职场英语：效率工具能助你提高效率吗？

How Productivity Tools Can Waste Your Time

Trying to be more productive? An explosion in technology aimed at helping people manage their time and tasks may actually be making it harder.

你是否在努力提高工作效率?大量涌现的旨在帮助人们管理自己时间和任务的技术也许反而会增大它的难度。

New productivity products 'have skyrocketed in the last couple of years. There is way too much out there to make sense of it all,' says Whitson Gordon of Los Angeles, editor in chief of Lifehacker, a website on using technology to be more productive.

洛杉矶Lifehacker网站的主编惠特森•戈登(Whitson Gordon)说，提高工作效率的新产品“在过去几年里迅猛增长，数量实在多得让人无法一一弄清那些东西是什么”。Lifehacker是一家探讨如何使用技术来提高工作效率的网站。

Many people choose something that doesn't fit the way they think and work, or they jump from one tool to another, wasting time and energy. Rather than picking the right app or system on their own, people 'let themselves be directed by the latest and loudest,' says David Allen, an Ojai, Calif., productivity expert whose book 'Getting Things Done' has sold more than 1.6 million copies in English.

很多人选择的工具并不适合他们的思维和工作方式，或者频繁地从一种工具换到另一种工具，徒然浪费了时间和精力。加利福尼亚州欧海市(Ojai)的生产力管理专家戴维•艾伦(David Allen)说，人们不是去选择适合自己的应用程序或系统，而是“让自己被最新、炒得最热的东西所左右”。他写的《成事之道》(Getting Things Done)一书的英文版销售量已经超过了160万册。

Also, some systems are 'so complicated to keep up that 80% of the people fail,' says Laura Stack, a Denver-based speaker, trainer and author on productivity.

此外，丹佛的生产力管理领域的演说家、培训师和作家劳拉•斯塔克(Laura Stack)表示，有些系统“维护起来太复杂了，致使80%的人都无法做得到”。

It's a good idea to identify your own weaknesses before committing to a productivitymethod. Most programs and techniques promise help with one or more of four basic processes: collecting tasks and projects from all your notebooks, calendars and files into one organizing system; deciding on the next steps and desired outcomes for each item; organizing everything into categories, and making a habit of frequently checking and updating your to-dos and plans.

一个很好的思路是在采用某种效率提升方法之前找到自身的薄弱之处。以下是效率提升的四个基本方面，大多数程序和方法都能在其中一个或多个方面给予你帮助：将你的笔记本、日历和文件夹中的所有任务和项目收集到一个整理系统中;确定后续的行动步骤以及每一个项目的预期结果;将所有东西进行归类;养成经常检查、更新你的任务和计划的习惯。

Among the most popular techniques is Mr. Allen's Getting Things Done method, according to a 2012 Lifehacker survey of 2,032 people. Others include the Pomodoro Technique, which trains users to focus on tasks uninterrupted for 25 minutes; the Action Method, a task- and project-management program by Behance of New York City; and the Kanban approach, which orders tasks for various projects into three categories (to-dos, next up, and just completed).

根据Lifehacker网站2012年对2,032个人进行的调查，最受欢迎的方法中有艾伦的“成事之道法”(Getting Things Done method)，其它的还有训练用户25分钟连续不断专注于工作的“番茄工作法”(Pomodoro Technique)、纽约Behance公司的任务及项目管理方案“行动法”(Action Method)、以及将各种项目任务整理成三大类(待办的事情、下一步办理的事情和刚完成的事情)的“看板法”(Kanban approach)。

Mixing up your own hybrid method is a popular solution -- but this can become a job in itself. Lisa Hendey relies on Getting Things Done principles, such as breaking projects into action steps, to stay on top of her duties as an author, speaker, editor and founder of a website, CatholicMom.com. She maintains several color-coded Google calendars and uses a program called Evernote for taking and organizing notes. She also is trying out four apps for making to-do lists.

自行组合出一种混合法是很多人采用的解决途径──但是这本身也是一项任务。身兼作家、演说家、编辑和CatholicMom.com网站创办人的莉萨•亨迪(Lisa Hendey)利用“成事之道”原则(比如把项目拆分成多个行动阶段)来让自己保持最佳的工作状态。她弄了好几个彩色谷歌日历，使用一个名叫Evernote的程序来记事和整理记录，同时还在试用四个应用程序来制作待办事项列表。