Sound familiar? You’re not alone. Thanks in part to technology and its constant pinging and chiming, roughly 41 million people in the United States — nearly a third of all working adults — get six hours or fewer of sleep a night, according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And sleep deprivation is an affliction that crosses economic lines. About 42 percent of workers in the mining industry are sleep-deprived, while about 27 percent of financial or insurance industry workers share the same complaint.

        聽起來很熟悉吧？并非只有你是這樣。美國(guó)疾病控制和預(yù)防中心的最新報(bào)告顯示，在美國(guó)大概有4100萬(wàn)人口（接近總工作人口的1/3）每晚睡6小時(shí)，或者更短，這部分要?dú)w罪于科技，如它帶來的短信聲、屏幕閃動(dòng)等。睡眠不足困擾著經(jīng)濟(jì)領(lǐng)域中的各行各業(yè)的人。 大概42%的礦工反映睡眠不足，而又27%的金融保險(xiǎn)從業(yè)者也抱怨缺覺。

Typically, mention of our ever increasing sleeplessness is followed by calls for earlier bedtimes and a longer night’s sleep. But this directive may be part of the problem. Rather than helping us to get more rest, the tyranny of the eight-hour block reinforces a narrow conception of sleep and how we should approach it. Some of the time we spend tossing and turning may even result from misconceptions about sleep and our bodily needs: in fact neither our bodies nor our brains are built for the roughly one-third of our lives that we spend in bed.

        一般來說，提到越來越多的睡眠不足問題，就不得不提“晚上早睡，多睡”這一倡導(dǎo)。然而，這個(gè)倡導(dǎo)也許正是問題部分癥結(jié)所在。因?yàn)檫@個(gè)倡導(dǎo)不能幫助我們獲得更多的休息，“8小時(shí)連續(xù)睡眠”武斷地把睡眠的概念以及如何實(shí)現(xiàn)好睡眠框在一個(gè)很窄的觀念框里。有些時(shí)候的輾轉(zhuǎn)反側(cè)也許就是來自我們對(duì)睡眠和身體需要的錯(cuò)誤認(rèn)識(shí)。事實(shí)是，無論是我們的身體還是大腦都不是專門為那耗在床上的1/3人生時(shí)間設(shè)計(jì)的。

The idea that we should sleep in eight-hour chunks is relatively recent. The world’s population sleeps in various and surprising ways. Millions of Chinese workers continue to put their heads on their desks for a nap of an hour or so after lunch, for example, and daytime napping is common from India to Spain.

        人們應(yīng)該在晚上連續(xù)睡8個(gè)小時(shí)的觀念是最近被提起的。世界各地人口以各種各樣的、令人驚奇的方式睡覺。例如，上百萬(wàn)的中國(guó)工人仍會(huì)在午飯后趴在桌子上睡上個(gè)把小時(shí)，白天小睡在印度和西班牙等地區(qū)也很普遍。

One of the first signs that the emphasis on a straight eight-hour sleep had outlived its usefulness arose in the early 1990s, thanks to a history professor at Virginia Tech named A. Roger Ekirch, who spent hours investigating the history of the night and began to notice strange references to sleep. A character in the “Canterbury Tales,” for instance, decides to go back to bed after her “firste sleep.” A doctor in England wrote that the time between the “first sleep” and the “second sleep” was the best time for study and reflection. And one 16th-century French physician concluded that laborers were able to conceive more children because they waited until after their “first sleep” to make love. Professor Ekirch soon learned that he wasn’t the only one who was on to the historical existence of alternate sleep cycles. In a fluke of history, Thomas A. Wehr, a psychiatrist then working at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md., was conducting an experiment in which subjects were deprived of artificial light. Without the illumination and distraction from light bulbs, televisions or computers, the subjects slept through the night, at least at first. But, after a while, Dr. Wehr noticed that subjects began to wake up a little after midnight, lie awake for a couple of hours, and then drift back to sleep again, in the same pattern of segmented sleep that Professor Ekirch saw referenced in historical records and early works of literature.

        弗吉尼亞理工學(xué)院歷史學(xué)教授Roger Ekirch在20世紀(jì)90年代早期就首先證實(shí)連續(xù)睡眠8小時(shí)是不可信的。他花費(fèi)數(shù)小時(shí)研究夜的歷史并且開始注意到關(guān)于睡眠的奇怪文獻(xiàn)?！犊蔡夭坠适录分械囊粋€(gè)人物決定在“第一段睡眠”后繼續(xù)睡覺。英格蘭的一位醫(yī)生寫到，在“第一段睡眠”和“第二段睡眠”之間的時(shí)間是學(xué)習(xí)和沉思的最好時(shí)間。一位16世紀(jì)的法國(guó)內(nèi)科醫(yī)生總結(jié)到，工人能夠生出更多的孩子是因?yàn)樗麄兊鹊健暗谝欢嗡摺焙蟛抛鰫?。Ekirch教授很快發(fā)現(xiàn)到他并不是唯一一個(gè)認(rèn)識(shí)到睡眠周期交替這一歷史性存在的人。一位名叫Thomas A. Wehr的精神病專家在位于馬里蘭州貝塞斯達(dá)的國(guó)家心理衛(wèi)生研究所工作，他做了個(gè)實(shí)驗(yàn)，實(shí)驗(yàn)中處在沒有人工照明環(huán)境中。沒有照明，沒有電燈泡、電視或者電腦的干擾，被試者最初在晚上睡覺，但是，Wehr博士注意到被試者在午夜后不久醒來，數(shù)個(gè)小時(shí)候再度入睡。這與Ekirch教授在歷史文獻(xiàn)和早期文學(xué)作品中發(fā)現(xiàn)的階段性睡眠模式相同。

It seemed that, given a chance to be free of modern life, the body would naturally settle into a split sleep schedule. Subjects grew to like experiencing nighttime in a new way. Once they broke their conception of what form sleep should come in, they looked forward to the time in the middle of the night as a chance for deep thinking of all kinds, whether in the form of self-reflection, getting a jump on the next day or amorous activity. Most of us, however, do not treat middle-of-the-night awakenings as a sign of a normal, functioning brain.

        如果我們有機(jī)會(huì)遠(yuǎn)離現(xiàn)代生活，貌似我們的身體將會(huì)很自然地適應(yīng)分段睡眠模式。被試者漸漸喜歡以一種新的方式經(jīng)歷黑夜。一旦他們拋棄“睡眠模式應(yīng)該怎樣怎樣”的念頭，他們會(huì)渴望午夜時(shí)間的到來，屆時(shí)他們有深思的機(jī)會(huì)，無論是自我反省，還是給自己的一天一個(gè)跳躍式的啟動(dòng)，或者是想情愛的事。然而，我們大部分人并不認(rèn)為午夜醒來時(shí)正常運(yùn)作的信號(hào)。

Doctors who peddle sleep aid products and call for more sleep may unintentionally reinforce the idea that there is something wrong or off-kilter about interrupted sleep cycles. Sleep anxiety is a common result: we know we should be getting a good night’s rest but imagine we are doing something wrong if we awaken in the middle of the night. Related worries turn many of us into insomniacs and incite many to reach for sleeping pills or sleep aids, which reinforces a cycle that the Harvard psychologist Daniel M. Wegner has called “the ironic processes of mental control.”

        醫(yī)生們兜售幫助睡眠藥物，并且提倡更多的睡眠，這些行為無意中強(qiáng)化了這樣的觀念：睡眠中斷是有問題的或者狀態(tài)不好的。我們認(rèn)為自己在夜里應(yīng)該獲得一個(gè)好的休息，而如果我們?cè)谝归g醒來，我們就認(rèn)為自己是不正常的，這樣，睡眠焦慮的出現(xiàn)就不足為奇了。一系列的焦慮使我們失眠，一些人甚至要求助于藥物或者睡眠幫助，這是個(gè)被哈佛心理學(xué)家稱之為“具有諷刺意味的精神控制過程”的惡性循環(huán)。

As we lie in our beds thinking about the sleep we’re not getting, we diminish the chances of enjoying a peaceful night’s rest.

        當(dāng)我們躺在床上想著自己沒有獲得本應(yīng)該得到的睡眠時(shí)，我們自己就減少了盡享靜美的夜間休息的機(jī)會(huì)。

This, despite the fact that a number of recent studies suggest that any deep sleep — whether in an eight-hour block or a 30-minute nap — primes our brains to function at a higher level, letting us come up with better ideas, find solutions to puzzles more quickly, identify patterns faster and recall information more accurately. In a NASA-financed study, for example, a team of researchers led by David F. Dinges, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, found that letting subjects nap for as little as 24 minutes improved their cognitive performance.

        事實(shí)是，很多最近的研究表明任何形式的深度睡眠，無論是8小時(shí)連續(xù)睡眠還是30分鐘的小睡，都會(huì)讓我們的大腦以更高效的水平運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)，會(huì)讓我們想到更好的主意，能夠更快地找到解答謎題的思路，更快地識(shí)別謎團(tuán)，更準(zhǔn)確地回憶起信息。在由美國(guó)宇航局資助的研究中，其中，賓夕法尼亞大學(xué)教授David F. Dinges帶領(lǐng)的團(tuán)隊(duì)研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，讓被試者小睡僅僅24分鐘就會(huì)改進(jìn)他們的認(rèn)知表現(xiàn)。

In another study conducted by Simon Durrant, a professor at the University of Lincoln, in England, the amount of time a subject spent in deep sleep during a nap predicted his or her later performance at recalling a short burst of melodic tones. And researchers at the City University of New York found that short naps helped subjects identify more literal and figurative connections between objects than those who simply stayed awake.

        林肯大學(xué)教授Simon Durrant負(fù)責(zé)的另一項(xiàng)研究表明，一個(gè)被試者在小睡時(shí)的深睡眠時(shí)間可以預(yù)測(cè)其在回憶一小段有旋律的音調(diào)中的表現(xiàn)。紐約城市大學(xué)的研究者發(fā)現(xiàn)小睡的被試者比那些沒有小睡的能夠更好地建立各目標(biāo)之間的文字關(guān)系和修飾關(guān)系。

Robert Stickgold, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, proposes that sleep — including short naps that include deep sleep — offers our brains the chance to decide what new information to keep and what to toss. That could be one reason our dreams are laden with strange plots and characters, a result of the brain’s trying to find connections between what it’s recently learned and what is stored in our long-term memory. Rapid eye movement sleep — so named because researchers who discovered this sleep stage were astonished to see the fluttering eyelids of sleeping subjects — is the only phase of sleep during which the brain is as active as it is when we are fully conscious, and seems to offer our brains the best chance to come up with new ideas and hone recently acquired skills. When we awaken, our minds are often better able to make connections that were hidden in the jumble of information.

        哈佛醫(yī)學(xué)院的精神病學(xué)教授Robert Stickgold提出睡眠使我們大腦有機(jī)會(huì)辨別什么樣的新信息該留，什么樣的該扔，這其中包括深睡眠的小睡。這就是為何我們的夢(mèng)中有很多奇怪的場(chǎng)景和人物，這是因?yàn)榇竽X試圖找到它最近學(xué)到了什么和在長(zhǎng)期記憶中儲(chǔ)存了什么二者之間的關(guān)系。快速眼動(dòng)睡眠，如此叫法是因?yàn)榘l(fā)現(xiàn)這個(gè)睡眠（階段）的研究者在看到睡著的被試者的顫動(dòng)的眼皮的時(shí)候非常震驚。這個(gè)睡眠階段是唯一一個(gè)大腦活躍度跟完全意識(shí)狀態(tài)下相同的階段，似乎能夠讓我們的大腦有機(jī)會(huì)產(chǎn)生新想法，還會(huì)讓最近學(xué)到的技能更加精尖。當(dāng)醒來的時(shí)候，我們的思維常常能夠讓我們理順隱藏在混亂的信息背后的各種聯(lián)系。

Gradual acceptance of the notion that sequential sleep hours are not essential for high-level job performance has led to increased workplace tolerance for napping and other alternate daily schedules.

        連續(xù)睡覺幾個(gè)小時(shí)并不是高水平工作績(jī)效的必要條件，人們逐漸接受了這個(gè)觀念，企業(yè)漸漸地允許在工作場(chǎng)所午睡或者其他類似的時(shí)間安排的存在。

Employees at Google, for instance, are offered the chance to nap at work because the company believes it may increase productivity. Thomas Balkin, the head of the department of behavioral biology at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, imagines a near future in which military commanders can know how much total sleep an individual soldier has had over a 24-hour time frame thanks to wristwatch-size sleep monitors. After consulting computer models that predict how decision-making abilities decline with fatigue, a soldier could then be ordered to take a nap to prepare for an approaching mission. The cognitive benefit of a nap could last anywhere from one to three hours, depending on what stage of sleep a person reaches before awakening.

        例如，谷歌就允許員工在工作時(shí)午睡，因?yàn)楣菊J(rèn)為這將會(huì)提高生產(chǎn)效率。沃爾特里德陸軍研究院行為生物系主任Thomas Balkin構(gòu)想了在不久的未來可能出現(xiàn)的場(chǎng)景：軍事指揮官通過看士兵手腕上的睡眠監(jiān)測(cè)腕表就能夠知道每個(gè)士兵在24小時(shí)總共睡了多久，然后再通過“決策判斷力-疲憊”計(jì)算機(jī)模型，就可以命令士兵小睡，以便迎接下一個(gè)任務(wù)。小睡產(chǎn)生的認(rèn)知優(yōu)勢(shì)可以在任何地點(diǎn)持續(xù)1到3小時(shí)，持續(xù)時(shí)間長(zhǎng)短還要看人們?cè)谛褋砬疤幵谀膫€(gè)睡眠階段。

Most of us are not fortunate enough to work in office environments that permit, much less smile upon, on-the-job napping. But there are increasing suggestions that greater tolerance for altered sleep schedules might be in our collective interest. Researchers have observed, for example, that long-haul pilots who sleep during flights perform better when maneuvering aircraft through the critical stages of descent and landing.

        我們大多數(shù)并沒有那么幸運(yùn)，工作環(huán)境不允許我們?cè)诠ぷ髌陂g小睡，更不用說贊許小睡。越來越多的建議顯示：更多地接受改變的睡眠時(shí)間表可能是我們的集體利益所在。例如，研究者已經(jīng)觀察到在航班期間小睡的長(zhǎng)途飛行員在駕駛飛機(jī)的時(shí)候，在下降和著陸的關(guān)鍵步驟上表現(xiàn)較出色。

Several Major League Baseball teams have adapted to the demands of a long season by changing their sleep patterns. Fernando Montes, the former strength and conditioning coach for the Texas Rangers, counseled his players to fall asleep with the curtains in their hotel rooms open so that they would naturally wake up at sunrise no matter what time zone they were in — even if it meant cutting into an eight-hour sleeping block. Once they arrived at the ballpark, Montes would set up a quiet area where they could sleep before the game. Players said that, thanks to this schedule, they felt great both physically and mentally over the long haul.

        美國(guó)職業(yè)棒球大聯(lián)盟的幾個(gè)球隊(duì)已經(jīng)通過改變睡眠模式適應(yīng)了長(zhǎng)賽季的需要。德州騎兵隊(duì)（Texas Rangers）前力量調(diào)節(jié)教練Fernando Montes，建議他的隊(duì)員在賓館房間睡覺時(shí)拉開窗簾，這樣他們不論在哪個(gè)時(shí)區(qū)，都會(huì)在太陽(yáng)升起時(shí)起床，即便這意味著8小時(shí)連續(xù)睡眠。一旦他們抵達(dá)訓(xùn)練場(chǎng)，這位前教練就會(huì)搭建一個(gè)可以讓隊(duì)員賽前睡覺的安靜區(qū)域。隊(duì)員們說在這個(gè)長(zhǎng)賽季中他們身心感覺棒極了，多虧了這個(gè)時(shí)間安排。

Strategic napping in the Rangers style could benefit us all. No one argues that sleep is not essential. But freeing ourselves from needlessly rigid and quite possibly outdated ideas about what constitutes a good night’s sleep might help put many of us to rest, in a healthy and productive, if not eight-hour long, block.

        德州騎兵隊(duì)的戰(zhàn)略性小睡會(huì)讓我們所有人受益。沒有人否定睡眠的不可或缺性。什么構(gòu)成了好的夜間睡眠？對(duì)此問題，我們?cè)胁槐匾墓虐宓亩铱赡苁峭耆^時(shí)的觀念。我們要把自己從錯(cuò)誤的觀念中解放出來，只有這樣，我們才會(huì)在更健康、更富有效率的時(shí)間獲得更好的休息，而不是8小時(shí)的時(shí)間。