2018年考研英语阅读第四篇文章来源于2017年6月13日BBC网站上一篇名为Why you should manage your energy not your time的文章，网址如下：http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20170612-why-you-should-manage-your-energy-not-your-time。鉴于此，文都考研教学研究院教研中心再次强烈建议有意参加2019考研的同学们，无论是基于切实提高自身英语阅读能力的目的还是基于考研英语取得佳绩的目的，都应该在日常学习过程中，广泛涉猎英美核心期刊杂志以及网站， 如The Guardian（《卫报》），The Economics（《经济学人》），Scientific American（《科学美国人》），Newsweek（《新闻周刊》），The Times（《泰晤士报》）等等。希望同学们通过精读与泛读相结合的方式提升自己的英语阅读理解水平，只有做到知己知彼，方能百战百胜，无往而不利。回归到2018考研英语二阅读第四篇，以下为其英文原文完整版呈现：
By Madeleine Dore
13 June 2017
For ten years, Lisa Congdon’s days were packed like a “can of sardines.” Juggling between five and 20 projects at any one time, the artist and author, based in Portland, Oregon in the US, tried to squeeze as much into her daily work schedule as she could.
Finally, in the tenth year of her career, she started to have physical symptoms as a result of the stress – chronic back pain, upper neck pain and headaches.
“I was waking up with anxiety, feeling a sense of tension in the pit of my stomach, and I had trouble sleeping,” she says.
Many of us will have had that sense of there just not being enough hours in the day to do everything we need to do. Tasks that should take only a few minutes can stretch into hours, all while other work mounts up.
For most, the solution is to work later into the evening or even over the weekend, which leaves many of us feeling exhausted, stressed and burned out. But what if working less were the key to getting more done?
The time management myth
Previously, Congdon would often work from eight in the morning until seven at night without a break.
It’s an easy trap to fall into – it’s drilled into us that working solidly for eight or more hours will increase our output and impress our colleagues and managers. But in reality, even the traditional nine-to-five workday is not conducive to productivity.
A workplace study found an average working professional experiences 87 interruptions per day, making it difficult to remain productive and focused for a full day.
Knowing something had to give, Congdon began to adjust her approach to work and restructured her day to achieve the same amount of output, without working around the clock. She decided to split her day into fewer 45-minute segments, and aimed to maximise her productivity within those strict time sessions.
The key to maintaining focus and energy in shorter bursts was to apply flexibility to those segments – she could use some for exercise, some for meditation, some for work. Getting rest within her workday helped lower stress levels and therefore achieve better results within the allotted time for working, Congdon found.
This makes sense in the light of research that has found our productivity has less to do with the amount of hours we squeeze out of the working day, and more to do with the rest we have.
In 2014, the social networking company The Draugiem Group used a time-tracking productivity app to study what habits set their most productive employees apart.
Working for show, it seems, is also futile. A study of consultants by Boston University’s School of Business found that managers could not tell the difference between employees who actually worked 80 hours a week and those who just pretended to.
Deflecting distraction
To combat the trap of putting such a premium on being busy, Newport recommends building a habit of ‘deep work’ – the ability to focus without distraction.
There are a number of approaches to mastering the art of deep work – be it lengthy retreats dedicated to a specific task; developing a daily ritual; or taking a ‘journalistic’ approach to seizing moments of deep work when you can throughout the day. Whichever approach, the key is to determine your length of focus time and stick to it.
