译 | 午休玩手机，可能更累。

译文 | 好好越读 （2/50）

我们每天面对大量的工作，时不时还有老板的指责。如何面对这样的压力，让自己在工作中游刃有余呢？

最近，99u网站上发表了一篇文章，专门谈如何休息的，而且是根据科学调查得出的结果，我们一起来看看几个主要的观点，后面附上译文：

When deadlines are looming, the phone keeps ringing, and your inbox is overflowing, the idea of taking a break seems faintly ludicrous. The only option, you tell yourself, is just to plough on. Understandable, but shortsighted – you’ll end up paying a heavy price in the long term.

• plough on 坚持不懈

Just as you need to refuel your car and recharge the batteries(重新给电池充电) in your cell phone, it’s important to give yourself the chance to（偶尔） recoup your energy levels throughout the workday. In fact, the more demanding your day, and the less time you feel like you have to take any breaks, the more crucial it is that（至关重要的） you make sure you do take regular breaks to prevent yourself from becoming exhausted.好句子

But not just any kind of break will do. Psychologists and business scholars have recently started studying the most effective ways to relax during a workday – they call them “micro breaks” – and their latest findings point to some simple rules of thumb（大拇指规则，经验法则） to sustain and optimize your energy levels through a grueling nine to five（朝九晚五）. We’ve crunched the data into the following three-step process to reach peak restfulness.

It’s extremely tempting（非常诱人的）, especially when we’re tired, to spend breaks doing things that are convenient（方便的、实用的）, but aren’t truly restful. This might be internet shopping, browsing the latest news, or skimming an industry magazine（随意翻翻杂志）. However, studies show that brief work breaks are only genuinely rejuvenating （真正变得有活力）when they give you the chance to fully switch off. By contrast, any kind of activity that involves willpower or concentration, even if it’s not in a work context, is only going to add to your fatigue levels.（疲劳程度）

Consider a study published this year by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and George Mason University that involved nearly a hundred Korean office workers keeping a diary for ten work days, in which they noted how much work pressure they had after lunch and what they did during any work breaks. Each participant ultimately noted how fatigued they felt at the end of the day. The researchers coded（罗列了） the work break activities as relaxing (such as daydreaming or stretching), as nutrition-based (grabbing a coffee), social (chatting with colleagues), or cognitive (reading newspapers or checking emails).

Reading websites taxes many of the same mental processes that we use when we’re working.

As you’d expect, feeling that work demands were more intense around lunch time（午餐期间的） went hand in hand （伴随着）with feeling more end-of-day fatigue. Crucially, the right kind of break provided a protective buffer against this link between work demands and fatigue. Which kind of break was this? Only relaxation and social break activities had any benefit. Cognitive activities during work breaks actually made fatigue worse, likely because reading websites or checking emails taxes many of the same mental processes that we use when we’re working.

•around…time…  进入到都段时间内，turn-around time 留港时间（经）

Workers who spent lunch break using their smart phone, as opposed to chatting with friends, felt more emotionally exhausted in the afternoon.

Another related study, published this year by a pair of researchers at Ajou University in South Korea and the Korea Institute for Research in the Behavioral Sciences, found that workers who spent their lunch break using their smart phone, as opposed to chatting with friends, felt like they’d enjoyed as much distraction from work as the sociable folk, but they actually ended up feeling more emotionally exhausted in the afternoon.

There’s a popular theory in psychology that says our concentration and willpower levels are like fuel in a car – the more you use them in one activity, the less you have left over for other tasks. The theory has recently come under criticism for being overly simplistic, but if nothing else, it provides a useful analogy to make sense of the new research findings on workday breaks: As your energy reserves get gradually depleted through the day, you’re only going to allow these reserves to replenish if you genuinely relax in your break times.

A key insight from the research is that it makes a difference when you take breaks. Most of us feel more energetic in the morning than in the afternoon, and it can be tempting to wait until we’re flagging later in the day before allowing ourselves a short break. However, findings suggest that we actually respond better to breaks in the morning – it seems you need to have some fuel in the tank to benefit from a re-fill.

This was one of the main findings to come out of a study of 95 employees at Baylor University across five days, in which they filled out brief surveys about how they were feeling after each break they took. Breaks taken in the morning were much more beneficial, in terms of the improvements in how the workers said they felt afterwards（后来觉得） physically and mentally.

If you deprive yourself of many breaks, when you do finally take one, it’s going to be need to be longer to have any beneficial effect.

A related detail from this study was that if you take frequent breaks, then they don’t need to be as long to be beneficial – a couple of minutes might be enough. On the other hand, if you deprive yourself of many breaks, then when you do take one, it’s going to be need to be longer to have any beneficial effect.

Of course, when you’re embroiled in a complicated creative project, the idea of breaking off for 30 minutes or an hour can seem unappealing and impractical and so you end up wading on, meaning your performance is likely to suffer. Crucially, if you remember and have the self-discipline to take breaks early and often, you won’t be faced with this dilemma later in the day – you will be less fatigued, and any breaks you take at this later juncture needn’t be as long and disruptive.

For creatives who work in a large office building, it’s easy to find yourself spending whole days indoors – you might take breaks to the water cooler or the staff canteen, but nothing beats getting outside and away from the work environment. One problem with staying in the office, is that even if you take a decent lunch break and chat with colleagues, there’s still that pressure to maintain a good impression and you often end up talking shop.

Staff who did any work-related activities at lunch were rated as more fatigued by their colleagues at the end of the day.When researchers led by John P. Trougakos at the University of Toronto recently studied the effect of different lunch break activities among nearly a hundred university workers, they found that staff who socialized at lunch or did any work-related activities at lunch were rated as more fatigued by their colleagues at the end of the day. This was especially the case if the socializing was imposed by management – something to bear in mind for bosses who try too hard to foster camaraderie in the work place.

If you can get outside, even if it’s just a five minute walk around the block, you potentially – depending on where you’re located – also get to benefit from a rejuvenating dose of nature. Countless studies have shown how a green environment gives us a mental recharge, and what’s really encouraging is that recent work has shown that this doesn’t have to be a tropical rainforest. A modest urban park is all it takes.

There’s a work zeitgeist today that says you have to be constantly busy to succeed. If you’ve got time to go for a short walk, you’re obviously not consumed by drive and ambition, so the mistaken ethos goes. The psychological reality is that your mental and physical reserves are limited and it is only by taking frequent short breaks of a truly restful nature that you will fulfil your true potential.

A final thought – you might have the view that you’ll push yourself relentlessly during the day, squeezing every minute for what it’s worth, and then completely flake out after dark. This strategy of extremes might work for a robot, but not a human.

•flake out (因精疲力竭而)瘫倒或睡着

Psychology research from the University of Konstanz in German and Portland State University shows that over-exhaustion at the end of the day makes it even more difficult to recuperate after work hours. In other words allowing yourself proper breaks during the day will make your out-of-hours recovery more effective, ultimately boosting your productivity and creativity in the weeks and months ahead.

总结一下作者的观点

原文地址： A Science-Backed Guide to Taking Truly Restful Breaks

这篇翻译了3天，断断续续的。

第一天，翻译了一半，顺带着很多单词看不懂，语句的逻辑关系也拎不清。

第二天，翻译完了，都是意译，好了一点，整体的语句还是不通。

第三天，整理了全文，发现很多东西都看明白了。而且修改了一些句子，肯定还有错误，但是感觉轻松很多。反而奇怪之前两天为什么翻译得如此痛苦。

1、先看全文，有一个整体的概念，了解文章到底在说什么。

2、逐段翻译，不要逐句翻译。一个段落的逻辑关系自成一体，搞清楚句与句之间，还有从句之间的逻辑关系，看是总分、分总还是并列，是解释这个观点的，赞同的还是反对的。这样一段的意思就很容易搞清楚。一定注意那些连接词。

3、纵观全文来看看翻译的称谓是不是一致，关键词是不是统一。说白了，就是在翻译之后看起来会不会产生歧义，通顺与否。

4、plough on 多坚持坚持，一定先一字不落的看下来，然后再一个难点一个难点攻破。刚开始肯定很慢，毕竟放下英语很多年了，但是没关系，重新拾起来越多，后面的速度会越快，翻译得也越好。

前两天看万维钢的《精英日课》，说到了这篇文章。

因为本文近5000字了，有些长，所以另写一篇文章整理，后续添加链接。

扩展阅读：六种征兆说明你抑郁了 ... 翻译拍照扫一扫 ... 孩子上课发呆走神是什么原因 ... 翻译拍照在线翻译器 ... 抑郁厌学多久能恢复 ... 大学生 归寝打卡 合法吗 ... 抑郁厌学怎么办 ... 创维机顶盒接入平台83 ... 儿童上课经常走神发呆是什么原因 ...