【英语生活】凯拉韦：我的办公室情绪实验

For the first four days of last week I kept a diary of my private thoughts and feelings while at work.The last time I did anything of this kind I was 13; the result then was banal and embarrassing and I hid it from everyone. The latest effort is also banal and embarrassing but this time I am reproducing it below.

My aim is to undermine the newly popular management theory that says happy workers are more creative and productive than miserable ones. This theory is supposedly proved by an article in the May edition of the Harvard Business Review in which 238 professionals were asked to keep daily diaries of their inner working lives. Two professors pored over 12,000 entries and compared them with the quality of the work that the people had done.

I have just conducted the same experiment on myself, and an analysis of my results points to a different conclusion. First, the raw data.

Monday: Feeling quite perky by recent standards. Started writing my agony aunt column with enjoyment. Felt smug. Had long gossipy lunch with colleague. Lost momentum in the afternoon. Finished column in a panic. Realised I'd forgotten to pick up my youngest son from school. Cycled home feeling less smug.

Tuesday: Slept badly. Slouched into work feeling tired, flat and thoroughly out of sorts. Had conversation with tiresome colleague and decided I loathed him. Hardly had any e-mails. Felt unpopular. Wrote some of the Martin Lukes column with distaste. Read the result and thought it laboured and unfunny. Decided I hated my job and contemplated retirement. Later at home did some maths with my daughter. Felt oddly cheered up by simultaneous equations.

Wednesday: Lovely ride to work in the sun feeling carefree. Looked over previous day's work and thought it not too bad. Finished column with satisfaction. Chatted to people. Had lunch with another colleague. We sat in the sun and moaned, which was nice. E-mailed cheerfully. Frittered time. Day ends a little blank, but fine.

Thursday: Slightly hungover, almost no sleep. Headache, depressed. Had pointless and bad- tempered e-mail exchange with someone I like. Sat down to write this column. Too wretched to want to talk to anyone. Worked with dogged sense of purpose, though felt the result feeble beyond redemption.

Readers may be thinking two things. First, that my experience is less significant than that of 238 professionals. To this, I'd like to refer them to the pappy quality of their diary entries. Here is an example: "My boss's boss came by, which was nice. He brought bottled water!" Mine reads like Virginia Woolf by comparison.

A more serious objection is that my entries seem to support the theory that I'm trying to disprove: on my miserable days - Tuesday and Thursday - my work was bad too. The truth is more complicated.

For years I have been monitoring my vacillating moods and the effect they have on my work. When I am glum I invariably judge my work to be bad. When I'm cheery I tend to think my work fine. However, I am a hopeless judge of what I do. Indeed, the columns that people have liked best have often been the ones written in a mood close to despair, while many of the ones I've liked have fallen entirely flat.

There are three reasons for this. When tired and unhappy I have no energy for chatting. I am grimly focused on what I'm doing. I'm much more prepared to take creative risks too - if life seems already bad, what is there to lose? And the fact that I judge myself so harshly when down makes me try much harder.

If I am right, there are surely interesting management implications. Managers should concentrate on making us as miserable as they can. Actually my diary doesn't quite show that. There are many kinds of bad feelings and some are more productive than others. Mild depression may be good for work. Severe depression tends not to be good for anything at all. Bad moods generated not by existential angst but by cretinous managers and daft management initiatives are also unproductive. They simply make one think: why bother?

My diary seems to imply that managers should hire professionals who are by nature somewhat neurotic and depressive. But even this isn't so, because of something academics call "emotional contagion". A happy mood spills over to others, and a miserable one does too. Reading my entries on Tuesday and Thursday I can conclude that I wasn't helping the inner working life of those around me at all.

There is only one incident in my diary that has any constructive message for managers. Look at what I did on Tuesday. Notice how the maths cheered me up. This strikes a chord with the HBR survey, which found that workers were happier when they knew precisely what they were supposed to be doing and were allowed to do it. Ambiguity is bad. Clarity is good. This explains why the equations were such bliss. I knew what I was meant to do. I had the tools to do it. And I got the answers entirely, objectively, indisputably right

上周的前四天我一直写日记，记录工作时的个人想法和感受。我上一次做这种事情是13岁的时候，结果是既平淡无奇又让人难为情，我把它藏了起来，不让任何人看到。最近这次努力也同样平淡无奇且让人难为情，但这一次，我把它复制在下面。

我的目标是动摇最近流行的管理学理论。该理论认为，心情愉快的员工比心情糟糕的员工更具创造性和成效。据信，5月号《哈佛商业评论》(Harvard Business Review)上的一篇文章证明了这一理论。在这篇文章中，238名职业人士被要求每天记录他们内心中的工作生活。两位教授关注着逾1.2万条输入内容，并将这些内容与人们的工作质量进行对比。

我刚刚对自己进行了同样的实验，对其结果所做的分析，得出了一个不同的结论。首先，我们来看看原始数据。

星期一：以近来的标准来看，感觉意气风发。开始愉快地撰写《知心凯拉韦》读者来信专栏。感觉自鸣得意。午餐时，与同事进行了长时间的闲谈。下午的时候，干劲儿有所下降。慌慌张张地写完了专栏。意识到自己忘了去学校接最小的儿子。骑自行车回家，感觉不那么自鸣得意了。

星期二：睡眠很糟。懒散地开始工作，感觉疲惫、乏力，而且一点儿都不高兴。与一位无聊的同事交谈，发现自己讨厌他。几乎没有任何电子邮件。感觉自己不受欢迎。不情愿地写了马丁•卢克斯(Martin Lukes)专栏中的一部分。阅读工作成果，认为它矫揉造作，而且无趣。发现自己憎恨工作，并盘算着退休。随后，在家和女儿一起做了一些数学题。很奇怪，感觉到联立方程式使自己精神振奋。

星期三：在阳光中骑车上班，感觉无忧无虑。回顾前一天的工作，觉得还不是太糟。满意地完成了专栏。与别人聊天。与另一位同事共进午餐。我们坐在阳光中一同抱怨，这挺不错。愉悦地处理电子邮件。消磨时间。在一天结束的时候有些空荡荡的，但是挺好。

星期四：因为几乎没睡，感觉有些酒醉没醒。头疼、情绪低落。与一个我喜欢的人互通电子邮件，邮件内容毫无意义，而且脾气很坏。坐下来写这个专栏。情绪非常糟糕，以至于不想和任何人说话。在顽固的使命感下工作，尽管感觉结果苍白得无可挽回。

读者们可能想到两点。首先，与那238位职业人士相比，我的经历或许没有那么重要。对于这种想法，我愿意谈一谈那些职业人士日记的糟糕质量。这里有个例子：“我老板的老板来访，这很好。他带来了瓶装水！”相比之下，我的日记读起来就像是弗吉尼亚•伍尔夫(Virginia Woolf)。

一种更为严肃的反对意见是，我的日记似乎在支持我设法驳斥的理论：在星期二和星期四这两个我情绪不佳的日子，我的工作也很糟糕。而真相更为复杂。

多年来，我一直在监测自己起伏不定的心情以及它们对我工作的影响。当我阴郁时，我总认为自己的工作很糟。当我高兴时，我往往认为自己的工作很好。然而，我对自己所作所为的判断，糟糕到了无可救药的地步。实际上，读者最喜欢的那些专栏文章，经常是我在几近绝望的状况下写的。而很多我喜欢的文章，却根本产生不了预期的效果。

原因有三点。当我疲劳、不高兴时，我没有力气聊天。我严肃地专注于自己的工作。同时，我也更愿意去冒一些创新的风险——如果生活看起来已经够糟了，还怕失去什么呢？而且，当我情绪低落时，我对自己的评判特别严厉，这也让我会更加努力。

如果我说对了，那么，这里就蕴含着一些有趣的管理学道理。经理人应该集中精力、尽可能地让我们感到痛苦。实际上，我的日记并没有充分表明这点。糟糕的感受有许多种，有些感受比其它感受更有利于工作。轻微的沮丧可能对工作有好处。而严重的抑郁则对任何事情都没有好处。不是由“存在性焦虑”(existential angst)导致、而是由白痴经理人和愚蠢的管理层导致的糟糕情绪也不利于生产。它只会让人想：费这个劲干吗？

我的日记似乎暗示，经理人应该雇用天生有点神经质和抑郁症的职业人士。不过，就连这也不尽然，原因就是学术上称为“情绪传染”(emotional contagion)的某种现象。愉快的心情可以感染他人，悲痛的心情也可以传染。看看我周二和周四记录的几条内容，我可以得出结论说，我根本没有对自己周围人内心的工作生活有任何帮助。

我的日记里只有一件事对经理人有点建设性意义。看看我在周二做的事吧。请注意数学题是如何使我振作了起来。这与《哈佛商业评论》的观点有共鸣。《哈佛商业评论》发现，当员工确切知道他们被期望做什么、而且获准去做的时候，他们会更加快乐。含糊不好。明确好。这说明了为什么方程式会带来这么大的幸福。我知道自己想去做什么。我有做这件事的工具。而且我得到了答案——完全、客观，无可争议地正确。

译者/何黎