2025年英语专八真题听力 采访1

W: Good evening, everybody.

W: 大家晚上好。

Today, we are delighted to have invited Allen Lee, a consultant in Silicon Valley to tell us his latest book Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less.

今天，我们非常高兴地邀请到了硅谷顾问艾伦·李（Allen Lee）来为我们介绍他的新书《休息：为何少工作反而成就更多》

This book is an empirical argument in favour of more limited working hours and greater understanding of the benefits of active rest as a means of raising creativity and productivity. Well, Allen.

这本书是一个经验性论证，主张限制工作时长，并深入理解主动休息作为提升创造力和生产力手段的益处。那么，艾伦。

M:Thanks.I am very pleased to meet you all.

M: 谢谢。很高兴见到大家。

W:Allen, what made you decide to write the book?

W: 艾伦，是什么促使你决定写这本书？

M: I've been working as a consultant in Silicon Valley for about 20 years, and a few years ago, after lots of long projects and multitasking and travel, I started to feel the classic effects of burnout.

M: 我在硅谷担任顾问大约有20年了。几年前，在经历了大量长期项目、多任务处理和出差之后，我开始感受到典型的职业倦怠（burnout）效应。

My first response to this was to try to fit more into the day, to try to work harder,

我对此的最初反应是试图在一天中塞进更多事情，更加努力地工作。

But when I was away on sabbatical at the Blue Hill Research Center,

但是，当我在蓝山研究中心（Blue Hill Research Center）休假（sabbatical）时，

I found that in the three months there I got an enormous amount of stuff done and did an awful lot of really serious thinking.

我发现在那里的三个月里，我完成了大量的工作，并进行了大量非常深入的思考。

And whether you believe it or not,I also had what felt like an amazingly leisurely life.

不管你信不信，我同时感觉过上了极其悠闲的生活。

W:Oh, that's unbelievable.

W: 哦，这真是难以置信。

M: I didn't feel the constant pressure to look busy or the stress that I had when I was consulting.

M: 我没有感受到那种要显得忙碌的持续压力，也没有了做顾问时的那种压力。

And it made me think that maybe we had this idea about the relationship between working hours and productivity backward,

这让我思考，也许我们对工作时长与生产力之间关系的想法是本末倒置的。

And we should make more time in our lives for leisure in the classic Greek sense, not playing a lot of video games.

我们应该在生活中为休闲（leisure）留出更多时间，按经典的希腊式意义理解，而不是玩很多电子游戏。

W: So, up until you wrote the book, you thought the more you worked the more productive you were?

W: 那么，在你写这本书之前，你认为工作越多，效率就越高吗？

M: Yes, there was a straight line going up.

M: 是的，（我认为）那是一条笔直上升的线。

More hours equalled more productivity.

工作时间越长等于生产力越高。

This is an assumption, which is a mistake, really, that we've been making for a very long time.

这是一个我们长期以来一直在犯的错误假设。

And now there's more than a century's worth of research that shows overwork in the long run is bad for people and organisations ，and also bad for productivity,

而现在，超过一个世纪的研究表明，从长远来看，过度工作（overwork）对人、对组织都不利，也对生产力有害。

Overwork is something that can be sustained for a few weeks but after that,well, you start creating more problems than you solve.

过度工作是那种可以持续几周的事情，但之后，嗯，你开始制造的问题比你解决的问题还要多。

W: We're now living in a digital age where theoretically there is a great deal of flexibility in our modes of work， but at the same time we're more connected than ever to work,

W: 我们现在生活在一个数字时代，理论上我们的工作方式有很大的灵活性，但与此同时，我们与工作的联系却比以往任何时候都更紧密。

Can you foresee employers enforcing more detachment from work?

你能预见雇主们会强制要求员工更多地从工作中抽离（detachment）出来吗？

M: Well, I think we have tended to be less critical and questioning of the virtues of new technologies particularly communications technologies, than perhaps we should.

M: 嗯，我认为我们一直倾向于对新技术的优点，特别是通信技术，缺乏批判性和质疑精神，也许我们应该更审慎些。

However, after a generation's experience with emails, a decade's experience with smartphones,

然而，在经历了一代人的电子邮件（emails）体验，以及十年智能手机（smartphones）体验之后，

we are discovering that these technologies do not automatically make us more productive or give us more time with our kids.

我们正在发现，这些技术并不会自动地让我们更高效，或者给我们更多陪伴孩子的时间。

Rather they have tended to grind work down to a fine powder that spreads out right through our day.

相反，它们倾向于将工作研磨成细粉，渗透到我们每一天的各个角落。

Is it possible to dial this back? The answer is there are companies that are already doing so.

有可能扭转这种情况吗？答案是，有些公司已经在这样做了。

They have been limiting email contact in the evening and reducing the length of the working day.

他们一直在限制晚上的电子邮件联系，并缩短工作日长度。

Because you can have people doing an eight-hour day rather than a 10-hour day and still have people doing good work and being productive,

因为你可以让人们工作8小时而不是10小时，同时仍然让他们做好工作并保持高效。

I think these companies show that it is not inevitable that communications technologies have to keep us connected 24 hours every working day plus the weekend.

我认为这些公司表明，通信技术并不必然要求我们在每个工作日24小时外加周末都保持连接状态。

this is the end of part one of the interview

访谈的第一部分到此结束

Questions 1 to 5 are based on what you have just heard.

问题1至5是根据你刚才听到的内容来回答的。

1.What can we learn about the man?

关于这位男士（艾伦·李），我们能了解到什么？

2.What has finally made the man decide to write the book?

最终是什么促使这位男士决定写这本书？

3.What does the man think about overwork now?

这位男士现在对过度工作怎么看？

4.What is the man's view about new technologies?

这位男士对新技术的看法是什么？

5.What is the man's attitude towards cutting down workload in the evening?

这位男士对削减晚间工作量的态度如何？

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