I’ve been a psychology professor since 2012. In the past six years, I’ve witnessed students of all ages procrastinate on papers, skip presentation days, miss assignments, and let due dates fly by. I’ve seen promising prospective grad students fail to get applications in on time; I’ve watched PhD candidates take months or years revising a single dissertation draft; I once had a student who enrolled in the same class of mine two semesters in a row, and never turned in anything either time.

我从 2012 年开始担任心理学教授。在最近六年中，我见识了各种年龄段的学生在论文上拖拖拉拉，逃避演讲，错过作业，甚至无视截止日期。有些前途光明的研究生候选人没能按时递交申请；还有些博士生花了几个月甚至几年来修改一篇论文草稿。我还遇到过一个学生连续两个学期选了我的同一门课，每次都没交过任何作业。

I don’t think laziness was ever at fault.

我从来不认为这是因为懒惰。

Ever.

绝对不是。

In fact, I don’t believe that laziness exists.

事实上，我认为懒惰是不存在的。

I’m a social psychologist, so I’m interested primarily in the situational and contextual factors that drive human behavior. When you’re seeking to predict or explain a person’s actions, looking at the social norms, and the person’s context, is usually a pretty safe bet. Situational constraints typically predict behavior far better than personality, intelligence, or other individual-level traits.

作为社会心理学家，我主要研究那些驱使人类行为的情境和环境因素。当你想要预测或解释一个人的行为时，观察他们所处的社会规范和环境是一个不错的选择。情境因素往往比个性、智力或其他个人特质更能有效地预测行为。

So when I see a student failing to complete assignments, missing deadlines, or not delivering results in other aspects of their life, I’m moved to ask: what are the situational factors holding this student back? What needs are currently not being met? And, when it comes to behavioral “laziness,” I’m especially moved to ask: what are the barriers to action that I can’t see?

每当我看到学生不完成作业，错过截止日期，或在其它方面没有成绩时，我总会想：究竟是哪些情境因素在拖他的后腿？他目前有什么需求没有被满足？特别是当我看到他们表现出“懒惰”的行为时，我非常想知道：有哪些我没发现的阻碍他们行动的因素呢？

There are always barriers. Recognizing those barriers— and viewing them as legitimate — is often the first step to breaking “lazy” behavior patterns.

我们总会遇到各种障碍。承认这些障碍的存在，并且认为这些障碍是合理的，通常是克服“慵懒”行为习惯的第一步。

It’s really helpful to respond to a person’s ineffective behavior with curiosity rather than judgment. I learned this from a friend of mine, the writer and activist Kimberly Longhofer (who publishes under the name Mik Everett). Kim is passionate about the acceptance and accommodation of disabled people and homeless people. Their writing about both subjects is some of the most illuminating, bias-busting work I’ve ever encountered. Part of that is because Kim is brilliant, but it’s also because at various points in their life, Kim has been both disabled and homeless.

以好奇心而非批判来应对他人的无效行为确实非常有帮助。 这一点我从我的朋友，作家和活动家 Kimberly Longhofer 那里学到。Kim 对接纳和帮助残疾人和无家可归者充满热情。她在这两个方面的作品极具启发性，打破了许多偏见。这不仅因为 Kim 才华横溢，更因为她在人生的不同阶段亲身经历过残疾和无家可归。

Kim is the person who taught me that judging a homeless person for wanting to buy alcohol or cigarettes is utter folly. When you’re homeless, the nights are cold, the world is unfriendly, and everything is painfully uncomfortable. Whether you’re sleeping under a bridge, in a tent, or at a shelter, it’s hard to rest easy. You are likely to have injuries or chronic conditions that bother you persistently, and little access to medical care to deal with it. You probably don’t have much healthy food.

Kim 教会了我，不应该评判无家可归者想买酒或香烟的行为，这是种完全错误的看法。无家可归者的夜晚是寒冷的，世界对他们不友好，一切都让他们感到痛苦、不适。无论是睡在桥下、帐篷里，还是庇护所，都很难安稳地休息。他们可能还会有持续的伤痛或慢性疾病困扰，而却几乎得不到医疗帮助，也很难有足够的健康食物。

In that chronically uncomfortable, over-stimulating context, needing a drink or some cigarettes makes fucking sense. As Kim explained to me, if you’re laying out in the freezing cold, drinking some alcohol may be the only way to warm up and get to sleep. If you’re under-nourished, a few smokes may be the only thing that kills the hunger pangs. And if you’re dealing with all this while also fighting an addiction, then yes, sometimes you just need to score whatever will make the withdrawal symptoms go away, so you can survive.

在长期的不适和过度刺激的环境中，想要一杯酒或几支烟是可以理解的。正如 Kim 所说，如果你在严寒中躺着，喝点酒或许是唯一的取暖和入睡方式。如果你营养不良，抽几支烟可能是唯一能减轻饥饿感的方法。而如果你还在与成瘾作斗争，那么有时候你确实需要任何能缓解戒断反应的东西来生存。

Few people who haven’t been homeless think this way. They want to moralize the decisions of poor people, perhaps to comfort themselves about the injustices of the world. For many, it’s easier to think homeless people are, in part, responsible for their suffering than it is to acknowledge the situational factors.

很少有没经历过无家可归的人能这样思考。他们喜欢对贫穷者的选择进行道德评判，可能是为了解自己对世界不公的内疚。对许多人来说，比起承认环境因素，更容易认为无家可归者在一定程度上要为自己的困境负责。

And when you don’t fully understand a person’s context — what it feels like to be them every day, all the small annoyances and major traumas that define their life — it’s easy to impose abstract, rigid expectations on a person’s behavior. All homeless people should put down the bottle and get to work. Never mind that most of them have mental health symptoms and physical ailments, and are fighting constantly to be recognized as human. Never mind that they are unable to get a good night’s rest or a nourishing meal for weeks or months on end. Never mind that even in my comfortable, easy life, I can’t go a few days without craving a drink or making an irresponsible purchase. They have to do better.

当你不了解一个人的背景时，就是他们每天的真实感受、经历的各种烦恼和重大创伤，很容易对他们的行为提出不切实际且死板的要求。 比如说，你可能会认为所有无家可归的人都应该戒酒并去工作，而无视他们大多数人有心理问题和体质虚弱的问题，并且不断努力争取被视作有尊严的人。你也许忽略了他们好几周甚至几个月都无法好好睡觉或吃顿营养餐的事实。就连我在舒适安逸的生活中几天不喝酒或不随便购物都觉得难受，可是却要求他们表现得更好。

But they’re already doing the best they can. I’ve known homeless people who worked full-time jobs, and who devoted themselves to the care of other people in their communities. A lot of homeless people have to navigate bureaucracies constantly, interfacing with social workers, case workers, police officers, shelter staff, Medicaid staff, and a slew of charities both well-meaning and condescending. It’s a lot of fucking work to be homeless. And when a homeless or poor person runs out of steam and makes a “bad decision,” there’s a damn good reason for it.

尽管他们已经在尽力了。我认识一些无家可归的人，尽管如此，他们仍然努力工作，并在社区中帮助他人。许多无家可归者必须不停地应付各种官僚程序，包括与社会工作者、个案管理人、警察、庇护所员工、医疗补助人员以及大量善意但有时显得居高临下的慈善机构交涉，无家可归的生活需要付出极大的努力。当无家可归者或贫困者筋疲力尽，做出“错误决定”时，往往是事出有因。

If a person’s behavior doesn’t make sense to you, it is because you are missing a part of their context. It’s that simple. I’m so grateful to Kim and their writing for making me aware of this fact. No psychology class, at any level, taught me that. But now that it is a lens that I have, I find myself applying it to all kinds of behaviors that are mistaken for signs of moral failure — and I’ve yet to find one that can’t be explained and empathized with.

如果你无法理解一个人的行为，这是因为你不了解他们的背景，就是这么简单。我非常感谢 Kim 和他们的写作让我明白了这一点。没有任何心理学课程，无论是哪个层次，都教会我这一点。但现在，我已经掌握了这一视角，我发现自己在各种被误解为道德失败的行为中应用这个视角，至今为止，我没有发现一种行为是无法通过这个视角来解释并产生共情的。

Let’s look at a sign of academic “laziness” that I believe is anything but: procrastination.

我认为，拖延并不是学术“懒惰”的真正表现，让我们来看看为什么。

People love to blame procrastinators for their behavior. Putting off work sure looks lazy, to an untrained eye. Even the people who are actively doing the procrastinating can mistake their behavior for laziness. You’re supposed to be doing something, and you’re not doing it — that’s a moral failure right? That means you’re weak-willed, unmotivated, and lazy, doesn’t it?

人们总是喜欢责怪拖延行为。在外行人看来，拖延工作确实显得很懒散，甚至那些正在拖延的人也可能误认为自己在偷懒。你本该做点什么，却没有做，这是不是一种道德上的错误？这是不是意味着你意志不坚定、缺乏动力，甚至懒惰？

For decades, psychological research has been able to explain procrastination as a functioning problem, not a consequence of laziness. When a person fails to begin a project that they care about, it’s typically due to either a) anxiety about their attempts not being “good enough” or b) confusion about what the first steps of the task are. Not laziness. In fact, procrastination is more likely when the task is meaningful and the individual cares about doing it well.

心理学研究多年来已经证明，拖延症是功能性问题，而非懒惰的结果。当一个人无法开始他们关心的项目时，通常是因为他们担心做得不够完美或不知道从哪里着手。因此，这并不是懒惰的表现。事实上，当任务具有重要意义并且个人非常在意做好的时候，更容易产生拖延症。

When you’re paralyzed with fear of failure, or you don’t even know how to begin a massive, complicated undertaking, it’s damn hard to get shit done. It has nothing to do with desire, motivation, or moral upstandingness. Procastinators can will themselves to work for hours; they can sit in front of a blank word document, doing nothing else, and torture themselves; they can pile on the guilt again and again — none of it makes initiating the task any easier. In fact, their desire to get the damn thing done may worsen their stress and make starting the task harder.

当你因为害怕失败而感到瘫痪，或者面对一个庞大复杂的任务甚至不知道从何开始时，要完成事情真的非常难。这与愿望、动机或道德无关。拖延者可以强迫自己工作数小时；他们可能会坐在空白文档前什么也不做，自我折磨；他们会一再增加自己的愧疚感，但这些都不会让他们开始任务更容易。事实上，越想完成任务，可能压力越大，导致任务开始更加艰难。

The solution, instead, is to look for what is holding the procrastinator back. If anxiety is the major barrier, the procrastinator actually needs to walk away from the computer/book/word document and engage in a relaxing activity. Being branded “lazy” by other people is likely to lead to the exact opposite behavior.

真正的解决方法应该是找出拖延者被什么困住了。如果焦虑是主要原因，拖延者就应该暂时远离电脑、书本或文档，去做一些能够放松身心的事情。而如果被别人说成“懒惰”，反而可能会让他们的行为变得更加拖延。

Often, though, the barrier is that procrastinators have executive functioning challenges — they struggle to divide a large responsibility into a series of discrete, specific, and ordered tasks. Here’s an example of executive functioning in action: I completed my dissertation (from proposal to data collection to final defense) in a little over a year. I was able to write my dissertation pretty easily and quickly because I knew that I had to a) compile research on the topic, b) outline the paper, c) schedule regular writing periods, and d) chip away at the paper, section by section, day by day, according to a schedule I had pre-determined.

然而，很多时候，拖延症患者面临的障碍是执行功能方面的挑战，他们难以将一项重大责任细化为一系列具体、明确且有序的任务。下面是一个执行功能的实际例子：我在一年多的时间里完成了我的论文，从提案、数据收集到最终答辩。我之所以能相对轻松快速地完成论文，是因为我清楚要完成下列步骤：a）搜集相关研究资料，b）撰写论文大纲，c）安排定期写作时间，d）按照预先设定的时间表，一步步、逐日完成各部分内容。

Nobody had to teach me to slice up tasks like that. And nobody had to force me to adhere to my schedule. Accomplishing tasks like this is consistent with how my analytical, Autistic, hyper-focused brain works. Most people don’t have that ease. They need an external structure to keep them writing — regular writing group meetings with friends, for example — and deadlines set by someone else. When faced with a major, massive project, most people want advice for how to divide it into smaller tasks, and a timeline for completion. In order to track progress, most people require organizational tools, such as a to-do list, calendar, datebook, or syllabus.

我天生就知道如何拆分任务，也不会被迫去遵循我的日程安排。因为这种处理任务的方式完全契合我那种分析性、自闭症特质和高度集中的思维模式。而大多数人则不是这样，他们需要一些外部的结构来保持写作的进度，比如定期参加的写作小组会议或者别人给设定的 Deadline。当面对一个庞大的项目时，大多数人更需要一些建议来把它分成小任务，同时制定一个完成的时间表。此外，为了跟踪进展，大多数人还需要一些组织工具，比如待办事项列表、日历、记事本或课程大纲。

Needing or benefiting from such things doesn’t make a person lazy. It just means they have needs. The more we embrace that, the more we can help people thrive.

需要或依赖这些东西并不表示一个人懒惰，只是说明他们有这样的需求。我们越能接纳这一点，就越能帮助人们更好地发展。

I had a student who was skipping class. Sometimes I’d see her lingering near the building, right before class was about to start, looking tired. Class would start, and she wouldn’t show up. When she was present in class, she was a bit withdrawn; she sat in the back of the room, eyes down, energy low. She contributed during small group work, but never talked during larger class discussions.

我有一个学生总是逃课。有时我会在快上课的时候看到她在教学楼附近徘徊，看起来很疲惫。上课开始了，她却没出现。当她偶尔来上课时，她总是显得有些退缩；她坐在教室的最后面，低着头，一副无精打采的样子。在做小组作业时她会参与，但从不在大课讨论中发言。

A lot of my colleagues would look at this student and think she was lazy, disorganized, or apathetic. I know this because I’ve heard how they talk about under-performing students. There’s often rage and resentment in their words and tone — why won’t this student take my class seriously? Why won’t they make me feel important, interesting, smart?

我有很多同事看到这个学生，都会觉得她懒惰、缺乏组织性或漠不关心。我之所以知道这一点，是因为我听过他们谈论那些表现不佳的学生。他们的言辞和语调中常常带有愤怒和怨气，为什么这个学生不认真上我的课？为什么他们不让我感到重要、有趣、聪明？

But my class had a unit on mental health stigma. It’s a passion of mine, because I’m a neuroatypical psychologist. I know how unfair my field is to people like me. The class & I talked about the unfair judgments people levy against those with mental illness; how depression is interpreted as laziness, how mood swings are framed as manipulative, how people with “severe” mental illnesses are assumed incompetent or dangerous.

我的班级里有一个关于心理健康耻辱感的单元。这是我特别关心的话题，因为我是一名神经非典型的心理学家，深知这个领域对我们这些人有多么不公平。我们和学生讨论了社会对心理疾病患者的各种不公平判断；例如人们常常把抑郁症看作是懒惰，把情绪波动视为操纵行为，还认为患有“严重”心理疾病的人都是不称职或具有危险性的。

The quiet, occasionally-class-skipping student watched this discussion with keen interest. After class, as people filtered out of the room, she hung back and asked to talk to me. And then she disclosed that she had a mental illness and was actively working to treat it. She was busy with therapy and switching medications, and all the side effects that entails. Sometimes, she was not able to leave the house or sit still in a classroom for hours. She didn’t dare tell her other professors that this was why she was missing classes and late, sometimes, on assignments; they’d think she was using her illness as an excuse. But she trusted me to understand.

那个安静且偶尔逃课的学生对这场讨论表现出了极大的兴趣。下课后，大家纷纷离开教室时，她留下来找我谈话。她告诉我她有精神疾病，正在积极接受治疗，忙于心理治疗和更换药物，以及处理由此带来的各种副作用。有时，她甚至无法离开家或在教室里坐很长时间。她不敢跟其他教授讲这是她缺课和作业迟交的原因，因为害怕他们会认为她在找借口。但她相信我会理解她的情况。

And I did. And I was so, so angry that this student was made to feel responsible for her symptoms. She was balancing a full course load, a part-time job, and ongoing, serious mental health treatment. And she was capable of intuiting her needs and communicating them with others. She was a fucking badass, not a lazy fuck. I told her so.

我确实这么告诉她了，并且因此我非常愤怒。这个学生被指责要为自己的症状负责，这让我很不平。她在全力应对学业、兼职工作和长期的心理健康治疗。其实，她非常清楚自己的需求，也能有效与他人沟通。她真的是一个很棒的人，而不是一个懒虫。我对她说了这些。

She took many more classes with me after that, and I saw her slowly come out of her shell. By her Junior and Senior years, she was an active, frank contributor to class — she even decided to talk openly with her peers about her mental illness. During class discussions, she challenged me and asked excellent, probing questions. She shared tons of media and current-events examples of psychological phenomena with us. When she was having a bad day, she told me, and I let her miss class. Other professors — including ones in the psychology department — remained judgmental towards her, but in an environment where her barriers were recognized and legitimized, she thrived.

后来她和我一起上了更多的课，我看到她逐渐变得开朗了。到了高年级，她在课堂上变得活跃、坦率，甚至决心公开与同学讨论自己的心理疾病。在课堂讨论中，她会挑战我的观点，提出出色而深入的问题。她经常与我们分享很多来自媒体和时事的心理现象例子。当她心情不好时，会告诉我，然后我会允许她缺课。虽然其他教授，甚至是心理学系的教授，仍然对她有偏见，但在一个她的挑战被认可和尊重的环境中，她茁壮成长。

Over the years, at that same school, I encountered countless other students who were under-estimated because the barriers in their lives were not seen as legitimate. There was the young man with OCD who always came to class late, because his compulsions sometimes left him stuck in place for a few moments. There was the survivor of an abusive relationship, who was processing her trauma in therapy appointments right before my class each week. There was the young woman who had been assaulted by a peer — and who had to continue attending classes with that peer, while the school was investigating the case.

多年来，在那所学校，我遇到过无数因为生活中的困境未被认可而被低估的学生。例如，一个患有强迫症的年轻人总是迟到，因为他的强迫行为有时会让他停滞不前数分钟；一个从虐待关系中脱身的学生，她每周在我课前都要通过治疗应对她的心理创伤；还有一个被同学侵犯的年轻女子，在学校调查过程中，她不得不继续和那个同学一起上课。

These students all came to me willingly, and shared what was bothering them. Because I discussed mental illness, trauma, and stigma in my class, they knew I would be understanding. And with some accommodations, they blossomed academically. They gained confidence, made attempts at assignments that intimidated them, raised their grades, started considering graduate school and internships. I always found myself admiring them. When I was a college student, I was nowhere near as self-aware. I hadn’t even begun my lifelong project of learning to ask for help.

这些学生都是主动来找我的，并且向我倾诉了他们的烦恼。因为我在课堂上讨论过心理疾病、创伤和耻辱感的话题，他们知道我会理解他们。在做了一些适应性调整后，他们在学业上表现得越来越好。他们变得更加自信，敢于挑战之前让他们畏缩的作业，成绩也有所提高，并且开始考虑读研和实习的机会。我一直很佩服他们。当我还是大学生的时候，我的自我认知远没有他们那么强。我甚至还没有开始学会如何寻求帮助这项终身的学习。

Students with barriers were not always treated with such kindness by my fellow psychology professors. One colleague, in particular, was infamous for providing no make-up exams and allowing no late arrivals. No matter a student’s situation, she was unflinchingly rigid in her requirements. No barrier was insurmountable, in her mind; no limitation was acceptable. People floundered in her class. They felt shame about their sexual assault histories, their anxiety symptoms, their depressive episodes. When a student who did poorly in her classes performed well in mine, she was suspicious.

有障碍的学生并不总能得到我的心理学教授同事们的善待。特别是有一位同事，她出了名的严格，从不提供补考机会，也不允许学生迟到。无论学生有任何情况，她都毫不妥协。在她的眼中，没有任何障碍是不能克服的，也没有任何限制是可以接受的。学生们在她的课上痛苦挣扎，因自己曾遭受侵犯、患有焦虑症和抑郁感到羞愧。当一个在她课堂上表现不佳的学生在我的课堂上表现良好时，她会感到怀疑。

It’s morally repugnant to me that any educator would be so hostile to the people they are supposed to serve. It’s especially infuriating, that the person enacting this terror was a psychologist. The injustice and ignorance of it leaves me teary every time I discuss it. It’s a common attitude in many educational circles, but no student deserves to encounter it.

我对任何教育工作者对待他们应服务的对象表现出如此敌意感到道德上的反感。特别让我气愤的是，这种行为的实施者竟然是一位心理学家。每当我谈论这件事时，这种不公和无知总让我泪流满面。这种态度在很多教育圈中并不少见，但没有一个学生应当遇到这种对待。

I know, of course, that educators are not taught to reflect on what their students’ unseen barriers are. Some universities pride themselves on refusing to accommodate disabled or mentally ill students — they mistake cruelty for intellectual rigor. And, since most professors are people who succeeded academically with ease, they have trouble taking the perspective of someone with executive functioning struggles, sensory overloads, depression, self-harm histories, addictions, or eating disorders. I can see the external factors that lead to these problems. Just as I know that “lazy” behavior is not an active choice, I know that judgmental, elitist attitudes are typically borne out of situational ignorance.

我清楚地知道，教育者没有被教导去反思学生所面临的隐形障碍。有些大学以不向残障或精神病学生提供任何便利为荣，他们将残忍误以为是学术严谨。而且，大部分教授因为在学术上取得过轻松成功，无法站在那些有执行功能障碍、感官过载、抑郁、自残历史、成瘾或饮食失调的学生的角度去看问题。我能理解导致这些问题的外部因素。正如我知道，“懒惰”并不是一种主动选择，我也知道，批判性、精英主义的态度通常源自对情境的无知。

And that’s why I’m writing this piece. I’m hoping to awaken my fellow educators — of all levels — to the fact that if a student is struggling, they probably aren’t choosing to. They probably want to do well. They probably are trying. More broadly, I want all people to take a curious and empathic approach to individuals whom they initially want to judge as “lazy” or irresponsible.

这正是我写这篇文章的理由。我希望能够让各级教育工作者意识到：如果一个学生在努力学习中遇到困难，很可能不是他们的主动选择。他们可能也想取得好成绩，可能正在尽最大的努力。此外，我希望每个人在面对被贴标签为“懒惰”或“不负责任”的人时，都能抱有更多的好奇心和同理心。

If a person can’t get out of bed, something is making them exhausted. If a student isn’t writing papers, there’s some aspect of the assignment that they can’t do without help. If an employee misses deadlines constantly, something is making organization and deadline-meeting difficult. Even if a person is actively choosing to self-sabotage, there’s a reason for it — some fear they’re working through, some need not being met, a lack of self-esteem being expressed.

一个人无法起床，说明他们非常疲惫。学生不写论文，说明他们需要帮助才能完成作业。员工经常错过截止日期，说明他们在工作组织和准时完成上有困难。即使一个人选择自我破坏，也是有原因的，可能是他们在克服恐惧，满足某些未满足的需求，或者表现出自尊心的缺失。

People do not choose to fail or disappoint. No one wants to feel incapable, apathetic, or ineffective. If you look at a person’s action (or inaction) and see only laziness, you are missing key details. There is always an explanation. There are always barriers. Just because you can’t see them, or don’t view them as legitimate, doesn’t mean they’re not there. Look harder.

没有人会选择失败或让人失望。没有人愿意觉得自己无能为力、冷漠或无效。如果你看到一个人的行动（或不作为）只觉得他懒惰，那你可能忽略了重要线索。事情总有原因，总有障碍在阻拦。即使你看不到它们，或者不认同它们存在的合法性，也并不说明它们不存在。再仔细看看。

Maybe you weren’t always able to look at human behavior this way. That’s okay. Now you are. Give it a try.

或许你以前不能这样理解人类行为，但没关系，现在你有能力了。试试看吧。