是早起的鸟儿好，还是夜猫子灵呢？ | 经济学人商业

公众号新闻

2024-06-14 06:06

写在前面

思维导图作者：
Vicky，少儿英语老师+笔译新人

Business | Bartleby

商业 |巴托比专栏

英文部分选自经济学人20240608期商业板块

Business | Bartleby
商业|巴托比专栏

Is it better to be an early bird or a night owl?

是早起的鸟儿好，还是夜猫子灵呢？

The promise and perils of waking before sunrise

早起的好处与风险

A man in suit laid sleeping on top of a large letter Z. Another man is dashing off and appears to be whistling

一个西装革履的人躺在巨大的字母Z上睡梦正酣，而另一个人匆匆离去，好像还吹着口哨

Rare 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.

很少有首席执行官会赞美睡懒觉的好处。iPhone 制造商苹果公司掌门人蒂姆·库克（Tim Cook）会在凌晨 4 点到 5 点之间醒来。媒体巨头迪斯尼公司的老板鲍勃·艾格（Bob Iger）也是如此。调查显示，三分之二的美国大公司首席执行官在 6 点前起床；而普通美国人中，早起人群的比例不到三分之一。对于那些渴望获得商业成功的人来说，这个信息似乎很明确：睡得越多，离成功越远。

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.

本刊专栏客座作家巴托比虽然没有要大获成功的雄心壮志，但也曾尝试过早起，而且这段经历证实，早起的好处远不止比编辑早到工位的那点小得意。趁大批电子邮件和各种会议轰炸之前，你可以处理完邮箱里的邮件，解决棘手的问题，为一整天的工作做好充分准备。

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”.

清晨的宁静时光不一定只用来工作。TikTok当前流行一种视频，很多视频博主拍下自己完成复杂晨间流程的整个过程，他们浸泡在冰水中，背诵励志语录，精心准备益智咖啡。商业教练克里斯·克罗恩（Kris Krohn）有一条视频广受诟病。视频中，他详细描述了自己清晨四点起床，“调整身体激素水平，促进多巴胺分泌”的全过程。

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).

克罗恩的晨间流程可能并不科学严谨，但大量研究发现早起确实有益。2012年，当时同在多伦多大学工作的蕾妮·比斯（Renée Biss）和琳恩·哈舍（Lynn Hasher）研究发现，早起的人感觉更快乐、更健康。相比之下，夜晚活动的夜猫子往往睡眠较少，影响情绪和健康，工作效率也难免受损。芬兰奥卢大学的安德鲁·康林（Andrew Conlin）和共同作者发现，晚起的男性比早起男性收入低4%（不过他们没有研究多挣4%是否足以诱惑爱睡懒觉的人掀开羽绒被）。

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.

早起的人无疑更受尊敬。在大多数工作场所，迟到仍然是不受欢迎的。2022年，俄勒冈州立大学的杰西卡·迪奇（Jessica Dietch）及其共同作者发表的一项研究发现，受访者认为夜猫子“懒惰”、“不自律”、“不成熟”。根据香港中文大学的谢立亚及其同事的研究，这种刻板印象更强，受访者认为夜猫子还更胖。

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，早起并非全无缺点。如果准备就绪，等老板到来时安排工作，可能会接到更多任务。如果说早起的鸟儿有虫吃，那么聪明的虫子就会待在床上（避免被抓住）。白天经常会有紧急任务，所以早来的人可能会和不愿意早起的同事一样，工作到很晚。而且，早上发送的邮件越多，收到的回复也就越多。

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.

总是早起很可能会让人变得无趣。一些“百灵鸟”会忍不住描述自己完成了多少工作，而“夜猫子”则会按下贪睡按钮。其他人早早就回家睡觉了，不会在下班后参加社交活动。相比之下，夜猫子更懂得松弛下来。研究表明，他们喝酒、吸毒的频率更高，性生活也更频繁。海德堡教育大学的克里斯托夫·兰德勒（Christoph Randler）和同事发现，晚睡的男性“择偶成功率更高”。在许多人眼里，深夜是年轻人的专属，而早起是老年人的常态。

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.

努力改变昼夜节律可能只会带来疲惫和沮丧。科学上讲，一个人的生物钟在很大程度上由基因决定。晚上调暗灯光或者买个特殊闹钟，并不能神奇地把你变成早起的人。如果早起的几个小时都眼神迷离，茫然地盯着屏幕，那么这些时间就毫无意义。巴特比对保持清醒所需的咖啡因量感到震惊，随后便放弃了努力早起。对早起鸟来说，太阳落山后，他们永远不会成为派对上的主角，这是他们的损失。至少，这让他们少了一件沾沾自喜的事。

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.

也许最好的建议就是不要再担心你的生物钟了。大多数人既不是早起鸟，也不是夜猫子，而是介于两者之间。他们在早上或晚上做的第一件事通常没那么出色。很多人，包括你的专栏作家，也会在下午犯困。这就是为什么大多数办公室把工作时间设定为9点到5点，也是他们应该配备午休室的原因。

翻译组：

Ryan，译海徜徉的一条咸鱼
Lee，爱骑行的妇女之友+Timberland粉

Octavia, 键盘手和古风爵士，逃离舒适圈，有只英短叫八爷

校对组：

Lucian，灵魂在杰作中冒险

Rachel，学理工科，爱跳芭蕾，热爱文艺的非典型翻译

感想

本期感想

Very，男，电气民工，经济学人资浅爱好者

也许只是一种习惯，因人而异而已，但是我们是否有思考过，这个习惯是如何形成的呢？是被迫的？还是自己的懒的缘故，是真的因为夜里效率高吗，还只是一个借口？

我记得我老婆怀我女儿的时候，特别注重作息的时间，晚上9点半以后肯定睡觉了，早上6点半之前就起来，她说宝宝以后的作息会随母亲。从结果看似乎验证了这一说法，娃出生后极少在夜间兴奋得玩来玩去，作息与我老婆怀孕时如出一辙。也许这一个例说明不了什么问题，但是我想表达的是，所谓作息习惯，往往都是可以改变的，或者说都是可以被调整的。

那些晚上兴奋、效率高、能很晚睡觉的，几乎都有两个特点：一是早上不用起得很早，二是白天不会很忙。我从来没见过街上经营早餐的人晚上睡得很晚，也没见过白天忙了一整天，晚上回家后半夜还能精力充沛的。睡得很晚只是占据了一定的资源优势，允许让自己可以睡得很晚。但是如果反过头来想，如果这些人晚上能够有一个高质量的睡眠，那白天做事的质量和效率是否会更高呢？

我始终坚信一点，人类作为大自然的一员，符合日出而作日落而息的规律是必要的，也是可以获得正收益的。

愿景

打造

独立思考 | 国际视野 | 英文学习

小组

01 第十九期写作精品课