生活節奏匆亂快 可別忘了記憶力

Here is a test. Find a pencil and a scrap of paper and draw the Apple logo. Easy, no? Now compare your sketch to the real thing.
來做個測試。找一支鉛筆和一張紙，畫一個蘋果公司(Apple)的標識。容易不？現在把你畫的圖跟真正的標識對比一下。

If you are like me, or like 98.8 per cent of a sample recently tested by psychologists at UCLA, you failed. Almost everyone either puts the bite on the wrong side, draws two leaves instead of one, or in some other way bungles the simple job of reproducing an image we have all seen thousands of times.
如果你跟我差不多，或者像加州大學洛杉磯分校(UCLA)心理學家近期一批實驗對象中的98.8%人一樣，那麼你肯定要失敗了。幾乎所有人都會畫錯，不是把缺口畫在錯誤的一側，就是畫了兩片而不是一片葉子，還有一些是其他地方搞錯了。說起來不過是再現一幅我們都看過成千上萬次的圖像，但是如此簡單的任務絕大多數人都完不成。

Not only are we unable to sketch one of the most famous logos on earth, most of us cannot even pick out the real thing when we see it in an identity parade of lookalikes.
我們不但畫不出這個地球上最著名的標識之一，而且當這個標識和一系列相似的圖形混在一起時，大多數人甚至認不出正確的那個。

Why is this? The researchers talk of “attentional saturation” and “inattentional amnesia”, but I think it is simpler than that. We cannot recall it because we do not have to.
爲什麼會這樣？研究人員談到了“注意力飽和”和“不注意健忘”，但我認爲道理更簡單——我們記不住它，是因爲我們不必記住它。

For me, the Apple logo falls into a large collection of things that I do not need to remember.
對我來說，蘋果標識屬於一大堆我不必記住的事情之一。

Increasingly, practically everything belongs in this category. At home there are a few things I still need to remember, such as buying more shampoo when we have run out and filling out a form for my son’s school trip. But at work I can safely forget almost everything — apart from one big thing and one little thing. Otherwise the slate can be wiped clean. Workplace memory has been entirely outsourced to the computer.
漸漸地，幾乎所有事情都屬於這一類別。在家裏，仍有幾件事是我需要記住的，比如洗髮水用完時要買新的，我兒子要參加學校組織的旅行時給他填一份表格。但在工作中，我可以放心地忘記幾乎所有事情——只有一件大事和一件小事除外。其他事情完全可以拋在腦後。工作上要記的事情全部交給了電腦。

In theory, this means remembering my computer password, though in fact the help desk has often bailed me out when I’ve forgotten it. There is no need to remember any facts thanks to Google, all appointments are now online, and everything anyone ever said is easily found on an email somewhere.
在理論上，這意味着需要記住電腦密碼，不過事實上，幫助桌面經常在我忘記密碼時爲我解困。多虧了谷歌(Google)，我們不必記住任何事情了，因爲所有約會都記在網上，任何人說過的任何話很容易在某份電子郵件中找到。

A possible exception is corporate memory, which tends to be stored in heads rather than on clouds, but few corporations show much demand for that any more. Today’s decision makers do not welcome protestations from old geezers who can remember that such and such was tried before and didn’t work. Yesterday is an irritant.
公司歷史可能是個例外，這些通常存儲於人腦中而不是雲中，但如今沒多少公司對此有強烈的需要。今天的決策者不喜歡那些老傢伙們的說法，後者記得某些做法以前嘗試過了，而且不管用。昨天是令人惱火的。

So what are the two things we do need to remember at work? The small thing is the location of one’s vending cards/security passes. I try to make this easier by wearing mine on a string around my neck, although even this is not a complete solution as I sometimes take the card off the string, forget to put it back and then have to hunt around for it.
那麼，我們在工作中需要記住的兩件事是什麼呢？小事就是可在自動售貨機上使用的銀行卡/通行證放在了什麼地方。我設法讓這事兒變得更容易——把它和其他東西串在一起掛在脖子上，不過，這也不是萬全之策，因爲我有時會把卡取下來，然後忘了拴回去，結果還是不得不到處找它。

The big thing is recognising other people. Clearly, it is an advantage if you can remember someone’s name but, as failing to do so is commonplace, the penalty is fairly small. The vital thing is remembering faces and incidental detail about them.
大事是記住別人。如果你能記住某人的名字，你顯然就獲得了一種優勢；但由於人們常常做不到這一點，所以後果也不算嚴重。關鍵是要記得面孔，以及面部特徵。

I recently went to see Still Alice , the film in which Julianne Moore plays an academic with early onset Alzheimer’s. When she forgets a word in a lecture it is briefly embarrassing, but she makes a joke and recovers quickly. Getting lost on a run is worse, but the real horror is when she can’t remember her son’s girlfriend, having just been introduced to her 15 minutes earlier.
不久前我去看了電影《依然愛麗絲》(Still Alice)，朱麗安•摩爾(Julianne Moore)在片中扮演一名有早期阿爾茨海默病(Alzheimer's, 即老年性癡呆)症狀的學者。她在演講中忘記了一個詞，有一瞬間感覺很尷尬，於是她開了一個玩笑，就不再覺得難爲情了。更糟糕的是跑步時迷路，但最可怕的是，他兒子剛向她介紹了自己的女朋友，15分鐘後她就忘記兒子的女朋友是誰了。

You don’t need to have Alzheimer’s to forget a face, and when you do so at work it matters. Recently I met a man at a corporate event who had been at university with me and seemed to know a great deal about my life. Having no recollection of him at all put me at such a disadvantage that when he asked me to do him a favour I was wrongfooted into saying yes.
你就算沒患阿爾茨海默病，也很容易忘記一個人的面孔。當這種事發生在工作中時，問題就大了。最近，我在一次公司活動上遇到一個人，他是我的大學校友，而且似乎非常瞭解我的情況。我在記憶裏找不到一絲一毫他的影子，這對我非常不利，以至於每當他請我幫忙時，我總會胡亂地一口應承下來。

Equally, not long ago I ran into a senior executive with whom I had had an hour’s meeting five or six years ago. When I greeted him warmly he stared back blankly, evidently confident that we had never met. Possibly this meant nothing more than that his memory was poor, but I took it personally — as one inevitably does. Either I had aged so badly in five years that I was unrecognisable, I reasoned, or I had been too dull to remember. Neither one good.
還有，不久前我遇到了一位高管，五六年前我跟他見過面，談了一個小時。當我熱情地跟他打招呼時，他目光茫然地看着我，顯然以爲我們從未謀面。可能他只是記憶力差吧，但我認爲這是針對我個人的——人們難免會有這樣的想法。我推斷，要麼是我在5年裏老得不成樣子、難以辨認了，要麼就是我這人太無趣，別人記不住。無論是哪種情況都不是好事。

The ability to remember people strikes me as a bigger asset than emotional intelligence at work. Most of us don’t especially want empathy in the office, but everyone wants to be remembered. The more someone is able to recall chapter and verse of all small talk exchanged at previous meetings, the more you are inclined to like and trust them. It is not just a skill for politicians: it’s for everyone.
我認爲，在職場上，記人的能力比情商更有用。我們大多數人在辦公室裏不是特別需要別人的體諒，但每個人都希望被別人記住。一個人越是能記住以往會面時所有閒聊的細節，你就越是喜歡和信任他。這並不僅僅是政客們需要的一項技能：人人都需要它。

One day, probably very soon, wearable technology will do the job for us by recognising faces and connecting them to a database of trivia. But by then it will be worthless. The reason we want people to remember us is because it is so hard to do so.
有一天，也許就在不久之後，可穿戴技術將幫我們承擔這一任務——記住面孔，並把這些面孔跟一個瑣事數據庫建立連接。但到那時，這件事將變得沒有任何意義。我們想讓人們記住自己，是因爲做到這一點太難了。

If the computer does the remembering, the value of it becomes zero. No one wants to be remembered per se. We want to be remembered because it is a sign that another human being sees us as a valued individual, not just another interchangeable employee.
如果由電腦來做記憶工作，那麼記憶的價值就變爲零。誰也不想僅僅被記住。我們想要被記住，是因爲這表明別人認爲我們是值得尊敬的人，而不是隨便一個可以替代的員工。