The Devil Is in Your Snooze Button1

By Casey N. Cep

I feel like Faustus2. Faustus: 浮士德，歐洲中世紀傳說中的一位著名人物，為了追求知識和權(quán)力，向魔鬼出賣自己的靈魂。許多文學、音樂、歌劇和電影都以這個故事為藍本加以改編。本文中指的是德國文豪歌德的文學作品《浮士德》。在歌德的改編中，浮士德博士為了尋求生命的意義，在魔鬼梅菲斯托費勒斯的引誘下，以自己的靈魂換得它的幫助。在浮士德生命的最后時刻，他領(lǐng)悟到了人生的目的是為了生活和自由戰(zhàn)斗。下一句提到的Mephistopheles即是魔鬼梅菲斯托費勒斯。every morning. The warm darkness of sleep around me like a blanket3. blanket: 毛毯，毯子。, I listen as Mephistopheles whispers:Oh, Faustus, dear, I am here. I listen, but want so badly to still be asleep: What do I care, there is no here. There is neither here nor there in sleep, no anywhere really.

Faustus, Mephistopheles says, this time tugging4. tug: 用力拉，拖曳。softly at the blanket of darkness, dear Faustus, wouldn’t you like more rest? I never lie. You can have a few more minutes. I close my eyes against the day and answer: Oh, Mephistopheles, I’d do anything for more sleep, even a few more minutes.

The bargain is struck nine minutes at a time.5. bargain: 協(xié)議，討價還價；strike: 達成（協(xié)議或合同等）。I am Faustus, but the devil is my alarm clock or cell phone, whichever I’ve managed to set the night before. The devil offers me little extensions of nine minutes,and I happily accept three or four installments every single morning.6. 惡魔給我開出每張九分鐘的小小延時券，而我每天早上都樂于領(lǐng)上三四份。extension: 延長的時間，放寬的期限；installment: 分期付款，分期清償。

Then Mephistopheles enforces7. enforce: 強制執(zhí)行，使生效。the bargain. I stumble8. stumble: 蹣跚，東倒西歪地走。out of bed, at least 18, though usually 36 minutes later than when I had planned. I am late, and I have bargained away all the leisure and pleasure of the morning: No time for taking a shower, no time for toasting a bagel or bread, no time for reading the newspaper,no time for brewing coffee at home.9. leisure: 悠閑，安逸；bagel: 百吉圈，一種面包類食品，是西方常見的一種主食；brew:（以沖泡、煮沸等方法）調(diào)制飲料，煮（咖啡等）。I wonder sometimes what my neighbors think of me: all those endless choruses of alarm chimes and bells not once a morning, but at least three or four times on repeat.10. 有時我會好奇，想知道我的鄰居們究竟是怎么看我的：一大清早，鬧鈴聲此起彼伏，沒完沒了，響一次怎么都不夠，至少得重復三四次。chorus: 合唱；chime: （時鐘等的）報時音樂，鐘樂。

鬧鐘響了，按掉，再睡一會兒——這似乎成了我們每個清晨的習慣性動作，有時非得重復個三五次才能起床。小小的按鈕為什么會有這么大魔力？它將我們拽入兩難境地：我們既想重做美夢，又想爬起床來享受美麗清晨。通常情況是，我們會處于兩者之間的混沌狀態(tài)，失去了好睡眠，又失去了好精力。面對“枕邊惡魔”，我們該如何是好？

Snooze is the enemy of both sleep and wakefulness. Snooze is the devil that cheats us into thinking we’ll be more awake for those nine extra minutes of sleep, more rested for every one of those sleep extensions we accept from Mephistopheles. But it’s all a lie: Nine minutes at a time, the snooze cheats us of our waking life. It hasn’t always been this way. Alarm clocks are an ancient device, but the snooze button is a recent invention.

There have always been ways of waking: Even before clocks, there were crowing roosters and the rising sun.11. crowing: （公雞）啼叫的，喔喔啼的；rooster:公雞，雄雞。When water clocks first appeared centuries ago in Egypt, they were modified12. modify: 改造，改裝。over time to include alarms. Bells and whistles were adjusted to specific levels in the container from which or into which the water fell.13.人們在容器的某一特定刻度上安裝了特殊裝置；容器中會流出水或有水流入容器中。bells and whistles: 產(chǎn)品的特別零件，功能元件；adjust: 校準，調(diào)整。These noisemakers sounded whenever the water rose or fell to the appropriate level, providing a reliable alarm for keeping time.14. 隨著水流不斷傾注到容器中或水不斷流出容器，一旦水面上升或下降到某一水平，這一特殊裝置就會發(fā)出聲響，使其成為一種可靠的計時工具。reliable: 可靠的，可信賴的。There’s some indication that even Plato used such a clock, sounding a water organ early every morning to mark the beginning of his lectures.15. indication: 跡象，征兆；Plato: 柏拉圖（約公元前427年—前347年），著名古希臘哲學家，創(chuàng)辦了著名的“學院”（Academy）。柏拉圖是蘇格拉底的學生，也是亞里士多德的老師，他們?nèi)吮粡V泛認為是西方哲學的奠基者，史稱“西方三圣賢”；organ: 風琴，管風琴。

The history of horology is entangled with the history of commerce, so the next wave of time-keeping developments was tied to industry.16. horology: 鐘表學，鐘表制造術(shù)；entangle with:與……牽連，與……緊密聯(lián)系；industry: 工業(yè)。Alarms came in the form of town clocks,factory whistles, and neighborhood knocker-uppers17. knocker-upper: 在約定時間挨戶叫人起床者。. Town clocks chimed the early morning hours; factory whistles sounded the hours of shift work; and knocker-uppers went around cities knocking on windows or doors at arranged times so that everyone could make it to work. None of these methods offered the opportunity for drowsing18. drowse: 昏昏欲睡地度過時間，糊里糊涂地消磨時光。. Even when Seth Thomas patented a small mechanical alarm clock in 1876, there was still no snooze function.19. Seth Thomas: 塞斯·托馬斯（1785—1859），美國鐘表匠，是大規(guī)模制造鐘表的先驅(qū)；patent: 取得……的專利。

For centuries we got by without the snooze. It was only in 1956 that General Electric-Telechron released the Snooz-Alarm, which came equipped with a control bar for snoozing.20. release: 發(fā)布，發(fā)行；equipped with: 裝備著……，有……的配置；control bar: 控制欄，控制條。Westclox released their Drowse Alarm three years later, which featured the choice between snoozing for five minutes and 10 minutes. There is so much more truth in advertising with drowse than snooze, since what you get with each interval is less like sleeping and more like drowsing—a pitiful mix of hazy, haunted wakefulness.21

The original Snooz-Alarm had a nine-minute snooze,which became the standard. There is some speculation that engineers were constrained by mechanical gears and had to choose between complicated doubledigit intervals and the easier nine-minute dose.22. speculation: 推測，猜測；constrain: 約束，束縛；gear: 齒輪，裝置；double-digit: 兩位數(shù)的；dose: 一劑，一份。Nine minutes was the most you could get without designing a more sophisticated mechanism. For all the customizable features of modern alarms,from radio stations, specific songs,a multitude of tones, user-recorded messages, it’s surprising that no one has allowed us the freedom of timing our own snoozing for something less regulated than nine minutes.23. 令人驚奇的是，如今這么多可供用戶自定義的現(xiàn)代鬧鐘，從廣播電臺、自選歌曲和鈴音到自己錄制的語音等，我們還是無法自定義多睡這一會兒的間隔時間，標準還是九分鐘。a multitude of: 大批的，眾多的。

Every nine minutes of snooze wastes a little slice of our lives. Since 1956, we have been confusing snooze for sleep,sacrificing our waking life nine minutes

21.“半夢半醒”這個宣傳語可比“再睡一會”貼切多了，因為你每次多賴床的那一小會兒與其說是在睡覺還不如說是半夢半醒—— 一種可憐、迷糊、受折磨的醒著的狀態(tài)。interval:（時間、空間上的）間隔，間距；hazy: 朦朧的，模糊的；haunted: 焦慮不安的，受到折磨的。at a time. Not only do we delay the start of our days, but we compromise24. compromise: 危及，損害。the very sleep we are trying to steal. The healthy, continuous sleep cycles we need are thoroughly disrupted by the snooze.25. thoroughly: 徹底地，完全地；disrupt: 使中斷，破壞……的完整性。When we hear the first sound of the alarm, our bodies release adrenaline, hormones that wake us,interrupting our natural sleep cycle to make us alert.26. adrenaline: 腎上腺素，會引起興奮感，使人激動；hormone: 荷爾蒙，激素；alert: 使警覺，使警惕。

Surrendering to the temptation of the snooze erases that hormonal surge: our bodies try to reenter the deeper periods of sleep.27. surrender: 投降，屈服；temptation: 引誘，誘惑；erase: 使無用，使無效；surge: 猛增，急劇上升。Only those levels of sleep take a lot longer than nine minutes to enter, so every snooze confuses our bodies even more. We think three or four snoozes are the equivalent of an extra 30 or 40 minutes of rest, but the interrupted sleep of snooze is worse than no sleep at all. Instead of the natural sleeping then waking, the snooze drags us into unhealthy, unsatisfying fits of trying to sleep and trying to rise, but failing to do either.28. drag: 把……硬拖入（某種局面、行動等）；fit: （活動、行為等的）一陣。

I lived without the snooze for the first two decades of my life. It was only during a particularly sleep-deprived period of college that I gave in to the temptation of tapping that button three or four times every morning.29. sleep-deprived: 缺乏睡眠的，被剝奪睡眠的；tap: 輕拍，輕擊。Like any addiction30. addiction: 癮，上癮。, it’s hard to break. I go to bed contracting with my future self to rise the precise moment the alarm sounds, but morning after morning my future self cheats my past self with one snooze after another.Day by day, I rise groggier31. groggy: 搖搖晃晃的，頭昏眼花的。and drowsier, taking hours instead of minutes to actually, truly awaken.

So how are we to resist the wiles32. wile: 詭計，奸計。of Mephistopheles? If the war on smoking was won partly by convincing smokers that every cigarette stole 11 minutes of their lives, then perhaps the war on snooze can be won by convincing sleepers they lose nine, 18, 27, even 36 minutes of their sleep lives every morning.33. 如果說抗煙戰(zhàn)役贏得勝利的部分原因是，說服吸煙者相信每抽一支煙他們就會失去11分鐘的生命，那么若能說服人們，他們每天早上每一次按“再睡一會兒”按鈕他們就會失去9、18、27，甚至36分鐘的睡眠時間，那么也許抗“再睡一會”戰(zhàn)役也能贏得勝利。We must realize that every snooze is not nine minutes gained, but hours lost: not only of productive sleep, but productive wakefulness.

Next time Mephistopheles whispers in your groggy ear, try rejecting his bargain. Don’t cheat yourself out of restful sleep or waking life. Sleep scientists suggest going to bed earlier or setting your alarm for later, but never giving into the cheat of the snooze. Rather than negotiating that Faustian bargain every morning with the snooze, try setting a second alarm for 30 or 40 minutes after the first.34. 與其跟浮士德一樣每天早上與“枕邊惡魔”討價還價，還不如在第一個鬧鈴30或40分鐘后再設一個鬧鈴。If you find yourself too sleepy to rise when you first intended, let yourself get real, restful sleep before trying again. It’s a war on snooze, but one we can win one morning at a time.