TED英语演讲：休假原来这么重要
老板都巴不得员工一年四季365天按时上班，不按时下班，并且自主加班，老板认为少放一天也不会怎么样，然而事实可能是多加一天班将会影响下一周整个的工作效率。设计师Stefan Sagmeister要告诉你关于休假的力量。每隔7年，设计师斯特凡(Stefan Sagmeister)关闭他在纽约的工作室一年去休假，以恢复他的创作灵感。他解释了常被忽略的休假的价值，并展示了他在巴厘岛休假时受启发而创造的作品。下面是小编为大家收集关于TED英语演讲：休假原来这么重要，欢迎借鉴参考。
演说题目：The power of time off
演说者：Stefan Sagmeister
演讲稿
I run a design studio in New York. Every seven years, I close it for one year to pursue some little experiments, things that are always difficult to accomplish during the regular working year. In that year, we are not available for any of our clients. We are totally closed. And as you can imagine, it is a lovely and very energetic time.
我在纽约开一家设计工作室。每七年我都关闭一年，让我进行一些(萤幕：七年之痒)小实验， 一些通常不容易在正常的工作年度里达成的事。关闭的一年，我们不接受任何顾客，完全关门。可想而知，那是一段美好又充满能量的时光。
I originally had opened the studio in New York to combine my two loves, music and design. And we created videos and packaging for many musicians that you know, and for even more that you've never heard of. As I realized, just like with many many things in my life that I actually love, I adapt to it. And I get, over time, bored by them. And for sure, in our case, our work started to look the same. You see here a glass eye in a die cut of a book. Quite the similar idea, then, a perfume packaged in a book, in a die cut. So I decided to close it down for one year.
我起先在纽约开了这家工作室，为的是结合我的两项酷爱：音乐和设计。我们制作录像和设计装璜，其中有很多是你们熟悉的音乐家，更多是你们没有听闻过的音乐家。我发觉，就像生活中很多我喜爱的事物，一旦习以为常便渐渐变得沉闷，我的工作室也不例外。我们的作品开始变得类同。看到了吧，书中藏着一颗玻璃眼睛，同样的设计，用于香水包装，书中藏着一瓶香水，因此我们决定关门一年。
Also is the knowledge that right now we spend about in the first 25 years of our lives learning, then there is another 40 years that's really reserved for working. And then tacked on at the end of it are about 15 years for retirement. And I thought it might be helpful to basically cut off five of those retirement years and intersperse them in between those working years. (Applause) That's clearly enjoyable for myself. But probably even more important is that the work that comes out of these years flows back into the company and into society at large, rather than just benefiting a grandchild or two.
我还有另一个原因，目前我们大概用生命的前二十五年学习，之后的四十年，用于工作。放到最后的是约十五年的退休生活。我觉得更合理的，可能是拿走五年的退休时间，把它们穿插在工作的年头里(鼓掌)我自己显然因此很开心，但更重要的是来自休假那几年的成果，可以回馈公司、回馈社会，而不仅是贡献给一两个孙子孙女。
There is a fellow TEDster who spoke two years ago, Jonathan Haidt, who defined his work into three different levels. And they rang very true for me. I can see my work as a job. I do it for money. I likely already look forward to the weekend on Thursdays. And I probably will need a hobby as a leveling mechanism. In a career I'm definitely more engaged. But at the same time, there will be periods when I think is all that really hard work really worth my while? While in the third one, in the calling, very much likely I would do it also if I wouldn't be financially compensated for it.
两年前有一位TED的讲者名叫乔纳森 海德特(Jonathan Haidt) 他把工作定义为三个不同的层次，教我深深认同。我可以把工作视为一份工，为的是钱。星期四就开始盼周末，我可能会需要一种业余爱好，平衡生活。或者，我可以把工作看成我的事业，这样我会做得更加用心。但有时我又会想花这多精力值得吗?第三个层次，是把工作视为一种呼召，如果工作是一种呼召，很可能我无论如何也会做，即使没有金钱回报也没关系。
I am not a religious person myself, but I did look for nature. I had spent my first sabbatical in New York City. Looked for something different for the second one. Europe and the U.S. didn't really feel enticing because I knew them too well. So Asia it was. The most beautiful landscapes I had seen in Asia were Sri Lanka and Bali. Sri Lanka still had the civil war going on, so Bali it was. It's a wonderful, very craft-oriented society.
我不信教，但我尊重自然。我的第一个长修假是在纽约市度过的，我希望第二次会有所不同。欧洲和美国对我吸引力不大，我太熟悉它们了，所以我选了亚洲。我见到的亚洲最美丽的风景是在斯里兰卡和巴厘岛。斯里兰卡仍有内战进行，因此我选择了巴厘岛。那是一个美妙，十分重视手工艺的社会。
I arrived there in September 2008, and pretty much started to work right away. There is wonderful inspiration coming from the area itself. However the first thing that I needed was mosquito repellent typography because they were definitely around heavily. And then I needed some sort of way to be able to get back to all the wild dogs that surround my house, and attacked me during my morning walks. So we created this series of 99 portraits on tee shirts. Every single dog on one tee shirt. As a little retaliation with a just ever so slightly menacing message (Laughter) on the back of the shirt. (Laughter)
我2008年9月到达那里，立即投入工作，那地方本身就充满灵气。然而，我首先需要的是驱蚊剂，因为蚊子太多了。其次我需要某种方法赶走那些野狗，他们绕着我的房子。当我早上散步时来袭击我，我们就此做了99狗像系列的T恤衫。一只狗一个T恤衫，作为一个小报复，我加了一条小小的、略带威胁的信息(笑声)在T恤衫的背后。(笑声)
Just before I left New York I decided I could actually renovate my studio. And then just leave it all to them. And I don't have to do anything. So I looked for furniture. And it turned out that all the furniture that I really liked, I couldn't afford. And all the stuff I could afford, I didn't like. So one of the things that we pursued in Bali was pieces of furniture. This one, of course, still works with the wild dogs. It's not quite finished yet. And I think by the time this lamp came about, (Laughter) I had finally made peace with those dogs. (Laughter)
在我离开纽约前，我觉得可以装修一下我的工作室。我把工作全交给别人，自己不再操心，只管卖家具。结果是我喜欢的都买不起，买得起的我又都不喜欢。于是我在巴厘岛要做的其中一件事情就是设计家具。设计这个时，当然，我们仍跟野狗较量中，还没全部完成。我记得完成这盏灯的时候(笑声)我终于跟狗讲和了(笑声)
Then there is a coffee table. I also did a coffee table. It's called Be Here Now. It includes 330 compasses. And we had custom espresso cups made that hide a magnet inside, and make those compasses go crazy, always centering on them. Then this is a fairly talkative, verbose kind of chair. I also started meditating for the first time in my life in Bali. And at the same time, I'm extremely aware how boring it is to hear about other people's happinesses. So I will not really go too far into it.
我还设计了这张茶几，起名叫“现在到此”。它里面装了330个指南针，我们还特制了特浓咖啡的小杯子，里面藏着磁铁，它使这些指南针拼命地动，全朝向咖啡杯为中心。之后又设计这个相当健谈，絮絮不休的椅子。在巴厘岛，我开始平生第一次打坐。不过，同时我又请楚的意识到听别人讲他们的高兴事有多无聊，所以我就不多说了。
Many of you will know this TEDster, Danny Gilbert, whose book, actually, I got it through the TED book club. I think it took me four years to finally read it, while on sabbatical. And I was pleased to see that he actually wrote the book while he was on sabbatical. And I'll show you a couple of people that did well by pursuing sabbaticals.
你们很多人都认识这位TED的讲者Danny Gilbert，他写了本书，我从TED读书会买了这本书。一直等到四年后，我终于我休长假时读了这本书。我很高兴知道著者也是在休长假时写的这本书，我还要介绍给你们几位得益于修长假的人。
This is Ferran Adria. Many people think he is right now the best chef in the world with his restaurant north of Barcelona, El Bulli. His restaurant is open seven months every year. He closes it down for five months to experiment with a full kitchen staff. His latest numbers are fairly impressive. He can seat, throughout the year, he can seat 8,000 people. And he has 2.2 million requests for reservations.
这位是Ferran Adria：公认的当今世界上最好的厨师。他的餐馆位于Barcelona北部的 elBull他的餐馆每年只开七个月，另外五个月关门，他用这段时间来做试验，全体厨房员工也不放假。他的最新数据相当可观，他的餐馆一年可以容纳8,000 人，却收到220万的预订申请。
If I look at my cycle, seven years, one year sabbatical, it's 12.5 percent of my time. And if I look at companies that are actually more successful than mine, 3M since the 1930s is giving all their engineers 15 percent to pursue whatever they want. There is some good successes. Scotch tape came out of this program, as well as Art Fry developed sticky notes from during his personal time for 3M. Google, of course, very famously gives 20 percent for their software engineers to pursue their own personal projects.
看看我的周期，干七年，休一年，是我百分之12.5的时间。看看比我更成功的公司，3M公司，自20世纪30年代起让所有的工程师花百分之十五工作时间做他们自己想做的事，有些很成功的例子，思高牌胶带就是这个公司政策下的产物。还有Art Fry研制的不干胶贴纸，也是他利用私人时间为3M发明的;谷歌，众人皆知，给他们的软件工程师百分之二十的时间去做他们自己想做的项目。
Anybody in here has actually ever conducted a sabbatical? That's about five percent of everybody. So I'm not sure if you saw your neighbor putting their hand up. Talk to them about if it was successful or not. I've found that finding out about what I'm going to like in the future, my very best way is to talk to people who have actually done it much better than myself envisioning it.
听众里有没有人尝试过修长假呢?大概百分之五吧。坐你身边的人举手了吗?请和他们聊聊，看他们的休假是否成功。我发现，探讨我未来想做的事最佳的办法是与做过的人谈谈，那比自己空想要更有效。
When I had the idea of doing one, the process was I made the decision and I put it into my daily planner book. And then I told as many, many people as I possibly could about it so that there was no way that I could chicken out later on. (Laughter)
当我想到一个好主意时我便把决定写在日计划本里，然后我告诉很多很多的人，越多越好，好等我日后不会轻易知难而退。(笑声)
In the beginning, on the first sabbatical, it was rather disastrous. I had thought that I should do this without any plan, that this vacuum of time somehow would be wonderful and enticing for idea generation. It was not. I just, without a plan, I just reacted to little requests, not work requests, those I all said no to, but other little requests. Sending mail to Japanese design magazines and things like that. So I became my own intern. (Laughter)
我的第一个休假初期，事情进展一点也不顺利，我以为不用计划，空闲本身就很好，使人创新。但我错了，没有计划，我会被动的去应付琐碎小事。我不是指工作上的事情，那些我全拒绝了，我是指的其他琐事，比如说给日本设计杂志写信。就是说，我成了给自己打下手的学徒工。(笑声)
And I very quickly made a list of the things I was interested in, put them in a hierarchy, divided them into chunks of time and then made a plan, very much like in grade school. What does it say here? Monday, 8 to 9: story writing; 9 to 10: future thinking. Was not very successful. And so on and so forth. And that actually, specifically as a starting point of the first sabbatical, worked really well for me. What came out of it? I really got close to design again. I had fun. Financially, seen over the long term, it was actually successful. Because of the improved quality, we could ask for higher prices.
很快，我把自己感兴趣的事情列了个清单，把它们分门别类，分给大块的时间，然后作个计划，就像在小学校做的一样。计划有什么呢?星期一8至9点：写小说;9至10点，预想未来。那不是很成功。等等，等等。而实际上，作为第一次休假的开始，这些安排很适合我。结果呢，我又重新爱上设计了。我自得其乐，从长远经济角度看，我的第一个长假是成功的，由于质量提高，我们可以设更高的价格。
And probably most importantly, basically everything we've done in the seven years following the first sabbatical came out of thinking of that one single year. And I'll show you a couple of projects that came out of the seven years following that sabbatical. One of the strands of thinking I was involved in was that sameness is so incredibly overrated. This whole idea that everything needs to be exactly the same works for a very very few strand of companies, and not for everybody else.
或许最重要的是，基本上在下七年我们的设计、意念俱源自我们休假的那一年。请你看看以下几项作品，都是那个长休假之后七年设计的。第一种体会是(在设计品牌时)我们过分强调一致性，其实这种凡事必须完全相同的想法，仅仅能对极少数公司行得通，而并非每间公司都合适。
We were asked to design an identity for Casa da Musica, the Rem Koolhaas-built music center in Porto, in Portugal. And even though I desired to do an identity that doesn't use the architecture, I failed at that. And mostly also because I realized out of a Rem Koolhaas presentation to the city of Porto, where he talked about a conglomeration of various layers of meaning. Which I understood after I translated it from architecture speech in to regular English, basically as logo making. And I understood that the building itself was a logo.
音乐之家(Casa de Musica) 曾请我们设计标志，就是那个由Rem Koolhaas设计建造的音乐中心，在波尔图，葡萄牙。尽管我想要把这个标志，设计得与建筑物造型没关，结果却没有成功。一个主要原因是因为Rem Koolhaas给波尔图市做的一场简报，他说到要把多层含意交织在一起。我起先没有明白，直至我把他的建筑设计语言翻成一般英语去理解。基本上，建筑设计就是标志设计，我才明白，那建筑本身就是一个标志。
So then it became quite easy. We put a mask on it, looked at it deep down in the ground, checked it out from all sides, west, north, south, east, top and bottom. Colored them in a very particular way by having a friend of mine write a piece of software, the Casa da Musica Logo Generator. That's connected to a scanner. You put any image in there, like that Beethoven image. And the software, in a second, will give you the Casa da Musica Beethoven logo. Which, when you actually have to design a Beethoven poster, comes in handy, because the visual information of the logo and the actual poster is exactly the same.
事情由此变得十分容易，我们在建筑上蒙了个罩子，从远远的地面查看，从各个角度查看。西、北、南、东、从上到下用非常特殊的方式着色。让我的一个朋友写了个软件叫音乐之家?标志生成器，把它连接到扫描仪，把任何图像放上，例如贝多芬像，软件可以立即给你音乐之家贝多芬标志。当你想设计一个有贝多芬像的海报，那软件很有用，因为标志的视觉元素和海报是完全一样的。
So it will always fit together, conceptually, of course. If Zappa's music is performed, it gets its own logo. Or Philip Glass or Lou Reed or the Chemical Brothers, who all performed there, get their own Casa da Musica logo. It works the same internally with the president or the musical director, whose Casa da Musica portraits wind up on their business cards. There is a full-blown orchestra living inside the building. It has a more transparent identity. The truck they go on tour with. Or there's a smaller contemporary orchestra, 12 people that remixes its own title.
所以在概念的层面而言，它们一定能互相配合。如果演出Zappa的音乐，它会有自己独特的标志或Philip Grass，或Lou Reed，或Chemical Brothers谁在那里表演，谁就有自己的标志。这是音乐之家自己的标志在音乐之家内部也是一样不论是音乐之家主席，或是音乐总监，他们的音乐之家画像印在他们的名片上。有一队完整的管弦乐队，驻扎在那所建筑里，他们拥有自己清晰的标志。这是他们巡演用的卡车，它们还有一个较小的现代乐团，一个以"交织 "(remix)为名的十二人乐团，名字就交织在标志中。
And one of the handy things that came about was that you could take the logo type and create advertising out of it. Like this Donna Toney poster, or Chopin, or Mozart, or La Monte Young. You can take the shape and make typography out of it. You can grow it underneath the skin. You can have a poster for a family event in front of the house, or a rave underneath the house or a weekly program, as well as educational services.
十分方便的是你可以用这个标志创造广告，就像这幅Donna Toney海报或肖邦 (Chopin)，或莫扎特 (Mozart) 或拉蒙杨 (La Monte Young)您可以根据它的形状设计字样，你还可以把它从皮肤下长出来。你可以设计一张海报，介绍一项适合一家大细，在音乐之家外面举行的活动或在音乐之家下面举行的狂野派对或每周定期举行的活动，又或是教育服务。
Second insight. So far, until that point I had been mostly involved or used the language of design for promotional purposes, which was fine with me. On one hand I have nothing against selling. My parents are both salespeople. But I did feel that I spent so much time learning this language, why do I only promote with it? There must be something else. And the whole series of work came out of it. Some of you might have seen it. I showed some of it at earlier TEDs before, under the title "Things I've Learned in My Life So Far." I'll just show two now.
第二种体会：在那次长假之前 多数时候 我都时用设计这种语言 帮助促销 那并没有什么不好 一方面我不反对销售 我父母都是销售员 但我觉得 我花了这多时间学习这种语言 为什么仅用来帮助促销? 应该还可以利用它做些其他事 这些作品都出自这个想法 有些你们可能已经见过 我在以前的TED 会上曾经展示过 以前的TED 会 标题是“至今我所学到的” 我现在就介绍两项。
This is a whole wall of bananas at different ripenesses on the opening day in this gallery in New York. It says, "Self-confidence produces fine results." This is after a week. After two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, five weeks. And you see the self confidence almost comes back, but not quite. These are some pictures visitors sent to me. (Laughter)
这是一整面墙的香蕉，不同的生熟程度。在一家纽约的画廊开张那天，上面说“自信产生优秀结果” 一周后、两周后、三，四，五周后，你可以见到自信心几乎都回来了。只是几乎，不是全部。这是一些客人发送给我的照片。(笑声)
And then the city of Amsterdam gave us a plaza and asked us to do something. We used the stone plates as a grid for our little piece. We got 250,000 coins from the central bank, at different darknesses. So we got brand new ones, shiny ones, medium ones, and very old, dark ones. And with the help of 100 volunteers, over a week, created this fairly floral typography that spelled, "Obsessions make my life worse and my work better."
阿姆斯特丹市给了我们一个广场，并要我们做些事情，我们用石板作为网格，作为我们一件小作品的背景。我们从中央银行提了25万个硬币，颜色有不同的深度，有的崭新发亮，半旧的和非常旧的，发黑的用了一周多的时间，得到了100多志愿者的帮忙。创造了这个以花卉模样的字样，文字是“沉迷破坏生活 却做就好作品”。
And the idea of course was to make the type so precious that as an audience you would be in between, "Should I really take as much money as I can? Or should I leave the piece intact as it is right now?" While we built all this up during that week, with the 100 volunteers, a good number of the neighbors surrounding the plaza got very close to it and quite loved it. So when it was finally done, and in the first night a guy came with big plastic bags and scooped up as many coins as he could possibly carry, one of the neighbors called the police.
我们的构思是把图样做得很精美，要令观赏者觉得难以决定我是要把这些钱尽量拿走，还是保持图像完好无缺。在拚砌这个图像的过程与数百名志愿者一起的那个星期，有很多居住在周围的居民都走近它看，很喜欢它当它。终于完工时，第一夜一个人拿了一个大塑料袋把钱币大堆大堆的装进袋子里，直到他提不动为止，一位邻居报了警。
And the Amsterdam police in all their wisdom, came, saw, and they wanted to protect the artwork. And they swept it all up and put it into custody at police headquarters. (Laughter) I think you see, you see them sweeping. You see them sweeping right here. That's the police, getting rid of it all. So after eight hours that's pretty much all that was left of the whole thing. (Laughter)
阿姆斯特丹警方急中生智赶到现场，看到一切，他们想保护这件艺术作品，就把钱币都扫了起来，放到警察局好好保存(笑声)看见他们扫了吧，那是警察，把作品全扫光了，8小时之后，所剩的就只有那么多，几乎全部扫光。(笑声)
We are also working on the start of a bigger project in Bali. It's a movie about happiness. And here we asked some nearby pigs to do the titles for us. They weren't quite slick enough. So we asked the goose to do it again, and hoped she would do somehow, a more elegant or pretty job. And I think she overdid it. Just a bit too ornamental. And my studio is very close to the monkey forest. And the monkeys in that monkey forest looked, actually, fairly happy. So we asked those guys to do it again. They did a fine job, but had a couple of readability problems. So of course whatever you don't really do yourself doesn't really get done properly.
我们还在巴厘岛开始了一个更大的项目，是一个讲关于快乐的电影。在这里，我们请了附近的一些猪为我们做标题，却嫌它们不够仔细。我们试用了鹅希望她会做出优雅美观的作品，它却似乎太讲究了，有点过分装饰。而我的工作室是在猴子森林边，这猴子森林的猴子，看起来相当高兴。我们又请了这些家伙帮忙，他们做得很出色，但是，有可读性问题。当然，如果你不自己亲自做就别指望完全满意。
That film we'll be working on for the next two years. So it's going to be a while. And of course you might think that doing a film on happiness might not really be worthwhile. Then you can of course always go and see this guy.
我们今后两年将制作这个电影，还得有一阵子。你可能会想，制作关于快乐的电影，可能会不值得，你当然总是可以去看这个家伙。
Video: (Laughter) And I'm happy I'm alive. I'm happy I'm alive. I'm happy I'm alive.
Stefan Sagmeister:
我很高兴我活着，我很高兴我活着，我很高兴我活着。
Thank you. (Applause)
谢谢你们 (鼓掌)
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