Free exchange 自由交流
Paying no mind 心不在焉
Digital distractions hurt well-being, if not economic growth
数字干扰即使不危害经济增长，也危害幸福
1. ①FOR many it is a reflex as unconscious as breathing. ②Hit a stumbling-block during an important task (like, say, writing a column)? ③The hand reaches for the phone and opens the social network of choice. ④A blur of time passes, and half an hour or more of what ought to have been productive effort is gone. ⑤A feeling of regret is quickly displaced by the urge to see what has happened on Twitter in the past 15 seconds. ⑥Some time after the deadline, the editor asks when exactly to expect the promised copy. //⑦Distraction is a constant these days; supplying it is the business model of some of the world’s most powerful firms. ⑧As economists search for explanations for sagging productivity, some are asking whether the inability to focus for longer than a minute is to blame.
本段的布局是这样的，通过层层论证得出论点，和我们常见的先出论点，再论证正好相反。
第①到⑦句都是例证，第①句是这个例证的总领句，②到⑥句是具体举例，第⑦句是一个总括句。
第⑧句是通过上面一个工作中受干扰的例子得出的一个论点：技术干扰会导致生产率疲软。
写作建议：开头现象段里，我们也可这样，先用例子论证，再得出论点！
好处是论点会更加突出，而且开头呈现例子也更吸引人！
2. ①The technological onslaught has been a long time building. ②Bosses no doubt found the knock of the telegraph boy or the clack of the ticker-tape machine an abominable interruption. ③Fixed-line desk phones were an intrusion in their day, before the mobile phone brought work interruptions into the home. ④But the web is different, with its unending news cycle, social networks humming with constant conversation, and news feeds algorithmically structured to keep users scrolling and sharing. ⑤The louder the din, the greater the distraction—and the harder to tune it out for fear of missing important information.
第二段承接第一段，介绍了各个时代阶段人们经历的技术干扰，比较清晰。
属于“是什么”这一分论点。
3. ①Distractions clearly affect performance on the job. //②In a recent essay, Dan Nixon of the Bank of England pointed to a mass of compelling evidence that they could also be eating into productivity growth. ③Depending on the study you pick, smartphone-users touch their device somewhere between twice a minute to once every seven minutes. ④Conducting tasks while receiving e-mails and phone calls reduces a worker’s IQ by about ten points relative to working in uninterrupted quiet. ⑤That is equivalent to losing a night’s sleep, and twice as debilitating as using marijuana. ⑥By one estimate, it takes nearly half an hour to recover focus fully for the task at hand after an interruption. ⑦What’s more, Mr. Nixon notes, constant interruptions accustom workers to distraction, teaching them, in effect, to lose focus and seek diversions.
本文结构还是很清晰的，第①句是总领句，后面的句子通过一个调查，比较客观地指出分心对于工作和生产率的影响。
写作建议：如果能在写作中穿插一点调查，研究，或者数据，会让文章看起有说理性更强，也更加专业。上期就有一些优秀作文这么写的，显得论证方式很多，且有力。
4. ①Could this explain the rich world’s productivity slowdown? ②In a paper published in 2007, Sinan Aral and Erik Brynjolfsson, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Marshall Van Alstyne, of Boston University, analysed firms’ use of information technology and its effects on labour productivity and revenue growth. ③They found an inverted U-shape pattern associated with multitasking and productivity. ④An initial increase in multitasking from the increased use of IT seems to raise productivity. ⑤But later, the accumulation of balls to be juggled reduces performance and increases the incidence of error.
本段开始质疑“电子干扰是降低生产率的主因”这一论点。
本段第①句就是质疑→技术的干扰真的是富裕国家生产率增长放缓的原因么？
后面几句通过paper上的研究来论证IT技术的应用及其对劳动生产率和企业收入增长的影响，分为两部分，起初是有帮助的，但是到达某个临界点的话，就成了干扰了。
5. ①IT does help workers in all sorts of ways. ②It speeds communication and allows documents to be shared remotely. ③The web makes finding information far simpler and quicker than it was in a world of paper archives. ④Productivity surged in the late 1990s and early 2000s as e-mail, digital databases and the web spread. ⑤The benefits technology brought, at that time, seemed to outweigh the cost of distraction. //⑥Since the mid-2000s, however, productivity growth has tumbled, perhaps because the burden of distraction has crossed some critical threshold.
上一段用别人的研究来论述，这一段作者用自己的口吻来论述，或者是对研究加以自己的分析。
写作建议：依然是为了增加论据的有力性，可以用→引用别人的东西+分析。
6. ①But this is surely not the whole story. ②Performance across industries does not fit very well with the idea that distraction is the main cause of weak productivity. ③Over the past decade, labour-productivity growth in both manufacturing and construction has been particularly disappointing—and the problem can hardly be desk jockeys frittering away time on Pinterest.
第6、7、8段依然是在质疑中，本段跳出“办公室工作”的环境，去看一下不需要IT技术干扰的领域生产率有没有下降，结果发现是下降的。
7. ①Weak productivity is also a consequence of the reallocation of workers from industries with relatively high rates of growth to more stagnant ones. ②In America health care and education, where labour productivity is persistently low, account for more than half of total employment growth since 2000.
本段提出生产率下降的另一个原因是就业向劳动生产率长期低下的医疗保健和教育行业转移。
8. ①How then to reconcile evidence of the toll taken by new technologies with the difficulty in detecting a productivity cost? ②One possibility is that firms have not been as strenuous as might be expected in maximising output per worker. ③Employment does not fall much in response to minimum-wage rises because output per worker goes up. ④That is partly because workers try harder and partly because firms, faced with a new cost, focus more on tracking worker performance. ⑤Similarly, productivity leapt in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, and not because firms laid off less productive workers. ⑥Rather, workers appear to have upped their game to convince bosses not to sack them. ⑦After a decade of low wages and high profits, firms may be feeling complacent. ⑧That, and their consequent failure to invest, may be a better explanation of weak productivity than workers’ distraction.
本段说来说去，其实就是分析生产率疲软的再一个原因，即公司觉得自己可以用低工资取得高利润这种沾沾自喜的心态，及其导致的投资不足，比分心更有利地解释了生产率的疲软。
我们总结一下“质疑技术干扰是生产率下降的主因”部分：
①IT技术只有过了一定的临界点才能产生干扰，不然它是有好处的。
②不止IT技术干扰重灾区的办公室工作生产率下降，制造业和建筑业这种不依赖电子技术的行业生产率也下降了，这能说干扰是主因么？
③生产力疲软还有一个原因是员工都开始扎堆在医疗和教育行业工作，而这两个行业基本生产率长期低下。
④最后一个原因是，公司自己不争气，不投资、不创新、沾沾自喜，这比员工受点技术干扰更能解释生产率的疲软。
Tweet dreams are made of this 又一条推文诞生了
9. ①Whether or not brains fried by constant interruption are slowing growth, the digital deluge takes a toll. ②Mr. Nixon reckons that distracted workers become less empathetic, a serious side-effect in an economy where human connections with customers are cast as a defence against automation. ③Distraction also appears to reduce reported happiness, and that effect may be magnified if it means that fewer tasks are completed to the workers’ satisfaction—or if the source of the distraction is another distressing news alert. ④So this is yet another reason to yearn for a truly tight labour market: when firms cannot spare an idle moment they might get serious about trimming productivity-sapping intrusions from the workplace, to everyone’s benefit. ⑤Right, time for a tweet.
最后一段对应标题，虽然论证得出干扰不一定是生产率下降的主因，但是在其他方面也产生了影响。
第①句是中心句，
②③句都是举例论证；第④句说明影响，和前两句是递进关系→“是什么”，“怎么样”。
最后一句有调侃的作用，增加了幽默的效果。
最后是思维导图，大家一定要看！！！
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