阿里安娜?赫芬頓的睡眠革命

When I first spot Arianna Huffington, a young aide is standing beside her holding a pen flashlight so that the boss can make notes in a darkened room. Huffington is fine-tuning her speech for the Discovery Leadership Summit in Johannesburg, about sleep (good) and smartphones (not so good). Sleep is her new business. It seems quite a leap from building the Huffington Post media company, and yet there’s a pattern here. Huffington’s gift is for spotting the zeitgeist, then monetising it.

我第一眼看到阿里安娜•赫芬頓(Arianna Huffington)時(shí)，一名年輕的助理正站在她身邊舉著一只小型手電，使自己的老板在光線很暗的房間中仍然可以作筆記。赫芬頓正在修改她將在約翰內(nèi)斯堡的“發(fā)現(xiàn)領(lǐng)導(dǎo)力峰會(huì)”(Discovery Leadership Summit)上發(fā)表的演講稿，主要內(nèi)容是關(guān)于睡眠(有益)和智能手機(jī)(不那么有益)。睡眠是她開拓的新商業(yè)領(lǐng)域。這相對(duì)于打造傳媒公司《赫芬頓郵報(bào)》(The Huffington Post)而言似乎是一個(gè)很大的跳躍，但這當(dāng)中有模式可循。赫芬頓的卓越才能在于把握時(shí)代特征，并將其貨幣化。

The moment she opens her mouth, her Greek accent startles you. You’d never guess that it’s half a century since the 16-year-old raised in a small Athenian flat arrived in England. (She later upgraded to the US.) The accent, she tells the conference, “has been the bane of my existence, until one day I met Henry Kissinger and he said, ‘You can never underestimate the effect in American public life of complete and utter incomprehensibility.’”

在她開口說話的那一刻，她的希臘口音會(huì)嚇你一跳。你永遠(yuǎn)也猜不到，16歲的赫芬頓離開雅典的小公寓來到英國(guó)已經(jīng)是半個(gè)世紀(jì)以前的事。(她后來又從英國(guó)到美國(guó)。)她對(duì)參會(huì)人士說，“這個(gè)口音曾是我生活的苦惱之源，直到有一天我遇見了亨利•基辛格(Henry Kissinger)，他對(duì)我說，‘你永遠(yuǎn)不會(huì)低估完全不可理解在美國(guó)公共生活中所能產(chǎn)生的影響。’”

Yet when we sit down later — and after I have fended off her charming attempt to talk about me instead of her — Huffington explains that being Greek is a business asset. “Maybe being an outsider, I’m comfortable disrupting conventional ways of being. I don’t have any allegiance to the current way of doing things.”

但當(dāng)我們隨后一起坐下聊天——在我抵抗住了她讓我談?wù)撟约憾皇撬母挥绪攘Φ膰L試后——赫芬頓解釋稱身為希臘人其實(shí)是一種商業(yè)優(yōu)勢(shì)。“也許作為一個(gè)外來者，我對(duì)于打破常規(guī)毫無壓力。我絲毫都不固守現(xiàn)有的做事方式。”

She was perfectly placed to disrupt her first target, the media. Handily, she had money: in 1997 she amicably divorced the Texan oil billionaire Michael Huffington, after he told her he was bisexual. An author of many books, she had used her people skills to befriend half the American cultural elite. (She has been called “the most upwardly mobile Greek since Icarus”.) And she foresaw, before almost anyone else, a future in which mostly unpaid writers would create new online media brands. In 2005 she founded The Huffington Post. The friends she recruited to blog for it ranged from Nora Ephron to Norman Mailer. In 2011 AOL bought the site for $315m. Huffington reportedly netted $21m, but stayed on as editor.

對(duì)于她“擾亂”的第一個(gè)目標(biāo)——媒體——而言，她具備極其有利的條件。一個(gè)顯著優(yōu)勢(shì)是，她很有錢：1997年，她與德克薩斯石油業(yè)億萬富翁邁克爾•赫芬頓(Michael Huffington)友好離婚，因?yàn)榇巳藢?duì)她聲稱自己是雙性戀。作為一名寫過很多書的作者，她運(yùn)用自己的人際交往能力與半個(gè)美國(guó)文化圈的精英們交上了朋友。(她曾被稱為“自伊卡洛斯(Icarus)之后最善于向上流動(dòng)的希臘人”。)而她比幾乎所有人都更早地預(yù)見到，未來大多沒有報(bào)酬的寫手們能夠創(chuàng)造出新的在線傳媒品牌。2005年她創(chuàng)立了《赫芬頓郵報(bào)》。她招攬來為其撰寫博客的朋友包括諾拉•埃夫龍(Nora Ephron)和諾曼•梅勒(Norman Mailer)。2011年美國(guó)在線(AOL)以3.15億美元的價(jià)格收購了該網(wǎng)站。據(jù)稱赫芬頓凈賺2100萬美元，并留任編輯職務(wù)。

When Donald Trump began running for president, the Huff Post initially covered his campaign only in the entertainment section. Later it appended an editor’s note to every article about Trump, calling him “a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther”. But when I ask whether his victory surprised her, Huffington says no. She points me to her 2010 book, Third World America. “It’s about the fact that many parts of America have become third world. They are the people who voted for Trump.”

當(dāng)唐納德•特朗普(Donald Trump)開始競(jìng)選美國(guó)總統(tǒng)時(shí)，《赫芬頓郵報(bào)》最初僅在娛樂版塊報(bào)道他的競(jìng)選活動(dòng)。后來該報(bào)給每則關(guān)于特朗普的報(bào)道都附上一篇“編者按”，稱特朗普是“一個(gè)慣性撒謊者，囂張的仇外者，種族歧視者，厭惡女性者，以及出生地陰謀論者”。但當(dāng)我問到特朗普的勝利是否讓她感到驚訝時(shí)，赫芬頓表示并沒有。她向我指了指她出版于2010年的書《第三世界的美國(guó)》(Third World America)。“這本書講的是美國(guó)很多地方已經(jīng)變成第三世界的現(xiàn)實(shí)。給特朗普投票的正是這些地方的人。”

This year, possibly perceiving the pointlessness of journalism earlier than most, Huffington jumped from media to sleep. She herself had been a sleepless overachiever until 2007, when she collapsed and woke in a pool of blood from a broken cheekbone. She changed her sleeping habits, moving devices out of the bedroom and redefining bedtime as a phase of unwinding. Now she uses rituals such as hot baths and the writing of a nightly “gratitude list” to leave behind the day “with all of its problems and unfinished business”.

2016年，或許是因?yàn)樗直却蠖鄶?shù)人更早地意識(shí)到了新聞業(yè)的無意義，赫芬頓從傳媒跳到了睡眠領(lǐng)域。她自己在2007年以前一直是一個(gè)幾乎不睡覺的高成就者，直到她最后崩潰，醒來發(fā)現(xiàn)自己躺在一灘血中，顴骨骨折。她改變了自己的睡眠習(xí)慣，將電子設(shè)備從臥室中移了出去，并將睡眠時(shí)間重新定義為一個(gè)放松心情的階段?，F(xiàn)在她踐行的日常儀式包括泡熱水澡，以及每晚寫下一份“感謝清單”來放下白天的“所有問題以及未完成的事務(wù)”。

It took her a while to see that sleep was a business opportunity. In 2014 she published the book Thrive. When she went around promoting it, “I found that this [sleep] is the one thing people wanted to talk to me about more than anything else in the book.” (Huffington, unusually, can listen as well as talk.) So she wrote The Sleep Revolution and, last month, launched her “wellness company” Thrive Global. Central to its business model will be selling sleep.

她過了一段時(shí)間以后才發(fā)現(xiàn)，睡眠是一個(gè)商業(yè)機(jī)會(huì)。2014年，她出版了《茁壯成長(zhǎng)》(Thrive)一書。在四處推廣該書時(shí)，“我發(fā)現(xiàn)，睡眠是人們最想和我討論的話題，超過書中的任何其他內(nèi)容。(赫芬頓罕見地既能傾聽他人發(fā)言，也能侃侃而談。)因此她寫了《睡眠革命》(The Sleep Revolution)一書，并于近期創(chuàng)立了自己的“健康公司”Thrive Global。該公司業(yè)務(wù)模式的核心即是銷售睡眠。

I suspect this is a good idea. Most of us are tired. Charles Czeisler of Harvard Medical School estimates that average American sleep on work nights has declined over the past 50 years from eight-and-a-half hours to seven. Sleeping beside one’s smartphone, as many people now do, doesn’t help.

我猜這是一個(gè)好主意。我們中的絕大多數(shù)人都很疲憊。據(jù)哈佛大學(xué)醫(yī)學(xué)院(Harvard Medical School)的查爾斯•切斯勒(Charles Czeisler)估計(jì)，在過去的五十年間，美國(guó)人在工作日夜晚的平均睡眠時(shí)長(zhǎng)從八個(gè)半小時(shí)縮短到了七小時(shí)。睡覺時(shí)把智能手機(jī)放在身邊，就像很多人現(xiàn)在所做的那樣，無助于增進(jìn)睡眠。

The problem is arguably embodied by Trump, who claims to sleep four hours a night. Huffington says he displays classic characteristics of sleep deprivation: impulsiveness, paranoia, an inability to process information. “He needs to get more sleep,” she says, “and he needs to charge his phone away from his bedroom so that he doesn’t wake up in the middle of the night and retweet Mussolini or attack the former Miss Universe.”

這個(gè)問題無疑在特朗普身上得到了體現(xiàn)，他宣稱每晚只睡四個(gè)小時(shí)。赫芬頓稱，特朗普表現(xiàn)出了睡眠不足的典型特征：沖動(dòng)，偏執(zhí)，以及無法處理信息。“他需要更多睡眠，”赫芬頓說，“而且他需要把手機(jī)放在臥室以外的房間充電，以保證他半夜醒來不會(huì)在推特上回復(fù)墨索里尼或者攻擊前環(huán)球小姐。”

But now, adds Huffington, ever more people are realising they have a sleep problem. In an unfortunate choice of metaphor, she says: “There’s a collective awakening.” Even Goldman Sachs and McKinsey use sleep specialists.

赫芬頓補(bǔ)充稱，如今越來越多的人意識(shí)到他們有睡眠問題。她打了一個(gè)不甚恰當(dāng)?shù)谋扔鳎?ldquo;一場(chǎng)集體性的覺醒正在發(fā)生。”就連高盛(Goldman Sachs)和麥肯錫(McKinsey)都開始聘用睡眠專家。

Huffington remains in part a journalist — that’s how she sniffs out the zeitgeist — and the moment I finish interviewing her, she starts interviewing me about my sleep habits. I admit to feeling exhausted.

赫芬頓在某些方面仍然是一個(gè)記者——正是靠著這一點(diǎn)她能夠敏銳地嗅出時(shí)代趨勢(shì)——在我快要結(jié)束采訪的時(shí)候，她開始采訪我的睡眠習(xí)慣。我承認(rèn)自己感到疲憊。

Four weeks later, I can report that Huffington has changed my life. Chez Kuper, bedtime now means bedtime: a phase of leaving the day behind. I cannot bring myself to write a “gratitude list” but I have stopped doing work-related reading in bed and no longer sleep beside my smartphone. And I do feel slightly less exhausted. I may go down in history as an early convert.

四個(gè)星期以后，我發(fā)現(xiàn)赫芬頓已經(jīng)改變了我的生活。在庫柏家，現(xiàn)在睡覺時(shí)間就意味著睡覺時(shí)間：一個(gè)放下白天紛擾的階段。我自己做不到寫“感謝清單”，但我已經(jīng)停止了在床上閱讀與工作有關(guān)的材料，并且睡覺時(shí)不再把智能手機(jī)放在身邊。如今我確實(shí)感到?jīng)]有那么疲憊了。我或許會(huì)作為一個(gè)早期皈依者被載入史冊(cè)。