【英语生活】谁能治高管失眠?

The most harmful thing my mother ever taught me, in fact the only harmful thing she ever taught me, was how important it was to go to bed at a decent hour and get a solid eight hours' sleep. If you didn't, she warned, you'd be exhausted and grumpy and would not be able to cope with the following day.

The reason this did me such harm was not that she was wrong. Going to bed early is one of life's greatest pleasures and eight hours' sleep is bliss. The problem with her lesson is that just thinking about it prevents me from following it. Fretting about how much sleep I am getting is the surest way to ensure that I never get enough.

I am alarmed to see that disciples of my mum have now made their way into the Harvard Business Review. A recent issue devotes seven pages to an interview with a man in a white coat who is even more obsessed with the negative effects of poor sleep than was my mother.

According to Dr Charles Czeisler, a lack of sleep not only does horrible things to your body (making you fat, old and prone to heart attacks), it also makes you less effective at work to the point of being dangerous. The sleep-deprived macho culture is downright irresponsible, he says, encouraging managers to work flat out, burn the candle at both ends, jet around the world into different time zones and then come into work and start taking decisions. All responsible companies should have sleep policies just as they have policies on smoking and sexual harassment, he concludes.

Like my mum, Dr Czeisler is right. Managers who don't sleep enough get manic, irrational, bad-tempered and probably make dodgy decisions. But his warning, like mum's, is decidedly unhelpful. The worst sleep-deprived managers are not the ones who fly too much, they are the ones who can get themselves into bed more or less OK, but can't take the next step from the eyes-shut position to oblivion. It is all very well saying executives should sleep more. But if you are one who cannot, where does this get you? If you phoned in sick on the days you'd had less than eight hours' sleep you'd never show up at work at all.

From experience, I can tell you that the real trick for an insomniac is to accept that you sleep badly and learn how to live with it. One way that I cope is through moaning. I have a support group of fellow insomniacs whom I regularly seek out in the office to tell how awful I feel when I've woken at 4am and failed to get back to sleep. Often they reply: I was awake at 4am too! And then I say, if only I had known, I could have rung you and we could have had a chat.

Last week, as I rehashed this conversation for the hundredth time with a colleague, I had a eureka moment. We insomniacs should set up instant messaging groups that could become as important a part of our social lives as MSN is for schoolchildren. We would log on as soon as we woke and see who else among our acquaintance was lying there staring at the ceiling.

In theory, this could be done on a BlackBerry, but I find jabbing at those tiny keys bad enough in the daytime, and wouldn't want to do it at night. Instead, there could be a special hand-held computer with big keys and a gently back-lit keyboard so that you wouldn't have to turn on the light and disturb your maddeningly snoring partner.

I have toyed with the name of Uawake?? for my new product, although, as insomniacs tend to be up-tight people alienated by liberties with spelling, YouAwake?? might secure greater brand loyalty.

Last week, I excitedly tried to explain the beauty of the concept to a couple of non-insomniacs, but the response was disappointing. Surely if you are awake, they said, you'd want to get back to sleep, so typing away on a keyboard wouldn't help at all.

This betrays the most profound ignorance of the condition. When you wake at 4am you feel that you are the only person in the city deserted by sleep. Simply knowing how many of your friends and colleagues are terminally awake would be reassuring.

The favourite pastime of the nocturnally wakeful is worrying. At 2am you worry about big things, small things, silly things, anything at all. If you could e-mail these mad anxieties to fellow worriers you might shame yourself into sense and, thus soothed, might even be able to go back to sleep.

A third beauty of YouAwake?? would be it would help make use of the weird creative energy that sometimes surfaces at night. At 3am I am often full of ideas; if I were connected to fellow insomniacs we could use the time profitably for a bit of a pre-dawn brainstorm.

The possibilities are legion: YouAwake?? could easily become an exclusive club, a network that those who get their eight hours might come to envy.

As for the revenue stream of this promising business, it would partly come from sale of the devices but mainly from advertising of products such as Horlicks, comfortable mattresses, lavender pillows and make-up pencils to remove the dark shadows under eyes. It could even carry ads for nappies and baby lotion, as breastfeeding mothers would surely be keen users of YouAwake?? too.

You may be wondering why I am broadcasting such a profitable idea rather than keeping it to myself. The answer is that I worry enough as a wage slave: if I became an entrepreneur and had to shoulder the additional cares of running my own business I'd never sleep again.

In any case, my motives in offering YouAwake?? on a plate are not altruistic. If you can shoulder the worry and make this brilliant idea happen, I will be your first customer.

在母亲对我的教导中，最有害的一件（实际上也是唯一有害的一件）就是：适时上床睡觉和保证8小时睡眠有多么重要。她警告说，如果不这样做，你就会疲惫不堪、性情暴躁，无法应付第二天的生活。

这条忠告令我深受其害的原因不是她错了。早睡是人生最大的乐事之一，8小时睡眠是天赐的福分。她的教导带来的问题在于，只要一想到这条忠告，我就无法遵从它。为睡了多长时间而烦恼是确保我永远睡不够的最佳方法。

我惊恐地发现，母亲的信徒们现在已经上了《哈佛商业评论》(Harvard Business Review)。最近一期杂志，对一位男医生的专访占据了7页的篇幅，他比我母亲更沉迷于睡眠不足的负面影响。

查尔斯•切斯勒(Charles Czeisler)医生认为，睡眠不足不仅会伤害身体(使你发胖、变老、易得心脏病)，还会将工作效率降低到危险的地步。他表示，剥夺睡眠的男子汉文化完全是不负责任的，它鼓励经理人全力以赴，耗尽每一分体力，坐飞机在不同的时区间穿梭，然后回到办公室做决策。他的结论是，所有负责任的公司都应当制定睡眠政策，就像它们制定了禁止吸烟和性骚扰政策一样。

同我母亲一样，切斯勒医生是对的。睡眠不足的经理人会变得狂躁不安、失去理性、脾气不佳，可能做出不合理的决策。但同我的母亲一样，他的警告丝毫无济于事。最缺乏睡眠的经理人不是那些飞机坐得最多的人，而是那些基本上可以按时上床、却无法入睡的人。高管应当多睡点的观点完全正确，但如果你睡不着，那又有什么意义呢？如果睡眠不足8小时，你就打电话请病假，那你就根本不用去上班了。

对于失眠症患者，真正的解决办法是：接受睡眠不好的现实，学会适应。这是我的经验之谈。我的一个应对办法是倾诉。我有一群同样失眠的朋友，在我早上4点就醒来然后再也无法入睡的时候，我经常会去办公室找他们，告诉他们我感觉有多糟糕。他们通常会回答说：我也是早上4点钟醒的！然后我会说，早知道我就给你打电话了，我们可以聊会儿天。

最近，当我跟一位同事第100次重复这个话题时，脑海中突然闪过一个念头：我们这些失眠症患者应当建立即时消息群，它们可以像MSN之于学生一样，成为我们社交生活的重要组成部分。我们一醒来就可以登陆上去，看看我们的熟人中还有谁也躺在那儿盯着天花板。

从理论上讲，这通过黑莓就可以实现，但我发现，在白天敲那些细小的按键就已经够糟糕的了，晚上不会再想这么做。因此，可以发明一个特殊的掌上电脑，配上大按键和有柔和背光灯的键盘，这样你就不必开灯，打扰你那鼾声震天的伴侣。

我一直在琢磨着为新产品起的Uawake??这个名字。不过，由于失眠症患者往往心情焦燥，不喜欢随意的拼写，或许YouAwake??能获得更高的品牌忠诚度。

最近，我心情激动地向两位非失眠症患者讲述了这个创意的美妙之处，但得到的反应却令人失望。他们说，如果你醒了，你肯定会想接着睡，所以靠在键盘上打字来消磨时间应该无济于事。

这暴露了对失眠状况最严重的无知。在凌晨4点醒来时，你会感到自己是这个城市中唯一一个被睡眠抛弃的人。只要知道在网线另一端还有多少朋友和同事醒着，就会给你带来安慰。

夜不能寐者最喜欢的消遣方式颇为令人担忧。在凌晨2点，你会担心大事、小事、无聊事——总之是任何事情。如果可以将这些令人发狂的焦虑情绪，通过电子邮件传达给也在担忧的朋友们，你或许会因羞愧而恢复理智，镇静下来，甚至可能再次入睡。

YouAwake??的第三个美妙之处是，它将有助于利用夜里有时候会出现的神奇创造力。凌晨3点时分我通常会满脑子创意，如果此时我能和失眠伙伴连上线，我们就可以有效利用时间，来点黎明前的头脑风暴。

可能性有很多：YouAwake??可能很容易就能成为一个排他性俱乐部，一个可能让晚上睡足8小时的人嫉妒的社交网络。

至于这一有前途的业务的收入来源，一部分可能来自设备的销售，但主要将来自产品广告，比如Horlicks(一种牛奶制成的睡前饮料，著名英国品牌，译者注)、舒适的床垫、熏衣草枕头，以及去除黑眼圈的化妆笔等。它甚至可以放些尿布和婴儿润肤液的广告，因为哺乳的母亲当然也会成为YouAwake??的热心用户。

你也许会奇怪，为什么我要把这么一个大有“钱”途的创意公之于众，而不是据为己有？答案是：作为一个工薪族，我的担忧已经够多的了，如果成为企业家，不得不额外花些心思经营自己的业务，那我就永远无法入睡了。

无论如何，我把YouAwake??创意奉献出来并不是无私的。如果你能承受烦扰，将这个绝佳的创意付诸实践，那我将是你的第一个顾客。

译者/何黎