生活节奏匆乱快 可别忘了记忆力

Here is a test. Find a pencil and a scrap of paper and draw the Apple logo. Easy, no? Now compare your sketch to the real thing.

来做个测试。找一支铅笔和一张纸，画一个苹果公司(Apple)的标识。容易不？现在把你画的图跟真正的标识对比一下。

If you are like me, or like 98.8 per cent of a sample recently tested by psychologists at UCLA, you failed. Almost everyone either puts the bite on the wrong side, draws two leaves instead of one, or in some other way bungles the simple job of reproducing an image we have all seen thousands of times.

如果你跟我差不多，或者像加州大学洛杉矶分校(UCLA)心理学家近期一批实验对象中的98.8%人一样，那么你肯定要失败了。几乎所有人都会画错，不是把缺口画在错误的一侧，就是画了两片而不是一片叶子，还有一些是其他地方搞错了。说起来不过是再现一幅我们都看过成千上万次的图像，但是如此简单的任务绝大多数人都完不成。

Not only are we unable to sketch one of the most famous logos on earth, most of us cannot even pick out the real thing when we see it in an identity parade of lookalikes.

我们不但画不出这个地球上最著名的标识之一，而且当这个标识和一系列相似的图形混在一起时，大多数人甚至认不出正确的那个。

Why is this? The researchers talk of “attentional saturation” and “inattentional amnesia”, but I think it is simpler than that. We cannot recall it because we do not have to.

为什么会这样？研究人员谈到了“注意力饱和”和“不注意健忘”，但我认为道理更简单——我们记不住它，是因为我们不必记住它。

For me, the Apple logo falls into a large collection of things that I do not need to remember.

对我来说，苹果标识属于一大堆我不必记住的事情之一。

Increasingly, practically everything belongs in this category. At home there are a few things I still need to remember, such as buying more shampoo when we have run out and filling out a form for my son’s school trip. But at work I can safely forget almost everything — apart from one big thing and one little thing. Otherwise the slate can be wiped clean. Workplace memory has been entirely outsourced to the computer.

渐渐地，几乎所有事情都属于这一类别。在家里，仍有几件事是我需要记住的，比如洗发水用完时要买新的，我儿子要参加学校组织的旅行时给他填一份表格。但在工作中，我可以放心地忘记几乎所有事情——只有一件大事和一件小事除外。其他事情完全可以抛在脑后。工作上要记的事情全部交给了电脑。

In theory, this means remembering my computer password, though in fact the help desk has often bailed me out when I’ve forgotten it. There is no need to remember any facts thanks to Google, all appointments are now online, and everything anyone ever said is easily found on an email somewhere.

在理论上，这意味着需要记住电脑密码，不过事实上，帮助桌面经常在我忘记密码时为我解困。多亏了谷歌(Google)，我们不必记住任何事情了，因为所有约会都记在网上，任何人说过的任何话很容易在某份电子邮件中找到。

A possible exception is corporate memory, which tends to be stored in heads rather than on clouds, but few corporations show much demand for that any more. Today’s decision makers do not welcome protestations from old geezers who can remember that such and such was tried before and didn’t work. Yesterday is an irritant.

公司历史可能是个例外，这些通常存储于人脑中而不是云中，但如今没多少公司对此有强烈的需要。今天的决策者不喜欢那些老家伙们的说法，后者记得某些做法以前尝试过了，而且不管用。昨天是令人恼火的。

So what are the two things we do need to remember at work? The small thing is the location of one’s vending cards/security passes. I try to make this easier by wearing mine on a string around my neck, although even this is not a complete solution as I sometimes take the card off the string, forget to put it back and then have to hunt around for it.

那么，我们在工作中需要记住的两件事是什么呢？小事就是可在自动售货机上使用的银行卡/通行证放在了什么地方。我设法让这事儿变得更容易——把它和其他东西串在一起挂在脖子上，不过，这也不是万全之策，因为我有时会把卡取下来，然后忘了拴回去，结果还是不得不到处找它。

The big thing is recognising other people. Clearly, it is an advantage if you can remember someone’s name but, as failing to do so is commonplace, the penalty is fairly small. The vital thing is remembering faces and incidental detail about them.

大事是记住别人。如果你能记住某人的名字，你显然就获得了一种优势；但由于人们常常做不到这一点，所以后果也不算严重。关键是要记得面孔，以及面部特征。

I recently went to see Still Alice , the film in which Julianne Moore plays an academic with early onset Alzheimer’s. When she forgets a word in a lecture it is briefly embarrassing, but she makes a joke and recovers quickly. Getting lost on a run is worse, but the real horror is when she can’t remember her son’s girlfriend, having just been introduced to her 15 minutes earlier.

不久前我去看了电影《依然爱丽丝》(Still Alice)，朱丽安•摩尔(Julianne Moore)在片中扮演一名有早期阿尔茨海默病(Alzheimer's, 即老年性痴呆)症状的学者。她在演讲中忘记了一个词，有一瞬间感觉很尴尬，于是她开了一个玩笑，就不再觉得难为情了。更糟糕的是跑步时迷路，但最可怕的是，他儿子刚向她介绍了自己的女朋友，15分钟后她就忘记儿子的女朋友是谁了。

You don’t need to have Alzheimer’s to forget a face, and when you do so at work it matters. Recently I met a man at a corporate event who had been at university with me and seemed to know a great deal about my life. Having no recollection of him at all put me at such a disadvantage that when he asked me to do him a favour I was wrongfooted into saying yes.

你就算没患阿尔茨海默病，也很容易忘记一个人的面孔。当这种事发生在工作中时，问题就大了。最近，我在一次公司活动上遇到一个人，他是我的大学校友，而且似乎非常了解我的情况。我在记忆里找不到一丝一毫他的影子，这对我非常不利，以至于每当他请我帮忙时，我总会胡乱地一口应承下来。

Equally, not long ago I ran into a senior executive with whom I had had an hour’s meeting five or six years ago. When I greeted him warmly he stared back blankly, evidently confident that we had never met. Possibly this meant nothing more than that his memory was poor, but I took it personally — as one inevitably does. Either I had aged so badly in five years that I was unrecognisable, I reasoned, or I had been too dull to remember. Neither one good.

还有，不久前我遇到了一位高管，五六年前我跟他见过面，谈了一个小时。当我热情地跟他打招呼时，他目光茫然地看着我，显然以为我们从未谋面。可能他只是记忆力差吧，但我认为这是针对我个人的——人们难免会有这样的想法。我推断，要么是我在5年里老得不成样子、难以辨认了，要么就是我这人太无趣，别人记不住。无论是哪种情况都不是好事。

The ability to remember people strikes me as a bigger asset than emotional intelligence at work. Most of us don’t especially want empathy in the office, but everyone wants to be remembered. The more someone is able to recall chapter and verse of all small talk exchanged at previous meetings, the more you are inclined to like and trust them. It is not just a skill for politicians: it’s for everyone.

我认为，在职场上，记人的能力比情商更有用。我们大多数人在办公室里不是特别需要别人的体谅，但每个人都希望被别人记住。一个人越是能记住以往会面时所有闲聊的细节，你就越是喜欢和信任他。这并不仅仅是政客们需要的一项技能：人人都需要它。

One day, probably very soon, wearable technology will do the job for us by recognising faces and connecting them to a database of trivia. But by then it will be worthless. The reason we want people to remember us is because it is so hard to do so.

有一天，也许就在不久之后，可穿戴技术将帮我们承担这一任务——记住面孔，并把这些面孔跟一个琐事数据库建立连接。但到那时，这件事将变得没有任何意义。我们想让人们记住自己，是因为做到这一点太难了。

If the computer does the remembering, the value of it becomes zero. No one wants to be remembered per se. We want to be remembered because it is a sign that another human being sees us as a valued individual, not just another interchangeable employee.

如果由电脑来做记忆工作，那么记忆的价值就变为零。谁也不想仅仅被记住。我们想要被记住，是因为这表明别人认为我们是值得尊敬的人，而不是随便一个可以替代的员工。