This summer, there was much discussion of the concept of “quiet quitting” — meaning, essentially, doing the bare minimum at work. And perhaps that’s not surprising: After more than two years of pandemic uncertainty, employee stress levels are at all-time highs, and people are still languishing. When you’re exhausted and overwhelmed, it feels like something needs to give — and for many, that seems to be the pursuit of excellence at work.

动词languish可以表示“变得衰弱；未能取得进展”，那么形容词languishing就表示“萎靡不振的，日趋衰弱的”。

看一个《经济学人》的新例句：

Innovations can languish without appropriate or timely rule-making.

没有适当或及时的规则制定，创新可能会萎靡不振。

it feels like something needs to give，这里的give熟词僻义哦，表示“让步，妥协”。

参考译文：今年夏天，人们对“躺平”的概念做了很多讨论，从本质上说，这个概念的意思是只做最低限度的工作。这也许并不奇怪：在疫情中经历了两年多的不确定性后，员工压力水平达到了历史最高水平，人们仍然萎靡不振。当你精疲力竭、不堪重负时，就会觉得需要放弃掉一些东西——对很多人来说，放弃的似乎就是继续在工作中追求卓越。

But is taking your foot off the gas the answer? I’d argue it isn’t. As a writer focused on time management, I’ve come to realize that the opposite of burnout isn’t doing nothing, or even scaling back. It’s engagement. As counterintuitive as that seems, adding energizing activities to your schedule just might make life feel more doable.

我们知道gas可以表示“汽油”，step on the gas是一个美式口语中的固定表达，表示“踩油门；加速”，那么这里出现了一个相反的表达：take one’s foot off the gas，意思自然就是“减速”，也就是“松弛、懈怠下来”。

Burnout字面意思是“燃尽；烧尽；熄灭”，可以引申表示“耗尽体力；筋疲力尽”，可以替换exhaustion。

我们知道scale作名词通常表示“规模”，那么把它名词动用，scale sth up/down就可以表示“增加/减少数量，扩大/缩减规模”了。这里的scale back也是类似，指的就是“缩减日常事务，减少工作量”。

看一个《经济学人》关于scale up的例句吧：

Like Uber, WeWork wants to show that it has a profitable core that can be scaled up.

和优步一样，WeWork也想显示自己的核心业务能够盈利并实现规模化。

Counterintuitive很明显是一个由前缀counter-和intuitive组成的合成词，前者表示“相反，对立”，关于counter，可以戳这篇专栏详细学习哦：gt;英语写作能量词汇专栏 |  Counter (第十二期)。Intuitive表示“直觉的”，那么连起来counterintuitive就表示“反直觉的”。

doable这个词乍一看不常见，其实就是do和形容词后缀-able的构成的形容词，表示“可做的，切实可行的”。

参考译文：但是，把脚从油门上拿开就是答案吗？我认为没这么简单。作为一个专注时间管理的作家，我开始意识到，能对抗倦怠的不是什么都不做，甚至都不是少做一点。能对抗它的是投入。虽然这似乎违反直觉，但在你的日程安排中增加充满活力的活动，可能会让你感觉生活更有劲头。

That’s what I found when I ran a time-satisfaction study with more than 140 busy people for a book I was working on. At the beginning of my project, during the spring of 2021, they spoke of feeling exhausted and tapped out. “Life feels very chaotic with so many different balls in the air,” one person told me. “My work to-do list is never-ending,” another said. Someone else lamented feeling “like I need a few more hours each day in order to have time to manage family and life.”

有一个习语叫做keep several balls in the air，字面意思是让很多个球不落地，也就是“同时兼顾很多事务”的意思，这里Life feels very chaotic with so many different balls in the air说的就是“同时处理那么多琐事让人感到生活混乱”。

这个短语会让我想起另一个类似的短语：juggle sth with sth，它本义表示“玩杂耍，用双手连续抛接物件”，那么就可以非常形象的引申表示“同时兼顾，尽力同时应付（两个或更多的重要工作或活动）”，比如说“平衡家庭和事业”，就可以说：juggle family with career。

看一个《金融时报》的例句：

Grandparents often do not live nearby to help out, and culturally embedded gender roles mean the burden often falls on mothers to juggle working at home while looking after their children. 

祖父母通常不会住在附近来帮忙，而且文化上根深蒂固的性别角色意味着，负担往往要落在母亲头上，她们在家工作的时候还要照顾子女。

参考译文：我正在写一本关于140多名忙碌者对时间管理满意程度的书，这就是我在研究中的发现。我的项目开始于2021年春天，当时他们个个都说自己感到精疲力尽。“生活感觉非常混乱，事务繁杂，”一个人告诉我。另一个人说：“我的工作待办事项清单好像无穷无尽。”还有人抱怨说：“我每天都需要多几个小时来管理家庭和生活。”

The participants applied nine time-management strategies over the course of nine weeks. But instead of asking them to scale things back or draw stricter boundaries between work and life, most of the strategies I taught people were additive. I had them build in regular physical activity. I had them make space for little adventures. And when it came to leisure activities, I asked them to put “effortful before effortless” — to choose those that require action over those that are passive (even something as simple as reading a novel instead of binge-watching a TV show).

Make space for little adventures，我个人非常喜欢这条建议，我们确实非常需要在平淡的日常生活中增添一些小小冒险。这里的make space for相当于make room for，表示“给某事物腾出空间”。

讲一下binge这个词，它作为不及物动词，表示“大吃大喝；狂欢作乐”， 一般用的搭配是binge on sth，比如说，有的人心情不好的时候就会狂吃垃圾食品，我们就可以说：Some people binge on junk food when they’re depressed.

而binge做名词表示的就是“（短时间的）狂热活动，狂欢”，比如“寻欢作乐”就可以叫go on a binge。记得前两年我们的精读课材料曾经选过一篇来自《经济学人》的文章，讲的是娱乐产业，标题就叫做《The $650bn binge（6500亿美元的狂欢）》。

文章这里的binge-watch就比普通的watch多了一层“放肆无节制”的含义，如果是通宵看剧，用binge-watch就再贴切不过了。

《金融时报》里也用过这个词：

Netflix upended the traditional model of television by releasing all its episodes at once, rather than week by week, so viewers could “binge-watch” entire series in one sitting.

Netflix颠覆了传统的电视模式，一次性发布所有剧集，而不是逐周发布，因此观众可以一次性“刷完”整个系列。

这里就用了“binge-watch” entire series in one sitting来表达“一次性刷完整部剧集”。

参考译文：参与者在九周的时间里应用了九种时间管理策略。但是，我没有要求他们减少手头的任务，或在工作和生活之间划出更严格的界限，我教给他们的大多数策略都是做加法。我让他们进行有规律的体育锻炼。我让他们为小小冒险腾出空间。当谈到休闲活动时，我告诉他们“努力参与比不参与更重要”——选择那些需要主动参与的活动，而不是那些被动的活动（甚至是选择读小说而不是长时间煲剧这种简单的小事）。

I also introduced them to the principle of taking “one night for you” — committing to doing something you enjoy, apart from work and family, for at least a few hours each week. As with quiet quitting, this might sometimes mean leaving work a little earlier than usual, but the point is not to do less; the idea is that joining a choir, a softball team or anything else with expected attendance nudges you to figure out the logistics, arrange the child care if necessary and go — even if life seems too busy to contemplate such a thing.

动词contemplate表示“打算，想，考虑”，类似于consider，常用的结构是contemplate doing sth。

参考译文：我还向他们介绍了“一个属于自己的晚上”原则——保证每周至少花几个小时做一些工作和家庭之外，你自己最喜欢的事情。与“躺平”一样，这有时可能意味着比平时提早一点下班，但重点不是要让自己更闲；可以选择加入合唱团、垒球队或任何需要保证出席的活动，这些都会促使你安排后勤事务，必要时安排好孩子的照料，然后再去参加活动——即使生活看上去太忙而没时间考虑这些事。

And it worked. Over the course of nine weeks, participants came to feel that their schedules were brimming with activities that they had actively chosen and that they could look forward to — and as a result, time felt more abundant. Their satisfaction with how they spent their time overall rose 16 percent from the beginning of the project to the end. When asked about how they spent their leisure time “yesterday” after nine weeks, participants’ satisfaction rose 20 percent. They even reported making more progress on their professional goals — pretty much the opposite of quiet quitting — as their increased energy and engagement spilled over into all areas of life.

brim作名词本身表示“（杯、碗等的）口，边沿”，比如说“把酒杯斟满”就可以说：fill the glass right up to the brim。那么brim with sth就顺理成章地有了“充满，充斥”的意思，brimming with activities就是“排满了活动”的意思。

还有哪些关于“充满，充斥”的表达呢？咱们见过的还有be flooded with, be packed with, be stuffed with, be replete with, teem with（注意teem和brim一样都是不及物动词，不要用成被动了）等等，赶快动笔积累下来。

参考译文：这种方法奏效了。在这九周里，参与者开始感到他们的日程表里充满了他们主动选择、可以期待的活动——结果是，大家感到时间更充裕了。从项目开始到结束，他们对自己时间规划的总体满意度上升了16%。九周后，当被问及如何度过“昨天”的闲暇时光时，参与者的满意度上升了20%。他们甚至反馈说，他们在职业目标上取得了更大的进步——这与躺平几乎是相反的——因为他们增加的精力和投入溢出到了生活的方方面面。

We each have the same 168 hours every week. But time is also all about the stories we tell ourselves. When life is full of have-to-dos, with only brief periods of downtime in between, we can feel beaten down by responsibilities. But add things we actually want to do, to compete with those have-to-dos, and time feels different. We feel a bit more in control of our lives.

downtime本义表示计算机的“停止运行时间”，也可以表示“停工，休息”。比如说，大家都需要休息一下，就可以说：Everyone needs a little downtime.

参考译文：我们每个人每周都有同样的168个小时。但时间也和我们给自己讲的故事有关。当生活充满了不得不做的事情，而中间只有短暂的休息时间时，我们会被责任感所击垮。但如果新增一些我们真正想做的事情，让它们与那些不得不做的事情竞争，我们对时间的感知就完全不同了。我们会对自己的生活产生更多的掌控感。

Hannah Bogensberger, a participant in my time study, found this to be the case. As a busy software engineer raising three young children with her husband, a nurse, her days were full and work often slipped into nights and weekends. Adding anything else didn’t seem like an obvious path toward time satisfaction. But she agreed to try taking one night for herself — a weekly Tuesday tennis match with her sisters, and later, a regular class.

参考译文：汉娜·博根斯伯格是我这项时间管理研究的参与者，她意识到情况恰恰如此。作为一名忙碌的软件工程师，她和从事护理工作的丈夫一起抚养着三个年幼的孩子，她的日程满满当当，经常晚上和周末加班。乍一看，新增其他活动似乎并不是获得时间满足感的好方法。但她同意试着给自己留出一个晚上——每周二和姐妹们打一场网球，后来这变成了固定课程。

“For one hour a week, all my ruminations are quieted,” she told me. When she returned home for the first time after her hour of tennis tranquility, her husband told her, “You look like you’re glowing.” Playing tennis made Ms. Bogensberger feel “recharged” for the rest of her week, she told me, and she has found she’s also more attentive to family as a result. “I think when I wasn’t consistently giving myself true leisure, there was a bit of resentment,” she said. “But now, knowing there is blocked off, protected time on the calendar has eased that.”

动词ruminate本义表示牛等动物的“反刍”，这些动物把胃内的食物倒流回口腔内再次咀嚼，所以这个词被用来引申表示“反复琢磨，认真考虑，think something very carefully”，和ponder是同义词。它的名词形式就是rumination，同样表示“琢磨，深思”，这里指的就是“翻来覆去的纷乱思绪”了。

参考译文：“每周拥有一个小时，我所有的纷乱思绪就都被平息了，”她告诉我。她第一次靠打网球偷闲了一个小时的那天，回到家时，丈夫对她说：“你看起来容光焕发。”博根斯伯格告诉我，打网球让她在一周剩下的时间里感到“精力充沛”，她发现自己也因此更关心家人了。“我认为，当我没有坚持让自己拥有真正的闲暇时间的时候，内心会有一些怨念，”她说。“但现在，知道日程安排上有了雷打不动的固定休闲时间，这种心态有所缓解。”

Another study from a few years ago found that university students who were asked to help edit at-risk high school students’ essays for 15 minutes later reported having more free time than subjects who were allowed to leave the lab 15 minutes early. Logically, this doesn’t make sense, since those who left early had more free time. But the people who spent time in the rewarding, engaging activity of helping others felt that their time was less scarce.

参考译文：几年前的另一项研究发现，与那些被允许提前15分钟离开实验室的受试者相比，被要求花15分钟时间帮助有学业问题的高中生修改论文的大学生反馈的空闲时间更多。这是不符合逻辑的，因为那些早离开的人明明有更多的空闲时间。但是把时间花在帮助他人这种有益的、具有参与性的活动上，会让人觉得自己的时间不那么匮乏了。

Put simply, when we put time into what we find energizing, our inner narrative changes. We no longer feel like life is a slog.

Slog作名词表示“一段时间的艰苦工作或努力”，看一个《经济学人》的例句：

Even by Japanese standards, working for the company is regarded as a relentless slog. But the sales engineers are compensated handsomely for their dual roles.

即使按照日本的标准，这家公司的工作强度也被认为是无情的苦役。但是，销售工程师的双重角色给员工带来了丰厚的报酬。

相应地，slog做动词也有“埋头苦干；坚持不懈地做”的含义，一般用slog through sth或者slog away at sth的结构。比如高中三年埋头苦读，才能换来一张满意的录取通知书，这就可以说：Students often slog through intensive three years so as to win good university places.

参考译文：简而言之，当把时间花在让我们迸发活力的事情上时，我们的内在叙事就会改变，不再觉得生活是一种苦役。

That was certainly the case for Kathleen Paley, a mother of two and a lawyer at a firm in Washington, D.C., who I interviewed for my book. She said that she had gone through a dark period of feeling that her whole being was consumed by work and family. She described a sense, familiar to many working parents, that “every bit of you, as an individual, has to be put on the back burner for a while.”

国外的炉灶一般会有双排的灶头，后面一排通常用于烹饪那些需要煮很久、不需要随时照看的料理，所以on the back burner就有了“暂时搁置”的意思。

参考译文：凯瑟琳·佩利就是这样一个例子。她是两个孩子的母亲，是华盛顿特区一家律师事务所的律师，我为写书采访过她。她说自己经历了一段黑暗时期，感觉自己的全部精力都被工作和家庭占据了。她描述了一种许多职场父母都熟悉的感觉，那就是“作为个体，你的每一点都必须暂时放在次要位置”。

But instead of quiet quitting, loud quitting or phoning it in at home, Ms. Paley took on something she was passionate about: She began volunteering with the Fairfax City Economic Development Authority, doing projects that were completely different from her job and family responsibilities. She helped organize Restaurant Week in Fairfax and figured out ways to promote its small business incubator.

我们说quiet quitting是一种表面上一切如常，内心已经开始摆烂混日子的状态，与之相对地，loud quitting就是明晃晃的“辞职”了，相当于resign，但是没有quiet quitting做对比的时候可别随便乱用，可能会让人摸不着头脑。

Phone it in是一个习语，表示“敷衍、交差了事，意思一下”，和打电话没有什么关系。为啥会有这层意思，咱们可以这样记忆它：如果重视一件事，人们大都会选择当面去做、亲力亲为，如果只是打个电话处理，则就有一种不够重视、敷衍了事的感觉。
 

incubator本义表示“(体弱或早产婴儿)恒温箱”，可以表示初创企业的“孵化器”。
 

参考译文：但佩利并没有选择躺平、辞职，或者敷衍了事地对待家庭，而是做了她热爱的事情：她开始在费尔法克斯市经济发展局做志愿者，参与一些与她的工作和家庭责任截然不同的项目。她帮助组织了费尔法克斯的“餐厅周”，并想出了推广其小型企业孵化器的方法。

She found doing this work so much more energizing than the TV she used to watch after the kids went to bed, and in her excitement, her time seemed to multiply. Ms. Paley was eventually voted in as the chair of the development authority. And she did all this while still doing well at her job and being an active member of her family. Committing to something she was passionate about renewed her energy for everything else she was doing.

参考译文：比起等孩子们入睡后看电视，她发现做这份工作令她更有活力，这份兴奋劲儿使她觉得时间似乎成倍增加了。佩利最终被选为发展委员会主席。而在做这一切的同时，她仍然在本职工作中表现良好，并依然积极照顾着家庭。致力于自己所热爱的事情，为她生活中的其他事务注入了活力。

To be sure, there’s no reason to cram things into your schedule out of a sense of obligation, and depleting pursuits should be eschewed. But when you’re feeling overwhelmed, committing time to something that feels wonderful could be a better bet than simply doing less.

动词deplete表示“耗尽，用尽”，那么形容词depleting就表示“令人精疲力竭的，耗费心神的”，可以和前面讲过的burnout放在一起积累。

eschew表示“回避，避开”，而且一般是有意这样做的，它比avoid用词更加正式。

多看一个《金融时报》的例句混一下眼熟：

But unlike many highly skilled graduates, the 27-year-old industrial engineer has eschewed the bright lights of the big city for village life in Portugal’s mountainous interior.

但与许多高技能毕业生不同，这位27岁的工业工程师刻意远离了大城市的繁华，搬到了葡萄牙的内陆山区，享受乡村生活。

熟词僻义来了，bet一般表示“打赌”，要先对事情的走向加以判断才可以下注嘛，所以bet还可以表示“预估，预测”。这层意思下，经常用的表达有the/one’s best bet，表示当前情境下做某事的“最佳方法，最好选择”，那么文中的be a better bet指的就是“是更好的选择、方法”了。

除此之外，a safe bet也很常用，表示“合适的东西，稳妥的选择”，比如说，给小朋友买乐高做礼物很合适、肯定不出错，就可以说：Lego is a safe bet as a present for a kid.
 

参考译文：诚然，没有理由仅出于责任感就把各种事务塞满你的日程，而且耗费心神的事情应当被尽量避免。但当你感到不堪重负时，不妨抽出时间做一些让你感觉很棒的事情，这可能比让自己闲下来来的更好。