????人類把很多時間都浪費在了無謂的事情上。拿我寫這篇文章的過程為例：我先是寫下幾個句子，然后收收電子郵件，泡杯咖啡，再寫兩句，喝口咖啡，然后上上Facebook，再做一個毫無意義的個性測試（只是為了確認一些我已經知道的事實），然后我告訴自己不能再拖延了，然后再一鼓作氣寫下兩段，然后再收收郵件，回一兩條無關緊要的消息，最后起身再泡一杯咖啡。不管你信不信，我最后居然還是寫完了這篇文章。

????我對自己糟糕的時間管理能力感到非常羞愧。杜克大學（Duke University）教授、知名行為經濟學家丹?艾瑞里曾經把人類浪費時間的傾向稱為“邊緣抑郁癥”，恐怕我就是患者之一。

????艾瑞里在上周的一次采訪中對我說：“我們不妨思考一下，人類有多少創意，有多少干正經事的能力，有多少進步的空間，再看看人們最后都在做什么。他們把大量的時間花在各種糟糕的事情上，而沒有去追求自己的幸福，沒有去做任何有用的事。人類的愚蠢的確讓我很苦惱。它就像某種抑郁癥——邊緣抑郁癥。”

????艾瑞里研究人類不靠譜的行為已經很多年了（難怪這哥們兒有點郁悶）。他的第一本書《怪誕行為學》（Predictably Irrational）揭示了我們在做最佳財務決策方面是多么的無能（并且該書還找到了供需理論的漏洞）。他的研究給治愈“拖延癥”帶來了一絲小小的希望。他與斯坦福大學（Stanford University）計算機科學教授約阿夫?肖漢姆和斯坦福大學博士研究生雅各布?班克一道，創辦了一家公司，旨在讓人們更好地利用他們最寶貴的資源——時間。

????這家公司的總部位于加州的山景城，它的第一款產品是一個名叫Timeful的應用，可以在iOS平臺上下載。第一眼看過去，Timeful有點像一個加強版的日歷應用：它可以自動與你的現有日歷同步，而且界面也和普通日歷應用差不多。不過這款應用會要求用戶列出一張與健康或幸福有關的任務清單，比如跑步、用牙線清潔牙齒、給父母打電話等等，此外也有與工作或生活有關的日常任務清單。此外它還包含了睡眠模式，并且你還可以指定一天的某個時間段為最有效率的時間。整合了以上所有信息之后，這款應用便會提供一份日程建議表，將一天的每件事安排得井井有條。艾瑞里表示：“要確定怎樣合理安排你的時間，的確是個非常復雜的計算問題。”

????讓我頗感安慰的是，艾瑞里指出，人們在決定何時做什么事時，很少會把所有因素都考慮進去。人們一想到前頭還有千頭萬緒的大事小情等著自己，往往就開始頭痛。再加上我們經常搞不清干完某件事需要多長時間，也不知道自己在一天的幾點到幾點干事最專心，因此我們往往會先做手頭上最簡單的任務——再看一遍還沒回復的電子郵件，或是更新一下Facebook。

????換句話說：我們都是嚴重的拖延癥患者。

????有些事情我們通常放在工作以外的時間做，但忽視了它們也有在工作時間做的可能，比如給父母打電話、跑步甚至是清潔牙齒。但是如今的大多數電子日歷，并沒有先進到能夠見縫插針地替我們把這些事安排到工作時間里。換句話說，現有的電子日歷應用依然不夠智能，無法通盤考慮如何利用一整天的時間，無法把我們需要做的事情（比如寫材料）和我們應該想要做的事情（比如利用午休時間跑步）結合起來。

????Human beings waste an awful lot of time. Consider my process for writing this article: Begin writing, check email, make coffee, write some more, drink coffee, peruse Facebook, take a meaningless personality quiz (only to confirm what I already knew), tell myself I shouldn’t procrastinate, write more, check email again, respond to a non-pressing message, and finally, get up to make more coffee. Believe it or not, at some point I actually finished writing the thing.

????I have plenty of guilt about my shameful time management skills, but I’m afraid that I may have also contributed to what Dan Ariely, the DukeUniversity professor and renowned behavioral economist, describes as his “marginal depression” about humans’ wasted potential.

????“You think about the amount of human creativity and human ability to do good and the amount of progress we can make and you see what people end up doing,” Ariely told me in an interview last week. “They’re just kind of squandering their time in all sorts of terrible ways and not fulfilling their own happiness, not doing anything useful. The human stupidity really weighs on me. It’s like a depression—a marginal depression.”

????Ariely, whose first book Predictably Irrational highlighted how painfully incompetent we are at making optimal financial decisions (and poked holes in the theory of supply and demand), has been researching human fallibility for years. (No wonder the guy is a little despondent.) But there is reason for a small, newfound source of hope. Along with Stanford University computer science professor Yoav Shoham and Jacob Bank, a Stanford doctoral candidate, Ariely has co-founded a company that aims to help people make better use of their most precious resource—time.

????The trio’s first product is an application called Timeful, a name that their Mountain View, Calif-based company shares. At first glance, the iOS app seems like a slightly souped-up calendar tool: it automatically synchronizes with existing calendars and has a familiar interface. But the app also instructs users to pick from a list of health- and happiness-minded tasks—running, flossing, calling Mom or Dad—in addition to the usual personal or work-related to-do list. It then incorporates all of that data, which can include sleep patterns and designated productive times of the day, to suggest time slots for everything. “Figuring out what to do with your time is a really complex computational problem,” Ariely says.

????Much to my relief, Ariely posits that we are pretty much all unable to take all factors into account when deciding what to do, and when. Faced with myriad big tasks and smaller to-do list items, plus the difficulty of estimating how long it will take us to complete something and which time of day we’re best able to focus, we often turn to the easiest task at hand: re-reading unanswered emails or updating one’s Facebook status.

????Translation: We procrastinate. A lot.

????Making matters worse is the fact that most of today’s digital calendars aren’t well-equipped to remind us of the kinds of things we typically do outside of work but could possibly do during work—like calling Mom and Dad, running, or even flossing. In other words, today’s calendar apps seem to lack the smarts or focus in providing a more holistic view of our day, incorporating both what we need to do (like writing an article) and what we should aspire to do (like go for a lunchtime run).