智能手机泛滥，大脑不堪重负怎么办

    100年前，汽车第一次流行起来时，一开始并不存在什么道路规则或速度限制。受到这个快捷新玩具所带来自由的鼓舞，司机们尽己所能地开车狂飙，车祸司空见惯。

    如今的快捷新玩具是智能手机和平板电脑。它们能够随时随地，在人们需要时为工作提供助力。人们为新发现的自由欢欣鼓舞。他们无时不刻都保持着连线状态，以最快的速度进行工作。这次的“祸患”不太明显，但仍然带来了痛苦。

    曾经每周在办公室通过视频向客户汇报的创意团队现在每天都得利用平板电脑进行视频通话。以前需要6个人花费数月时间才能完成的软件项目，现在被分解成数百个部分，微开发者们一周就能完成。虽然这些想法听起来可能很诱人，但如此迅速的进展也会带来一些影响，就好比惠普（HP）和苹果（Apple）分别从各自的平板电脑和地图应用中发现的问题。

    以“混乱”的速度行进

    也许这种新速度的最大影响是在生活方面，尤其是对我们的大脑。最近，我有幸进入一家美国以外地区政府机构的会议室参观。这个机构负责监管一个本应缓慢发展的行业。他们已经有几十年的历史，拥有10,000名雇员和大量的资金。他们面临的最大挑战是什么？“我们的雇员不堪重负，没有人有时间进行思考，信息太多了，”这家机构的管理者说。

    信息的大量涌现让人们变得多少有点疯狂。对我来说，这敲响了警钟。我经常听到一些机构——包括我自己的在内——幻想，如果拥有时间进行调整，具备更好的系统、合适的员工数量或是足够多的资金，生活会变得多么美好。然而，这儿有一家具备所有条件甚至更多的机构，却同样存在我在创业公司身上看到的那种混乱。

    讽刺的是，所有人都保持着连线状态，这最大的受害者乃是人们的工作效率，没有人能够在办公室完成很多工作。神经领导力研究所（NeuroLeadership Institute）曾对6,000名职员进行调查，结果发现只有10%的人能够在工作时达到最佳的思维状态。我经常听到这样的话，“我必须回到家，等到晚上才能把所有事情做完。”在夜间和周末工作让人们花在家人和朋友身上的时间变少了，甚至连睡眠的时间也缩短了，如今30%的美国人得不到充足的睡眠。

    我们已经不再执行20小时的轮班制了，但却对让员工全天候保持电邮响应安之若素。我们对工作场所进行了调整，以减少对身体的伤害，但我们却希望员工一连几小时处理海量数据。我们强制人们休假，但却有比以往任何时候都要多的人在假期中保持连线。我们没有尊重大脑的需求，这在很大程度上是因为那些需求并不明显。现在也许是时候揭开真相了。

    When cars first became popular 100 years ago, there were no road rules or speed limits to begin with. Inspired by the freedom of their speedy new toys, drivers zoomed around as fast as they could. Crashes were a constant.

    Today's speedy new toys, the smartphone and tablet, help people work when, where, and how they want. Excited by their newfound freedom, people are staying connected 24/7, working as fast as they can. The crashes this time are less obvious but still producing pain.

    A creative team that used to debrief with their client by video once a week from the office is now on video daily from their tablets. A software project that took six people a few months to complete is now broken into hundreds of parts for micro developers to finish in a week. While these ideas may sound enticing, there are implications to moving this fast, as HP (HPQ) discovered withtablets and Apple (AAPL) with maps.

    Traveling at the speed of confusion

    Perhaps the biggest implication of our new speed is what this is doing to our lives, and in particular to our brains. Recently, I was in the boardroom of a government organization outside the U.S. that was in charge of regulating what should be a slow-moving industry. They were decades old, with around 10,000 employees and mountains of money. Their biggest challenge? "Our people are so overwhelmed, no one has any time to think, it's all too much," their executives explained.

    The fire hose of information was driving folks more than a little crazy. This was a wake-up call for me. I often hear firms, including my own, fantasizing how much better life would be once they had years to get organized, better systems, the right number of employees, or plenty of capital. Yet here was a firm with all that and more, with the same chaos I see at startups.

    Ironically, the biggest casualty of everyone being so connected is productivity. No one is getting much done at the office. One survey of 6,000 workers by the NeuroLeadership Institute found only 10% of people do their best thinking at work. "I have to go home and work at night to get anything done" is a phrase I hear all too often. Working nights and weekends leads to less time with families and friends and even less sleep, with 30% of Americans not getting the sleep they need today.

    We won't let people work 20-hour factory shifts anymore, but we're okay to let them respond to emails 24/7. We organize workplaces to minimize physical injuries, yet we expect people to process huge volumes of data for hours on end. We mandate that people have vacations, yet more people are connected on vacation than ever. We are not respecting the needs of the brain largely because they are not obvious. Maybe it is time we made them more so.