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Business
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Bartleby
巴托比专栏
Working from nowhere
无处可办公
Every location has got worse for actual work.
所有地方都变得更难去真正工作。
Work would be so much better if you could get work done.
如果能好好完成工作，工作就会变得让人舒心很多。
It has always been hard to focus amid the staccato rhythms of meetings, the relentless accumulation of messages or the simple distraction of colleagues thundering past.
开会让工作节奏断断续续，各种消息不停累积，或者只是同事风风火火地走过而带来干扰，在这些情况下总是很难集中注意力。
But since the covid-19 pandemic, every single place of work has become less conducive to concentration.
但自新冠疫情暴发以来，每一个工作场所都变得不利于注意力集中。
Start with the home office.
首先是居家办公。
The promise of hybrid working is that you can now choose your location depending on the task at hand.
混合办公的承诺是，现在可以根据手头的任务选择办公地点。
If you need to focus on work, you can now skip the commute, stay home and get your head down.
如果你需要专心工作，那么你现在可以不用通勤，待在家里，埋头干活。
This tactic would have worked well in 2019, when no one else was ever at home.
这种策略要是在2019年实施，效果应该会很好，因为当时没有人在家。
Now there are likely to be other people there, too, grabbing the best spot for the Wi-Fi, merrily eating your lunch and talking loudly to a bunch of colleagues in their own workplaces.
现在家里面可能还有其他人，他们抢占了Wifi信号最好的位置，开心地把你的午餐吃掉，大声地和其他一些远程办公的同事交谈。
Home has become a co-working space but without any of the common courtesies.
家已经成了一个共同工作的空间，但这个空间里没有任何常见的礼貌行为。
Even if none of your family or flatmates is at home, they now know you might be.
即使你的家人或室友都不在家，他们现在也知道你可能在家。
That spells disaster.
这意味着灾难。
Parcels are delivered with monotonous regularity; large chunks of the day are spent being photographed on your own doorstep holding intriguing packages that are not for you.
快递总是以单调且规律的方式送到，白天的大部分时间都是你在家门口拿着不属于你的让人好奇的包裹，让快递员给你拍照。
Children who want food or money know where to track you down.
想要食物或钱的孩子知道去哪里找你。
Worst of all, jobs that once required a day off can now be done at no personal cost by booking them in for days when someone else is at home.
最糟糕的是，那些曾经需要请假一天来完成的工作，现在可以不用花费个人成本就完成，只要预约好在别人在家的时候分几天完成就行了。
“Are you going in today?” might sound like an innocuous question.
“你今天去上班吗？”听起来像个无伤大雅的问题
It should put you on high alert.
但这个问题应该让你高度警惕。
It means that a bunch of people with drills will storm the house just as you settle down to the laptop.
这意味着，正当你坐在笔记本电脑前的时候，一群带着电钻的人会冲进家里。
One natural response is to head to the place you were trying to avoid—the office.
一个自然的反应是前往那个你试图避开的地方——办公室。
But its role has changed since the pandemic.
但自疫情暴发以来，办公室的作用发生了变化。
It was never a great place for concentrating (the periods of lockdown were glorious exceptions).
办公室从来不是一个适合集中注意力的地方（封控时期的办公室是光荣的例外）。
But it has become even less suitable now that the office is seen as the place where collaboration and culture-building happen.
但现在，办公室被视为进行合作和建设企业文化的场所，它就变得更不适合集中注意力了。
Before you might have been able to sit in a cubicle, fenced off from other people; now openness is in vogue, which means fewer partitions and greater visibility.
以前，你可能可以坐在一个格子间里，与其他人隔开，而现在，开放成了潮流，这意味着隔间更少，可见度更高。
Before you might have had a normal chair and a desk; now you will be asked to wobble awkwardly on a tall stool at a champagne bar.
以前，你可能有一把普通的椅子和一张桌子，现在，你会被要求摇摇晃晃地、局促地坐在香槟酒吧的高脚凳上。
Before you were interrupted; now you are being given an opportunity to interact.
以前，你会被打断，现在，你得到了与人互动的机会。
There is much more emphasis on meetings, brainstorming, drinking, eating, bouncing around on space-hoppers or whatever appalling activity builds team spirit.
人们更加强调开会、头脑风暴、喝酒、吃饭、坐在橡胶球上蹦来蹦去，或者任何能够建立团队精神的可怕活动。
There is much less emphasis on single-minded attention.
人们对一个人的专注强调得更少。
Home is heaving, the office is off-putting.
家里人太多，办公室太讨厌。
What about other places, like co-working spaces and coffee shops?
那么其他地方呢？比如共享办公室和咖啡馆？
These too have got worse since the pandemic, for two reasons.
但这两个地方自疫情以来也变得更糟，原因有两个。
First, there is more competition for spaces.
首先，对空间的竞争更加激烈。
Everyone else who is finding it hard to concentrate has had exactly the same idea of heading to a third location.
所有难以集中注意力的其他人都有同样的想法，那就是前往第三个地方。
Second, online meetings have made it acceptable to reach everyone everywhere.
第二，在线会议使随时随地联系所有人的做法变得可接受。
It used to be said that you are never more than six feet away from a rat; now the same is true of a Zoom call.
过去人们常说，你离老鼠的距离永远不会超过6英尺，现在Zoom视频会议也是这样。
Wherever you are—homes, offices, cafes, libraries, monasteries—someone is within earshot, yapping away about something that manages to be both tedious and impossible to ignore: the plight of local papers in Maine, the risk calculations behind Solvency 2 or why Denise is so impossible to work with.
无论你身在何处——家里、办公室、咖啡馆、图书馆、修道院——都能听见有人在哇啦哇啦地说着一些既无聊又令人无法忽视的事情：缅因州当地报纸的困境、“欧盟偿付能力二代要求”背后的风险计算，或者为什么和丹尼斯一起工作如此令人难以忍受。
There are ways around the concentration problem.
解决专注的问题有一些办法。
One is to become richer: everything is so much easier if you have another wing of the house, or indeed another house.
一个是变得更富有：如果你住的房子有另一个侧楼，或者你另有一个房子，那么一切都容易得多。
Another is deliberately to swim against the hybrid tide: if Monday is the day when most people work from home in order to focus, the office is going to be a better place to work that day.
另一个办法是故意逆混合办公潮流而动：如果星期一是大多数人为了集中精力而在家工作的日子，那么在这一天办公室将是一个更好的工作场所。
The most common and least healthy answer is to defer focused work until the evenings and weekends.
最常见也最不健康的办法是将需要专注的工作推迟到晚上和周末。
This is not a lament for the pre-pandemic world.
本文不是怀念疫情前的世界的哀叹。
Just because each location has got worse as a place to do focused work does not mean that things have got worse overall.
仅仅因为每个地方都变得更难集中注意力工作，并不意味着事情整体变得更糟。
Hybrid work allows people to pick the most appropriate locations for specific tasks.
混合办公允许人们为特定任务选择最合适的办公地点。
The option of occasionally staying at home, even if home is noisier than it was before 2020, is still better for many workers and employers than the pre-covid norm of coming into the office every day.
即使家里比2020年以前更吵，但偶尔待在家里的选择对许多上班族和雇主来说，仍然比疫情前每天去办公室的常态要好。
But wherever you are, other people are more likely to be there or to have a greater expectation of interacting with you.
但无论你身在何处，其他人都更有可能也在那里，或更期望与你互动。
The ability to concentrate is sold as a benefit of flexibility.
能够集中注意力被推销为是灵活办公的好处。
It can be the price you pay for it.
这也可能是你为灵活办公付出的代价。
