6.a 关于效率

Make Time Your Friend 6.a: On Efficiency

> By Li Xiaolai · 2008-05-19 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20111113132556/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/449.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

Everyone wants to raise their efficiency. But strangely, how is it that so many so-called experts so often overlook a very simple and very obvious fact—in fact, just as no machine can keep running at 100% power all the time, no person can be 100% efficient.

**Remember, you cannot be one hundred percent efficient, at least not one hundred percent efficient all the time.** Sometimes you'll be very efficient, but this can't be kept up forever; and what is certain is that if you actually force yourself to do so, you'll be like those machines run at 100% power, scrapped early because of too much wear.

I often see some students make [Translator's note: the original writes 只做 ("only do"), which makes no sense here; 制作 ("make") appears to be meant; translated by the intended sense] task lists several pages long. This is a waste of time; they spend too much time planning things that simply can't be finished. Everyone's ability and efficiency have an upper limit. Let's see what someone like Lyubishchev, who achieved countless things in his life, says:

> [Translator's note: quoted by the author: Lyubishchev's words; not Li Xiaolai's own words.] "People often say they work fourteen or fifteen hours a day. There may be such people. But I can't do that much in a day. My record for time spent on scholarly work is eleven hours thirty minutes. Generally, if I can have seven or eight hours of pure working time, I'm perfectly satisfied. My record month was July 1937; in one month I worked three hundred and sixteen hours, an average of seven hours of pure working time a day. Of course, everyone has to sleep every day and eat. In other words, everyone has a certain amount of time used for standard activities. Work experience shows that about twelve to thirteen hours can be used for non-standard activities, such as going to the office, scholarly work, social work, entertainment, and so on."

So, **when making a time budget, you must leave room.** First, you must be clear that unexpected events are bound to happen, so you should leave some time to deal with them; second, you must rest and relax in suitable ways, so as to recover a good state for doing more things. Besides work and study, you must make sure you have enough other normal life activities. I often urge college students that before graduating from college they must have one passionate, earth-shaking love affair, or at least sneak in a fling, and this is the reason.

Be a normal person—that is everyone's right. Every day and every night, as normal people we have to do a lot of [Translator's note: the original writes 做很工作学习之外的事情, missing 多 ("many") after 很; translated by the intended sense] things outside work and study. Drink some tea, or some coffee, and some people even must have a bit of alcohol; read the paper, read some light books, though of course more people like to watch TV or films; take a walk, climb a hill, and some people go to the gym very regularly to make sure they're in good physical shape; men look at girls, women glance at handsome guys; without a doubt, for adults, ensuring regular and healthy relations between the sexes is very helpful to mental health……

If you spend most of your time on work and study, you are a person oriented toward work achievement. If you spend most of your time enjoying pleasure, you are a person oriented toward life satisfaction. Everyone is different; some people get more fun out of work and study, and some get more [Translator's note: the original writes 更得的, with 得 ("get"); 更多的 ("more") is meant; translated by the intended sense] happiness out of the trivia of life.

So you need to determine what kind of person you are. Much of the time, you really can't have both the bear's paw and the shark's fin. Again, you must choose. And this understanding will make you very clear about a simple fact: choosing means giving up. If you do one thing, you may not be able to do another; even if you think you can do two things together, in fact you've already determined that you can't do a third.

According to the golden ratio, if you have 10 hours a day you can plan, then if you've determined you're a person oriented toward work achievement, plan like this: use about 6.18 hours for work and study, and the remaining roughly 3.82 hours for enjoying pleasure—because you are, after all, a normal person. Conversely, if you've determined you're a person oriented toward life satisfaction, plan like this: use about 6.18 hours for enjoying pleasure, and the remaining roughly 3.82 hours for work and study—because after all you still have to find a way to support yourself.

People's ability to concentrate differs. In a few cases a person can concentrate to the utmost degree. Just look at those who play mahjong for days and nights on end, or those who do nothing every day but take drugs, or those who sit in front of the computer playing games for long stretches, and you'll know. But these are all negative examples. From the principles discussed earlier, you can tell that these people are in essence people controlled by their own brains, not people who control their own brains. In a certain sense, we have to say that such people's minds are not very soundly developed, because they are too easily satisfied with, and satisfied only with, simple sensory stimulation, and seldom or never perceive the kind of spiritual pleasure that can only be obtained through complex operations.

Believe me, with a certain amount of practice, you can surely break free of your brain's control and then control it completely; or at least partly break free of your brain's control and then have some ability to control it. Do you know how you can be sure you've done it, or at least partly done it? The method is very simple: look at how many of the things you do each day are dull but very important, and how many are very interesting but unimportant. If you spend the whole day doing things that are very important but perhaps no fun, that means you have completely broken free of your brain's control and become its true master.

On this point—actually the great majority of things in this world are the same—you don't necessarily have to go to the extreme. There's a simple calculation: if full marks are 100, again by the golden ratio, 61.8 is just right. Because a score above 61.8 means you must give up a lot to get it. If you don't believe it, look at the Olympic champions; few of them are without injuries. And of course many more have been injured to the point where you can't possibly know them—because the ones you know are all the champions who held out to the end. By holding out to the end here I don't mean their perseverance, but their luck. You should know that those who had to retire early because of injury also had extraordinary perseverance. Even those champions very likely were simply overdrawing. Also, you should know they can't stay in that state all their lives.

Many people give up halfway often because they set their goals too high, while at the same time having no clear understanding of the price that must be paid to reach such a high goal. I often feel that much of my happiness rests on knowing myself. I know what my strengths are and at the same time what my weaknesses really are, so usually I'm unlikely to daydream. For example, when I went to be an English teacher—I knew I'd become a very good teacher, but I also knew that certain limitations of mine meant I wouldn't become a figure like Yu Minhong (俞敏洪) or the like in this field. But so what? I live just as well. Ordinary people have the right to be happy too.

When I went to the gym to exercise, I was surprised to find that my genes were actually very good to begin with. With just a little exercise I can make my muscles very full. But I know what I want. I don't want to train myself into a bodybuilding coach. Because training into a bodybuilding coach takes training twice a day, each session consuming at least 150 minutes or more in all, and at least five meals a day, and no less than 9 hours of sleep; and a direct result of doing this is that fitness coaches often don't earn much. So I think I can't trade my time and income for a bodybuilding coach's figure. But why must I have 100 points? 61.8 points is how I am now: 1.72 meters tall, weight kept at 75 to 80 kilograms, waist kept at around two chi four cun [Translator's note: 两尺四, two chi four cun in traditional Chinese units, about 80 cm or 31.5 inches]—pretty good.

Having got this far, you should understand why you read many books on time management in the past and in the end gained nothing at all, right? The reason you feel those books were of little use is actually not necessarily that the principles written in them were wrong (of course, it can't be ruled out that most of those books really are garbage—fine works are always few). The problem lies in yourself—you actually set yourself a goal of 100 points every time! Even if the method in the book was right, the way you practiced it was obviously unreasonable. Of course, you've read many other books besides time management that should have been especially useful, but for the same reason, you didn't gain much……

［Image］

Once again take out your paper and pen and list the things that, though dull, are actually very important for you. If you're a student, that thing may be memorizing English words; if you're a teacher, that thing may be correcting students' essays; if you're a programmer, that thing may be writing detailed comments for your code; if you're a business manager, that thing may be writing next year's budget for your picky boss……

Anyway, pick out one thing you think is most important. Then make yourself a timetable: over the coming week, or even month, concentrate on this thing for at least 2 hours every day. Of course, it's even better if you can concentrate for 3 hours. Believe me, in most cases, 2 hours is basically enough. If you actually stick it out and finish something that needs 4 hours of concentration a day, you'll surely be envied by those around you. Believe me, more importantly, you'll win respect because of it—because they know they can't do it themselves, even though you haven't reminded them, and don't need to.

In fact, I bet that, untrained as you are, you certainly can't concentrate for 2 hours on something you don't like—because nobody can do it without training.

You can refer to the so-called time-division method. For example, you need to concentrate on this thing for 2 hours, that is, 120 minutes. Then you should break the day's task into 6 chunks, each completed in 20 minutes. You take 20 minutes as your basic unit of concentration, and after each unit, rest for 5 minutes and find a way to reward yourself—drink a cup of coffee or milk, smoke a cigarette if you're not afraid for your health, or call your boyfriend or girlfriend and say something mushy…… In the last minute of the 5-minute rest period, pull yourself together again, try to get back into the zone, and then enter the next basic unit—another 20 minutes.

So when planning your time, you should understand that in order to concentrate fully for 120 minutes, you ultimately need to plan about 150 minutes of time spending. This method is very simple but very effective. And because it's simple and effective, it's easy to feel the effect. So you should find it easy to stick with. Of course, after a while, this method of dividing time won't be necessary for you anymore. Because you'll eventually be able to concentrate fairly freely on the very important things you should be doing—whether they're interesting or dull.

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