2024年06月六级第3套长篇阅读匹配原文翻译及答案

A) Phyllis Hartman knows what it's like to make one's way through the depths of office meeting hell. Managers at one of her former human resources jobs arranged so many meetings that attendees would fall asleep at the table or intentionally arrive late. With hours of her day blocked up with unnecessary meetings, she was often forced to make up her work during overtime. "I was actually working more hours than I probably would have needed to get the work done," says Hartman, who is founder and president of PGHR Consulting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

菲利斯·哈特曼深知穿越办公室会议地狱深渊的滋味。她在一家前人力资源岗位工作时，经理们安排了如此之多的会议，以至于参会者会在桌上打瞌睡或故意迟到。由于每天数小时被不必要的会议占据，她经常被迫在加班时间弥补工作。"实际上，我工作的小时数可能比完成工作所需的还要多，"哈特曼说，她是宾夕法尼亚州匹兹堡PGHR Consulting的创始人和总裁。

B) She isn't alone in her frustration. Between 11 million and 55 million meetings are held each day in the United States, costing most organisations between 7% and 15% of their personnel budgets. Every week, employees spend about six hours in meetings, while the average manager meets for a staggering 23 hours.

她的沮丧并非个例。在美国，每天举行1100万到5500万次会议，导致大多数组织损失其人事预算的7%到15%。每周，员工在会议中花费约6小时，而平均每位经理的会议时间高达惊人的23小时。

C) And though experts agree that traditional meetings are essential for making certain decisions and developing strategy, some employees view them as one of the most unnecessary parts of the workday. The result is not only hundreds of billions of wasted dollars, but an annoyance of what organisational psychologists call "meeting recovery syndrome (MRS)": time spent cooling off and regaining focus after a useless meeting. If you run to the office kitchen to get some relief with colleagues after a frustrating meeting, you're likely experiencing meeting recovery syndrome.

尽管专家们一致认为传统会议对于某些决策和战略制定至关重要，但一些员工将其视为工作日中最不必要的部分之一。结果不仅造成了数千亿美元的浪费，还引发了组织心理学家所谓的"会议恢复综合征（MRS）"的烦恼：即在无用的会议后花费时间冷静下来并重新集中注意力。如果你在令人沮丧的会议后跑去办公室厨房与同事寻求放松，你很可能正在经历会议恢复综合征。

D) Meeting recovery syndrome is a concept that should be familiar to almost anyone who has held a formal job. It isn't ground-breaking to say workers feel fatigued after a meeting, but only in recent decades have scientists deemed the condition worthy of further investigation. With its links to organisational efficiency and employee wellbeing, MRS has attracted the attention of psychologists aware of the need to understand its precise causes and cures.

会议恢复综合征是一个几乎所有有过正式工作的人都应该熟悉的概念。说员工在会议后感到疲劳并不新奇，但直到最近几十年，科学家们才认为这一状况值得进一步研究。由于与组织效率和员工福祉相关，MRS引起了心理学家的关注，他们意识到需要了解其确切原因和治疗方法。

E) Today, in so far as researchers can hypothesize, MRS is most easily understood as a slow renewal of finite mental and physical resources. When an employee sits through an ineffective meeting their brain power is essentially being drained away. Meetings drain vitality if they last too long, fail to engage employees or turn into one-sided lectures. The conservation of resources theory, originally proposed in 1989 by Dr. Stevan Hobfoll, states that psychological stress occurs when a person's resources are threatened or lost. When resources are low, a person will shift into defence to conserve their remaining supply. In the case of office meetings, where some of employees' most valuable resources are their focus, alertness and motivation, this can mean an abrupt halt in productivity as they take time to recover.

如今，根据研究人员的假设，MRS最容易被理解为有限心理和生理资源的缓慢恢复过程。当员工熬过一个无效的会议时，他们的脑力实际上正在被消耗。如果会议持续时间过长、未能吸引员工或变成单方面讲座，就会消耗活力。资源保护理论最初由斯蒂文·霍布福尔博士于1989年提出，指出当个人的资源受到威胁或丧失时，就会产生心理压力。当资源不足时，个人会进入防御状态以保存剩余供应。在办公室会议的情况下，员工最宝贵的资源是他们的专注力、警觉性和动力，这可能意味着在恢复期间生产力的突然中断。

F) As humans, when we transition from one task to another on the job—say from sitting in a meeting to doing normal work—it takes an effortful cognitive switch. We must detach ourselves from the previous task and expend significant mental energy to move on. If we are already drained to dangerous levels, then making the mental switch to the next thing is extra tough. It's common to see people cyber-loafing after a frustrating meeting, going and getting coffee, interrupting a colleague and telling them about the meeting, and so on.

作为人类，当我们在工作中从一个任务切换到另一个任务——比如从参加会议转到做常规工作——这需要费力的认知转换。我们必须从先前的任务中脱离出来，并消耗大量心理能量来继续前进。如果我们已经消耗到危险水平，那么进行心理切换到下一件事会更加困难。常见的是，人们在令人沮丧的会议后进行网络摸鱼、去拿咖啡、打断同事并告诉他们会议情况等。

G) Each person's ability to recover from horrible meetings is different. Some can bounce back quickly, while others carry their fatigue until the end of the workday. Yet while no formal MRS studies are currently underway, one can loosely speculate on the length of an average employee's lag time. Switching tasks in a non-MRS condition takes about 10 to 15 minutes. With MRS, it may take as long as 45 minutes on average. It's even worse when a worker has several meetings that are separated by 30 minutes. "Not enough time to transition in a non-MRS situation to get anything done, and in an MRS situation, not quite enough time to recover for the next meeting," says researcher Joseph Allen. "Then, add the compounding of back-to-back bad meetings and we may have an epidemic on our hands."

每个人从糟糕会议中恢复的能力不同。有些人能迅速恢复，而另一些人则将疲劳持续到工作日结束。然而，尽管目前没有正式的MRS研究进行，但可以大致推测平均员工的滞后时间。在非MRS情况下切换任务需要约10到15分钟。在MRS情况下，平均可能长达45分钟。当员工有几次间隔30分钟的会议时，情况更糟。"在非MRS情况下，没有足够的时间转换来完成任何事情，而在MRS情况下，没有足够的时间为下一次会议恢复，"研究员约瑟夫·艾伦说。"然后，再加上连续糟糕会议的复合效应，我们可能面临一场流行病。"

H) In an effort to combat the side effects of MRS, Allen, along with researcher Joseph Mroz and colleagues at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, published a study detailing the best ways to avoid common traps, including a concise checklist of do's and don'ts applicable to any workplace. Drawing from around 200 papers to compile their comprehensive list, Mroz and his team may now hold a remedy to the largely undefined problem of MRS.

为了对抗MRS的副作用，艾伦与研究员约瑟夫·姆罗兹以及内布拉斯加大学奥马哈分校的同事们发表了一项研究，详细说明了避免常见陷阱的最佳方法，包括一份适用于任何工作场所的简洁应做和应做事项清单。通过参考约200篇论文来编制综合清单，姆罗兹及其团队现在可能找到了针对MRS这一大体未定义问题的补救措施。

I) Mroz says a good place to start is asking ourselves if our meetings are even necessary in the first place. If all that's on the agenda is a quick catch-up, or some non-urgent information sharing, it may better suit the group to send around an email instead. "The second thing I would always recommend is keep the meeting as small as possible," says Mroz. "If they don't actually have some kind of immediate input, then they can follow up later. They don't need to be sitting in this hour-long meeting." Less time in meetings would ultimately lead to more employee engagement in the meetings they do attend, which experts agree is a proven remedy for MRS.

姆罗兹说，一个好的起点是自问我们的会议是否真的有必要。如果议程上只是快速同步信息或一些非紧急的信息共享，那么发一封电子邮件可能更适合团队。"我总是建议的第二件事是尽可能保持会议规模小，"姆罗兹说。"如果他们没有某种即时的输入，那么他们可以稍后跟进。他们不需要坐在这长达一小时的会议中。"减少会议时间最终将导致员工在参加的会议中更加投入，专家们一致认为这是MRS的经过验证的补救措施。

J) Employees also feel taxed when they are invited together to meetings that don't inspire participation, says Cliff Scott, professor of organisational science. It takes precious time for them to vent their emotions, complain and try to regain focus after a pointless meeting—one of the main traps of MRS. Over time as employees find themselves tied up in more and more unnecessary meetings—and thus dealing with increasing lag times from MRS—the waste of workday hours can feel insulting.

组织科学教授克利夫·斯科特说，当员工被一起邀请参加不激励参与的会议时，他们也会感到负担。在无用的会议后，他们需要宝贵的时间来发泄情绪、抱怨并试图重新集中注意力——这是MRS的主要陷阱之一。随着时间的推移，当员工发现自己被越来越多的无用会议缠身——因此应对MRS不断增加的滞后时间——工作日时间的浪费会让人感到受辱。

K) Despite the relative scarcity of research behind the subject, Hartman has taught herself many of the same tricks suggested in Mroz's study, and has come a long way since her days of being stuck with unnecessary meetings. The people she invites to meetings today include not just the essential employees, but also representatives from every department that might have a stake in the issue at hand. Managers like her, who seek input even from non-experts to shape their decisions, can find greater support and cooperation from their workforce, she says.

尽管该主题的研究相对缺乏，哈特曼自学了姆罗兹研究中提出的许多相同技巧，并且自从被困在不必要的会议以来，她已经取得了长足进步。她今天邀请参加会议的人不仅包括必要的员工，还包括每个可能与手头问题相关的部门的代表。她说，像她这样的经理，即使向非专家寻求输入来塑造决策，也能从员工那里获得更大的支持和合作。

L) If an organisation were to apply all 22 suggestions from Mroz and Allen's findings, the most noticeable difference would be a stark decrease in the total number of meetings on the schedule, Mroz says. Less time in meetings would ultimately lead to increased productivity, which is the ultimate objective of convening a meeting. While none of the counter-MRS ideas have been tested empirically yet, Allen says one trick with promise is for employees to identify things that quickly change their mood from negative to positive. As simple as it sounds, finding a personal happy place, going there and then coming straight back to work might be key to facilitating recovery.

姆罗兹说，如果一个组织应用姆罗兹和艾伦研究结果中的所有22条建议，最显著的差异将是会议总数的急剧减少。减少会议时间最终将提高生产力，这是召开会议的最终目标。虽然反MRS的想法尚未经过实证测试，但艾伦说，一个有希望的技巧是员工识别能快速将他们的情绪从负面转为正面的事物。听起来简单，找到一个个人快乐的地方，去那里然后直接回来工作，可能是促进恢复的关键。

M) Leaders should see also themselves as "stewards of everyone else's valuable time", adds Steven Rogelberg, author of The Surprising Science of Meetings. Having the skills to foresee potential traps and treat employees' endurance with care allows leaders to provide effective short-term deterrents to MRS.

《会议惊人科学》的作者史蒂文·罗格尔伯格补充说，领导者还应将自己视为"其他人宝贵时间的管理者"。拥有预见潜在陷阱并谨慎对待员工耐力的技能，使领导者能够提供有效的短期威慑措施来对抗MRS。

N) Most important, however, is for organisations to awaken to the concept of meetings being flexible, says Allen. By reshaping the way they prioritise employees' time, companies can eliminate the very sources of MRS in their tracks.

然而，最重要的是组织要意识到会议灵活的概念，艾伦说。通过重塑他们优先安排员工时间的方式，公司可以从根本上消除MRS的根源。