治疗拖延症的妙方：增加忙碌感

    在炎炎夏日，许多人都希望自己生而为法国人，这样就可以在海滩上度过一个月的酷暑，在这样的天气，人们似乎更难达到最佳工作效率。当然，这并不意味着，在其他季节，工作效率低下便不是热门话题：苹果（Apple）应用商店有超过3,700款帮助人们处理待办事项的应用，而网上搜索结果显示，仅美国从2011年以来出版的关于如何提高工作效率的图书，便有5,000多本。

    尽管如此，对于拖延症和错过最终期限这两个工作效率问题，大多数管理者的处理方法似乎并不正确。至少，这是4家商学院所做的一项最新研究得出的结论。

    来做个快速测试：如果一名团队成员将项目推迟到最终期限之后，你会a)认为他有太多事情要做，因此减轻他的工作量，使他可以集中更多精力做好手头的任务，或者b) 设定新的最终期限，但不减少他的任务数量？

    大多数善良的老板都会选择a)，但其实b)才是更好的答案。该项目负责人，匹兹堡大学（University of Pittsburgh）约瑟夫•卡茨商学院（Joseph A. Katz Graduate School of Business）教授安德鲁•T•史蒂芬表示：“人们错过最终期限时，通常会感到惭愧。他们非常愧疚，甚至会有些难堪。”这些情绪“会让人变得消极。一旦有人在某项任务上产生了负面情绪，完成任务就会变得更难。”

    史蒂芬说道，相反，如果错过最终期限的人除了未按时完成的项目之外，还有一些其他工作，“他们便不会变得如此消极。他们会为未按时完成任务寻找借口：‘我还有另外10件事要做呢。’这样可以减轻他们的压力，使他们更容易完成任务。”

    该项研究对一款生产效率应用的586,808个数据点进行了分析，连续两周对250人进行了现场研究，并进行了两次可控实验室实验，因此，可谓非常全面，并且产生了许多其他方面的见解。

    首先，一个人不得不完成的绝对任务数量，并没有他或她是否觉得自己非常忙碌那么重要。因此，史蒂芬表示，为了减少员工拖延的可能性，管理者可能需要在不实际增加工作量的前提下，增强员工“忙碌感”。

    他说道：“一种方法是将一个项目分成多个组成部分，分别设定单独的最终期限，使员工感觉他们有10件工作要做，而不是一件。而且，许多人自己也会这么做，因为这会使一个任务看起来更易于管理。”

    史蒂芬非常谨慎地指出，这项研究对“忙碌”的定义不同于多任务处理，后者通常会降低工作效率。他说道：“我们也不建议给一个人安排过多的工作量，因为在这种情况，员工会惊慌失措，结果反而无法正常工作。但也要抵制减轻员工工作量的诱惑，尤其是对于拖延症患者。因为这样做毫无帮助。”（财富中文网）

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓

    Here in the dog days of summer, when many of us are wishing we had had the foresight to be born French so we could spend the month on a beach, peak productivity might be a little harder to achieve than usual. Not that it isn’t also a hot topic the rest of the year: Apple’s App Store offers no fewer than 3,700 applications designed to help users tackle their to-do lists, and a quick online search turns up more than 5,000 books on how to boost productivity published since 2011 in the U.S. alone.

    Even so, it seems most managers handle two big productivity problems—procrastination and missed deadlines—all wrong. At least, that’s the conclusion of a new study from researchers at four B-schools.

    Here’s a quick quiz: When a member of your team puts off a project until the deadline has sailed past, do you a) assume he has too many things to do and take away some of his workload so he can concentrate better on the task at hand, or b) simply set a new deadline, without reducing his total number of tasks?

    Most well-intentioned bosses would choose a), but the better answer is b). “When people miss a deadline, they usually feel bad about it. They feel guilty and maybe embarrassed,” notes Andrew T. Stephen, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s Joseph A. Katz Graduate School of Business, who led the study. Those emotions “are demotivating. Once someone starts associating negative feelings with a task, it just makes it even harder to get the damn thing done.”

    By contrast, when people who blow a deadline have plenty of other work on their plates, besides the project they didn’t finish on time, “they don’t get as demotivated,” Stephen says. “They can excuse their failure to finish this one thing on time by telling themselves, ‘Well, I had 10 other things going on.’ It takes the edge off, and makes it easier to complete that task.”

    Based on an analysis of 586,808 data points from a productivity app, a field study of 250 people over two consecutive weeks, and two controlled lab experiments, the research was nothing if not thorough, and it yielded a few other insights.

    For one thing, the absolute number of tasks someone has to do isn’t as important as whether or not she perceives herself to be busy. So, to make people less prone to procrastinate, Stephen says managers might want to help boost employees’ feelings of “busy-ness,” without actually piling on any more work.

    “One approach is to break each project down into many component parts, with separate deadlines, so that someone feels they’ve got 10 things to do instead of just one,” he says, adding that “many people tend to do this for themselves anyway, partly because it makes a task seem more manageable.”

    Stephen is careful to point out that the study’s definition of “busy-ness” is not the same as multitasking, which usually reduces productivity. “We’re also not recommending overloading anyone to the point where they’re like a deer in headlights and can’t function,” he says. “But do resist the temptation to let people—especially procrastinators—be less busy. It won’t help.”