這裡的做法是提供了一份梗概，也就是我常說的「知其意」。而這種做法必然帶來對原文的「曲解」和破壞內容的「結構」，還是建議有能力的看原文。

梗概：

• 和人合作浪費時間但也減輕個人凈工作量，並行工作有一定優勢
• 任何工作都需要大量時間提前準備，不是一蹴而就的
• 人每天狀態不定，工作精力也是波動的
• 靈活安排時間，根據狀態選擇工作內容
• 必要時與外界切斷聯繫，高效完成工作
• 儘早完成任務
• 效率的高低是由心態決定（自信 or 自負）
• 事情要一件一件做，避免虎頭蛇尾
• 需要耗費精力的事情一次完成，不太耗費精力的分批次完成
• 極其長的任務分解為小的、獨立的、每個都能立刻得到回報的任務
• 把大量的時間和精力投入到學習將來可能重複使用的技能還是有意義的
• 有些事需要合理拖延，等待轉機出現或運氣降臨
• 健全合理的時間管理制度
• 投入1-5%的生產時間去做時間管理，剩餘95-99%的生產時間去做真正的工作
• 有時候一個人應該放棄自己的規則並且跟從意外的發現

原文及粗翻如下：

Prodded by several comments, I have finally decided to write up some my thoughts on time management here. I actually have been drafting something about this subject for a while, but I soon realised that my own experience with time management is still very much a work in progress (you should see my backlog of papers that need writing up) and I don』t yet have a coherent or definitive philosophy on this topic (other than my advice on writing papers, for instance my page on rapid prototyping). Also, I can only talk about my own personal experiences, which probably do not generalise to all personality types or work situations, though perhaps readers may wish to contribute their own thoughts, experiences, or suggestions in the comments here. [I should also add that I don』t always follow my own advice on these matters, often to my own regret.]

因為被許多評論刺激到，我最終決定寫一些自己關於時間管理的想法。事實上我一直在起草關於這個話題的文章，但我很快意識到我自己的時間管理經驗也是在不斷的迭代進步（你應該看看我積壓的需要寫完的論文），而且在這裡我並沒有一個連貫或者準確的哲學。另外，我在這裡能說的只是我的個人經驗，並不能對所有人或所有工作環境通用，話雖如此但讀者可以在這裡評論來貢獻他們自己的想法、經驗、建議。【我應該多說一句，我並不總是按照我的建議去做這些事，這常常是我的遺憾】

I can maybe make some unorganised comments, though. Firstly, I am very lucky to have some excellent collaborators who put a lot of effort into our joint papers; many of the papers appearing recently on this blog, for instance, were to a large extent handled by co-authors. Generally, I find that papers written in collaboration take longer than singly-authored papers, but the net effort expended per author is significantly less (and the quality of writing higher). Also, I find that I can work on many joint papers in parallel (since the ball is often in another co-author』s court, or is pending some other development), but only on one single-authored paper at a time.

我可能做一些沒有條理的評論。首先，我非常幸運有一些極其優秀的合作者，他們為我們的共同的論文做出了很多努力；最近出現在這個網站上的許多論文，很大程度上由這些合著作者處理。通常，我發現合著的論文比個人論文更費時，但是每個作者的凈工作量明顯減少（並且寫作質量更高）。同時，我發現我可以並行編寫多個聯合論文（因為球經常出現在另一個合著者的球場上，或者有待一些其他的發展），但是獨自完成論文的人一次只能寫一篇文章。

[For reasons having to do with the academic calendar, many more of these papers get finished during the summer than any other time of year, but many of these projects have actually been gestating for quite some time. (There should be a joint paper appearing shortly which we have been working on for about three or four years, for instance; and I have been thinking about the global regularity problem for wave maps problem on and off (mostly off) since about 2000.) So a paper being released every week does not actually correspond to a week being the time needed to conceive and then write up a paper; there is in fact quite a long pipeline of development which mostly happens out of public view.]

因為學術日曆的許多原因，這些論文中的大多數在一年中的夏季完成，但這些項目中的許多實際上已經經過一段時間的孕育了。（一份聯合論文的出現通常是我們已經研究了三到四年，舉例來說，我從2000年一直在思考波動圖的全局規律性問題，中間不斷啟動研究和停止）。所以每周發表一篇論文，這一周並不是構思和寫論文的實際時間，事實上有相當長的流程是在公眾視野之外進行的。

Another thing is that my ability to do any serious mathematics fluctuates greatly from day to day; sometimes I can think hard on a problem for an hour, other times I feel ready to type up the full details of a sketch that I or my coauthors already wrote, and other times I only feel qualified to respond to email and do errands, or just to take a walk or even a nap. I find it very helpful to organise my time to match this fluctuation: for instance, if I have a free afternoon, and feel inspired to do so, I might close my office door, shut off the internet, and begin typing on a languishing paper; or if not, I go and work on a week』s worth of email, referee a paper, write a blog article, or whatever else seems suited to my current levels of energy and enthusiasm. It is fortunate in mathematics that a large fraction of one』s work (with the notable exception of teaching, which one then has to build one』s schedule around) can be flexibly moved from one time slot to another in this manner. [A corollary to this is that one should deal with tasks before they become so urgent that they have to be done immediately, thus disrupting one』s time flexibility.]

另一個事情是我做嚴謹的數學的能力每天波動都很大；有時候我可以在很難的問題上思考一個小時，別的時間我感覺已經準備去為一個梗概填充所有細節了或者我的合著作者已經開始寫了，其餘的時間我只覺得有資格回復郵件和跑腿，或者走走路打個盹。我發現這種做法對我組織我的時間去配合波動很關鍵：舉例，如果我有一個空閑的下午，並且開始感覺很有動力，我就會關閉我的辦公室的門，關閉網際網路，開始寫哭哭思索的論文，寫一篇博客文章，或者別的適合我當前級別的能量和熱情的東西。幸運的是對數學來說，一個人大量的工作可以被（除了教學以外，一個人必須在自己的日程上制定計劃）靈活的從一個時間間隙移動到另一個時間間隙。【由此產生的一個推論是：一個人應該儘早解決問題，避免事情變的緊急以至於他們必須立刻完成，這摧毀了時間的靈活性】

It helps a lot here to be able to honestly and accurately evaluate your work potential (a function of your location, your current level of motivation and energy, your upcoming duties and commitments, availability of resources, and the expected level of distraction) for a given period of time into the future (e.g. the rest of the day): being either overconfident or underconfident about what you can achieve leads to taking on either more or less than you can properly handle, both of which lead to inefficiencies (I have learned both sides of this from direct experience).

這種做法可以在未來一段的時間內對真實且精確的衡量你的工作潛力起到很大作用（一個關於你的工作場所、當前動力和能量、即將到來的責任和義務、資源有效性、使人分心的事情的期望水平的函數）：變的自負或者不自信將會導致你處理的過多或過少，這導致了效率的低下。（我從直接經驗中學到了這些）。

While I have a large number of things on my 「to do」 list, at various levels of complexity, difficulty, and length, when it comes to any task requiring dedicated thought, I try to focus on it exclusively, postponing or shutting out everything else; I find that multitasking only works for me when none of the tasks requires more than a fraction of my attention (in particular, it seems to work best when I am not inspired to do any one particular task). Quite often, these tasks take longer to complete than I have the energy, time, or patience for, in which case one has to find a natural break point (e.g. proving a key lemma in a paper that one is writing up, or writing down a full sketch of some idea that just came up in conversation or on the blackboard or scratch paper) where one can safely set the task aside and forget about it for a while, and be able to resume later without losing one』s place. The thing to avoid is to drop a task when it is only partially finished, without any good 「closure」; it then either gets lost, or weighs on one』s mind and prevents one from fully thinking about something else, or has to be redone from an earlier point when one picks it up again. But one doesn』t have to finish each task off completely as it comes, as long as it can be picked up later. A mundane example: when I get around to writing physical letters (usually a low priority, when I don』t feel ready to do serious mathematics), I type them, print them out, seal them in an envelope, and then deposit them in my 「out」 tray, but I generally don』t mail them (or process any other paperwork in my out tray) until it piles up and I have nothing better to do, at which point I go out and deal with all of it at once. [I find that a particularly good time for doing this is when my computer needs to reboot or is somehow not easily usable.]

當我有大量的事出現在「to do」列表中時，且他們擁有不同的複雜度、困難度和長度，當涉及到任何需要專註思考的事物，我都會試著專註於此，推遲或關閉其他的一切；我發現多任務處理只有當任務不需要佔用我的注意力的時候才對我有效（特別是，當我沒有動力去做別的特定事情的時候效果最好）。通常來說，這些花費更長時間完成的任務需要尋找一個自然的突破點（比如，證明論文中的一個關鍵的引理，或者在黑板上或草稿紙上寫下剛剛交談中出現的想法梗概），在此之後一個人可以安全地把任務放在一邊並且忘記一段時間，並且從當前位置重新開始。要避免的是在部分完成的時候放棄一項任務，而不是好的「結束」；這種做法會使人迷失或者壓在一個人的心頭，讓一個人不能充分的思考其他事情，或者被迫從先前的某點重新開始做。但是一個人不需要做完所有的任務，只要它可以在後面被用到。一個普通例子：當我沒有足夠時間去寫物理信函的時候（通常是低優先順序，當我沒準備好去學嚴謹的數學的時候），我把它們列印出來，封在信封里，並且放置在「靠外面」的盤子里，但是我通常並不郵寄他們（或者說在我的外盤裡進行任何別的論文工作）直到它疊滿了並且我沒有別的更好的工作去做，在這個時刻我會一次解決他們的所有。【我發現一個好的時間點：當我的計算機需要重啟的時候或者不知何故不能用的時候】

More generally, tasks that require little concentration seem to be best done in batches if possible, while tasks that require a lot of concentration seem to be best done individually, with as few distractions as one can manage.

更普遍的是，如果可能的話不太需要集中精力的任務最好分批完成，與此相反，需要集中精力的任務最好單獨完成，這樣能控制分心的情況發生。

Related to the point about 「closure」 is the desirability of being able to chop up an extremely long task into smaller, self-contained ones, ideally each with its own immediate 「payoff」. To give one example: I doubt I would ever attempt to write (let alone finish) the equivalent of my 19 or so lectures on the Poincaré conjecture if I had decided to write one enormous article or monograph rather than 19 reasonably manageable and self-supporting shorter pieces. (It helped also to 「paint myself into a corner」 a little bit here by announcing the lectures in advance, and building up some momentum, to stop myself from abandoning the project half-way.)

與結束有關的一點是能夠把極其長的任務分解為小的、獨立的、每個都能立刻得到回報的任務。給一個例子：如果我決定要寫一部關於龐加萊猜想(Poincaré conjecture)的著作或專論，而不是寫十九篇較易完成的關於龐加萊猜想的獨立短文，我就會懷疑我自己根本不會嘗試寫（更不用說寫成了）那十九篇講義（這個做法某程度上也讓我「置之死地而後生」，因為事先說好會寫講義，好給自己一點推動力，叫我不能半途而廢，撒手不幹）。

[One very nice thing about modern text editors, including the one on this blog, is that it is very easy to save a draft at some intermediate stage and flesh it out or polish it later, which greatly assists the task of writing long papers by chopping up this task into a sequence of much smaller tasks, as discussed above. I am quite impressed by mathematicians from before the computer era who were able to meticulously write out high-quality papers and even books; even with good secretarial support, I would find this extremely difficult to do myself.]

一個關於現代編輯器的好事，包括在這個博客上用到的，它可以做到非常簡單的在中間階段保存草稿顯示出來或者晚點發布，這通過分解任務為很小的任務系列，很好的幫助了完成寫長論文的任務。我對計算機時代前的數學家們印象深刻，他們可以寫出高質量的論文甚至著作；即使有很好的秘書支持，我也覺得這對我來說是很困難的。

It also makes good sense to invest a serious amount of time and effort into learning any skill that you are likely to use repeatedly in the future. A good example in mathematics is LaTeX: if you plan to write a lot of papers, it makes sense to go beyond the bare minimum of skill needed to jerry-rig whatever you need to write your paper, and go out and seriously learn how to make tables, figures, arrays, etc. Recently I』ve been playing with using prerecorded macros to type out a standard block of LaTeX code (e.g. begin{theorem} … end{theorem} begin{proof} … end{proof}) in a few keystrokes; the actual time saved per instance is probably minimal, but it presumably adds up over time, and in any event feels like you』re being efficient, which is good for morale (which becomes important when writing a long paper).

把大量的時間和精力投入到學習將來可能重複使用的技能還是有意義的。在數學領域中一個好的例子就是LaTex：（帶公式懶得翻了）。

There are also many situations in which it makes tactical sense to defer, delay, delegate, or procrastinate on any given task, and go work on something else instead in the meantime; not everything is equally important, and also a given task may in fact become much easier (and be completed in a much better way) if one waits for one』s own skills to get stronger, or for other events to happen that reduce the importance or need for the task in the first place. My current papers on wave maps, for instance, have been delayed for years, much to my own personal frustration, but in retrospect I can see that it was actually a good idea to let those papers sit for a while, as the project as I had originally conceived it was a technical nightmare, and it really was necessary to wait for the technology and understanding in the field to improve before being able to tackle it in a relatively civilised manner. [Perhaps this very article on time management is an example of this, also. There are also a number of other draft articles hidden in this blog that I felt were not quite working at the time, and are awaiting some further inspiration to complete. It seems that not every idea or topic for an article necessarily leads to a viable end product; cf. 「use the wastebasket「.]

在很多情況下對任何任務推遲、委託而去做別的事是有戰術意義的；並不是所有的事情都同等重要，如果一個人在等待自己的技能變得更強大，或者其他事情發生時減少了事情的重要性，或者一開始的重要性減弱了，一個給定的任務實際上會變得更容易（並以更好的方式完成）。我現在的關於wave maps的論文，都拖延了很久，給了我很強的挫敗感。但是就回憶來說，我可以看到它拖住了這些論文很久，對原先的設想來說它就是一場技術的噩夢。而且它真的在相對舒服的解決方式出現之前需要時間去等待技術和理解的提高。【也許這篇關於時間管理的文章就是這方面的一個例子。也有一些其他草稿隱藏在這個博客，我覺得不太適合當時的工作，並正在等待進一步的靈感來完成。看起來並不是所有的想法或者話題的文章必然產生一個可行的最終產品；參見「廢紙簍」。】

My final suggestion is to pick some sort of organisational system and make a real effort to stick to it; a half-hearted system is probably worse than no system at all. [A corollary to this is not to try to make an overly ambitious system ab nihilothat one is unlikely to follow faithfully; it is probably better to let such systems evolve over time.] I have my own system involving a PDA synchronised to my laptop, my email account, some in trays, out trays, and other designated spots in my office, and a 「reserved」 blackboard, that probably only I can understand completely, and I don』t think I can even explain it properly here, but I』m used to it now and it seems to work well enough (though I sure hope nobody ever erases that blackboard!). The choice of system though is presumably a very personal matter and I wouldn』t be able to advise on what would work best for anyone other than myself. But I do find that such systems free up a lot of memory; if I don』t have to worry about what I』m supposed to be doing at 3pm on Tuesday, or what work needs to be done on X, Y, and Z for purposes A, B, and C, I can devote more of my attention to trying to understand a mathematical argument, or proving a tricky lemma, or whatever else I need to work on. [I also find it psychologically satisfying to be able to physically cross off an item from my organisational system, which can be a useful motivation when one feels otherwise uninspired to deal with something.] On the other hand, one should not obsess too much about such systems; as a rule of thumb, I would say to devote about 1-5% of your productive time to time management, and 95-99% of your productive time to actual work.

我最後的建議是選擇某種有組織的制度，並真正努力的堅持學下去；一個不健全的制度可能比沒有制度更糟糕。【一個推論是不要試圖去嘗試做過度宏大的制度,因為人不可能做到跟隨其中。更現實的做法是讓制度隨著時間的推移去進化迭代】我有自己的制度，包括一個PDA，同步到我的筆記本電腦，我的電子郵件帳戶，一些在「托盤」內，「托盤」外，和其他指定的地點，比如我的辦公室，以及一個「保留」的黑板，大概只有我可以完全理解，我想我甚至不能在這裡合理的解釋它，但我現在習慣它了並且它工作的很好（我非常希望沒人去擦這塊黑板！）選擇制度是一個非常私人的事情，我不保證除了我以外的別人同樣有效。但是我發現這樣的制度確實節省內存。如果我不必擔心什麼，我應該在星期二的下午3點做，或者因為ABC等原因需要完成XYZ,我可以花費更多的精力在一些數學爭論上，或者證明一個引理，或者別的需要致力解決的。我還發現當我劃掉有組織的制度中的一個項目的時候我會感到滿意，當感覺一些事是枯燥的時候可能有用。另一邊，一個人不應該被制度所困擾；根據經驗，我建議說投入1-5%的生產時間去做時間管理，剩餘95-99%的生產時間去做真正的工作。

Oh, and one final disclaimer: sometimes one should abandon one』s own rules and allow for serendipity. There have been many times, for instance, when I had planned to work on something during my lunch hour (grabbing something quick to eat), when I was interrupted by a colleague or visitor to go out to eat. It has often happened that I got a lot more out of that lunch (mathematically or otherwise) than I would have back at the office, though not in the way I would have anticipated. And it was more enjoyable, too. (Similarly with skipping talks at conferences (or skipping conferences altogether) to go work on one』s own papers, etc.)

噢，一個最後的免責聲明：有時候一個人應該放棄自己的規則並且跟從意外的發現。有許多次，我本計劃在午餐時間去忙某個事情（弄點東西快速吃一下），被同事或拜訪者打斷並和他們外出吃飯了。比起預想的那樣回到辦公室工作，我經常從那次午餐中得到更多（數學或別的事情）。這樣也更加愉快。（類似於在會議上跳過談話去忙自己的論文等等（或者跳過全部會議））。