Sometimes you’re at work and you just have to watch that one cute cat-/dog-/panda-playing-in-the-snow video. And then you spot that girl from high school on your Facebook feed and wonder what she’s been up to all these years … Would you look at that? It’s lunchtime! Time to skip out of work and wait in an obnoxiously¹ long cafeteria line with your co-workers and dissect² that cute animal video you just saw.

在工作中有时我们会在网上偷懒去看看小动物嬉戏打闹的有趣视频，有时Facebook上跳出提示让你去看看高中时候的那位女同学现在怎么样了，你会看吗？午餐时间到了，是时候停下手头工作去排那个糟心的午餐长队了，顺便和同事们聊聊刚才看的小动物视频。

But exactly how much time are we wasting at work? That’s what a group of economists³ — Michael Burda, Kaie Genadek, and Daniel Hamermersh — wanted to find out, and they’ve published their results in a new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper.

但工作中你到底会浪费多少时间呢？这正是Michael Burda，Kaie Genadek和Daniel Hamermersh这些经济学家们想知道的，他们已经把结论在发布在新一期的国家经济研究局刊物上了。

Using the self-reported American Time Use Survey, the economists found that, on average, workers spent about 34 minutes per day not working. Doesn’t seem a lot, right? But when the economists got rid of the people who claimed they didn’t spend any time slacking off (uh-huh, right), the figure rose to 50 minutes. About half that time wasted was spent on eating, the other half on “leisure” activities (watercooler break!).

通过“美国人时间利用自我报告调查”数据，经济学家发现人均每天有34分钟时间不花在工作上。看上去并不多，是吗？但是当经济学家把那些自称没有偷懒的人排除后，结论变成了50分钟，其中一半花费在吃上面，另一半则是在“休闲”活动上（例如饮水休息）。

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Perhaps unsurprisingly, not everyone wasted the same proportion of the workday. The authors explained that, all else being equal, the more someone worked, the higher the proportion of the time they slacked off — until about 42 hours a week. The more time in the office workers logged above this level, the less they slacked off, proportionally. Those eager-beaver, first-to-arrive-and-last-to-leave types seemed more capable of resisting the lure⁴ of internet cats than the rest of us.

不足为奇的是，工作日中每个人浪费的比例不同。作者解释说，在其他条件都相同的前提下，工作量越多，偷懒休息的比例就越大，直到超过一周42小时。超过这一比例后放松偷懒的比例又会下降。那些起早贪黑辛勤工作的小蜜蜂们比我们更能够抵御互联网的诱惑。

Like any research based on self-reported statistics, there are some limitations here, simply because there could be various biases⁵ to how people estimated or reported the amount of time they spent slacking. It’s also important to realize that slacking tendencies may vary a great deal over time, depending on the economy. In a section of the paper titled “To Loaf or Not to Loaf: That Is the Question,” the economists note that recessions make slacking off more of a luxury than during a “normal” economy, as worker jobs hang in the balance and are at risk of being axed. The data was from 2003 to 2012, so it captured much of the recession, meaning it may be that we’re slacking more these days than we were back then, given that the economy’s a bit stronger.

和其他自我统计报告一样，这份数据又有些不足，仅仅是因为人们对自己放松偷懒时间的统计估计方式存在差异。我们必须意识到，随着经济状况的变化，放松偷懒的趋势也会变化。在报道中有篇文章标题为“放松还是不放松，这是个问题”其中经济学家指出经济萧条时期相比经济正常的时候，人们认为工作中放松是件奢侈的事，因为萧条时期工作不努力就可能被裁员。2003年到2012年的数据包含了萧条时期，现在人们的偷懒时间更多也说明现在的经济状况比之前好些。

But maybe the simpler point to keep in mind here is that not all slacking is bad. In fact, as the Science of Us noted⁶ earlier this month in a video, taking breaks is a good thing, both for your mind and creative output. Afternoon naps are a treasured part of Japanese work culture, and working for more than four and a half hours at a time actually leads to a diminishing rate of productivity. In fact, some researchers think the ideal work/break balance comes out to 17 hard-earned minutes of fun time for every 52 minutes of work. If you calculate that for a ten-hour day, that comes out 147.8 minutes — or over two hours — of “loafing” time.

但也许我们需要记得的是，不是所有的偷懒都是坏事。事实上，正如Science of Us在月初的视频节目中提到的那样，休息放松对思考和创造力都有好处。在日本午睡也是种工作文化，连续不断工作超过4.5小时会降低生产力。研究表明每工作52分钟休息17分钟是比较理想的工作方式。如果以一天来计算，那么就得出一天可以休息2个多小时。

So take heart, worker: You’re not a lazy bum⁷ straight off the set of The Office. You’re merely taking a brain break.

所以请记住：你不是办公室懒人，你只是让大脑休息下而已。