The Procrastination Matrix
拖延矩陣
The Instant Gratification Monkey is the part of your brain that makes you procrastinate—he’s a primal part of you who lives to maximize the ease of the present moment. Read more about him.
瞬足（瞬間滿足）猴子是讓你形成拖延，它是你大腦的一個部分—他讓你能夠在暫時的時刻最輕松的生活的一種原始機制。
The Panic Monster is the part of your brain that wakes up and has a freak out when a deadline draws too close. He’s the only thing the monkey is terrified of and the only reason a procrastinator ever manages to get anything done.
當截止日期臨近的時候，你大腦中恐慌的怪物就會被喚醒并感到崩潰。這是唯一可以讓猴子感到恐慌并且是唯一的理由讓一個拖延者設法去完成一件事情。
Rational Decision-Maker—inner-self.
合理決策制造者—內在自我
High school is full of regular deadlines and short-term project, and even long term projects had sub-deadlines that force pacing upon you.
高校都充滿了有規律的截止日期和短期計劃，而且即使長期計劃也都有在其之上的截止日期去按步就班的完成。
There was definitely an Instant Gratification Monkey in my head, but he was cute more than anything. With deadlines looming constantly, my Panic Monster was never fully asleep, and the monkey knew that while he could have some time at the wheel each day, he wasn’t the one in charge.
在我們的大腦中會確信出現一只瞬足的猴子，但是他顯得比其他事物更加可愛。伴隨著截止日期的隱隱到來，我們恐慌的怪物從來不敢去安穩睡覺，這時猴子知道他可以在每一天擁有控制權的時候，他也并不是唯一擁有掌控權的。
My Brain in High School:
PanicMonster/Rational Decision-Maker/Instant Gratification Monkey
Rational Decision: “If I get my homework done now, I can enjoy some good TV later tonight.”
Monkey: “or……we can dick around for the next four hours and make everything stressful!”
Four hours later
Panic Monster:”AAHH”
Rational Decision:” That’s enough monkey, It’s really time to work now.”
在高校中的大腦：
恐慌的怪物/合理決策創造人/瞬足猴子
合理決策者：“如果我現在就完成了我的作業，我今晚后續的時間就可以看一些自己喜歡的電視節目”
猴子：“或者……我們可以游手好閑四個小時然后讓所有的事情變得緊張！”
四小時后
恐慌怪物：“啊啊啊”
合理決策者：“夠了猴子，該干活了?！?/i>
College is not like high school. The assignments are big, with a lot of time between deadlines, and since you’re not a child anymore, classes don’t treat you like one—no one forces you to pace anything. As a Government major, most of my classes involved a couple papers, a midterm, and a final exam over a four-month stretch, which means most of the time, there were no hard deadlines anywhere on the horizon.
大學不像是高校。這些任務更繁重，在截止日期間你有大量的時間，因為你也不再是個孩子了，課程也不會再那樣對待你—再也沒有人再推著你慢慢進行一些事情。就像一個官方主修科目，在四個月的時間里大部分的課程包含了兩張紙，一場其中考試和一場期末考試，也就意味著大部分的時間，在我們的視野中沒有特別困難的截止日期存在。
Without deadlines to occupy him, my Panic Monster, who can’t think too far ahead, began to spend a lot of time in hibernation. My Rational Decision-Maker, who never realized how much he had relied on the Panic Monster, began to have difficulties carrying out his plans.
離開截止日期去提醒他們，我的恐慌怪物就無法想的更遠，然后就開始花費大量時間去冬眠。我的合理決策創造者，她也就認識不到他可以依靠恐慌怪物多少，開始非常困難的執行他的計劃。
Rational Decision: “The only way to get the most out of college classes is to do the assigned reading.”
Monkey:” Never ever ever!”
合理決策者：“完成大部分大學課程的唯一方法是去做有計劃的閱讀。”
猴子：“決不，決對不！”
The more the Panic Monster slept, the more confidence the monkey gained. The Rational Decision-Maker, the only member of the brain who sees the world clear, was concerned—he knew that college assignments were a lot bigger than high school assignments, and that pacing was no longer something to scoff at, but a critical thing to do. He’d put his foot down about social commitments when a deadline began to draw closer, but that wouldn’t solve the problem.
恐慌怪物睡的越深，這只猴子就會獲得越多的自信。合理決策制造者作為大腦群體中唯一一個對世界有清晰判斷的成員，顯得格外被關心—他知道大學任務比高校任務要繁重的多，按步就班的模式不再是一種值得嘲笑的事情，而是一件需要判斷的事情。當事情的截止日期開始臨近，他需要去履行他的社會承諾，但是這并不能解決問題。
A:”Hey! We’regoing to a movie. Wanna come?”
B:”Would loveto, but I’ll skip it because I have to work.”
(RationalDecision: “With only two days until this paper is due, that was a gooddecision.)
Monkey: “Adorable”
2.5hours later
A:”What agreat movie and life experience!”
C:”How’d the workgo?”
A:“嗨，我們要去看電影，一起來嗎？”
B：“我很想去，但是我去不了，因為我還要去工作?！?/i>
（合理決策者：僅需要兩天就可以交付這個作業，真是一個正確的決策。）
猴子：“崇拜”
2.5小時后
A:“多棒的電影和人生體驗呀！”
C：“工作進行的怎么樣？”
The RDM( rational decisionmaker) would slip further into despair, and only the times when things reachedtheir most dire would anything change.
合理決策制造者將會把未來走到絕望，只有這個時候，當所有的事情都快形成悲劇的時候，事情才有所轉機。
This is due in5 hours and I haven’t started yet how did I let this happen again???
Panic Monster:”AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH”
……
交付時間只有五個小時了，我還沒有開始，我怎么會再次讓這種事發生？？
恐慌怪物：“啊……”
It didn’t matter how obvious adecision seemed to the RDM, it was becoming clear that he was totally unable tocontrol the monkey without the Panic Monster’s help.
這和一個合理決策創造者做了一個多么正確的決定沒有關系，事情很容易發展成他完全無法在離開恐慌怪物的情況下控制這只猴子。
Wait…wait…there’sbeen an extension.
RationalDecision:”There’s been an extension praise every fuck shit……This is too good tobe true. Just minutes age I was swearing at myself for letting things get tosuch a dire situation, filled with regret. And now, as if from God himself. I’mgiven a new lease on life. I can now have all the extra time I was fantasizingabout. I can relax, really dig into this paper, and crush it. This is just thebest--”
Monkey:”Playtime up the dick!”
等一等……可以延期了。
合理決策者：“這個延期真他么的值得稱贊……真的實現了實在太棒了。幾分鐘前我還在詛咒我自己講事情拖到這么一個悲慘的情況，感到非常后悔。現在，就好像來自于上帝的恩賜，我的生命中上了一課。我現在擁有了我幻想的所有額外的時間了。我可以放心了，真正鉆研作業，碾壓這些課題。真的是太棒了—”
猴子：“學雞毛，嗨起來”
Last year, I came across alittle diagram that I think holds the key to these questions. It’s called theEisenhower Matrix:
去年，我無意中發現一些表格，我想這個表格可能是解決這些問題的關鍵。這個表格稱之為艾森豪威爾矩陣。
The EisenhowerMatrix:
URGENT ? ? ?NOT URGENT
IMPORTANT ? QUADRANT 1 ? QUADRANT 2
IMPORTANT AND URGENT ? IMPORTANT AND NOT URGENT
NOT ? ?QUADRANT3 ? ? ?QUADRANT4
IMPORTANT ?URGENT AND ?NOT ?URGENT AND
NOT IMPORTANT ?NOT ?IMPORTANT
艾森豪威爾矩陣:
緊急的不緊急的
重要的第一象限第二象限
重要而緊急的重要而不緊急的
不重要的第三象限第四象限
緊急而不重要的不重要也不緊急的
The Eisenhower Matrix places anything you could spend your time doing on two spectrums: one going from the most urgent possible task to the least urgent, the other going from critically important to totally inconsequential—and using these as axes, divides your world into four quadrants.
艾森豪威爾舉證將你所需要消耗時間做的事情放置到了兩個范圍：一個是從最緊急的可能的任務到最不緊急，另一個是判斷出重要的任務到完全不重要的任務—并且使用這個表格進行削減，將你的世界劃分成四個象限。
The matrix was popularized in Stephen Covey’s famous book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and is named after President Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower was well-known for being tremendously productive, which Covey credits to his “first thing first”attitude on how to spend your time. And to Eisenhower, the “first things” were always the important ones. He believed you should spend nearly all of your time in Quadrants 1 and 2, and he accomplished this with a simple D-word for each quadrant:
這個矩陣在史蒂芬.科維的著名暢銷書中被普及，《高效人士的七個習慣》這也是在德懷特.艾森豪威爾總統之后命名的。艾森豪威爾由于其可怕的高效執行力而被大家認知，科維將其歸功于他用“要事第一”的態度去支配時間。對艾森豪威爾來說“要事第一”經常是其重要的一些事。他相信你可以花費將近你所有的時間在第一象限和第二象限，并且他使用簡單的D單詞完成每個象限的內容。
The EisenhowerMatrix:
URGENTNOT URGENT
IMPORTANTQ1Q2
DO NOWDECIDE WHEN TO DO IT
NOTQ3Q4
IMPORTANTDELEGATE IT AWAYDELETEIT
艾森豪威爾矩陣:
緊急的不緊急的
重要的第一象限第二象限
立即去做決定什么時候去做
不重要的第三象限第四象限
委派他人去做清除不做
And that’s fantastic for Dwight fucking Eisenhower. But you know what Dwight clearly didn’t have in his bald head? An all-powerful Instant Gratification Monkey. If he had, he’d know that a procrastinator’s matrix looks like this:
這個不切實際的東西出自于德懷特意淫艾森豪威爾。但是你們知道德懷特清楚他那個禿頭中沒有的東西？一直全能的瞬間滿足猴子。只要他愿意，他可以讓拖延者的矩陣變成這樣：
The EisenhowerMatrix:
URGENTNOT URGENT
IMPORTANTQ1Q2
DO WHENDELEGATE TO
IT GOESFROMFUTURE YOU
URGENT TO
APPALLINGLYDIRE
NOTQ3Q4
IMPORTANTDO WHEN Q1DO NOW
IS URGENT(and maybe also just do forever)
艾森豪威爾矩陣:
緊急的不緊急的
重要的第一象限第二象限
當事情發展到委派給將來的你去做
駭人聽聞的
悲慘境地時再做
不重要的第三象限第四象限
當第一象限變緊急時再去做立刻去做
（甚至也許是一直做下去）
One way to look at this is that
each human life has a certain number of “time points,” and it’s up to you how
you “spend” them. Consider the difference between someone who spends 30 hours a
week in Q2 and someone else who only manages two hours of Q2 time a week. Since
Q2 is, for many, where real advancement happens, over the course of their
lives, the 30 hour person will accomplish 15 times as much in her life as the
two hour person. And in reality, the multiplier is probably even larger than
15, since progress builds upon progress and the rate can accelerate.The distinction between an ordinary person and an extraordinary person might simply come down to the differences in how they allot their time points.
看待這個問題的其中一個方法就是每一個人的一生都有確定的“時間點”的數量，這就取決于你怎樣使用他們。一些人每周會花費30個小時在第二象限而兩一些人僅僅會在第二象限每周投入2小時，我們可以思考一下兩者的不同。就第二象限而言，對于大多數人來說，真正進步的出現，是在他們生活中的鍛煉中出現，完成30小時的人比完成2小時的人在生活中實現15倍的超越。在現實中，這個倍數可能要遠大于15倍，進步的疊加使得成長率可能成指數級增長。歸根結底，普通人和非凡的人之間的區別也許就在于他們是如何分配自己的時間點的。
Clearing away delusion
消除迷惑
If we want to improve our time point spending, the first step is learning to see the world through a crystal clear Eisenhower Matrix—which means shaking off all delusion.
如果我們想要改善自己的對時間點的使用，首先就是要學習使用完全清楚的艾森豪威爾矩陣對世界進行認知—也就是說要擺脫所有的迷惑。
We need to develop well-thought-out definitions of urgent and important, which will be different for everyone and requires a deep dig into the highly personal question,” What matters most to me?”
我們需要深思熟慮后發展出自己的緊急而重要的概念，這些概念對每個人來說都是不同的并且需要深入的向自己的內心提問，“那些事對我來說是值得稱最的？“
Brett Mckay defines” important tasks” as things that contribute to our long-term mission, values, and goals. This is broad and straightforward and a good core sentence to come back to when assessing importance down the road.
布雷特.麥凱將“重要的任務”定義為需要為長期的使命，價值和目標做出貢獻的事情。這就需要廣闊又直率，還有一個好的核心判斷，當將來的某個時刻到來時做出評估。
You may also want to gather some hard data on how you’re currently spending your time points, by logging your hours for the next week and seeing just how many of them fall into each of the four quadrants (you’ll probably be unpleasantly surprised by the results).
你也許也愿意收集一些詳細的數據看你是怎么消耗你當前的時間點的，這個可以通過記錄你未來一周的時間并且看看他們中有多少分布在四個象限之中（你有可能會對結果表示驚奇和不爽。）
Becoming the boss of your brain
成為你大腦的主宰
Once you feel clear on your Eisenhower Matrix and where its various boundaries lie, you’ll need to do the hard part and gain control over how you spend your time points within it. Which for a procrastinator, is life’s greatest challenge.
一旦你在你自己的艾森豪威爾矩陣中感覺清晰并且探索到矩陣邊界的位置，你就需要去做困難的部分并且在其之中對你如何使用你的時間點增加控制。這對于一個拖延者來說，是生命中最大的挑戰。
The rewards of gaining control are obvious. It’s incredible how much a person can get done—while also maintaining a balanced lifestyle—if they’re in control of their time points pending. And those not in control will lose most of their time points to Q3 and Q4 and feel like they don’t have time for either their work or their lifestyle, all while accomplishing very little. Time point allotment is everything.
增加時間控制的好處是顯而易見的。如果一個人能夠控制他們對時間點的使用。他們能夠完成的事情是難以置信的—與此同時也能夠維持一種生活方式上的平衡。同時那些無法控制的人們將會在第三象限和第四象限上消耗他們的大部分時間點并且會感覺他們沒有足夠的時間用在他們的工作和生活方式上，這兩者他們都只能實現一點點。時間點的分配就是一切。
A procrastinator’s reality is that his inner self—his Rational Decision-Maker—is the grand master of his life in theory, but in practice, only a spectator. The procrastinator’s RDM goes,helplessly, where the waves take him, shuffled from activity to activity by the primal forces of the monkey and the Panic Monster. Until a procrastinator’s RDM can walk, on his own, from Q4 to Q2, whenever he wants to, he’s not fixed.
一個拖延者的現實是在他自己的內心深處—他的合理決策制造者—是他生命方向的導師，但是在實踐中，只是一個旁觀者。拖延者的合理決策制造者是無助的，他的方向隨著一個又一個的事件被猴子和恐慌怪物最原始的力量所左右。直到拖延者的合理決策制造者能夠以自己的方式從第四象限走到第二象限，無論何時他想要出發，他都不會再困惑。
At its deepest level, it comes down to a battle of confidence. The RDM and monkey each have their own idea of how to spend your time points, and whichever of them is more confident—whoever has a stronger belief that they’re the alpha dog in the relationship—ends up prevailing. The difference between a procrastinator and a non-procrastinator is simply that the procrastinator’s monkey and RDM both believe that the monkey is the alpha dog, and the non-procrastinator’s pair both believe that the RDM is the boss.
在最深得層級上，實質上是一場關于自信心的戰斗。合理決策制造者和猴子都有各自關于使用時間點的主意，無論他們誰更有信心—無論誰更強大，都相信在兩者關系中有一個是絕對的跟班—最終成占到上峰。拖延者和非拖延者的區別簡單來說就在于拖延者的猴子和合理決策制造者都認為猴子是那個跟班，而非拖延者的兩者認為合理決策制造者是老板。
But as firmly entrenched as these confidence levels may feel, the monkey and the RDM share a single pool of confidence with a fixed sum—when one’s confidence goes up, the other’s goes down—and the balance can begin to be tipped by the smallest changes, taking your storyline with it.
但是也許能夠感覺到信心的程度已經足夠的牢固堅定，猴子和合理決策制造者還是處于一個單一的信心撞球混合的環境中—當其中一方信心增加，另一方就減少—這個平衡將會隨著微小的變化而傾斜，就看你使用哪種故事情節去推動。
Figuring out the starting point of this chicken and egg paradox is each procrastinator’s personal quest. But auniversal starting point is to try to remain aware as much as possible. Aware of what’s important, aware of what’s urgent, and most importantly—aware of the monkey. The monkey is not your friend, and he never will be. But he’s also part of your head and impossible to get rid of, so get in the habit of noticing him.
計算出先有雞還是先有蛋這個悖論就是每一位拖延者個人需要探索的。但是一個普通的起點就是盡可能的保持意識。意識到什么是重要的，意識到什么是緊急的，以及最重要的—意識到猴子。猴子不是你的朋友，而且永遠也不會是你的朋友。但是他卻是你頭腦中的一部分，并且不可能擺脫他，因此你需要有警惕他的習慣。
But he thrives off of unconsciousness. Simply by noticing him and saying to yourself, “Yup, there’s the monkey, right on cue,” you can start to tip the balance out of its default state. Then maybe one day, you’ll find yourself nonchalantly shoving the monkey off of the wheel with the simplest.” No monkey, not now.” And your life will be forever change.
但是他會在無意識中發展。簡單的注意他并對自己說，“是的，這有一只猴子，果然不出所料，”你可以不再處于默認狀態而去開始傾斜你的天平。也許有一天，你會發現你可以使用最簡單的方法輕易的讓這只猴子原理控制源“沒有猴子，也沒有當下?！蹦敲茨愕纳鼘肋h改變。
