这篇翻译原文是TED演讲者Laura Vanderkam的演讲稿，演讲的题目是[How to gain control of your free time],如果对这个演讲感兴趣的话，可以在www.ted.com输入演讲者的名字以观看该视频。
目录：
1.演讲者自嘲：入题
2.优先的事=坏了的热水器
3.找出优先的事的两个策略
4.如何去做
5.我们真的有时间
一.演讲者自嘲：入题
When people find out I write about time management, they assume two things. One is that I'm always on time, and I'm not. I have four small children, and I would like to blame them for my occasional tardiness, but sometimes it's just not their fault. I was once late to my own speech on time management.
当人们发现我写关于时间管理时，他们假设两件事情，一是我始终准时，但我不是。我有四个孩子，有时会因为我的迟到而责怪他们，但有时也不是他们的错。我曾经在我们的时间管理演讲上迟到了。
We all had to just take a moment together and savor that irony.我们都需要一点时间欣赏那个反语。（此处是因为观众因为她在时间管理的演讲迟到笑了）。
The second thing they assume is that I have lots of tips and tricks for saving bits of time here and there. Sometimes I'll hear from magazines that are doing a story along these lines, generally on how to help their readers find an extra hour in the day. And the idea is that we'll shave bits of time off everyday activities, add it up, and we'll have time for the good stuff. I question the entire premise of this piece, but I'm always interested in hearing what they've come up with before they call me. Some of my favorites: doing errands where you only have to make right-hand turns —
第二是他们认为我有许多从各种场合节约时间的技巧。我有时我从那些围绕着这些话题写故事的杂志里读到，如何帮助他们的读者从一天里挤出额外的一小时。他们的观点是我们从每天的活动里挤出一点时间，累计起来，我们就有时间给重要的事情了。我质疑这个观点的整个前提，但我也对他们在呼叫我之前如何提出观点很感兴趣。一些我最喜欢的：做那些你只需翻翻右手的差事。
Being extremely judicious in microwave usage: it says three to three-and-a-half minutes on the package, we're totally getting in on the bottom side of that. And my personal favorite, which makes sense on some level, is to DVR your favorite shows so you can fast-forward through the commercials. That way, you save eight minutes every half hour, so in the course of two hours of watching TV, you find 32 minutes to exercise.
对于微波炉的使用要相当明智：也就是3到3分30秒的食物包装时间，我们已经达到了极限。我个人最喜欢的，在某些层面是说得通的，录下你最喜欢的节目，那样你就可以快速跳过广告了。那样，你每半小时可以节约8分钟，这样当你看两个小时电视时，你就有32分钟锻炼了。
Which is true. You know another way to find 32 minutes to exercise? Don't watch two hours of TV a day, right?这是真的。但你知道另有方法找到32分钟来锻炼，每天不看2个小时电视，对吗？
Anyway, the idea is we'll save bits of time here and there, add it up, we will finally get to everything we want to do. But after studying how successful people spend their time and looking at their schedules hour by hour, I think this idea has it completely backward.We don't build the lives we want by saving time. We build the lives we want, and then time saves itself.
无论如何，这个观点就是，通过运用好琐碎的时间，累积起来，我们最终能做所有我们想做的事情。但是在研究过成功人士的如何运用他们的时间，以及详细检视他们的日程表，我认为这个观点完全是相反的。我们不能通过节约时间过上我们想要的生活，我打造我们想要的生活，时间自然就被节约了。
Here's what I mean. I recently did a time diary project looking at 1,001 days in the lives of extremely busy women. They had demanding jobs, sometimes their own businesses, kids to care for, maybe parents to care for, community commitments — busy, busy people. I had them keep track of their time for a week so I could add up how much they worked and slept, and I interviewed them about their strategies, for my book.
我的意思是。我最近在做一个时间日志项目，观察那些非常繁忙的女士的生活1001天。她们有繁忙的工作，有时是她们自己的生意，照顾孩子，甚至父母，社区事务---非常繁忙的人士。我持续了追踪了一周的时间，这样我就可以计算她们工作的睡眠的时间，为了我的书，我采访了她们的时间管理策略。
二.优先的事=坏了的热水器
One of the women whose time log I studied goes out on a Wednesday night for something. She comes home to find that her water heater has broken, and there is now water all over her basement. If you've ever had anything like this happen to you, you know it is a hugely damaging, frightening, sopping mess. So she's dealing with the immediate aftermath that night, next day she's got plumbers coming in, day after that, professional cleaning crew dealing with the ruined carpet. All this is being recorded on her time log. Winds up taking seven hours of her week. Seven hours. That's like finding an extra hour in the day.
我研究过时间日志的一位女士，她周三晚上因为有事外出了。她回家发现热水器坏了，结果水淹没了整个地下室。如果你也经历过同样的事情，你会明白那是一个破坏大的、令人沮丧的、潮湿的混乱。所以她那天晚上就快速处理了后果，第二天水管工来了，第三天，专业的清洁人员除了报废的地毯。所有的事都记录在她的时间日志里。总计花了那周里7个小时的时间。7个小时，那就像每天找到额外的1小时。
But I'm sure if you had asked her at the start of the week, "Could you find seven hours to train for a triathlon?" "Could you find seven hours to mentor seven worthy people?" I'm sure she would've said what most of us would've said, which is, "No — can't you see how busy I am?" Yet when she had to find seven hours because there is water all over her basement, she found seven hours. And what this shows us is that time is highly elastic. We cannot make more time, but time will stretch to accommodate what we choose to put into it.
但我确定如果在周一问她，“你能挤出7个小时给铁人三项训练吗？””你能空出7个小时的时间指导有价值的人吗？“我相信她的回答和大多数我们一样，”不，难道你看不出我有多忙吗？”然而当因为地下室全是水，她必须挤出7小时，她找出了7小时的时间。这告诉我们时间是相当有弹性的。我们不能产生更多的时间，但是时间会随着我们的选择而伸展。
And so the key to time management is treating our priorities as the equivalent of that broken water heater. To get at this, I like to use language from one of the busiest people I ever interviewed. By busy, I mean she was running a small business with 12 people on the payroll, she had six children in her spare time. I was getting in touch with her to set up an interview on how she "had it all" — that phrase. I remember it was a Thursday morning, and she was not available to speak with me. Of course, right?
所以时间管理的关键是把我们优先级高的事物当做那个坏了的热水器一样。为了理解这个，我想使用我曾采访过的最忙的人的话来解释。说她忙，是因为它是一个12人小企业的领导，她还要照顾6个孩子。我为了采访她如何“掌控全部”，过去一直在和她联系协调。---我记得那是个周四的早晨，她当然没时间和我交谈，对吗？
But the reason she was unavailable to speak with me is that she was out for a hike, because it was a beautiful spring morning, and she wanted to go for a hike. So of course this makes me even more intrigued, and when I finally do catch up with her, she explains it like this. She says, "Listen Laura, everything I do, every minute I spend, is my choice." And rather than say, "I don't have time to do x, y or z," she'd say, "I don't do x, y or z because it's not a priority." "I don't have time," often means "It's not a priority." If you think about it, that's really more accurate language. I could tell you I don't have time to dust my blinds, but that's not true. If you offered to pay me $100,000 to dust my blinds, I would get to it pretty quickly.
她不能接受我采访的原因是因为她要出去远足。那是非常宜人的春晨，她想出去远足。所以这更使我好奇了，当我最终赶上她的时候，她这样解释道。她说：“听着，Laura，我做的所有事情，度过的每一分钟，都是我自己的选择。”与其说“我没有时间做某某某事，”她则说：“我没有做某某某事，因为它们不是当务之急。“”我没有时间“通常意味着”那不是优先之事。”，如果你考虑过它，那确实是很精确的表达。我如果告诉你我没有时间清理我的窗帘，但那不是真的。如果你给我100000美元去清理窗帘，我肯定立马去做。
Since that is not going to happen, I can acknowledge this is not a matter of lacking time; it's that I don't want to do it. Using this language reminds us that time is a choice. And granted, there may be horrible consequences for making different choices, I will give you that. But we are smart people, and certainly over the long run, we have the power to fill our lives with the things that deserve to be there.
但那种事情是不会发生的，我承认这不是时间问题，而是我不想做。使用这样的语言可以提醒我们时间是一个选择。的确，做出不同的选择可能糟糕的后果，我向你保证。但我们是智人，生活是基于长跑的，我们有能力用重要的事情填满它。
三.找出优先的事的两个策略
So how do we do that? How do we treat our priorities as the equivalent of that broken water heater?
那么我们如何做呢，如何才能把优先的事当做那个坏了的热水器呢？
1.做明年工作表现复盘
Well, first we need to figure out what they are. I want to give you two strategies for thinking about this. The first, on the professional side: I'm sure many people coming up to the end of the year are giving or getting annual performance reviews. You look back over your successes over the year, your "opportunities for growth." And this serves its purpose, but I find it's more effective to do this looking forward. So I want you to pretend it's the end of next year. You're giving yourself a performance review, and it has been an absolutely amazing year for you professionally. What three to five things did you do that made it so amazing? So you can write next year's performance review now.
首先，我们得弄清优先的事是什么。我想给你两个策略做参考。第一，专业的方面：我相信许多人年末的都会做工作表现复盘。你回顾整年下来你的成功，成长的机会。这发挥它的作用，但是更有效的方法是向前看。我想让你假设到了年末，你在给自己做一个年度复盘，对于你的专业来说，那是很神奇的一年。是哪3到5件事让它如此神奇呢？你现在就可以写下明年的工作复盘。
2.家庭节日回顾卡
And you can do this for your personal life, too. I'm sure many of you, like me, come December, get cards that contain these folded up sheets of colored paper, on which is written what is known as the family holiday letter.
对于私人生活你们也可以这样做。我相信许多人都像我这样，12月了，拿出那些包含着彩色折纸的卡片，在上面下了家庭节日计划卡。
Bit of a wretched genre of literature, really, going on about how amazing everyone in the household is, or even more scintillating, how busy everyone in the household is. But these letters serve a purpose, which is that they tell your friends and family what you did in your personal life that mattered to you over the year. So this year's kind of done, but I want you to pretend it's the end of next year, and it has been an absolutely amazing year for you and the people you care about. What three to five things did you do that made it so amazing? So you can write next year's family holiday letter now. Don't send it.
一种令人难过的文体，关于每个家庭成员是如何好，更有趣的，家庭成员是如何繁忙。但这些信的目的是，告诉你的朋友和家人过去的一年对你最重要的事。这是今年完成的事，但我想让你假设这是明年的末尾，对于你和你关心的人是十分美好的一年。哪3到5件事让它如此美好。所以你现在就可以写下明年的家庭节日信。不要邮寄。
Please, don't send it. But you can write it. And now, between the performance review and the family holiday letter, we have a list of six to ten goals we can work on in the next year.
请不要邮寄，写下来就可以。现在，在工作表现复盘和家庭节日信之间，我们有了可以为之奋斗的6到10个目标清单。
四.如何去做
And now we need to break these down into doable steps. So maybe you want to write a family history. First, you can read some other family histories, get a sense for the style. Then maybe think about the questions you want to ask your relatives, set up appointments to interview them. Or maybe you want to run a 5K. So you need to find a race and sign up, figure out a training plan, and dig those shoes out of the back of the closet. And then — this is key — we treat our priorities as the equivalent of that broken water heater, by putting them into our schedules first. We do this by thinking through our weeks before we are in them.
现在我们要把这些目标分解成可行的步骤。或许你想写出家族史。首先你要阅读其他家庭的家史，看看风格。接着想出你想问亲人的问题，确定采访他们的日期。或者你想跑5km比赛，你需要找到一场比赛，并且注册，制定训练计划，从壁橱里翻出跑鞋。接着，关键部分，把我们优先的事情当做坏了的热水器，把它们放到日程表的第一位。这些事情都是在我们开始几周前就已经计划好了。
I find a really good time to do this is Friday afternoons. Friday afternoon is what an economist might call a "low opportunity cost" time. Most of us are not sitting there on Friday afternoons saying, "I am excited to make progress toward my personal and professional priorities right now."
我发现做这件事绝好的时间是周五下午，周五下午是一位经济学家称为的“低机会成本”的时间。我们中的大多数都不会在周五的下午说：“我很激动现在正朝着个人和专业优先的事进步。”
But we are willing to think about what those should be. So take a little bit of time Friday afternoon, make yourself a three-category priority list: career, relationships, self. Making a three-category list reminds us that there should be something in all three categories. Career, we think about; relationships, self — not so much. But anyway, just a short list, two to three items in each. Then look out over the whole of the next week, and see where you can plan them in.
但我们乐意去考虑这些事情是应该是怎样的。所以花上周五下午的一点时间，给自己做一个三类的优先清单：职业，关系，自我。让那三类的清单提醒我们三类里都有有事情去做。职业成长，和谐关系，个人成长，不太多，但无论如何，短短的清单，每类2到3件事。接着看看第二周，那些时间可以将这些事计划进去。
Where you plan them in is up to you. I know this is going to be more complicated for some people than others. I mean, some people's lives are just harder than others. It is not going to be easy to find time to take that poetry class if you are caring for multiple children on your own. I get that. And I don't want to minimize anyone's struggle. But I do think that the numbers I am about to tell you are empowering.
如何运用你的时间在于你。我知道这件事某些人会比另一些人更复杂。我是说，一些人的生活比其他人更困难。如果你要自己照看几个孩子的话，找到时间去执行那几类优先的事情是不容易的。我知道那是什么感受。我不想最小化任何人的挣扎。但我认为数字上是可能的。
五.我们真的有时间
There are 168 hours in a week. Twenty-four times seven is 168 hours. That is a lot of time. If you are working a full-time job, so 40 hours a week, sleeping eight hours a night, so 56 hours a week — that leaves 72 hours for other things. That is a lot of time. You say you're working 50 hours a week, maybe a main job and a side hustle. Well, that leaves 62 hours for other things. You say you're working 60 hours. Well, that leaves 52 hours for other things. You say you're working more than 60 hours. Well, are you sure?
一周168个小时，24乘以7是168小时。这是大把的时间。如果你做全职工作的话，40小时每周，每晚8小时睡眠时间，56小时每周---72小时可以做其他事情。你说你每周工作50小时，或许主业和副业。62小时给其他事情。工作60小时每周，52小时给其他事情。你每周工作超过60小时。你说真的吗？
There was once a study comparing people's estimated work weeks with time diaries. They found that people claiming 75-plus-hour work weeks were off by about 25 hours.
有一个研究时间日志比较了人们估计的工作时间。他们发现人们宣称75小时+的工作周实际上大约25小时是空闲的。
You can guess in which direction, right? Anyway, in 168 hours a week, I think we can find time for what matters to you. If you want to spend more time with your kids, you want to study more for a test you're taking, you want to exercise for three hours and volunteer for two, you can. And that's even if you're working way more than full-time hours.
你可以想想哪个方向，对吗？无论如何，一周168小时，我认为我们可以给对我们重要的事情留出时间。如果你想有更多的亲子时间，你想为考试多学一点，你想锻炼3小时，做志愿者2小时。甚至你想工作更久。
So we have plenty of time, which is great, because guess what? We don't even need that much time to do amazing things. But when most of us have bits of time, what do we do? Pull out the phone, right? Start deleting emails. Otherwise, we're puttering around the house or watching TV.
所以我们有大量的时间，非常好，猜猜是什么？我们不需要那样多的事情去做美好的事情。但当我们有琐碎的时间，我们做什么？拿出手机，开始删邮件，或者在房子周围闲逛，或看电视。
But small moments can have great power. You can use your bits of time for bits of joy. Maybe it's choosing to read something wonderful on the bus on the way to work. I know when I had a job that required two bus rides and a subway ride every morning, I used to go to the library on weekends to get stuff to read. It made the whole experience almost, almost, enjoyable. Breaks at work can be used for meditating or praying. If family dinner is out because of your crazy work schedule, maybe family breakfast could be a good substitute.
但琐碎的时间也有很大的力量。你可以用琐碎的时间娱乐。可以选择在去工作的公交上读书。过去，当知道我的工作要在公交和地铁上两个小时，我常常周末去图书馆找阅读材料。那使的整个体验相当愉快。工作的休息可以用来冥想和祈祷。如果家庭晚餐因为你繁忙的日程取消了，那家庭早餐是个非常好的替代。
It's about looking at the whole of one's time and seeing where the good stuff can go. I truly believe this. There is time. Even if we are busy, we have time for what matters. And when we focus on what matters, we can build the lives we want in the time we've got.
看看一个人所有的时间，哪里有好的材料。我真得相信我们是有时间的，即使很忙。对于重要的事情我们有时间。当我们专注于对我们重要的事情，我们可以用拥有的时间过上我们想要的生活。
背景知识：
关于family holiday letter，谷歌了这个词组，但是几乎都是关于如何写一封family holiday letter的教程，于是又去谷歌图片搜了搜这个词组，发现所谓的family holiday letter和演讲者提到的工作复盘很像，只不过这个是关于个人生活的总结，回顾过去的一年都做了哪些事情，完成情况如何，将这样的信寄给家人，他们对于亲人的状况能有一个更好的了解。
越来越觉得生活里最重要的事情就是选择，如何利用好时间，都是我们的选择，生活中的学习、经历都是为了帮助我们做出更好地选择。为了更好地做出选择，需要不断地去学习，提高自我判断能力，能够承担或者去享受选择带来的后果。
本译文仅供个人研习、欣赏语言之用，谢绝任何转载及用于任何商业用途。本译文所涉法律后果均由本人承担。本人同意简书平台在接获有关著作权人的通知后，删除文章。
