One of my resolutions this New Year is to popularize the term “thick presence.” It sounds lurid, but it’s not.
我的新年决心之一就是宣传“亲密共处”这个理念。听起来有些耸人听闻，但事实上并非如此。
The phrase isn’t mine—it belongs to Tim Leberecht, author of the soon-to-be released The Business Romantic. But the moment I heard it, I recognized the phenomenon. It describes an effect I’ve experienced several times but couldn’t easily define, let alone know how or why it was so gratifying.
这种说法并非我的原创——它的版权属于蒂姆o列伯莱希特。他的新书《商业罗曼蒂克》（The Business Romantic）即将出版。最初听到这种说法，我就立刻确认出这种现象。它描述的效果，我也曾经历过许多次，但不知道该如何定义，更不知道这种效果如何或者为什么令人如此满意。
Thick presence is spending several unbroken hours with someone, unplugged and untethered to phones. For a stricter definition, imagine a daylong meeting with one other person to discuss one project—without the interference of email, phones, or other obligations.
所谓“亲密共处”就是连续几个小时与某个人在一起，不插电，远离电话。更严谨的说法是，想象与另外一个人进行一整天的会谈，讨论一个项目——没有电子邮件、电话或其他职责的干扰。
I realize this may sound dreadful. The thick presence moments I experienced over the past year went something like this: Meet client shortly after 9 a.m. Have coffee and a pastry. Sit down at a big table amid all the documents and deliverables we’ll be discussing. Chat for a long while then get to work. A few hours in, we order in lunch, stopping only to tip the delivery person and for bathroom breaks. We let the conversation wander into personal territory at times because we are not relentlessly on task—in fact, we’re being very much ourselves. What matters is that for the approximately nine hours we’re together, we are stuck with each other. Stuck in the moment. Stuck with this one item on our shared to-do list, and we can’t call it a day until it’s crossed off.
我知道这听起来可能有些可怕。我在过去一年经历过这种“亲密共处”时刻：上午刚过9点去见客户。一起喝咖啡，吃点心。坐在一张大桌子前面，桌子上摆满了我们将要讨论的所有文件和可交付成果。我们聊了一会儿，然后开始工作。几个小时之后，我们订了午餐，期间除了给送餐员小费，去了一趟洗手间，我们一直没有中断讨论。我们有时候会聊一聊私人的事情，因为我们不可能永远专注于任务——事实上，我们非常自由，非常放松。重要的是，在大约九个小时内，我们都沉浸在两个人的世界里，沉浸在当下，沉浸在我们两人都需要完成的待办事项上，直到任务完成，我们才结束了一天的工作。
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