拖延症患者注意：这个APP可以帮你克服“懒癌”

    艾瑞利也指出：“日历应用在提醒会议安排上表现得很好，但是除了会议之外，我们在生活中想要完成的事情还有很多。”可现在我们一看到日历上有空闲的时间，首先想到的就是再安排一个会议。

    教别人如何更好地利用他们的时间是不管用的。如果一款应用可以自动为你安排时间，告诉你何时去做你需要做的事、想要做的事和应该做的事，那么你真正完成这些事的可能性就会更高，这就是Timeful背后的行为科学原理。当然，要真正实现这些功能，也离不开技术上的一些“绝活”。

    该公司的首席执行官班克表示：“首先，系统需要捕捉所有占用我们时间的事情，然后它要帮你安排做这些事的时间。”据该公司表示，Timeful的日程安排主要是根据一种叫做“意向排名”的算法计算出来的，这种算法使用了机器学习技术来在时间空窗内安排活动。“意向排名”的基础是所谓的“意向基因”，它会把我们的意向分解成基本的元素并进行分类。

    公司的另一名创始人肖汉姆表示：“Timeful还包含了很多其它的效率工具，可以说是你为系统工作，而不是系统为你工作。”肖汉姆还表示，Timeful日历应用只是该公司开发的第一款应用。该公司今年年初刚从第一轮融资中筹集到700万美元。未来Timeful还可以整合可穿戴设备和其它渠道的数据，以便为用户提供更合理的建议。

    像其它效率工具一样，Timeful也有一条学习曲线，需要一定的时间才能得心应手地使用。这款应用安装起来并不麻烦，但是它既有传统电子日历的界面，又有一个系统建议的任务清单，有些任务并没有明确的开始和结束时间（比如洗衣服），用户要想适应这款应用还是要花些时间的。你为这款应用提供的信息和参数越多（这些需要花时间），理论上讲它为你建议的任务清单就更适合你的实际情况。

    艾瑞里短期内可能还难以从他的“边缘抑郁症”恢复过来，他表示：“一个人要想学会管理好自己的时间，本身就需要很长时间。”说这话时，声音中还带着一丝挫败感。（虽然凭借这款应用，艾瑞里可能成功地帮助人们解决了时间管理问题，但人性中的其他弱点仍然让他整夜忧思难眠。他喜欢指出，人类有44%的死亡是由糟糕的决策直接或间接导致的。）

    另外还有一点也比较令人沮丧：Timeful所在的领域早已充斥了大量的日历和效率应用。说真的，谁有时间来比较它们的算法谁好谁坏呢？我们都忙着干更重要的事——比如在心理测试中研究在匹萨饼上放哪种食材更符合我们的性格。

    不知道为什么，我选的是蘑菇——它差不多也是我唯一讨厌的食物。这个答案肯定有它的原因，但我决定不去想了，因为我的另一壶咖啡泡好了，而且我敢肯定，这时候肯定又有一封电子邮件进来了。（财富中文网）

    译者：朴成奎

    “The calendar is great to represent meetings,” Ariely says. “But we want to achieve many more things in life than meetings.” And yet, when we see an open slot in our calendar, he says, we think we can fill it with yet another meeting.

    Teaching someone how to make better use of their time doesn’t seem to work—so if an app automatically finds time for you to do the things you need to, want to, and should do, you are more likely to actually get them done. Therein lies the behavioral science at work in Timeful, with a few technological twists to help facilitate it.

    “The system needs to capture all of the things that are vying for your time,” says Bank, who serves as the company’s chief executive. “And it needs to help you make time for them.” According to the company, Timeful’s scheduling suggestions are based on a so-called Intention Rank, an algorithm that uses machine learning to rank activities within time slots. Underneath it is a data model—Timeful calls it its “Intention Genome”—that breaks down intentions to basic components and classifies them.

    “With many [other] productivity tools, you work for the system rather than the system working for you,” says Shoham, who has co-founded (and sold) two previous startups. He adds that the Timeful calendar is just the first app for the company, which raised nearly $7 million in Series A funding earlier this year. Down the road, Timeful could integrate data from wearables and other information in order to make more informed suggestions to users.

    Like any new productivity tool, there is a bit of a time-consuming learning curve with Timeful. The app doesn’t take long to set up, but it does take a while for the user to get used to having an interface that incorporates both a traditional calendar and a suggested list of tasks, some of which don’t have a clear beginning and end (such as laundry). The more information and preferences you feed the app—which, incidentally, takes more time—the better it will theoretically make suggestions tailored to you.

    Ariely is unlikely to recover from his marginal depression anytime soon. “The task of time management just takes too much time,” he says, with a hint of defeat in his voice. (Ariely may succeed in helping to solve time mismanagement with his app, but there are plenty of other human incompetencies that keep him up at night. He likes to point out that about 44% of human deaths are aided or caused by bad decision making.)

    Here’s another downer: Timeful arrives in a category bursting with calendar and productivity apps. And really, who has time to evaluate them based on algorithmic superiority? We’re all too busy tackling much more important tasks—like which pizza topping most closely matches our personality.

    Inexplicably, I got mushrooms—about the only food that I hate with a passion. I’m sure there’s good reason for it, but I’ve got another pot of coffee brewing, and I’m pretty sure I just saw another email come in.