1 . Machines work well at a constant speed—and the faster the better. They are designed and built for it. Whether they are spinning cotton or dealing with numbers, regular, repetitive actions are what they excel at.
Increasingly, our world is being designed by machines, for machines. We adapt to machines and hold ourselves to their standards: People are judged by the speed with which they respond, not the quality of their response. Such ideas are being woven into our culture. “Always on” becomes something to boast of, or aspire to.
Most of us are busy most of the time, if not with work then with family, domestic tasks or our social networks—real and virtual. When I ask people how they are doing, they almost always answer “busy”. Ticking things off the “to do” list becomes a means of defining ourselves.
A few years ago, I became very interested in what it means to pause. I started to notice where pauses show up in my own work and life. For example, I realized that when I was writing, a short walk was a more effective way to break a creative block than concentrating harder.
I realized that a pause is not nothing. It acts as a kind of switch or opening. As Helene Simonsen, a classical musician, says, “Whatever you are doing, if you want something else to happen, you need to pause.” It is not a fixed unit of time. It might be taking a moment before you enter a room, but it could also be a “screen-free Saturday”, a “Think Week” every two years (which works for Bill Gates) or a year-long vacation. However fast you are moving, there is always the chance to pause—to rest, reflect or refresh of course, but also to appreciate, get perspective, connect to others, or have new ideas.
There is more to life than getting things done. Time, as we experience it, varies wildly. A minute eating ice-cream is not the same as a minute doing push-ups. Even time itself isn’t a uniform raw material—as the physics of Einstein shows. Try to let go of the idea that time is linear (直线型), regular and objective, and think of it in the same way we experience it. Instead of setting work and life against each other, use pauses to leaven (为增色) your experience. Pause is like yeast (酵母): you don’t need much, but it is a vital ingredient.
I want to give pauses more visibility, importance and status. My hope is that each of us can use pauses, great and small, to avoid sliding into a mode where we act like poorly performing machines.
1. What can we learn from the first two paragraphs?| A．The widespread use of machines has destroyed our life. |
| B．People have become quite obsessed with response speed. |
| C．People always get pleasure from competing with machines. |
| D．It’s difficult for people to adapt to a highly mechanized life. |
| A．learning to slow down |
| B．concentrating on one thing |
| C．selecting what we should do |
| D．getting things done one by one |
| A．It makes your life dynamic and delightful. |
| B．It improves our working efficiency greatly. |
| C．It helps develop interpersonal connections. |
| D．It enables people to do what they want to do. |
| A．Time can never get returned. |
| B．Time exists in the form of lines. |
| C．Time is precious that we all need to cherish. |
| D．Time is what everyone experiences uniquely. |
| A．They are useless if taken for short periods of time. |
| B．They are for those who have too much spare time. |
| C．They play a vital role in our well-being and creativity. |
| D．They bring harm to our ability to perform efficiently. |
