How often have you had a work day when, as mid-afternoon races toward late-afternoon, you realize that you haven't really gotten anything done?

Painfully often, if you're like many of the professionals we talked to for a recent study on everyday work life through Harvard Business School.

你工作时是否经常感到，下午甚至什么都没做，就已经到傍晚了?

Getty Images如果你和最近我们通过哈佛大学商学院(Harvard Business School)对日常工作进行的一项研究中采访的许多专业人士一样，那么这种情况应该是经常在你身上发生。

Not only do unproductive days like this detract from the success of your projects, your team and your organization; they can endanger your own well-being.

We discovered that nothing makes people feel happier and more engaged at work than making meaningful progress on something they care about. We call that the progress principle. But this progress principle has a serious downside: Nothing makes people feel worse than being stalled in their work and this negative effect is much stronger.

这种低效率不仅会降低你所在团队和组织的项目成功率，还会威胁到你自身。

我们发现，没有什么比在自己关心的事情上取得有意义的进展更让人高兴和干劲十足的了。我们称这为进展原则。但这种进展原则还有另外一面：没什么比工作停滞不前更让人感到沮丧的了，而且这种负面影响比正面的影响要大得多。

Most often, the cause of an unproductive day is fragmentation trying to juggle many competing, and usually unexpected, demands on your time. It's what happens when you've worked like crazy all day, and still you have the sense that you haven't been productive. Sound familiar?

Work-life management experts Tony Schwartz, David Allen, and others have useful techniques for setting up routines to get more done. But how can you save a day where you simply haven't been able to get to the work that matters most?

工作效率低下最常见的原因是时间被分割得七零八落──试图平衡彼此冲突而且经常是预料之外的时间需求。当你每天疯狂地埋头工作，却仍感觉效率不高时，就是这种情况。听上去很熟悉吧?

工作时间管理专家托尼 施瓦茨(Tony Schwartz)、戴维 艾伦(David Allen)和其他人有一些有用的技巧，能帮你建立事半功倍的工作习惯。那么如果你实在来不及完成最重要的工作，如何才能补救呢?

1. Carve out a time-oasis. (20 minutes) If possible, move something off your schedule for the remainder of the day, protecting just 20 minutes to focus uninterrupted on that meaningful project. More time is better if you can manage it, but 20 minutes can still make a difference.

1、 划出时间空档。(20分钟)如果可能的话，从日程表中划去当天剩下的某项工作，以保证自己有20分钟不被打扰，以专心投入那项有意义的工作。如果你能办得到，那么留出更多时间更好，但20分钟已足以令工作效率有所改观。