If time is money, we’re broke: how we waste hours on end.
如果时间就是金钱，那我们便将破产：我们竟然在不断浪费时间。
The first of my many, many time-wasting activities takes place each morning with repeated manipulations1 of the snooze button2 on my alarm clock, followed by a dilly-dallying shower and an untoward amount of time spent perusing the offerings of my closet. The snooze button alone gains me (according to my rudimentary math skills) roughly 106 more hours of sleep per year, which is great, But I’m also usually late for work and wearing an outfit that, despite the fifteen minutes I spent ruminating about it, is not really all that cute.
在所发生的众多浪费时间的活动中，第一件事就是每天早上我都要重复按下 那该死的闹钟，然后继续赖床。起床后，磨磨蹭蹭地洗个澡,接着便漫无目的地看向 衣橱里的衣服。每天赖床的时间累积起来(根据我初级的计算水平），一年大概多睡 了 106个小时,有点太多了。但可笑的是，我上班通常都会迟到,而且，不管在离家前 的15分钟我怎样思索该穿怎样的套装，最后的效果却总不尽人意。
And that’s just the morning. If I add up all the time I spend doing one semi-useless thing or another, I’m sure I would be horrified that I have blithely9 let slip away precious hour upon precious hour of my one and only earthly life. Seize the day, indeed. I’m sure if I had spent that time more constructively, I would have cured cancer, written the great American novel, negotiated peace in the Middle East, and finally gotten caught up on reading my New Yorkers — or at least figured out how Lost will end. Alas, life is simply too full of tantalizii^4 time-sucks.
那还仅仅是早上。如果将我花在这件或那件无用东西上的时间都加在一起，我 确信自己会被那个结果吓住:在我这仅有一次的人生中，自己竟然很愉快地让那无 比宝贵的一个个小时轻松溜走。事实上，我应该抓住每一天。我相信，如果我当初能 更有建设性地使用时间的话，那我将能治愈癌症，能写出本优秀的美国小说，能在 中东进行和平谈判，最后得出我们这些纽约人的理解——或者至少找出结束战争 的方法。唉！生活到处充满了稍纵即逝的时间啊。
The Closet Vortex
壁橱漩涡
What girl doesn’t long for a Carrie Bradshaw style closet, replete with the most fashionable offerings her budget will allow (and then some)? Such closets, and even smaller, simpler ones, are major culprits in terms of lost time. The average American woman spends sixty-one minutes contemplating her outfits during the course of a week. An hour, ladies. An hour. Just think of what you could accomplish if you got even half of those 3,172 minutes per year back. Where would the human race be if we were even slightly more decisive about what to wear?
女孩们并不渴望得到的像《欲望都市》里卡丽?布拉德肖式的,装满了无数最新 潮服饰的衣橱，何况各自的财政预算能允许她们这样想吗(还有其他的一些东西)? 像这种衣橱,和即使比这小点的,简单点的,都是浪费时间的罪魁祸首。在美国，平均 每位女性一周里都要花61分钟思考“自己该穿什么' 1个小时啊，女性们，1个小时！ 想想看，即使你仅仅用这一年中你浪费的3172分钟一半的时间，你能完成多少有用 的事情？如果我们在穿衣服问题上稍微更果断的话,人类的明天将会走向哪里？
Fantasy Land
幻想的国度
For the average person, daydreaming consumes 15 to 50 percent of each day. My aforementioned6 rudimentary math skills prevent me from breaking that down into actual hours and minutes, but even at the lower, 15 — 20 percent range, we’re still talking about a good chunk of our days’ being spent woolgathering 一 fantasizing about how we’d spend our imaginary lottery winnings, envisioning the moment when our boyfriends are finally going to pop the long-awaited question. Happily, some studies have suggested that daydreaming is actually a sign of creativity and intelligence, and many psychologists regard it as a healthy mental exercise, much like meditation, so it would seem to be a worthy undertaking. However, that doesn’t remove the necessity of greeting the grindstone for at least part of each day.
一个人每天会花费15% ~ 50%的时间来做白日梦。我前面提到的我那差劲的计算能力阻止我将这些时间拆分成精确的小时和分钟，但即使再低一些，在15% ~ 20%的范围内，我们依然谈论着一天当中都用来神游的一整块的时间——我们幻 想着怎么用想象的中彩票的奖金消费，想象着期待已久的我们的男朋友最后成为 了名父亲的美妙时刻。令人愉快的是，一些研究证明，做白日梦的确是富有创造力 与智慧的表现，而许多心理学家就是把做白日梦当做是让心灵更加健康的锻炼，这 和冥想很相似。所以,这看上去是一项值得从事的事业。但是，这些都不能改变一个 事实，它的确消磨了一天中一定的时间。
Retail Therapy
购物疗法
It all seems harmless enough: making a quick stop for coffee on your way to the office; grabbing a bite at the salad place and perhaps running an errand7 at the pharmacy during your lunch hour; doing a little grocery shopping or making other necessary stops after work. Add all that up and mix it in with more discretionary retail outings, and that’s nearly six and half hours per week that the average woman spends buying stuff. (Unsurprisingly, men roll in at a lazy four hours weekly in the shopping category.) And that doesn’t even take Into account8 the immeasurable hours we spend browsing and fondling and mulling over and justifying various buys; this is simply the time we spend making purchases at cash registers. I’ll not touch on the financial implications of this particular statistic — let’ s just say it’s a miracle economic recovery is still described as sluggish.
这看上去没什么坏处:比如，在你去办公室的路上稍作停留,买杯咖啡;趁着中 午用餐的时间品尝一下沙拉,或者跑到药店买药什么的;下班之后到杂货店买点东 西，或者停下来做些其他事情。将上述所说的加起来，再将他们和更多的随意的购 物参观放松加在一起，大概一周花上6.5个小时，这大概就是女性平均买东西的时 间(不必吃惊，就连懒惰的男性消耗在购物上的时间一周也有4个小时)。而且，这当 中还不包括我们在购物时浏览的时间、在喜爱的物品上停留的时间，以及用来证明 买这些东西是有价值的时间,还有很简单的在收银柜台前的时间花费,我无法说明 这些详细的统计量在金融业有怎样的含义——我只能说，经济复苏还在缓慢进行 中，这真是个奇迹。
The Idiot Box
电视机
Nothing drains our time reserves like the television. We’ve all been guilty of turning on the TV to catch the last quarter of the game or check to see who’s still on the island and who isn’t — and next thing you know, it’s 2 a.m. That seems like an extreme scenario — or maybe not, if you consider that the average American spends three hours a day watching TV. Twenty-four hours in a day have officially become twenty-one — I thought we needed more time, not less.
没有什么能比电视机更能榨干我们存储的时间的了。我们带着罪恶感打开电 视机去看最新一季的比赛，或者去查看一下岛上谁还活着谁巳经死亡——下一件 事你知道的，天啊,已经凌晨2点了 ！这是个相对极端的场景，或者说，还不止如此， 如果你考虑到美国人平均一天看3小时电视的话。如此一来，一天的24小时已变成 21小时~我觉得我们需要更多的时间，而不是更少。
Something to Cry About
为某些事哭泣
You may not have shed many tears in the last few days, but on average, women over the age of nineteen cry for two hours a week. What sets us off? Just about anything, apparently — without even taking into account the usual hormonal fluctuations that often cause us to weep if we look at a puppy from the right angle.The top causes of tearful female outbursts are weepy movies, relationship worries, breaking up, and the death of a loved one — and, of course, pain and simple exhaustion can weaken our tear ducts，strongholds.
在生命的最后几天,你或许不会流太多的眼泪,但超过19岁的女性平均一周得 哭上2小时。是什么惹我们情绪爆发了?任何事情都有可能,很明显的如果我们 直面一个幼小的动物，我们甚至无需考虑是惯常的荷尔蒙激素波动造成的我们哭 泣。能让一位女性眼泪决堤的“主犯”是催人落泪的电影,折磨人的关系,破裂的感 情,以及一位挚爱之人的去世——当然,疼痛和纯粹的筋疲力尽的感觉也能让女性 的泪腺变得脆弱。
Between the TV, Facebook, deciding what to wear, shopping, daydreaming, and weeping, it’s a wonder we get anything done at all. My rudimentary math skills suggest that the average American woman spends roughly 3,311 hours each year indulging in all of these activities at least to some extent. There are 8,766 hours in a year. That means that almost half our time is “wasted,” sucked into the vortex of our modern world and all of its tempting distractions. Or you could just call it “living.”
穿梭在电视、脸谱网、决定穿什么、购物、白日梦和哭泣的循环之中，如果我们还能有时间做成任何事情，那还真是一个奇 迹。我蹩脚的数学才能所得出的数据是:美 国女性一年平均从某种程度上最少花 上3311小时沉浸在上述这些活动中。1年总 共有8766个小时，这就意味着一年有一半的 时间是被浪费掉的’被无情地卷入现代社会 和充满诱惑力娱乐的漩涡中。或者，你姑且 能将其称之为‘‘生存'