There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing
过去的一年，你“萎靡”了吗？

At first, I didn’t recognize the symptoms that we all had in common. Friends mentioned that they were having trouble concentrating. Colleagues reported that even with vaccines on the horizon, they weren’t excited about 2021. A family member was staying up late to watch “National Treasure” again even though she knows the movie by heart. And instead of bouncing out of bed at 6 a.m., I was lying there until 7, playing Words with Friends.

一开始，我没有意识到这个我们共有的症状。朋友们说自己很难集中注意力。同事们说即使疫苗即将问世，他们对2021年也没多少期待。有一位家人虽然对《国家宝藏》(National Treasure)了如指掌，但还是再次熬夜观看这部电影。我早上6点醒来，不是马上起床，而是躺在床上玩填字游戏直到7点。

It wasn’t burnout — we still had energy. It wasn’t depression — we didn’t feel hopeless. We just felt somewhat joyless and aimless. It turns out there’s a name for that: languishing.

这并不是倦怠——我们还有精力。这也不是抑郁——我们没有感到绝望。我们只是感到有些无趣、没有目标。这种现象有一个名字：萎靡(languishing)。

Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield. And it might be the dominant emotion of 2021.

萎靡是一种停滞和空虚的感觉。就像浑浑噩噩地度过每一天，透过雾蒙蒙的挡风玻璃看着自己的生活。这可能是2021年的主导情绪。

As scientists and physicians work to treat and cure the physical symptoms of long-haul Covid, many people are struggling with the emotional long-haul of the pandemic. It hit some of us unprepared as the intense fear and grief of last year faded.

随着科学家和医生努力治疗和治愈新冠带来的徘徊不去的身体症状，许多人正在与疫情相关的徘徊不去的情感问题做斗争。随着去年强烈的恐惧与悲伤渐渐消退，这样的情感问题令我们当中的一些人猝不及防。

In the early, uncertain days of the pandemic, it’s likely that your brain’s threat detection system — called the amygdala — was on high alert for fight-or-flight. As you learned that masks helped protect us — but package-scrubbing didn’t — you probably developed routines that eased your sense of dread. But the pandemic has dragged on, and the acute state of anguish has given way to a chronic condition of languish.

在疫情早期那些不确定的日子里，很可能你大脑的威胁检测系统——它被称为杏仁体——处于战斗或逃跑的高度戒备状态。当你了解到口罩有助于保护我们——但擦拭物品外包装并不能——你可能会养成一些习惯来缓解恐惧感。但这场疫情拖了很长时间，严重的痛苦状态让位于慢性的萎靡状态。

In psychology, we think about mental health on a spectrum from depression to flourishing. Flourishing is the peak of well-being: You have a strong sense of meaning, mastery and mattering to others. Depression is the valley of ill-being: You feel despondent, drained and worthless.

在心理学中，我们认为心理健康是一个从抑郁到心盛(flourishing)的光谱。心盛是幸福的顶峰：你有一种强烈的意义感和掌控感，觉得自己对他人非常重要。而抑郁是病态的谷底：你感到沮丧、精疲力竭、毫无价值。

Languishing is the neglected middle child of mental health. It’s the void between depression and flourishing — the absence of well-being. You don’t have symptoms of mental illness, but you’re not the picture of mental health either. You’re not functioning at full capacity. Languishing dulls your motivation, disrupts your ability to focus, and triples the odds that you’ll cut back on work. It appears to be more common than major depression — and in some ways it may be a bigger risk factor for mental illness.

萎靡感是心理健康中被忽视的中间地带。它介于抑郁和蓬勃之间的空隙——缺乏幸福感。你没有精神疾病的症状，但你也不是精神健康时该有的样子。你的能力没有完全发挥出来。萎靡会削弱你的动力，扰乱你的注意力，并使你减少工作的可能增加两倍。它似乎比重度抑郁症更常见——在某些方面，它可能是精神疾病更大的风险因素。

The term was coined by a sociologist named Corey Keyes, who was struck that many people who weren’t depressed also weren’t thriving. His research suggests that the people most likely to experience major depression and anxiety disorders in the next decade aren’t the ones with those symptoms today. They’re the people who are languishing right now. And new evidence from pandemic health care workers in Italy shows that those who were languishing in the spring of 2020 were three times more likely than their peers to be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

这个术语是由社会学家科里·凯斯创造的，他惊讶地发现，许多没有抑郁的人也没有心盛。他的研究表明，在未来十年中，最有可能患上严重抑郁和焦虑障碍的并不是现在表现出这些症状的人，而是现在那些正在苦苦挣扎的人。来自意大利疫情卫生保健工作者的新证据表明，2020年春季处于萎靡状态的人被诊断为创伤后应激障碍的可能性是同龄人的三倍。

Part of the danger is that when you’re languishing, you might not notice the dulling of delight or the dwindling of drive. You don’t catch yourself slipping slowly into solitude; you’re indifferent to your indifference. When you can’t see your own suffering, you don’t seek help or even do much to help yourself.

处于萎靡状态的部分危险在于，人们可能不会注意到对愉悦的迟钝或驱动力的减弱，不会发现自己正在慢慢陷入孤独；人们对自己的心灰意冷无动于衷。人们看不到自己的痛苦时，就不会寻求帮助，甚至不会采取多少自助行动。

Even if you’re not languishing, you probably know people who are. Understanding it better can help you help them.

即使你没有感到萎靡，你可能也认识有这种感觉的人。更好地了解萎靡能有助于你帮助他们。

A name for what you’re feeling

人们正在感受的东西有个名字

Psychologists find that one of the best strategies for managing emotions is to name them. Last spring, during the acute anguish of the pandemic, the most viral post in the history of Harvard Business Review was an article describing our collective discomfort as grief. Along with the loss of loved ones, we were mourning the loss of normalcy. “Grief.” It gave us a familiar vocabulary to understand what had felt like an unfamiliar experience. Although we hadn’t faced a pandemic before, most of us had faced loss. It helped us crystallize lessons from our own past resilience — and gain confidence in our ability to face present adversity.

心理学家发现，应对情绪问题的最佳策略之一是为其命名。2020年春，在疫情的剧烈痛苦中，《哈佛商业评论》有史以来发表的最热门文章是一篇将我们共同的不适感描述为悲伤的文章。在哀悼失去所爱之人的同时，我们也在哀悼常态的丧失。“悲伤”这个词给了我们一个熟悉的词汇，让我们理解那些不曾熟悉的经历。虽然我们以前没有经历过大流行，但我们中的大多数人经历过失去。这个词帮助我们把自己过去快速恢复的能力凝结为经验，让我们对自己有能力面对当前的逆境获得信心。

We still have a lot to learn about what causes languishing and how to cure it, but naming it might be a first step. It could help to defog our vision, giving us a clearer window into what had been a blurry experience. It could remind us that we aren’t alone: languishing is common and shared.

让人萎靡的原因以及如何将其治愈，我们仍有很多要学的东西，但给它起个名字可能是第一步。起名字有助于我们消除认识上的模糊，让我们对了解一种曾经模糊的经历有一个更清晰的窗口。起名字能提醒我们，不只是你一人有这种感觉，萎靡是一种常见的、很多人都有的感觉。

And it could give us a socially acceptable response to “How are you?”

这个名字还让我们对别人问起“你好吗”时，有一个可被社会接受的回答。

Instead of saying “Great!” or “Fine,” imagine if we answered, “Honestly, I’m languishing.” It would be a refreshing foil for toxic positivity — that quintessentially American pressure to be upbeat at all times.

与其回答“很好”或“还好”，想像一下如果我们回答“老实说，我有点萎靡”会怎样吧。这会给有毒的乐观以一种令人耳目一新的陪衬，任何时候都要保持乐观是一种典型的美式压力。

When you add languishing to your lexicon, you start to notice it all around you. It shows up when you feel let down by your short afternoon walk. It’s in your kids’ voices when you ask how online school went. It’s in “The Simpsons” every time a character says, “Meh.”

词汇库里添加了“萎靡”一词后，你会开始注意到它无处不在。午后的短暂散步让你感到沮丧时，那是萎靡。在你问孩子们网课上得怎么样后，你能从他们回答的声音中听到萎靡。《辛普森一家》中的角色每次说表示没兴趣或无聊的“Meh”时，也能听到萎靡。

Last summer, the journalist Daphne K. Lee tweeted about a Chinese expression that translates to “revenge bedtime procrastination.” She described it as staying up late at night to reclaim the freedom we’ve missed during the day. I’ve started to wonder if it’s not so much retaliation against a loss of control as an act of quiet defiance against languishing. It’s a search for bliss in a bleak day, connection in a lonely week, or purpose in a perpetual pandemic.

2020年夏，记者达芙妮·李发了一个关于“报复性熬夜”的推文，这个中文说法被翻译成revenge bedtime procrastination。李把这个说法描述为夜里不睡觉，以重获我们在白天失去的自由。我开始想，这个说法与其说是对失去控制的报复，不如说是对萎靡的无声反抗。它是在阴郁的一天寻找幸福，在孤独的一周寻找联系，或在永无休止的疫情中寻找意义。

An antidote to languishing

萎靡的解药

So what can we do about it? A concept called “flow” may be an antidote to languishing. Flow is that elusive state of absorption in a meaningful challenge or a momentary bond, where your sense of time, place and self melts away. During the early days of the pandemic, the best predictor of well-being wasn’t optimism or mindfulness — it was flow. People who became more immersed in their projects managed to avoid languishing and maintained their prepandemic happiness.

我们对萎靡能做些什么呢？一个叫“心流”(flow)的概念可能是萎靡的解药。心流是沉浸在有意义的挑战或短暂联系中的一种难以解释的状态，在这种状态下，人们对时间、地点和自我的感觉会消失。在新冠病毒疫情早期，对健康存在感最好的预测不是乐观或正念，而是心流。那些更多地沉浸在他们所做之事的人设法避免了萎靡，保持了他们在疫情前的快乐感。

An early-morning word game catapults me into flow. A late-night Netflix binge sometimes does the trick too — it transports you into a story where you feel attached to the characters and concerned for their welfare.

起床后的文字游戏让我进入心流状态。把一整部电视剧在网飞上连夜看完有时也有这种效果——它把你带入一个故事，让你觉得与剧中的角色有关系，对他们的福祉感兴趣。

While finding new challenges, enjoyable experiences and meaningful work are all possible remedies to languishing, it’s hard to find flow when you can’t focus. This was a problem long before the pandemic, when people were habitually checking email 74 times a day and switching tasks every 10 minutes. In the past year, many of us also have been struggling with interruptions from kids around the house, colleagues around the world, and bosses around the clock. Meh.

虽然找到新挑战、令人愉快的新经历，以及有意义的工作是治疗萎靡的可能方法，但当人无法集中注意力时，就很难找到心流状态。早在新冠病毒疫情之前，这个问题就已经存在了，那时，人们曾习惯性地每天查看74次电子邮件，每10分钟就换件事做。在过去的一年里，我们中的许多人也一直受困于家里的孩子、世界各地的同事，以及老板日夜不停的打扰。对这一切也只能说Meh了。

Fragmented attention is an enemy of engagement and excellence. In a group of 100 people, only two or three will even be capable of driving and memorizing information at the same time without their performance suffering on one or both tasks. Computers may be made for parallel processing, but humans are better off serial processing.

分散的注意力是密切关系和卓越的敌人。在一百个人中，只有两三人能同时做开车和记住信息这两项任务，而不影响他们在其中一项上的表现，或让他们两项都干不好。计算机也许能做并行处理，但人类更适合于串行处理。

Give yourself some uninterrupted time

给自己一些不受打扰的时间

That means we need to set boundaries. Years ago, a Fortune 500 software company in India tested a simple policy: no interruptions Tuesday, Thursday and Friday before noon. When engineers managed the boundary themselves, 47 percent had above-average productivity. But when the company set quiet time as official policy, 65 percent achieved above-average productivity. Getting more done wasn’t just good for performance at work: We now know that the most important factor in daily joy and motivation is a sense of progress.

这意味着我们需要设定界限。几年前，一家位于印度的《财富》500强软件公司测试了一项简单的政策：每周二、周四和周五午前不打扰员工。工程师们自行管理这个界限时，他们中的47%有高于平均水平的生产率。公司将安静时间作为正式政策后，65%的员工实现了高于平均水平的生产率。完成更多的工作不仅有利于工作表现，我们现在知道，日常的快乐和动力中最重要的因素是进步感。

I don’t think there’s anything magical about Tuesday, Thursday and Friday before noon. The lesson of this simple idea is to treat uninterrupted blocks of time as treasures to guard. It clears out constant distractions and gives us the freedom to focus. We can find solace in experiences that capture our full attention.

我不认为周二、周四和周五午前的时间有什么神奇之处。这个简单想法教给我们的是，要把不被打断的时间块当作财富来守护。这样做能消除没完没了的干扰，让我们有聚精会神的自由。我们能在吸引自己全部注意力的经历中找到安慰。

Focus on a small goal

集中在一个小目标上

The pandemic was a big loss. To transcend languishing, try starting with small wins, like the tiny triumph of figuring out a whodunit or the rush of playing a seven-letter word. One of the clearest paths to flow is a just-manageable difficulty: a challenge that stretches your skills and heightens your resolve. That means carving out daily time to focus on a challenge that matters to you — an interesting project, a worthwhile goal, a meaningful conversation. Sometimes it’s a small step toward rediscovering some of the energy and enthusiasm that you’ve missed during all these months.

新冠病毒疫情是一个巨大损失。为了克服萎靡，人们可以试着从一些小收获开始，比如读一部侦探小说时找到凶手，或者玩七个字母单词填字游戏时的兴奋。通往心流的最清晰路径之一是一件刚好能应对的难事，一个让你伸展能力、增强决心的挑战。这意味着把每天的时间分配到集中精力解决一个对你来说重要的挑战上：一个有意思的项目，一个重要的目标，一次有意义的谈话。有时候，这只需要你向重新找回几个月来失去的精力和热情迈出一小步。

Languishing is not merely in our heads — it’s in our circumstances. You can’t heal a sick culture with personal bandages. We still live in a world that normalizes physical health challenges but stigmatizes mental health challenges. As we head into a new post-pandemic reality, it’s time to rethink our understanding of mental health and well-being. “Not depressed” doesn’t mean you’re not struggling. “Not burned out” doesn’t mean you’re fired up. By acknowledging that so many of us are languishing, we can start giving voice to quiet despair and lighting a path out of the void.