The Devil Is in Your Snooze Button1

By Casey N. Cep

I feel like Faustus2. Faustus: 浮士德，欧洲中世纪传说中的一位著名人物，为了追求知识和权力，向魔鬼出卖自己的灵魂。许多文学、音乐、歌剧和电影都以这个故事为蓝本加以改编。本文中指的是德国文豪歌德的文学作品《浮士德》。在歌德的改编中，浮士德博士为了寻求生命的意义，在魔鬼梅菲斯托费勒斯的引诱下，以自己的灵魂换得它的帮助。在浮士德生命的最后时刻，他领悟到了人生的目的是为了生活和自由战斗。下一句提到的Mephistopheles即是魔鬼梅菲斯托费勒斯。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: 协议，讨价还价；strike: 达成（协议或合同等）。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. 恶魔给我开出每张九分钟的小小延时券，而我每天早上都乐于领上三四份。extension: 延长的时间，放宽的期限；installment: 分期付款，分期清偿。

Then Mephistopheles enforces7. enforce: 强制执行，使生效。the bargain. I stumble8. stumble: 蹒跚，东倒西歪地走。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: 悠闲，安逸；bagel: 百吉圈，一种面包类食品，是西方常见的一种主食；brew:（以冲泡、煮沸等方法）调制饮料，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. 有时我会好奇，想知道我的邻居们究竟是怎么看我的：一大清早，闹铃声此起彼伏，没完没了，响一次怎么都不够，至少得重复三四次。chorus: 合唱；chime: （时钟等的）报时音乐，钟乐。

闹钟响了，按掉，再睡一会儿——这似乎成了我们每个清晨的习惯性动作，有时非得重复个三五次才能起床。小小的按钮为什么会有这么大魔力？它将我们拽入两难境地：我们既想重做美梦，又想爬起床来享受美丽清晨。通常情况是，我们会处于两者之间的混沌状态，失去了好睡眠，又失去了好精力。面对“枕边恶魔”，我们该如何是好？

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: （公鸡）啼叫的，喔喔啼的；rooster:公鸡，雄鸡。When water clocks first appeared centuries ago in Egypt, they were modified12. modify: 改造，改装。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.人们在容器的某一特定刻度上安装了特殊装置；容器中会流出水或有水流入容器中。bells and whistles: 产品的特别零件，功能元件；adjust: 校准，调整。These noisemakers sounded whenever the water rose or fell to the appropriate level, providing a reliable alarm for keeping time.14. 随着水流不断倾注到容器中或水不断流出容器，一旦水面上升或下降到某一水平，这一特殊装置就会发出声响，使其成为一种可靠的计时工具。reliable: 可靠的，可信赖的。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: 迹象，征兆；Plato: 柏拉图（约公元前427年—前347年），著名古希腊哲学家，创办了著名的“学院”（Academy）。柏拉图是苏格拉底的学生，也是亚里士多德的老师，他们三人被广泛认为是西方哲学的奠基者，史称“西方三圣贤”；organ: 风琴，管风琴。

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: 钟表学，钟表制造术；entangle with:与……牵连，与……紧密联系；industry: 工业。Alarms came in the form of town clocks,factory whistles, and neighborhood knocker-uppers17. knocker-upper: 在约定时间挨户叫人起床者。. 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: 昏昏欲睡地度过时间，糊里糊涂地消磨时光。. Even when Seth Thomas patented a small mechanical alarm clock in 1876, there was still no snooze function.19. Seth Thomas: 塞斯·托马斯（1785—1859），美国钟表匠，是大规模制造钟表的先驱；patent: 取得……的专利。

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: 发布，发行；equipped with: 装备着……，有……的配置；control bar: 控制栏，控制条。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: 推测，猜测；constrain: 约束，束缚；gear: 齿轮，装置；double-digit: 两位数的；dose: 一剂，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. 令人惊奇的是，如今这么多可供用户自定义的现代闹钟，从广播电台、自选歌曲和铃音到自己录制的语音等，我们还是无法自定义多睡这一会儿的间隔时间，标准还是九分钟。a multitude of: 大批的，众多的。

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.“半梦半醒”这个宣传语可比“再睡一会”贴切多了，因为你每次多赖床的那一小会儿与其说是在睡觉还不如说是半梦半醒—— 一种可怜、迷糊、受折磨的醒着的状态。interval:（时间、空间上的）间隔，间距；hazy: 朦胧的，模糊的；haunted: 焦虑不安的，受到折磨的。at a time. Not only do we delay the start of our days, but we compromise24. compromise: 危及，损害。the very sleep we are trying to steal. The healthy, continuous sleep cycles we need are thoroughly disrupted by the snooze.25. thoroughly: 彻底地，完全地；disrupt: 使中断，破坏……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: 肾上腺素，会引起兴奋感，使人激动；hormone: 荷尔蒙，激素；alert: 使警觉，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: 引诱，诱惑；erase: 使无用，使无效；surge: 猛增，急剧上升。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（某种局面、行动等）；fit: （活动、行为等的）一阵。

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，被剥夺睡眠的；tap: 轻拍，轻击。Like any addiction30. addiction: 瘾，上瘾。, 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: 摇摇晃晃的，头昏眼花的。and drowsier, taking hours instead of minutes to actually, truly awaken.

So how are we to resist the wiles32. wile: 诡计，奸计。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. 如果说抗烟战役赢得胜利的部分原因是，说服吸烟者相信每抽一支烟他们就会失去11分钟的生命，那么若能说服人们，他们每天早上每一次按“再睡一会儿”按钮他们就会失去9、18、27，甚至36分钟的睡眠时间，那么也许抗“再睡一会”战役也能赢得胜利。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. 与其跟浮士德一样每天早上与“枕边恶魔”讨价还价，还不如在第一个闹铃30或40分钟后再设一个闹铃。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.