教教我時(shí)間管理英語美文

　　Dear Economist

　　I have the habit of setting my watch five minutes fast. This fools me into avoiding being three minutes late for meetings, or the train – well, more often than not – and instead being two minutes early. But if I am a rational economic agent, how do I succeed in fooling myself so systematically?

　　Yours (in haste),

　　Mark, Oxford

　　Dear Mark,

　　That is a big “if”. Economists frequently explain eccentric behaviour with a model of two rational agents in one body, battling to outwit each other.

　　In your case, one agent (the one who is always late) is impatient: the risk of missing a train in half an hour is unimportant compared with the instant satisfaction to be derived from having one more sip of coffee.

　　Your more patient half disagrees. There seems to be some sort of stickiness in your perception of time. Stickiness is a feature of retail prices, because retailers will absorb a certain amount of inflation before spending money on repainting signs and reprinting catalogues. However at some stage - perhaps a five or 10 per cent increase in the price level - the fixed cost of that reprinting must be paid.

　　Your impatient self clearly suffers from a similar fixed cost of carrying out subtraction. If your watch was, say, 47 minutes fast, this fixed cost would have to be borne every time you looked at it, because being 47 minutes early for everything is even more costly than having to perform mental arithmetic. Five minutes, like a 1 per cent increase in the price level, is more tolerable.

　　To summarise: you have a split personality, a warped view of time and are too lazy to do simple sums. Now put down this magazine: I suspect you are running late for something.

　　教教我時(shí)間管理

　　親愛的經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家：

　　我習(xí)慣于把自己的手表調(diào)快5分鐘。這種自欺欺人的辦法，讓我避免因?yàn)橥?分鐘而無法趕上會(huì)議或火車——我經(jīng)常如此——相反還能提前2分鐘。但是，如果我是個(gè)理性的經(jīng)濟(jì)人，如何才能成功地做到如此系統(tǒng)地欺騙自己呢?

　　你的(匆忙的)，

　　牛津讀者馬克

　　親愛的馬克：

　　這是一個(gè)巨大的“如果”。經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家經(jīng)常用一種模型來解釋古怪的行為，即一個(gè)主體內(nèi)有兩個(gè)理性行動(dòng)者，它們爭(zhēng)著顯示自己比對(duì)方高明。

　　在你的例子中，一個(gè)行動(dòng)者(經(jīng)常遲到的那位)很急躁：與多喝一口咖啡所能立即得到的滿足感相比，錯(cuò)過半小時(shí)后的火車的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)并不重要。

　　你身上更有耐心的那個(gè)行動(dòng)者不同意這種做法。因此你在對(duì)時(shí)間的看法上似乎有某種執(zhí)著。執(zhí)著是零售價(jià)格的一種特性，因?yàn)榱闶凵淘诨ㄥX重新噴涂招牌并重印價(jià)目表之前，將承受一定的通脹。然而，在某些階段——價(jià)格水平可能上漲了5%或10%——就必須支付重新打印的固定成本。

　　你身上那個(gè)急躁的自我，顯然在實(shí)施減法時(shí)承受著類似的固定成本。比如說，如果你的手表被撥快了47分鐘，那你每次看表的時(shí)候都要承擔(dān)這種固定成本，因?yàn)樘崆?7分鐘的成本甚至要高于必須進(jìn)行心算本身。而5分鐘的時(shí)間，就像價(jià)格上1%的升幅，更容易承受。

　　最后總結(jié)一下：你的性格有些分裂，時(shí)間觀點(diǎn)扭曲，而且過于懶惰，以至于連簡(jiǎn)單算數(shù)題也不想做�，F(xiàn)在，趕緊放下這本雜志：我猜你可能又要遲到了。

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