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At this time of year many of us look back at the past 12 months, castigate ourselves for not having achieved more and resolve to become more productive. I’m beginning to wonder, though, if individuals are really the biggest obstacles to our own efficiency. It feels as though more and more time is being soaked up by things beyond our control: compliance, “computer says no” systems, and the forces of verbiage.
每年这个时候，许多人回顾过去的12个月，责备自己没有取得更多成就，并决心提高生产力。然而，我开始怀疑，个人是否真的是我们效率的最大障碍。似乎越来越多的时间被我们无法控制的事情占据：合规要求、“电脑说不”系统，以及冗长的语言。
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that technological advances would enable his grandchildren to work a 15-hour week. Instead, we seem busier than ever. Keynes didn’t reckon on computerised call centre menus telling us at length how our data will be handled, and urging us to try the website, which of course we have, otherwise why would we have picked up the phone to enter the sixth circle of hell?
1930年，约翰•梅纳德•凯恩斯(John Maynard Keynes)预测，技术进步将使他的孙辈每周只需工作15小时。然而，实际上我们似乎比以往任何时候都更忙。凯恩斯没有预料到计算机化的呼叫中心菜单会长篇大论地告诉我们数据将如何处理，并敦促我们尝试访问网站。当然，我们已经尝试过了，否则我们为什么要拿起电话进入第六层地狱呢？
Nor did he foresee the proliferation of words and jargon which seems to be a 21st-century hallmark. In the UK, the average FTSE 100 annual report now contains more pages than a Charles Dickens novel. In the US, ESG reports from the S&P 500, have grown a fifth longer in three years. Board packs have expanded too: the average one is 226 pages long. Majorities of board directors in both the US and UK have told surveys that the packs have little impact or prove an obstacle to understanding the business.
他也没有预见到词汇和术语的激增，这似乎是21世纪的一个标志。在英国，富时100(FTSE 100)的平均年度报告现在包含的页数比查尔斯•狄更斯(Charles Dickens)的小说还多。在美国，标普500的ESG报告在三年内增长了五分之一。董事会文件也在扩展：平均长度为226页。美国和英国的大多数董事会成员在调查中表示，这些文件对理解业务影响不大，甚至成为障碍。
For contrast, I suggest reading Watson and Crick’s 1953 paper describing the molecular structure of DNA. It is only a few pages long. Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, which moved a nation, was 10 sentences. Both are shorter than the introductions to most reports on my desk. Here’s a line from one I just picked up: “a lack of absorptive capacity can easily become a critical bottleneck for continuous innovation”. The report is by a consulting firm about — er — productivity.
为了对比，我建议阅读沃森和克里克1953年描述DNA分子结构的论文，只有几页长。亚伯拉罕•林肯(Abraham Lincoln)的葛底斯堡演说，曾感动整个国家，仅有10句话。两者都比我桌上大多数报告的引言要短。这里是我刚拿起的一份报告中的一句话：“吸收能力的缺乏很容易成为持续创新的关键瓶颈”。这份报告是由一家咨询公司撰写的，主题是——呃——生产力。
Sitting in a café in Massachusetts a few months ago I tried not to listen to a woman on a lengthy call about whether her presentation should say “key learning objectives” or “stakeholder outcomes”. Last week in London, I saw a friend who had been asked to give advice to a Whitehall department, only to find that the two-page note she had sent in advance had been converted by officials into what she described as a “word salad” that it took most of the meeting to decipher.
几个月前，我坐在麻萨诸塞州的一家咖啡馆里，努力不去听一个女人在电话中冗长地讨论她的演示文稿是应该说“关键学习目标”还是“利益相关者成果”。上周在伦敦，我见到了一个朋友，她被要求为白厅的一个部门提供建议，结果她提前发出的两页笔记被官员们变成了她所称的“文字沙拉”，会议的大部分时间都花在解读上。
How have we generated a caste of people who write gobbledegook? How will we cope when AI models are trained on it, producing even more gibberish? Management consultants are partly to blame. When I started my career at McKinsey many years ago, we were taught pithy phrases which clarified: “Quick wins” was one. Nowadays, many consultant reports are drowning in prolixity, perhaps to cover up a void in thinking — or justify a higher fee. Yet even those who charge by the hour don’t want to actually read this stuff. A wonderful experiment by an American attorney, Joseph Kimble, found that lawyers dislike complexity just as much as everyone else. When Kimble sent two versions of a court judgment to 700 lawyers, they overwhelmingly preferred the comprehensible version.
我们是如何培养出一群写晦涩难懂文字的人呢？当人工智能模型以此为基础进行训练，产生更多胡言乱语时，我们该如何应对？管理顾问对此负有部分责任。多年前我在麦肯锡(McKinsey)开始职业生涯时，我们被教导使用简洁明了的短语，比如“快速胜利”。如今，许多顾问报告充斥着冗长的文字，可能是为了掩盖思维的空洞，或者为更高的费用提供理由。然而，即使是按小时收费的人也不愿意真正阅读这些内容。美国律师约瑟夫•金布尔(Joseph Kimble)进行了一项精彩的实验，发现律师和其他人一样不喜欢复杂性。当金布尔将两种版本的法院判决发送给700名律师时，他们压倒性地更喜欢易懂的版本。
“When you write more, people understand less”. Those are the sage words of a UK government design manual which urges officials to write shorter sentences, in plain English. Unfortunately, the message is being lost. Some parts of the public sector are models of efficacy — I have just reported the death of an elderly relative to the “Tell Us Once” service which transmits news of a bereavement across the system — but others are bastions of jargon. A framework agreement for architects wishing to bid for building contracts with three London councils asks potential applicants, among other otiose questions, how they will “conceptualise collaborative social value, and what strategies [they] will implement to support clients in maximising social value returns through collaboration with stakeholders”.
“当你写得越多，人们理解得越少。” 这些是英国政府设计手册中的智慧之言，手册敦促官员们用简明的英语写更短的句子。不幸的是，这个信息正在被忽视。公共部门的某些部分是效率的典范——我刚刚向“Tell Us Once”服务报告了一位年长亲属的去世，该服务会在系统中传递丧亲之讯——但其他部分却是行话的堡垒。一个为希望与三个伦敦市政会签订建筑合同的建筑师准备的框架协议，除了其他冗余的问题外，还询问潜在申请者他们将如何“概念化协作社会价值，以及他们将实施哪些策略来支持客户通过与利益相关者的协作最大化社会价值回报”。
Supposedly, one purpose of this document is to encourage small firms to bid for building work. Yet they will be the most stretched in trying to generate responses of sufficient verbosity to meet the criteria.
据说，这份文件的一个目的是鼓励小公司参与建筑工程的投标。然而，他们在努力撰写足够详细的回应以满足标准时，将面临最大的压力。
I am reminded of Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, by the anthropologist David Graeber, who argued that around a third of modern jobs are pointless, and simply make work for other people. These included “Taskmasters”: middle managers who create work that isn’t needed; and “goons” — lobbyists and marketers who try to sell things that no one needs or wants. Graeber’s thesis had a huge response — many wrote to admit that they themselves had a bullshit job, and were miserable.
我想起了人类学家戴维•格雷伯(David Graeber)的《狗屁工作：一种理论》（Bullshit Jobs: A Theory）。他认为现代大约三分之一的工作毫无意义，仅仅是在为他人制造工作。这些工作包括“任务主管”：那些创造不必要工作的中层管理者；以及“打下手的”——比如游说者和营销人员，他们试图推销没人需要或想要的东西。格雷伯的论点引发了巨大反响，许多人写信承认，他们自己也有一份狗屁工作，并因此感到痛苦。
Verbosity — or what the former Lord Chief Justice Igor Judge used to call the “anxious parade of knowledge” — makes us miserable. No one wants to be invited to an “ideation session”.
冗长——或者用前任首席大法官伊戈尔•贾奇(Igor Judge)的话来说，就是“焦虑的知识游行”——让我们感到痛苦。没有人愿意被邀请参加“创意会议”。
In Douglas Adams’ novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the problem of bullshit jobs was solved, on the planet Golgafrincham, by sending all the marketing consultants to colonise a new planet. On Planet Earth, perhaps organisations could start moving all the people who create pointless complexity to roles that are useful. It could lower our blood pressure, save time and even solve labour shortages. As for me, I’m going to make the Plain English Campaign one of my charities for 2025.
在道格拉斯•亚当斯(Douglas Adams)的小说《银河系漫游指南》中，戈尔加芬查姆星球通过将所有市场顾问送去殖民新星球来解决废话工作的难题。在地球上，或许组织可以开始将那些制造无意义复杂性的人转移到有用的岗位上。这可以降低我们的血压，节省时间，甚至解决劳动力短缺问题。至于我，我计划将简明英语运动(Plain English Campaign)作为我2025年的慈善项目之一。