现在是时候带回邮件

重点 (Top highlight)

微处理 (Microprocessing)

I spend most Thursdays heads down writing. The task is one that, at least for me, requires absolute focus, a quality that I have to essentially beg some corner of my brain to extend to me for a few hours. This usually fails, making the draft take twice as long as it has to. Even now, my phone is lighting up with a text; several Twitter direct messages are awaiting my response; I have an email open in another tab that I actually want to answer.

我大多数星期四都低头写作。 这项任务至少对我来说是需要绝对专注的一项任务，我必须乞求自己的大脑某个角才能向我延伸几个小时。 这通常会失败，从而使草稿花费了两倍的时间。 即使在现在，我的电话仍在闪烁文本。 几条Twitter直接消息正在等待我的回复； 我在另一个我想回答的选项卡中打开了一封电子邮件。

There are a number of things I could do, some of which I’ve suggested in other columns, like turning off notifications (off for everything but texts, at the moment) and setting an alarm that dictates when I can look at any social media (I usually do this by the hour). Both methods help, but there’s a tool that, if more readily available and widely used, would make perhaps the biggest difference of all: away messages.

有事情我可以做，其中的一些，我建议在其他列，如NU 2M误码关闭通知 (关闭一切，但文本，此刻)，并设置报警，当我可以看任何使然社交媒体(我通常按小时进行)。 两种方法都有帮助，但是有一种工具，如果更容易获得和广泛使用，可能会带来最大的不同：离开消息。

In the glory days of online communication (2002 to 2009, in my rough, highly personal estimation), away messages were popular on AOL’s instant messaging service and acted a bit like digital Post-it notes stuck to a door: messages that would pop up next to a user’s handle indicating that a person was unavailable to chat. Yet they’ve largely fallen to the wayside, foregone in favor of constant connectivity that’s distracting and stressful. If I could easily apply away messages to iMessage, Twitter, and any other form of messaging app or social network, I’d rest easy while drafting, comforted by the fact that anyone trying to reach me will know by my away message that it’ll be some time before I respond.

在网上交流的辉煌岁月中(据我粗略的高度个人估计，2002年至2009年)，离开消息在AOL的即时消息服务中很流行，其行为有点像贴在门上的数字便利贴：消息会弹出指示用户无法聊天的用户句柄旁边的。 然而，它们很大程度上已经落到了路边，不再支持分散注意力和压力的持续连接。 如果我可以轻松地将离开消息应用于iMessage，Twitter和任何其他形式的消息传递应用程序或社交网络，那么在起草时我会很轻松，因为任何试图与我联系的人都会通过我的离开消息知道它是在我回复之前还需要一些时间。

“If you think about that over the span of even just a day, if we’re getting distracted even five or six times, that’s a couple hours of lost productivity.”

“如果仅在一天的时间里考虑这个问题，即使我们分散了五六次注意力，那将导致生产力损失几个小时。”

Anything that makes it easier to disconnect and focus on work will help ensure that you’re able to accomplish tasks in a more efficient manner and, ideally, get done earlier. As it stands, every distraction — a text message, checking your email, whatever — comes at a high cost, causing you to lose time that you could have spent on getting your shit done instead.

任何使断开连接和专注于工作变得更容易的事情，将有助于确保您能够以更有效的方式完成任务，并且理想情况下，尽早完成任务。 从目前的情况来看，每条分心的短信(无论是短信，电子邮件检查)都是高成本的，这会导致您浪费时间，而这本来可以花费在解决问题上。

Notifications and quick message checks can be highly distracting, because it takes time for your brain to fully focus on a task. “On average, if we’re sitting there writing an article, and then we get a notification ding, the act of going to check that notification and coming back, we’re basically losing 20 to 30 minutes worth of time,” says Laura Bright, PhD, an associate professor of media analytics at the University of Texas at Austin whose research focuses on consumer behavior and new media environments (like social media). “If you think about that over the span of even just a day, if we’re getting distracted even five or six times, that’s a couple hours of lost productivity.” When we get overwhelmed with information, Bright says, our processing capabilities go down. It’s a bit like having a conversation with a friend in a restaurant (remember doing that?): As the noise level in the restaurant goes up, you have to strain harder and harder to understand what your friend says, forcing you to either ask her to repeat herself as words get swallowed by the restaurant’s cacophony or, conversely, give up and get only half of what she’s telling you.

通知和快速消息检查可能会分心 ，因为您的大脑需要花费时间才能完全专注于一项任务。 劳拉说：“平均而言，如果我们坐在那里写一篇文章，然后得到通知通知，即检查该通知并返回的行为，那么我们基本上会浪费20至30分钟的时间。” Bright，博士，德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校媒体分析副教授，其研究重点是消费者行为和新媒体环境(例如社交媒体)。 “如果仅在一天的时间里考虑这个问题，即使我们分散了五六次注意力，那将导致生产力损失几个小时。” Bright说，当我们不知所措时，我们的处理能力就会下降。 这有点像在餐厅与朋友聊天(还记得吗？)：随着餐厅中的噪音水平上升，您必须越来越努力地理解朋友的话，迫使您要么问她在餐馆的喧闹声吞噬了言语时重复了自己，或者相反，放弃了，只得到了她告诉你的话的一半。

The expectation of constant connectivity might have a psychological impact as well. A 2019 study found that the presence of a smartphone in a social situation causes us to enjoy our socializing less and diminishes some of the psychological benefits we might have reaped from the interaction. The impact is subtle, meaning you are less likely to notice it while it’s happening. You just didn’t have quite as much fun picnicking with your friend than you might have otherwise.

对持续连接的期望也会产生心理影响。 一个 2019研究 发现在社交场合中使用智能手机会使我们减少社交活动的乐趣，并减少了我们可能从互动中获得的一些心理收益。 影响是微妙的，这意味着您在发生这种情况时不太可能注意到它。 与朋友野餐并不像以前那样有趣。

Turning your phone off entirely, turning off your notifications, or going on airplane mode are all good options for focusing more fully on whatever it is you’re doing, whether that’s having a conversation with a friend or hunkering down on a project. But they’re not complete solutions. Having your phone on do not disturb doesn’t mean your friends and family can’t send you messages; it just stops your phone from alerting you about it. The people trying to get in touch with you don’t know that your phone is on do not disturb or even off. They just know you’re not responding or, if your phone is off entirely, that you’re not in a spot where there’s service.

完全关闭手机，关闭通知或进入飞行模式都是很好的选择，无论您是在与朋友交谈还是在忙于一个项目，都可以更专注于您正在做的事情。 但是它们不是完整的解决方案。 开机不打扰并不意味着您的朋友和家人无法向您发送消息。 它只会阻止您的手机提醒您。 试图与您联系的人不知道您的手机处于开机状态，不会打扰甚至不会关机。 他们只知道您没有回应，或者，如果您的手机完全关闭，则您不在需要维修的地方。

An away message takes care of this for you. It communicates to your friends, family, or fans that, hey, I’m not going to be reachable until 6 p.m. I’ll read my messages then. This alleviates stress for the people sending you messages — you’re not ignoring them, you’re not dead or in some dire situation that’s preventing you from using your phone. Whether you’re working on a project for a few hours or on a weekend trip to a cabin in the woods, an away message alerts your contacts that it isn’t a good time to chat. It also saves you, the away message user, from feeling the urge to check your phone in the first place, since it’s less likely that people will be anxiously trying to get in touch with you.

离开的消息会为您解决此问题。 它告诉您的朋友，家人或粉丝，嘿，直到下午6点我才能联系我，然后我会阅读我的消息。 这减轻了向您发送消息的人们的压力-您不会忽略它们，您没有死，或者在某些可怕的情况下无法使用手机。 无论您是在一个项目上工作几个小时，还是周末去树林里的小屋旅行，一条走走的消息都会提醒您的联系人，这不是聊天的好时机。 这也使您(远离邮件的用户)免于一开始就想检查手机的冲动，因为人们不太可能会急于尝试与您联系。

There’s clearly a desire, at least on some scale, for away message functions, whether it’s via text message or some kind of version you could apply to your social media accounts. “I very much wish that Facebook and Instagram and Twitter have them so that we can just be out of office or deep-dive on a project,” says Courtney Maum, an author based in Connecticut. She goes on airplane mode when she’s working, she says, pointing out that others go on self-proclaimed “social media hiatuses.” These can often be found announced in a Twitter user’s display name, like so:

显然 ，至少在某种程度上 ，人们希望使用离开消息功能，无论是通过短信还是可以应用于社交媒体帐户的某种形式。 “我非常希望Facebook，Instagram和Twitter拥有它们，这样我们就可以不在办公室里或深入研究某个项目，”康涅狄格州的一位作者Courtney Maum说。 她说，当她工作时，她进入飞行模式，并指出其他人继续自称为“社交媒体中断”。 这些通常可以在Twitter用户的显示名称中找到，如下所示：

It’s one of a number of away workarounds people rely on that theoretically do the job but aren’t as helpful as if the social and messaging platforms had away message functionality built in. Another method, for incoming text messages, is to manually turn on and customize your Do Not Disturb While Driving setting if you have an iPhone. Android users need to download a separate app that sends auto-replies when activated. None of these solutions are very elegant or easy — and tech features need to involve as little friction as possible if they’re to become widely adopted.

从理论上讲，这是人们赖以工作的许多变通方法之一，但并没有像社交和消息传递平台内置了消息功能那样有用。另一种方法是传入短信， 手动打开并如果您有iPhone，请自定义“驾驶时请勿打扰”设置。 Android用户需要下载一个单独的应用程序，该应用程序在激活后会发送自动回复。 这些解决方案都不是优雅或简单的，而且要广泛采用，技术功能需要尽可能减少摩擦。

Nick Bowman, PhD, an associate professor of creative media industries at Texas Tech whose research focuses on the psychology of communication technology, isn’t convinced that away messages would be widely used if they were available because of how ingrained that always-on mentality is — or, at least, that’s what he thought pre-coronavirus. The dismantling of boundaries and the merging of our public and private life has changed that. For people who work in office-type environments, “for the last eight months, we’ve been living in a very blended reality, where our work and our social life have combined in ways we never expected,” Bowman says. “I wonder if there could be sort of a newfound appreciation for not only unplugging, but telling people you’re unplugging… I would be curious to see if there was a newfound appreciation for something like an away message.”

德克萨斯理工学院创意媒体产业副教授尼克·鲍曼(Nick Bowman)博士专注于通信技术的心理学研究，他不相信离开消息是否会被广泛使用，因为始终存在的想法根深蒂固-或者至少，这就是他认为的冠状病毒。 边界的拆除以及我们公共和私人生活的融合改变了这一点。 对于在办公室式环境中工作的人们，“在过去的八个月中，我们一直生活在一个非常融合的现实中，我们的工作和社交生活以我们从未想到的方式结合在一起，”鲍曼说。 “我想知道是否不仅可以拔出插头，而且可以告诉人们您正在拔下插头，是否会有某种新发现的鉴赏力。我很好奇，看看是否有对消失信息之类的新发现鉴赏力。”

The always-on mentality has clearly been ramping up as smartphones have become more ubiquitous. Now your boss, your friend group, your parents, and countless others maintain the assumption that as long as you are awake and alive, you’re more or less available. As we spend more and more time at home, the assumption of availability has only grown stronger. But this has massive consequences — for your ability to concentrate; for your emotional well-being and that of the people trying to get in touch with you; for your literal safety while walking, distracted, down the street — that could be easily remedied with a simple feature like an away message.

随着智能手机变得越来越普及，永远在线的心态显然已经增强。 现在，您的老板，您的朋友团体，您的父母和无数其他人仍然认为，只要您保持清醒和存活，您就或多或少地有空。 随着我们在家里花费越来越多的时间，可用性的假设越来越强。 但是，这会对您的专心致志产生巨大影响。 为了您的情感幸福以及试图与您取得联系的人们的幸福； 以确保您在步行，分心，在街上行走时的字面安全-可以通过简单的功能(例如，离开信息)轻松地进行补救。

For iPhone, at least, I picture it as something you can easily toggle on and off when you open your message app, like so:

至少对于iPhone，我将其描述为可以在打开消息应用程序时轻松打开和关闭的功能，例如：

An auto-reply could be sent to new contacts or manually set as the default for everyone, but for iMessage users, the away message would appear next to the name and avatar. For Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, it’d be simple and easy to include an “edit away message” option when you edit your profile; turning it on could even grayscale your profile info to make it super clear to people that you’re away.

自动答复可以发送给新联系人，也可以手动设置为所有人的默认答复，但是对于iMessage用户，离开消息将显示在姓名和头像旁边。 对于Twitter，Facebook和Instagram，在编辑个人资料时包含“编辑离开消息”选项非常简单。 启用该功能甚至可以对您的个人资料信息进行灰度处理，以使他人可以清楚地知道您不在。

Will platforms ever hear our pleas and add easy away messages? Both Bright and Bowman think that’s unlikely. “There’s probably some truth to the idea that if we start telling people they can form these away messages, they’ll start actually going away. And if they actually go away, they won’t interface with the platforms,” Bowman says.

平台是否会听到我们的请求并添加轻松发送的消息？ Bright和Bowman都认为这不太可能。 “这种想法可能有些道理，如果我们开始告诉人们他们可以形成这些离开的信息，那么他们实际上就会开始消失。 而且，如果它们实际上消失了，它们将不会与平台交互，”鲍曼说。

“The whole point of social media channels is to drive engagement. And being away from them decreases engagement,” Bright says. “The idea of providing something as simple as an ‘I’m going to check out for a week’ message — that’s probably like the last thing on their feature list.”

“社交媒体渠道的重点是促进参与。 远离他们会降低参与度，” Bright说。 “提供像“我将要检查一个星期的消息”这样简单的消息的想法-可能就像他们功能列表中的最后一件事。”

Over the past 20 years, technology companies have effectively made us almost entirely dependent on their products. Email is practically nonnegotiable; for many industries and in many families, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are essential to maintaining a presence and reminding people that, well, you exist. As these platforms have become more entrenched in our communication practices, the methods by which we can easily unplug — like away messages — have been wrenched from our grasp. Your best bet now for stepping away involves a series of half-measures like do not disturb that don’t fix the essential issue: You’re not available right now to chat, and the many people in your life deserve to know this. But if you’re not on the platform, you’re not consuming and engaging, and if you’re not consuming and engaging, you’re not making them money. So. Here we are. Forever.

在过去的20年中，科技公司有效地使我们几乎完全依赖于他们的产品。 电子邮件实际上是不可转让的； 对于许多行业和许多家庭来说，Facebook，Twitter和Instagram对于维持存在并提醒人们您已经存在至关重要。 随着这些平台在我们的交流实践中越来越牢固，我们无法轻松拔出的方法(如外出消息)就变得不那么容易了。 现在，您最好的选择是采取一系列措施，例如“请勿打扰”，这些措施无法解决基本问题：您现在无法聊天，您生活中的许多人都应该知道这一点。 但是，如果您不在平台上，那么您就没有消费和参与，如果您没有消费和参与，就没有在赚钱。 所以。 我们来了。 永远。

翻译自: https://onezero.medium.com/now-is-the-time-to-bring-back-away-messages-d53b3fcf0af3