How to do great work

How to do great work

by Paul Graham

If you collected lists of techniques for doing great work in a lot of different fields, what would the intersection look like? I decided to find out by making it.

如果你从许多不同领域收集做出优秀工作的技巧列表，那么这些列表的交集是什么样的？我决定亲自尝试找出答案。

Partly my goal was to create a guide that could be used by someone working in any field. But I was also curious about the shape of the intersection. And one thing this exercise shows is that it does have a definite shape; it’s not just a point labelled “work hard.”

部分原因是我想要创建一份对任何领域的工作者都有用的指南。但我也对交集的形状感到好奇。这次尝试表明，它确实有明确的形状；它不仅仅是一个标有“努力工作”的点。

The following recipe assumes you’re very ambitious.

以下步骤适用于有雄心壮志的你。

The first step is to decide what to work on. The work you choose needs to have three qualities: it has to be something you have a natural aptitude for, that you have a deep interest in, and that offers scope to do great work.

首先，你要决定从事什么工作。你选择的工作需要具备三个特性：你必须对其有天生的才能，你需要对其有深深的兴趣，同时它也要有做出伟大工作的潜力。

In practice you don’t have to worry much about the third criterion. Ambitious people are if anything already too conservative about it. So all you need to do is find something you have an aptitude for and great interest in. [1]

在实践中，你并不需要过分担忧第三个标准。雄心壮志的人恰恰在这方面过于保守。所以，你需要做的只是找到你既有才能，又极度感兴趣的事情。[1]

That sounds straightforward, but it’s often quite difficult. When you’re young you don’t know what you’re good at or what different kinds of work are like. Some kinds of work you end up doing may not even exist yet. So while some people know what they want to do at 14, most have to figure it out.

这听起来简单，但往往非常困难。当你年轻的时候，你不知道自己擅长什么，也不知道不同类型的工作是什么样的。你最终可能做的某些工作现在可能还不存在。所以，虽然有些人在14岁的时候就知道他们想做什么，但大多数人还需要去摸索。

The way to figure out what to work on is by working. If you’re not sure what to work on, guess. But pick something and get going. You’ll probably guess wrong some of the time, but that’s fine. It’s good to know about multiple things; some of the biggest discoveries come from noticing connections between different fields.

通过工作来找出自己该做什么。如果你不确定要做什么，就猜。但一定要选择某样东西，然后开始行动。你可能有时会猜错，但那没关系。了解多种事物是有好处的；许多最大的发现来自于发现不同领域之间的联系。

Develop a habit of working on your own projects. Don’t let “work” mean something other people tell you to do. If you do manage to do great work one day, it will probably be on a project of your own. It may be within some bigger project, but you’ll be driving your part of it.

养成自己做项目的习惯。不要让“工作”仅仅成为别人告诉你该做什么。如果你真的能做出伟大的工作，它可能会在你自己的项目中出现。这个项目可能是某个更大项目的一部分，但你将驾驭自己的那部分。

What should your projects be? Whatever seems to you excitingly ambitious. As you grow older and your taste in projects evolves, exciting and important will converge. At 7 it may seem excitingly ambitious to build huge things out of Lego, then at 14 to teach yourself calculus, till at 21 you’re starting to explore unanswered questions in physics. But always preserve excitingness.

你的项目应该是什么？那就是任何对你来说令人兴奋的、有野心的事物。随着你的成长和你对项目的品味的演变，令人兴奋的事物和重要的事物会趋于一致。7岁的时候，你可能会觉得用乐高构建大型物品非常有野心，14岁的时候，你可能会自学微积分，直到21岁，你开始探索物理学中未解的问题。但无论如何，都要保持激情。

There’s a kind of excited curiosity that’s both the engine and the rudder of great work. It will not only drive you, but if you let it have its way, will also show you what to work on.

有一种激动的好奇心，既是伟大工作的动力，也是它的舵手。它不仅会驱使你，如果你让它自由发挥，也会告诉你应该做什么。

What are you excessively curious about — curious to a degree that would bore most other people? That’s what you’re looking for.

你对什么有过度的好奇心——到让大多数人感到厌烦的程度？这就是你要寻找的东西。

Once you’ve found something you’re excessively interested in, the next step is to learn enough about it to get you to one of the frontiers of knowledge. Knowledge expands fractally, and from a distance its edges look smooth, but once you learn enough to get close to one, they turn out to be full of gaps.

一旦你找到了你非常感兴趣的事物，下一步就是了解足够多的知识，让你能够到达知识的前沿。知识像分形一样扩张，在远处看，它的边缘看起来平滑，但一旦你学到足够多的知识接近它，你会发现它们充满了缺口。

The next step is to notice them. This takes some skill, because your brain wants to ignore such gaps in order to make a simpler model of the world. Many discoveries have come from asking questions about things that everyone else took for granted. [2]

下一步就是要注意这些缺口。这需要一些技巧，因为你的大脑希望忽略这些缺口，以便构建一个更简单的世界模型。许多发现来自于对大家都视为理所当然的事情提出疑问。[2]

If the answers seem strange, so much the better. Great work often has a tincture of strangeness. You see this from painting to math. It would be affected to try to manufacture it, but if it appears, embrace it.

如果答案看起来奇特，那就更好了。伟大的作品常常带有一种奇异的色彩。从绘画到数学，你都能看到这一点。试图人为制造这种奇异性是矫揉造作的，但如果它自然出现，就拥抱它。

Boldly chase outlier ideas, even if other people aren’t interested in them — in fact, especially if they aren’t. If you’re excited about some possibility that everyone else ignores, and you have enough expertise to say precisely what they’re all overlooking, that’s as good a bet as you’ll find. [3]

大胆地追求那些离群的想法，即使其他人对它们不感兴趣——事实上，特别是他们不感兴趣的时候。如果你对大家都忽视的某种可能性充满了兴趣，而且你有足够的专业知识来精确地指出他们都忽视了什么，那就是你能找到的最好的赌注。[3]

Four steps: choose a field, learn enough to get to the frontier, notice gaps, explore promising ones. This is how practically everyone who’s done great work has done it, from painters to physicists.

四个步骤：选择一个领域，学习足够多的知识以达到前沿，注意到缺口，探索有前景的。这就是几乎所有做出伟大工作的人都是如何做到的，无论是画家还是物理学家。

Steps two and four will require hard work. It may not be possible to prove that you have to work hard to do great things, but the empirical evidence is on the scale of the evidence for mortality. That’s why it’s essential to work on something you’re deeply interested in. Interest will drive you to work harder than mere diligence ever could.

第二步和第四步需要努力工作。虽然可能无法证明你必须努力才能做出伟大的事情，但经验证据几乎可以和死亡的必然性相提并论。这就是为什么你必须从事自己深感兴趣的事情。兴趣会驱使你比单纯的勤奋工作更努力。

The three most powerful motives are curiosity, delight, and the desire to do something impressive. Sometimes they converge, and that combination is the most powerful of all.

最强大的三个动机是好奇心、快乐和渴望做出令人印象深刻的事情。有时，它们会汇聚在一起，这种结合是最强大的。

The big prize is to discover a new fractal bud. You notice a crack in the surface of knowledge, pry it open, and there’s a whole world inside.

最大的奖励就是发现一个新的分形花蕾。你注意到知识表面的一个裂缝，撬开它，里面有一个全新的世界。

Let’s talk a little more about the complicated business of figuring out what to work on. The main reason it’s hard is that you can’t tell what most kinds of work are like except by doing them. Which means the four steps overlap: you may have to work at something for years before you know how much you like it or how good you are at it. And in the meantime you’re not doing, and thus not learning about, most other kinds of work. So in the worst case you choose late based on very incomplete information. [4]

我们来再深入讨论一下如何确定工作目标这个复杂的问题。主要的困难在于，你无法通过别的方式了解大部分工作的真实性质，只能通过实际做才能知道。这意味着四个步骤是重叠的：你可能需要在某件事上花费数年才能知道你是否喜欢它或者你在这上面是否有天赋。而与此同时，你没有在做，也就没有在学习大多数其他类型的工作。所以，在最坏的情况下，你会在信息非常不完整的情况下晚些时候做出选择。[4]

The nature of ambition exacerbates this problem. Ambition comes in two forms, one that precedes interest in the subject and one that grows out of it. Most people who do great work have a mix, and the more you have of the former, the harder it will be to decide what to do.

雄心的性质使得这个问题更加复杂。雄心有两种形式，一种是在对某个主题产生兴趣之前就有的，另一种则是从对主题的兴趣中产生的。做出伟大工作的大多数人都有这两种形式的混合，你对前一种的拥有越多，决定做什么就越难。

The educational systems in most countries pretend it’s easy. They expect you to commit to a field long before you could know what it’s really like. And as a result an ambitious person on an optimal trajectory will often read to the system as an instance of breakage.

大多数国家的教育系统假装这很简单。他们期望你在长期以前就承诺一个领域，而那时你根本无法知道它的真实面貌。因此，一个在最优路径上的有野心的人在系统中往往会被视为一种破损的例子。

It would be better if they at least admitted it — if they admitted that the system not only can’t do much to help you figure out what to work on, but is designed on the assumption that you’ll somehow magically guess as a teenager. They don’t tell you, but I will: when it comes to figuring out what to work on, you’re on your own. Some people get lucky and do guess correctly, but the rest will find themselves scrambling diagonally across tracks laid down on the assumption that everyone does.

如果他们至少承认这一点会更好——如果他们承认系统不仅无法帮助你弄清楚要做什么，而且还是在假设你会在十几岁的时候神奇地猜出来的前提下设计的。他们没有告诉你，但我会：当涉及到弄清楚要做什么时，你只能靠自己。有些人运气好，猜对了，但其他人会发现他们在一条预设的轨道上横冲直撞。

What should you do if you’re young and ambitious but don’t know what to work on? What you should not do is drift along passively, assuming the problem will solve itself. You need to take action. But there is no systematic procedure you can follow. When you read biographies of people who’ve done great work, it’s remarkable how much luck is involved. They discover what to work on as a result of a chance meeting, or by reading a book they happen to pick up. So you need to make yourself a big target for luck, and the way to do that is to be curious. Try lots of things, meet lots of people, read lots of books, ask lots of questions. [5]

如果你年轻且有雄心壮志，但不知道要做什么，你该怎么办呢？你绝对不能被动地漂流，假设问题会自己解决。你需要采取行动。但没有系统化的步骤可以遵循。当你阅读做出伟大工作的人的传记时，你会发现运气的角色是如此的重要。他们因为偶然的相遇，或者因为读到一本他们偶然拿起的书，而发现自己的工作目标。所以你需要把自己变成运气的大靶子，而做到这一点的方法就是保持好奇。尝试很多事情，认识很多人，读很多书，问很多问题。[5]

When in doubt, optimize for interestingness. Fields change as you learn more about them. What mathematicians do, for example, is very different from what you do in high school math classes. So you need to give different types of work a chance to show you what they’re like. But a field should become increasingly interesting as you learn more about it. If it doesn’t, it’s probably not for you.

当你感到疑惑时，优先选择那些有趣的事情。当你对某个领域的了解增多时，你对这个领域的看法会发生变化。例如，数学家做的事情与你在高中数学课上做的事情大相径庭。所以你需要给不同类型的工作一个展示自己性质的机会。但是，随着你对某个领域了解得越多，它应该变得越来越有趣。如果没有，那可能就不适合你。

Don’t worry if you find you’re interested in different things than other people. The stranger your tastes in interestingness, the better. Strange tastes are often strong ones, and a strong taste for work means you’ll be productive. And you’re more likely to find new things if you’re looking where few have looked before.

如果你发现你对与其他人不同的事物感兴趣，也不要担心。你的兴趣越奇特，就越好。奇特的兴趣往往是强烈的兴趣，对工作的强烈兴趣意味着你会有高效的产出。而且，如果你在少有人关注的地方寻找，你更可能找到新的东西。

One sign that you’re suited for some kind of work is when you like even the parts that other people find tedious or frightening.

你适合某种工作的一个标志是，你甚至喜欢那些其他人觉得乏味或令人恐惧的部分。

But fields aren’t people; you don’t owe them any loyalty. If in the course of working on one thing you discover another that’s more exciting, don’t be afraid to switch.

但领域不是人；你不欠它们任何忠诚。如果在做一件事的过程中，你发现了另一件更让你兴奋的事，不要害怕切换。

If you’re making something for people, make sure it’s something they actually want. The best way to do this is to make something you yourself want. Write the story you want to read; build the tool you want to use. Since your friends probably have similar interests, this will also get you your initial audience.

如果你是为人们创造东西，确保那是他们真正想要的东西。做到这一点的最好方法是创造你自己想要的东西。写你想读的故事；构建你想用的工具。因为你的朋友们可能有类似的兴趣，这也将帮助你获得你的初始受众。

This should follow from the excitingness rule. Obviously the most exciting story to write will be the one you want to read. The reason I mention this case explicitly is that so many people get it wrong. Instead of making what they want, they try to make what some imaginary, more sophisticated audience wants. And once you go down that route, you’re lost. [6]

这应该是从寻找刺激性规则中自然得出的。显然，最让人兴奋的故事将是你想读的故事。我明确提到这个例子的原因是，很多人都搞错了。他们试图创造一些他们想象中的、更加复杂的受众想要的东西，而不是他们自己想要的。一旦你走上这条路，你就迷失了。[6]

There are a lot of forces that will lead you astray when you’re trying to figure out what to work on. Pretentiousness, fashion, fear, money, politics, other people’s wishes, eminent frauds. But if you stick to what you find genuinely interesting, you’ll be proof against all of them. If you’re interested, you’re not astray.

在你试图弄清楚要做什么时，有很多因素会让你偏离轨道。矫揉造作、时尚、恐惧、金钱、政治、他人的期望、名声大噪的骗子。但是，如果你坚持做你真正感兴趣的事情，你就能抵抗所有这些。如果你有兴趣，你就不会迷失。

Following your interests may sound like a rather passive strategy, but in practice it usually means following them past all sorts of obstacles. You usually have to risk rejection and failure. So it does take a good deal of boldness.

追随你的兴趣可能听起来像是一种相当被动的策略，但实际上，它通常意味着你要跨越各种障碍去追求你的兴趣。你通常需要冒着被拒绝和失败的风险。所以，这确实需要相当大的勇气。

But while you need boldness, you don’t usually need much planning. In most cases the recipe for doing great work is simply: work hard on excitingly ambitious projects, and something good will come of it. Instead of making a plan and then executing it, you just try to preserve certain invariants.

但是，虽然你需要勇气，但你通常不需要太多的计划。在大多数情况下，做出伟大工作的秘诀就是：在令人兴奋的雄心壮志的项目上努力工作，然后会有好的结果。你只需要保持一些不变的事物，而不是制定一个计划然后去执行它。

The trouble with planning is that it only works for achievements you can describe in advance. You can win a gold medal or get rich by deciding to as a child and then tenaciously pursuing that goal, but you can’t discover natural selection that way.

计划的问题在于，它只适用于你事先可以描述的成就。你可以决定从小就去赢得金牌或变得富有，然后坚持不懈地追求这个目标，但你不能用这种方式去发现自然选择。

I think for most people who want to do great work, the right strategy is not to plan too much. At each stage do whatever seems most interesting and gives you the best options for the future. I call this approach “staying upwind.” This is how most people who’ve done great work seem to have done it.

我认为，对于大多数想要做出伟大工作的人来说，正确的策略是不要计划得太多。在每个阶段，做最有趣的事情，并为未来提供最好的选择。我称这种方法为”逆风前行”。这就是大多数做出伟大工作的人似乎是如何做到的。

Even when you’ve found something exciting to work on, working on it is not always straightforward. There will be times when some new idea makes you leap out of bed in the morning and get straight to work. But there will also be plenty of times when things aren’t like that.

即使你找到了令人兴奋的工作，但要进行这项工作并不总是那么直接。有时候，新的想法会让你早上从床上跳起来，直接开始工作。但也有很多时候，情况并非如此。

You don’t just put out your sail and get blown forward by inspiration. There are headwinds and currents and hidden shoals. So there’s a technique to working, just as there is to sailing.

你不能只是张开帆，被灵感带动前进。你会遇到逆风、海流、隐藏的暗礁。因此，工作就像航海一样，有其技巧。

For example, while you must work hard, it’s possible to work too hard, and if you do that you’ll find you get diminishing returns: fatigue will make you stupid, and eventually even damage your health. The point at which work yields diminishing returns depends on the type. Some of the hardest types you might only be able to do for four or five hours a day.

例如，尽管你必须努力工作，但过度工作也是可能的。如果你这样做，你会发现收效越来越小：疲劳会让你变得愚蠢，最终甚至可能损害你的健康。工作带来的收益递减的点取决于工作类型。对于一些最困难的类型，你可能每天只能做四五个小时。

Ideally those hours will be contiguous. To the extent you can, try to arrange your life so you have big blocks of time to work in. You’ll shy away from hard tasks if you know you might be interrupted.

理想情况下，这些小时应该是连续的。尽量安排你的生活，让你有大块的时间去工作。如果你知道你可能被打断，你会避开困难的任务。

It will probably be harder to start working than to keep working. You’ll often have to trick yourself to get over that initial threshold. Don’t worry about this; it’s the nature of work, not a flaw in your character. Work has a sort of activation energy, both per day and per project. And since this threshold is fake in the sense that it’s higher than the energy required to keep going, it’s ok to tell yourself a lie of corresponding magnitude to get over it.

开始工作往往比保持工作更困难。你常常需要用一些小伎俩来克服那个初始的门槛。别为此担忧；这是工作的性质，而非你性格中的缺陷。工作有一种激活能量，每天都有，每个项目也都有。既然这个门槛是虚假的，因为它高于维持工作所需的能量，那么用相应大小的谎言来使自己克服它也是可以的。

It’s usually a mistake to lie to yourself if you want to do great work, but this is one of the rare cases where it isn’t. When I’m reluctant to start work in the morning, I often trick myself by saying “I’ll just read over what I’ve got so far.” Five minutes later I’ve found something that seems mistaken or incomplete, and I’m off.

如果你想做出伟大的工作，通常对自己说谎是一个错误，但这是罕见的例外之一。当我早上不愿开始工作时，我常常通过告诉自己”我只是看一下我到目前为止做了什么”来骗自己。五分钟后，我发现了一些看似错误或不完整的东西，然后我就开始行动了。

Similar techniques work for starting new projects. It’s ok to lie to yourself about how much work a project will entail, for example. Lots of great things began with someone saying “How hard could it be?”

类似的技巧适用于开始新项目。你可以对自己说谎，低估一个项目需要多少工作，例如。很多伟大的事情都是从某人说”这有多难呢?”开始的。

This is one case where the young have an advantage. They’re more optimistic, and even though one of the sources of their optimism is ignorance, in this case ignorance can sometimes beat knowledge.

这是年轻人有优势的一种情况。他们更乐观，尽管他们乐观的一种来源是无知，但在这种情况下，无知有时可以胜过知识。

Try to finish what you start, though, even if it turns out to be more work than you expected. Finishing things is not just an exercise in tidiness or self-discipline. In many projects a lot of the best work happens in what was meant to be the final stage.

尽管如此，你应该尽量完成你开始的事情，即使它比你预期的工作要多。完成事情不仅仅是一个整洁或自律的练习。在许多项目中，最好的工作往往发生在原本应该是最后阶段的地方。

Another permissible lie is to exaggerate the importance of what you’re working on, at least in your own mind. If that helps you discover something new, it may turn out not to have been a lie after all. [7]

另一个可以允许的谎言是，在你的心中夸大你正在做的事情的重要性。如果这能帮助你发现新事物，那么最后它可能并不是一个谎言。[7]

Since there are two senses of starting work — per day and per project — there are also two forms of procrastination. Per-project procrastination is far the more dangerous. You put off starting that ambitious project from year to year because the time isn’t quite right. When you’re procrastinating in units of years, you can get a lot not done. [8]

既然开始工作有两种意义——每天的和每个项目的——那么拖延也有两种形式。项目间的拖延远比日常的更危险。你年复一年地推迟开始那个雄心勃勃的项目，因为时间还不够成熟。当你以年为单位拖延时，你可以什么都不做。

One reason per-project procrastination is so dangerous is that it usually camouflages itself as work. You’re not just sitting around doing nothing; you’re working industriously on something else. So per-project procrastination doesn’t set off the alarms that per-day procrastination does. You’re too busy to notice it.

项目间拖延如此危险的一个原因是，它通常把自己伪装成工作。你不是坐着什么都不做，而是在别的事情上努力工作。所以项目间的拖延并不会像每天的拖延那样引发警报。你太忙了，没有注意到它。

The way to beat it is to stop occasionally and ask yourself: Am I working on what I most want to work on?” When you’re young it’s ok if the answer is sometimes no, but this gets increasingly dangerous as you get older. [9]

打败它的方法是偶尔停下来问自己：“我正在做我最想做的事情吗？”当你年轻的时候，答案有时候是“不”，这还可以接受，但随着你年纪越来越大，这越来越危险。[9]

Great work usually entails spending what would seem to most people an unreasonable amount of time on a problem. You can’t think of this time as a cost, or it will seem too high. You have to find the work sufficiently engaging as it’s happening.

优秀的工作通常需要在问题上投入对大多数人来说看似不合理的大量时间。你不能将这段时间视为成本，否则会觉得代价太高。你必须找到在工作过程中足够吸引你的东西。

There may be some jobs where you have to work diligently for years at things you hate before you get to the good part, but this is not how great work happens. Great work happens by focusing consistently on something you’re genuinely interested in. When you pause to take stock, you’re surprised how far you’ve come.

也许有些工作需要你在你讨厌的事情上勤奋工作数年，然后才能得到好的结果，但这不是优秀工作的产生方式。优秀的工作源于你对真正感兴趣的事情的持续专注。当你暂停下来审视，你会惊讶地发现你已经走了很远。

The reason we’re surprised is that we underestimate the cumulative effect of work. Writing a page a day doesn’t sound like much, but if you do it every day you’ll write a book a year. That’s the key: consistency. People who do great things don’t get a lot done every day. They get something done, rather than nothing.

我们之所以感到惊讶，是因为我们低估了工作的累积效应。每天写一页书似乎不算什么，但如果你每天都这么做，你一年就可以写一本书。这就是关键：持之以恒。做伟大事情的人并不是每天都有很多成果。他们每天都有所作为，而不是无所作为。

If you do work that compounds, you’ll get exponential growth. Most people who do this do it unconsciously, but it’s worth stopping to think about. Learning, for example, is an instance of this phenomenon: the more you learn about something, the easier it is to learn more. Growing an audience is another: the more fans you have, the more new fans they’ll bring you.

如果你做的工作能够累积，你就会得到指数级的增长。大多数做到这一点的人都是无意识的，但这值得我们停下来思考。例如，学习就是这个现象的一个例子：你对某事了解得越多，学习更多的东西就越容易。吸引观众也是如此：你拥有的粉丝越多，他们带来的新粉丝就越多。

The trouble with exponential growth is that the curve feels flat in the beginning. It isn’t; it’s still a wonderful exponential curve. But we can’t grasp that intuitively, so we underrate exponential growth in its early stages.

指数增长的问题在于，曲线在开始时感觉很平。实际上并非如此，它仍然是一个美妙的指数曲线。但我们无法直观地把握这一点，所以我们在指数增长的早期阶段低估了它。

Something that grows exponentially can become so valuable that it’s worth making an extraordinary effort to get it started. But since we underrate exponential growth early on, this too is mostly done unconsciously: people push through the initial, unrewarding phase of learning something new because they know from experience that learning new things always takes an initial push, or they grow their audience one fan at a time because they have nothing better to do. If people consciously realized they could invest in exponential growth, many more would do it.

指数增长的事物可能变得非常有价值，因此值得我们付出巨大的努力去启动它。但由于我们在早期阶段低估了指数增长，所以大多数人也是无意识地去做这些事：人们在学习新事物的初期，会坚持不懈，因为他们从经验中知道，学习新事物总是需要一次初次的努力，或者他们一个一个地增加粉丝，因为他们没有更好的事情去做。如果人们有意识地认识到他们可以投资于指数增长，那么会有更多的人去做这件事。

Work doesn’t just happen when you’re trying to. There’s a kind of undirected thinking you do when walking or taking a shower or lying in bed that can be very powerful. By letting your mind wander a little, you’ll often solve problems you were unable to solve by frontal attack.

工作并非只在你刻意去做的时候才会发生。当你走路、洗澡或躺在床上时，你会进行一种无目的的思考，这种思考可能会非常有力。通过让你的思绪稍微飘散一下，你常常能解决那些你正面攻击无法解决的问题。

You have to be working hard in the normal way to benefit from this phenomenon, though. You can’t just walk around daydreaming. The daydreaming has to be interleaved with deliberate work that feeds it questions. [10]

然而，要想从这种现象中受益，你必须以正常的方式努力工作。你不能只是四处漫步白日做梦。这种白日做梦必须与喂给它问题的有意识的工作交错进行。[10]

Everyone knows to avoid distractions at work, but it’s also important to avoid them in the other half of the cycle. When you let your mind wander, it wanders to whatever you care about most at that moment. So avoid the kind of distraction that pushes your work out of the top spot, or you’ll waste this valuable type of thinking on the distraction instead. (Exception: Don’t avoid love.)

大家都知道要在工作中避免干扰，但在思考周期的另一半中避免干扰也同样重要。当你让你的思绪漫游时，它会漫游到你在那一刻最关心的事情上。所以，要避免那种能把你的工作挤出重点的干扰，否则你就会把这种有价值的思考浪费在干扰上。（例外：别避开爱情。）

Consciously cultivate your taste in the work done in your field. Until you know which is the best and what makes it so, you don’t know what you’re aiming for.

你应该有意识地培养你对你所在领域的工作的品味。在你知道哪一种是最好的，以及是什么让它成为最好之前，你不知道你在追求什么。

And that is what you’re aiming for, because if you don’t try to be the best, you won’t even be good. This observation has been made by so many people in so many different fields that it might be worth thinking about why it’s true. It could be because ambition is a phenomenon where almost all the error is in one direction — where almost all the shells that miss the target miss by falling short. Or it could be because ambition to be the best is a qualitatively different thing from ambition to be good. Or maybe being good is simply too vague a standard. Probably all three are true. [11]

而这就是你要追求的，因为如果你不试图做到最好，你甚至无法做到好。这个观察已经被很多人在很多不同的领域提出过，也许我们应该思考一下为什么这是真的。可能是因为野心是一个现象，其中几乎所有的错误都在一个方向上——几乎所有没有击中目标的炮弹都是因为偏短。或者可能是因为想要做到最好的野心与想要做好的野心在质上是两种不同的事情。或者可能是因为做得好只是一个过于模糊的标准。可能这三者都是正确的。[11]

Fortunately there’s a kind of economy of scale here. Though it might seem like you’d be taking on a heavy burden by trying to be the best, in practice you often end up net ahead. It’s exciting, and also strangely liberating. It simplifies things. In some ways it’s easier to try to be the best than to try merely to be good.

幸运的是，这里存在一种规模经济。虽然试图做到最好可能看起来像是承担了沉重的负担，但实际上你通常会最终得益。这是令人兴奋的，也是一种奇妙的解放。它简化了事情。在某些方面，试图做到最好比只是试图做好更容易。

One way to aim high is to try to make something that people will care about in a hundred years. Not because their opinions matter more than your contemporaries’, but because something that still seems good in a hundred years is more likely to be genuinely good.

有一种设定高目标的方法是试图做出一些人们在一百年后仍会关心的东西。不是因为他们的观点比你的同龄人更重要，而是因为一百年后仍然看起来不错的东西更有可能真的很好。

Don’t try to work in a distinctive style. Just try to do the best job you can; you won’t be able to help doing it in a distinctive way.

不要试图以独特的风格工作。只需要尽你所能做到最好；你将无法避免以独特的方式做事。

Style is doing things in a distinctive way without trying to. Trying to is affectation.

风格是在不刻意尝试的情况下以独特的方式做事。刻意尝试就是矫饰。

Affectation is in effect to pretend that someone other than you is doing the work. You adopt an impressive but fake persona, and while you’re pleased with the impressiveness, the fakeness is what shows in the work. [12]

矫饰实际上就是假装做这项工作的人不是你。你采用了一个令人印象深刻但假冒的人格，而你对这种印象深刻的感觉感到满意，但是假冒的部分是在工作中显现出来的。[12]

The temptation to be someone else is greatest for the young. They often feel like nobodies. But you never need to worry about that problem, because it’s self-solving if you work on sufficiently ambitious projects. If you succeed at an ambitious project, you’re not a nobody; you’re the person who did it. So just do the work and your identity will take care of itself.

年轻人最容易有成为别人的诱惑。他们常常觉得自己是无名小卒。但你永远不需要担心这个问题，因为如果你致力于足够雄心勃勃的项目，这个问题会自我解决。如果你在一个雄心勃勃的项目中取得了成功，你就不再是无名小卒；你就是完成了这件事的人。所以，只需去做这项工作，你的身份就会自然而然地显现出来。

“Avoid affectation” is a useful rule so far as it goes, but how would you express this idea positively? How would you say what to be, instead of what not to be? The best answer is earnest. If you’re earnest you avoid not just affectation but a whole set of similar vices.

“避免矫饰”是一个有用的规则，但它只能指出你不应该成为什么，那么如何以积极的方式表达这个想法呢？如何告诉你应该成为什么？最好的答案是：真诚。如果你是真诚的，你不仅会避免矫饰，还会避免一系列类似的缺点。

The core of being earnest is being intellectually honest. We’re taught as children to be honest as an unselfish virtue — as a kind of sacrifice. But in fact it’s a source of power too. To see new ideas, you need an exceptionally sharp eye for the truth. You’re trying to see more truth than others have seen so far. And how can you have a sharp eye for the truth if you’re intellectually dishonest?

真诚的核心是思想上的诚实。我们在孩提时代就被教导要诚实，这被视为一种无私的美德——一种牺牲。但实际上，诚实也是一种力量的源泉。要看到新的想法，你需要对真理有极其敏锐的观察力。你正在尝试看到别人至今尚未看到的更多真理。如果你在思想上不诚实，怎么可能对真理有敏锐的观察力呢？

One way to avoid intellectual dishonesty is to maintain a slight positive pressure in the opposite direction. Be aggressively willing to admit that you’re mistaken. Once you’ve admitted you were mistaken about something, you’re free. Till then you have to carry it. [13]

避免思想上的不诚实的一种方法是保持微弱的正向压力。要大胆地承认你的错误。一旦你承认了你的错误，你就得到了自由。否则你必须承担它。

Another more subtle component of earnestness is informality. Informality is much more important than its grammatically negative name implies. It’s not merely the absence of something. It means focusing on what matters instead of what doesn’t.

真诚的另一个更微妙的组成部分是非正式。非正式比其语法上的负面含义要重要得多。它并不仅仅是缺乏某种东西。它意味着专注于重要的事物，而非无关紧要的事物。

What formality and affectation have in common is that as well as doing the work, you’re trying to seem a certain way as you’re doing it. But any energy that goes into how you seem comes out of being good. That’s one reason nerds have an advantage in doing great work: they expend little effort on seeming anything. In fact that’s basically the definition of a nerd.

正式与矫饰有共同之处：你不仅要做工作，而且还要在做工作的同时表现出一定的样子。但是，投入到你的表现中的任何能量都会减少你的优秀。这就是书呆子在做伟大工作时有优势的一个原因：他们几乎不用努力去表现任何东西。实际上，这就是书呆子的基本定义。

Nerds have a kind of innocent boldness that’s exactly what you need in doing great work. It’s not learned; it’s preserved from childhood. So hold onto it. Be the one who puts things out there rather than the one who sits back and offers sophisticated-sounding criticisms of them. “It’s easy to criticize” is true in the most literal sense, and the route to great work is never easy.

书呆子有一种天真的大胆，这正是你在做伟大工作时所需要的。这不是后天学来的；它是从童年时代保留下来的。所以要抓住它。成为那个将事物推向前进的人，而不是坐在后面，对它们提出看似深思熟虑的批评的人。“批评很容易”在最直接的意义上是真的，而走向伟大工作的道路从来都不容易。

There may be some jobs where it’s an advantage to be cynical and pessimistic, but if you want to do great work it’s an advantage to be optimistic, even though that means you’ll risk looking like a fool sometimes. There’s an old tradition of doing the opposite. The Old Testament says it’s better to keep quiet lest you look like a fool. But that’s advice for seeming smart. If you actually want to discover new things, it’s better to take the risk of telling people your ideas.

可能有一些工作，做事态度冷漠、悲观会有优势，但是如果你想做伟大的工作，乐观的态度会是一个优势，即使这意味着有时你会显得像个傻瓜。有一种古老的传统恰恰相反。旧约圣经说，保持沉默比让自己看起来像个傻瓜要好。但那只是看起来聪明的建议。如果你真的想发现新事物，最好冒险告诉人们你的想法。

Some people are naturally earnest, and with others it takes a conscious effort. Either kind of earnestness will suffice. But I doubt it would be possible to do great work without being earnest. It’s so hard to do even if you are. You don’t have enough margin for error to accommodate the distortions introduced by being affected, intellectually dishonest, orthodox, fashionable, or cool. [14]

有些人天生就是真诚的，而其他人则需要刻意努力。这两种类型的真诚都足够了。但我怀疑如果不真诚的话，可能无法做出伟大的工作。即使你真诚，做出伟大的工作也是如此艰难。你没有足够的容错率来容忍因为矫饰、思想上的不诚实、传统、时尚或酷带来的扭曲。[14]

Great work is consistent not only with who did it, but with itself. It’s usually all of a piece. So if you face a decision in the middle of working on something, ask which choice is more consistent.

伟大的作品不仅与其作者相一致，而且与自身一致。通常，它们是一体的。因此，如果你在工作过程中面临决策，那就询问哪个选择更具有一致性。

You may have to throw things away and redo them. You won’t necessarily have to, but you have to be willing to. And that can take some effort; when there’s something you need to redo, status quo bias and laziness will combine to keep you in denial about it. To beat this ask: If I’d already made the change, would I want to revert to what I have now?

你可能需要丢掉一些东西，然后重新做。你不一定非得这样做，但你必须愿意这样做。这可能需要一些努力；当有些东西需要你重做时，现状偏见和懒惰将联手使你对此处于否认状态。要克服这一点，问自己：如果我已经做出了改变，我是否会想恢复到现在的状态？

Have the confidence to cut. Don’t keep something that doesn’t fit just because you’re proud of it, or because it cost you a lot of effort.

要有信心去删减。不要因为你为此感到自豪，或者因为它花费了你大量的努力，就保留不合适的东西。

Indeed, in some kinds of work it’s good to strip whatever you’re doing to its essence. The result will be more concentrated; you’ll understand it better; and you won’t be able to lie to yourself about whether there’s anything real there.

实际上，在某些类型的工作中，最好将你正在做的事情剥离到其本质。结果会更加集中；你会更好地理解它；并且你无法欺骗自己关于是否真的有实质内容。

Mathematical elegance may sound like a mere metaphor, drawn from the arts. That’s what I thought when I first heard the term “elegant” applied to a proof. But now I suspect it’s conceptually prior — that the main ingredient in artistic elegance is mathematical elegance. At any rate it’s a useful standard well beyond math.

数学之美可能听起来像是一个纯粹的比喻，源自艺术。当我第一次听到”优雅”这个词被用来形容一个证明时，我就是这么想的。但现在我怀疑这是概念上的优先——在艺术的优雅中，主要的成分是数学的优雅。无论如何，这是一个超越数学的有用的标准。

Elegance can be a long-term bet, though. Laborious solutions will often have more prestige in the short term. They cost a lot of effort and they’re hard to understand, both of which impress people, at least temporarily.

但优雅可能是一个长期的赌注。繁琐的解决方案往往在短期内具有更高的声望。它们花费大量的努力，而且难以理解，这两点都会让人印象深刻，至少是暂时的。

Whereas some of the very best work will seem like it took comparatively little effort, because it was in a sense already there. It didn’t have to be built, just seen. It’s a very good sign when it’s hard to say whether you’re creating something or discovering it.

相反，一些最好的工作看起来好像花费了相对较少的努力，因为在某种意义上，它们已经存在了。它们不需要被构建，只需要被看见。当你很难判断自己是在创造某样东西还是在发现它时，这是一个非常好的迹象。

When you’re doing work that could be seen as either creation or discovery, err on the side of discovery. Try thinking of yourself as a mere conduit through which the ideas take their natural shape.

当你在做可以被视为创造或发现的工作时，更偏向于发现。试着把自己想象成一个管道，让想法自然地形成。

(Strangely enough, one exception is the problem of choosing a problem to work on. This is usually seen as search, but in the best case it’s more like creating something. In the best case you create the field in the process of exploring it.)

（奇怪的是，选择要解决的问题的过程是一个例外。这通常被视为搜索，但在最好的情况下，它更像是创造。在最好的情况下，你在探索过程中创造了这个领域。）

Similarly, if you’re trying to build a powerful tool, make it gratuitously unrestrictive. A powerful tool almost by definition will be used in ways you didn’t expect, so err on the side of eliminating restrictions, even if you don’t know what the benefit will be.

同样，如果你正在试图构建一个强大的工具，使其无所不能。几乎可以定义，一个强大的工具将会以你没预期到的方式被使用，所以更倾向于消除限制，即使你不知道这会带来什么好处。

Great work will often be tool-like in the sense of being something others build on. So it’s a good sign if you’re creating ideas that others could use, or exposing questions that others could answer. The best ideas have implications in many different areas.

伟大的工作往往在某种意义上像工具，即其他人可以在其基础上构建。因此，如果你正在创造其他人可以使用的想法，或是提出其他人可以回答的问题，那就是一个好的迹象。最好的想法在许多不同的领域都有影响。

If you express your ideas in the most general form, they’ll be truer than you intended.

如果你以最通用的形式表达你的想法，它们会比你预期的更真实。

True by itself is not enough, of course. Great ideas have to be true and new. And it takes a certain amount of ability to see new ideas even once you’ve learned enough to get to one of the frontiers of knowledge.

当然，仅仅真实是不够的。伟大的想法必须是真实的，也必须是新的。即使你已经学到足够的知识，站在知识的前沿，看到新的想法也需要一定的能力。

In English we give this ability names like originality, creativity, and imagination. And it seems reasonable to give it a separate name, because it does seem to some extent a separate skill. It’s possible to have a great deal of ability in other respects — to have a great deal of what’s often called “technical ability” — and yet not have much of this.

在英文中，我们给这种能力取了如原创性、创造力和想象力等名字。给它一个独立的名字似乎是合理的，因为在某种程度上，它确实是一个独立的技能。一个人可能在其他方面有很大的能力——具有很大的”技术能力”——然而在这个方面并没有多少。

I’ve never liked the term “creative process.” It seems misleading. Originality isn’t a process, but a habit of mind. Original thinkers throw off new ideas about whatever they focus on, like an angle grinder throwing off sparks. They can’t help it.

我一直不喜欢”创造过程”这个词，它似乎有些误导。原创性不是一个过程，而是一种思维习惯。原创的思考者会对他们关注的任何事物产生新的想法，就像角磨机抛出火花一样。他们无法控制。

If the thing they’re focused on is something they don’t understand very well, these new ideas might not be good. One of the most original thinkers I know decided to focus on dating after he got divorced. He knew roughly as much about dating as the average 15 year old, and the results were spectacularly colorful. But to see originality separated from expertise like that made its nature all the more clear.

如果他们关注的事物是他们不太了解的，那么这些新的想法可能并不好。我认识的最具原创性的思考者之一在离婚后决定专注于约会。他对约会的了解大致与普通15岁的青少年一样，结果可谓是五彩斑斓。但是看到原创性与专业知识如此明显的分离，使其本质更为明显。

I don’t know if it’s possible to cultivate originality, but there are definitely ways to make the most of however much you have. For example, you’re much more likely to have original ideas when you’re working on something. Original ideas don’t come from trying to have original ideas. They come from trying to build or understand something slightly too difficult. [15]

我不知道是否可以培养原创性，但肯定有方法可以最大限度地利用你所具有的原创性。例如，当你在做某件事时，你更有可能产生原创的想法。原创的想法不是来自于试图产生原创的想法。它们来自于试图建造或理解一些稍微困难的事物。

Talking or writing about the things you’re interested in is a good way to generate new ideas. When you try to put ideas into words, a missing idea creates a sort of vacuum that draws it out of you. Indeed, there’s a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing.

谈论或写作你感兴趣的事物是产生新想法的好方法。当你试图将想法转化为语言时，缺失的想法会创建一种吸引你的真空。实际上，有一种思考只能通过写作来完成。

Changing your context can help. If you visit a new place, you’ll often find you have new ideas there. The journey itself often dislodges them. But you may not have to go far to get this benefit. Sometimes it’s enough just to go for a walk. [16]

改变你的环境可以有所帮助。如果你访问一个新的地方，你通常会发现你在那里有新的想法。旅程本身往往会激发出这些想法。但你可能不需要走得太远就可以获得这种好处。有时，只是散步就足够了。

It also helps to travel in topic space. You’ll have more new ideas if you explore lots of different topics, partly because it gives the angle grinder more surface area to work on, and partly because analogies are an especially fruitful source of new ideas.

在话题空间中旅行也有帮助。如果你探索了许多不同的话题，你会有更多的新想法，部分原因是它为角磨机提供了更多的工作面积，部分原因是类比是产生新想法的一个特别丰富的源泉。

Don’t divide your attention evenly between many topics though, or you’ll spread yourself too thin. You want to distribute it according to something more like a power law. [17] Be professionally curious about a few topics and idly curious about many more.

不过，不要在许多话题之间均匀分配你的注意力，否则你会把自己分散得太薄。你应该根据类似于幂律的原则来分配注意力。[17] 对少数几个话题保持专业的好奇心，对更多的话题保持随意的好奇心。

Curiosity and originality are closely related. Curiosity feeds originality by giving it new things to work on. But the relationship is closer than that. Curiosity is itself a kind of originality; it’s roughly to questions what originality is to answers. And since questions at their best are a big component of answers, curiosity at its best is a creative force.

好奇心和原创性密切相关。好奇心通过提供新的事物来喂养原创性。但是这种关系比这更紧密。好奇心本身就是一种原创性；它大致上是对问题的提问，正如原创性是对答案的回答。而且，由于在最好的情况下，问题是答案的一个大组成部分，所以在最好的情况下，好奇心是一种创造力。

Having new ideas is a strange game, because it usually consists of seeing things that were right under your nose. Once you’ve seen a new idea, it tends to seem obvious. Why did no one think of this before?

拥有新想法是一种奇怪的游戏，因为它通常包含了看到那些就在你鼻子下面的事物。一旦你看到一个新的想法，它往往会显得很明显。为什么以前没有人想到这个呢？

When an idea seems simultaneously novel and obvious, it’s probably a good one.

当一个想法同时显得新奇而又明显，那么它可能是一个好的想法。

Seeing something obvious sounds easy. And yet empirically having new ideas is hard. What’s the source of this apparent contradiction? It’s that seeing the new idea usually requires you to change the way you look at the world. We see the world through models that both help and constrain us. When you fix a broken model, new ideas become obvious. But noticing and fixing a broken model is hard. That’s how new ideas can be both obvious and yet hard to discover: they’re easy to see after you do something hard.

看到明显的事物听起来很容易。然而从经验上来看，有新的想法是困难的。这种明显的矛盾源于什么呢？那就是看到新的想法通常需要你改变看世界的方式。我们通过模型来看世界，这些模型既帮助我们，也限制我们。当你修正一个错误的模型时，新的想法变得明显。但是注意并修正一个错误的模型是困难的。这就是新想法既明显又难以发现的原因：在你做了一些困难的事情后，它们很容易被看到。

One way to discover broken models is to be stricter than other people. Broken models of the world leave a trail of clues where they bash against reality. Most people don’t want to see these clues. It would be an understatement to say that they’re attached to their current model; it’s what they think in; so they’ll tend to ignore the trail of clues left by its breakage, however conspicuous it may seem in retrospect.

发现错误模型的一种方式是比其他人更严格。对世界的错误模型在与现实冲突的地方会留下一串线索。大多数人不想看到这些线索。说他们依恋他们现有的模型是轻描淡写；那是他们的思考方式；所以他们倾向于忽略其破损留下的线索，无论它在回顾中看起来多么明显。

To find new ideas you have to seize on signs of breakage instead of looking away. That’s what Einstein did. He was able to see the wild implications of Maxwell’s equations not so much because he was looking for new ideas as because he was stricter.

要找到新的想法，你必须抓住破损的迹象，而不是把视线转向其他地方。这就是爱因斯坦所做的。他之所以能够看到麦克斯韦方程的狂野含义，并不是因为他在寻找新的想法，而是因为他更严格。

The other thing you need is a willingness to break rules. Paradoxical as it sounds, if you want to fix your model of the world, it helps to be the sort of person who’s comfortable breaking rules. From the point of view of the old model, which everyone including you initially shares, the new model usually breaks at least implicit rules.

你需要的另一件事是愿意打破规则。这听起来矛盾，但如果你想修正你对世界的模型，那么成为一个乐于打破规则的人会有所帮助。从旧模型的角度来看，新模型通常至少会打破一些暗含的规则。

Few understand the degree of rule-breaking required, because new ideas seem much more conservative once they succeed. They seem perfectly reasonable once you’re using the new model of the world they brought with them. But they didn’t at the time; it took the greater part of a century for the heliocentric model to be generally accepted, even among astronomers, because it felt so wrong.

一旦新想法成功，它们看起来就会更保守，所以很少有人了解到真正需要打破规则的程度。一旦你开始使用它们带来的新的世界模型，这些新想法看起来完全合理。但在那时候，它们并不是这样的；即使在天文学家中，地心说也花了大部分的世纪才被普遍接受，因为它感觉错了。

Indeed, if you think about it, a good new idea has to seem bad to most people, or someone would have already explored it. So what you’re looking for is ideas that seem crazy, but the right kind of crazy. How do you recognize these? You can’t with certainty. Often ideas that seem bad are bad. But ideas that are the right kind of crazy tend to be exciting; they’re rich in implications; whereas ideas that are merely bad tend to be depressing.

实际上，如果你仔细想想，一个好的新想法必须对大多数人来说看起来是坏的，否则有人已经探索过了。所以你在寻找的是那些看起来疯狂，但又是正确类型的疯狂的想法。你怎么才能识别这些呢？你不能肯定。通常看起来不好的想法就是不好的。但那些正确类型的疯狂的想法往往会让人兴奋；它们富含暗示；而仅仅是坏的想法往往会让人沮丧。

There are two ways to be comfortable breaking rules: to enjoy breaking them, and to be indifferent to them. I call these two cases being aggressively and passively independent-minded.

舒适地打破规则有两种方式：享受打破它们，和对它们无所谓。我把这两种情况称为积极独立思考和被动独立思考。

The aggressively independent-minded are the naughty ones. Rules don’t merely fail to stop them; breaking rules gives them additional energy. For this sort of person, delight at the sheer audacity of a project sometimes supplies enough activation energy to get it started.

积极独立思考的人是淘气的。规则不仅不能阻止他们；打破规则给他们额外的能量。对于这种人来说，对一个项目的纯粹大胆的惊喜有时候足以提供足够的激活能量来启动它。

The other way to break rules is not to care about them, or perhaps even to know they exist. This is why novices and outsiders often make new discoveries; their ignorance of a field’s assumptions acts as a source of temporary passive independent-mindedness. Aspies also seem to have a kind of immunity to conventional beliefs. Several I know say that this helps them to have new ideas.

对规则的另一种打破方式是不关心它们，甚至可能不知道它们存在。这就是为什么新手和局外人经常能做出新的发现；他们对一个领域的假设的无知暂时充当了一种被动的独立思维的源泉。亚斯伯格综合症患者似乎也对传统信念有一种免疫力。我认识的几个人说，这帮助他们有新的想法。

Strictness plus rule-breaking sounds like a strange combination. In popular culture they’re opposed. But popular culture has a broken model in this respect. It implicitly assumes that issues are trivial ones, and in trivial matters strictness and rule-breaking are opposed. But in questions that really matter, only rule-breakers can be truly strict.

严格加上打破规则听起来像是一个奇怪的组合。在流行文化中，它们是对立的。但是在这方面，流行文化有一个破碎的模型。它隐含地假设问题是微不足道的，而在微不足道的事情上，严格和打破规则是对立的。但在真正重要的问题上，只有打破规则的人才能真正严格。

An overlooked idea often doesn’t lose till the semifinals. You do see it, subconsciously, but then another part of your subconscious shoots it down because it would be too weird, too risky, too much work, too controversial. This suggests an exciting possibility: if you could turn off such filters, you could see more new ideas.

一个被忽视的想法通常不会在半决赛中输掉。你确实在潜意识中看到它，但然后你潜意识中的另一部分将其拒之门外，因为它可能太怪异、太冒险、需要太多的工作，或者太具有争议性。这暗示了一个令人兴奋的可能性：如果你能关闭这样的过滤器，你就能看到更多的新想法。

One way to do that is to ask what would be good ideas for someone else to explore. Then your subconscious won’t shoot them down to protect you.

做到这一点的一种方法是问一问什么样的想法对其他人来说是好的。然后你的潜意识就不会拒绝它们来保护你。

You could also discover overlooked ideas by working in the other direction: by starting from what’s obscuring them. Every cherished but mistaken principle is surrounded by a dead zone of valuable ideas that are unexplored because they contradict it.

你还可以通过从相反的方向出发来发现被忽视的想法：从掩盖它们的事物开始。每一个被珍视但错误的原则都被一片未被探索的有价值的想法所包围，因为它们与之相矛盾。

Religions are collections of cherished but mistaken principles. So anything that can be described either literally or metaphorically as a religion will have valuable unexplored ideas in its shadow. Copernicus and Darwin both made discoveries of this type. [18]

宗教就是一些被珍视但错误的原则的集合。所以，任何可以字面上或比喻地被描述为宗教的事物都会在它的阴影下有未被探索的有价值的想法。哥白尼和达尔文都做出了这种类型的发现。

What are people in your field religious about, in the sense of being too attached to some principle that might not be as self-evident as they think? What becomes possible if you discard it?

在你所在领域的人们对什么东西过于依赖，以至于他们可能对某些可能并不像他们认为的那样不言自明的原则过于依赖？如果你放弃它，会有什么可能性出现呢？

People show much more originality in solving problems than in deciding which problems to solve. Even the smartest can be surprisingly conservative when deciding what to work on. People who’d never dream of being fashionable in any other way get sucked into working on fashionable problems.

人们在解决问题时表现出的原创性远大于在决定解决哪些问题时。即使是最聪明的人在决定从事什么工作时也会出奇地保守。那些在其他任何方式上都不会梦想成为时尚的人会被吸引去解决时髦的问题。

One reason people are more conservative when choosing problems than solutions is that problems are bigger bets. A problem could occupy you for years, while exploring a solution might only take days. But even so I think most people are too conservative. They’re not merely responding to risk, but to fashion as well. Unfashionable problems are undervalued.

人们在选择问题时比解决问题时更保守的一个原因是，问题是更大的赌注。一个问题可能会占据你好几年的时间，而探索一个解决方案可能只需要几天。但即便如此，我认为大多数人还是过于保守。他们不仅仅是在回应风险，也在回应时尚。不时尚的问题被低估了。

One of the most interesting kinds of unfashionable problem is the problem that people think has been fully explored, but hasn’t. Great work often takes something that already exists and shows its latent potential. Durer and Watt both did this. So if you’re interested in a field that others think is tapped out, don’t let their skepticism deter you. People are often wrong about this.

最有趣的不时尚问题之一是人们认为已经被充分探索，但实际上并未如此的问题。伟大的工作经常是取出已经存在的东西，展示其潜在的潜力。杜勒和瓦特都做过这样的事。所以，如果你对别人认为已经被探索透了的领域感兴趣，不要让他们的怀疑阻止你。人们对这个问题经常是错误的。

Working on an unfashionable problem can be very pleasing. There’s no hype or hurry. Opportunists and critics are both occupied elsewhere. The existing work often has an old-school solidity. And there’s a satisfying sense of economy in cultivating ideas that would otherwise be wasted.

从事不时尚的问题可以带来极大的满足感。没有炒作，没有急促。机会主义者和批评者都在其他地方忙碌。现有的工作往往有一种老派的坚实感。并且，在培养那些否则会被浪费的想法中，有一种满足的经济感。

But the most common type of overlooked problem is not explicitly unfashionable in the sense of being out of fashion. It just doesn’t seem to matter as much as it actually does. How do you find these? By being self-indulgent — by letting your curiosity have its way, and tuning out, at least temporarily, the little voice in your head that says you should only be working on “important” problems.

但是，最常见的被忽视的问题并不是明确地不时尚，就像它们已经过时了那样。它只是似乎没有实际上那么重要。你如何发现这些呢？就是通过自我放纵——让你的好奇心自由驰骋，至少暂时地屏蔽掉你头脑中那个说你应该只工作在“重要”问题上的小声音。

You do need to work on important problems, but almost everyone is too conservative about what counts as one. And if there’s an important but overlooked problem in your neighborhood, it’s probably already on your subconscious radar screen. So try asking yourself: if you were going to take a break from “serious” work to work on something just because it would be really interesting, what would you do? The answer is probably more important than it seems.

你确实需要处理重要的问题，但几乎每个人在判断什么算作重要问题时都过于保守。而且，如果在你身边有一个重要但被忽视的问题，它可能已经在你的潜意识的雷达屏幕上了。所以试着问问自己：如果你要从“严肃”的工作中休息一下，只是因为某件事真的很有趣，你会做什么？答案可能比它看起来的更重要。

Originality in choosing problems seems to matter even more than originality in solving them. That’s what distinguishes the people who discover whole new fields. So what might seem to be merely the initial step — deciding what to work on — is in a sense the key to the whole game.

在选择问题时的独创性似乎比在解决问题时的独创性更重要。这就是区别那些发现全新领域的人的东西。所以，看起来只是最初的一步——决定要做什么——在某种意义上是整个游戏的关键。

Few grasp this. One of the biggest misconceptions about new ideas is about the ratio of question to answer in their composition. People think big ideas are answers, but often the real insight was in the question.

很少有人能理解这一点。关于新观念的最大误解之一是关于问题与答案在其组成中的比例。人们认为大的想法是答案，但往往真正的洞察力在于问题。

Part of the reason we underrate questions is the way they’re used in schools. In schools they tend to exist only briefly before being answered, like unstable particles. But a really good question can be much more than that. A really good question is a partial discovery. How do new species arise? Is the force that makes objects fall to earth the same as the one that keeps planets in their orbits? By even asking such questions you were already in excitingly novel territory.

我们低估问题的部分原因是因为它们在学校中的使用方式。在学校里，他们往往只存在一段很短的时间，然后就被回答了，就像不稳定的粒子一样。但是一个真正好的问题可以更多的东西。一个真正好的问题是部分发现。新的物种是如何产生的？使物体下落到地球的力量是否和使行星保持在它们轨道上的力量相同？即使提出这样的问题，你已经处于令人兴奋的新领域。

Unanswered questions can be uncomfortable things to carry around with you. But the more you’re carrying, the greater the chance of noticing a solution — or perhaps even more excitingly, noticing that two unanswered questions are the same.

未回答的问题可以是令人不安的事情。但是你背负的问题越多，注意到解决方案的机会就越大——或者更令人兴奋的是，注意到两个未回答的问题是相同的。

Sometimes you carry a question for a long time. Great work often comes from returning to a question you first noticed years before — in your childhood, even — and couldn’t stop thinking about. People talk a lot about the importance of keeping your youthful dreams alive, but it’s just as important to keep your youthful questions alive. [19]

有时候你会携带一个问题很长时间。伟大的作品往往来自于回归到你在几年前——甚至在你的童年时期——首次注意到的问题，并且不能停止思考。人们经常谈论保持你年轻的梦想活着的重要性，但保持你年轻的问题活着同样重要。[19]

This is one of the places where actual expertise differs most from the popular picture of it. In the popular picture, experts are certain. But actually the more puzzled you are, the better, so long as (a) the things you’re puzzled about matter, and (b) no one else understands them either.

这是实际专业知识与其流行形象最大的不同之处。在流行的形象中，专家是确定的。但实际上，你越是困惑，越好，只要（a）你困惑的事情重要，并且（b）其他人也不理解它们。

Think about what’s happening at the moment just before a new idea is discovered. Often someone with sufficient expertise is puzzled about something. Which means that originality consists partly of puzzlement — of confusion! You have to be comfortable enough with the world being full of puzzles that you’re willing to see them, but not so comfortable that you don’t want to solve them. [20]

想一想在新想法被发现的那一刻之前发生的事情。通常，具有足够专业知识的人对某事感到困惑。这意味着原创性部分在于困惑——混淆！你必须对这个世界充满谜团感到舒服，你愿意去看到它们，但又不那么舒服到你不想解决它们。[20]

It’s a great thing to be rich in unanswered questions. And this is one of those situations where the rich get richer, because the best way to acquire new questions is to try answering existing ones. Questions don’t just lead to answers, but also to more questions.

拥有大量未回答的问题是一件伟大的事情。这是富人越富有的情况之一，因为获取新问题的最好方式是试图回答现有的问题。问题不仅导致答案，而且还导致更多的问题。

The best questions grow in the answering. You notice a thread protruding from the current paradigm and try pulling on it, and it just gets longer and longer. So don’t require a question to be obviously big before you try answering it. You can rarely predict that. It’s hard enough even to notice the thread, let alone to predict how much will unravel if you pull on it.

最好的问题在回答中成长。你注意到一个从当前范式中突出的线索，尝试拉动它，结果它变得越来越长。所以，在你尝试回答一个问题之前，不需要它显然很大。这很难预测。注意到这个线索就已经很难了，更不用说预测如果你拉它，会有多少东西被揭示出来。

It’s better to be promiscuously curious — to pull a little bit on a lot of threads, and see what happens. Big things start small. The initial versions of big things were often just experiments, or side projects, or talks, which then grew into something bigger. So start lots of small things.

更好的做法是滥于好奇——对许多线索都稍微拉一拉，看看会发生什么。大事物起始于小。大事物的初版通常只是实验，或者副项目，或者谈话，然后它们发展成为更大的东西。所以，开始很多小事情。

Being prolific is underrated. The more different things you try, the greater the chance of discovering something new. Understand, though, that trying lots of things will mean trying lots of things that don’t work. You can’t have a lot of good ideas without also having a lot of bad ones. [21]

多产是被低估的。你尝试的东西越多，发现新事物的机会就越大。不过，要明白，尝试很多事情意味着尝试很多不起作用的事情。你不能只有很多好主意，而没有很多坏主意。

Though it sounds more responsible to begin by studying everything that’s been done before, you’ll learn faster and have more fun by trying stuff. And you’ll understand previous work better when you do look at it. So err on the side of starting. Which is easier when starting means starting small; those two ideas fit together like two puzzle pieces.

尽管从先研究所有已经完成的事情开始听起来更负责任，但通过尝试东西，你会学得更快，也会更有乐趣。当你看它的时候，你会更好地理解之前的工作。所以，宁可犯错误也要开始。当开始意味着从小事做起时，这更容易；这两个想法就像两个拼图碎片一样紧密相连。

How do you get from starting small to doing something great? By making successive versions. Great things are almost always made in successive versions. You start with something small and evolve it, and the final version is both cleverer and more ambitious than anything you could have planned.

如何从小开始走向伟大？通过制作连续的版本。伟大的事物几乎总是通过连续的版本制作出来的。你从小事开始，然后发展它，最终的版本比你能计划的任何东西都要聪明和有野心。

It’s particularly useful to make successive versions when you’re making something for people — to get an initial version in front of them quickly, and then evolve it based on their response.

在为人们制作东西时，制作连续版本尤其有用——快速将初始版本展示给他们，然后根据他们的反应进行调整。

Begin by trying the simplest thing that could possibly work. Surprisingly often, it does. If it doesn’t, this will at least get you started.

从尝试可能能够成功的最简单的事情开始。令人惊讶的是，它经常会奏效。如果没有，这至少能让你开始。

Don’t try to cram too much new stuff into any one version. There are names for doing this with the first version (taking too long to ship) and the second (the second system effect), but these are both merely instances of a more general principle.

不要试图在任何一个版本中塞入太多新的东西。对于第一个版本（花太长时间来发布）和第二个版本（第二系统效应）这样做有专门的名称，但这两者都只是更一般原则的实例。

An early version of a new project will sometimes be dismissed as a toy. It’s a good sign when people do this. That means it has everything a new idea needs except scale, and that tends to follow. [22]

新项目的早期版本有时会被贬为玩具。当人们这样做时，这是个好兆头。这意味着它具有新想法需要的一切，除了规模，而规模往往会随之而来。[22]

The alternative to starting with something small and evolving it is to plan in advance what you’re going to do. And planning does usually seem the more responsible choice. It sounds more organized to say “we’re going to do x and then y and then z” than “we’re going to try x and see what happens.” And it is more organized; it just doesn’t work as well.

与从小事开始并演变它的选择不同的是，你提前计划你要做什么。规划通常看起来是更负责任的选择。说“我们打算做x，然后做y，然后做z”听起来比“我们打算尝试x，看看会发生什么”更有条理。而且确实更有条理；只是它的效果不如预期。

Planning per se isn’t good. It’s sometimes necessary, but it’s a necessary evil — a response to unforgiving conditions. It’s something you have to do because you’re working with inflexible media, or because you need to coordinate the efforts of a lot of people. If you keep projects small and use flexible media, you don’t have to plan as much, and your designs can evolve instead.

规划本身并不好。有时它是必要的，但它是一种必要的邪恶——对无情环境的回应。这是你必须做的事情，因为你正在使用不灵活的媒介，或者因为你需要协调很多人的努力。如果你保持项目的小型化并使用灵活的媒介，你就不必做太多规划，你的设计可以随之演变。

Take as much risk as you can afford. In an efficient market, risk is proportionate to reward, so don’t look for certainty, but for a bet with high expected value. If you’re not failing occasionally, you’re probably being too conservative.

尽你所能承受的风险。在一个有效的市场中，风险与收益成正比，所以不要寻求确定性，而是寻求期望值高的赌注。如果你偶尔不失败，你可能过于保守了。

Though conservatism is usually associated with the old, it’s the young who tend to make this mistake. Inexperience makes them fear risk, but it’s when you’re young that you can afford the most.

虽然保守主义通常与老年人相关联，但年轻人更倾向于犯这种错误。经验不足使他们害怕风险，但正是当你年轻的时候，你能承受的风险最大。

Even a project that fails can be valuable. In the process of working on it, you’ll have crossed territory few others have seen, and encountered questions few others have asked. And there’s probably no better source of questions than the ones you encounter in trying to do something slightly too hard.

即使是失败的项目也可能有价值。在进行项目的过程中，你将跨越少数人曾经见过的领域，遇到少数人曾经问过的问题。而在试图做一些稍微困难的事情时遇到的问题，可能是提问的最好来源。

Use the advantages of youth when you have them, and the advantages of age once you have those. The advantages of youth are energy, time, optimism, and freedom. The advantages of age are knowledge, efficiency, money, and power. With effort you can acquire some of the latter when young and keep some of the former when old.

在你年轻时，利用年轻的优势，当你年老时，利用年老的优势。年轻的优势是精力、时间、乐观和自由。年老的优势是知识、效率、金钱和权力。努力的话，你可以在年轻时获得一些后者，在年老时保持一些前者。

The old also have the advantage of knowing which advantages they have. The young often have them without realizing it. The biggest is probably time. The young have no idea how rich they are in time. The best way to turn this time to advantage is to use it in slightly frivolous ways: to learn about something you don’t need to know about, just out of curiosity, or to try building something just because it would be cool, or to become freakishly good at something.

老年人还有一个优势，那就是知道他们有哪些优势。年轻人往往有优势但并不自知。其中最大的可能就是时间。年轻人根本不知道他们在时间上有多富有。将这种时间转化为优势的最好方法是用稍微轻浮的方式使用它：出于好奇去了解你不需要知道的东西，或者只是因为它会很酷而去尝试制造某样东西，或者在某事上变得极度擅长。

That “slightly” is an important qualification. Spend time lavishly when you’re young, but don’t simply waste it. There’s a big difference between doing something you worry might be a waste of time and doing something you know for sure will be. The former is at least a bet, and possibly a better one than you think. [23]

这个”稍微”是一个重要的修饰词。在你年轻时，大量地花费时间，但不要简单地浪费它。做你担心可能是浪费时间的事和做你确定一定是浪费时间的事之间有很大的差别。前者至少是一种赌注，可能比你想象的要好。[23]

The most subtle advantage of youth, or more precisely of inexperience, is that you’re seeing everything with fresh eyes. When your brain embraces an idea for the first time, sometimes the two don’t fit together perfectly. Usually the problem is with your brain, but occasionally it’s with the idea. A piece of it sticks out awkwardly and jabs you when you think about it. People who are used to the idea have learned to ignore it, but you have the opportunity not to. [24]

年轻的最微妙的优势，或者更确切地说是经验不足的优势，是你用全新的眼光看待一切。当你的大脑第一次接受一个想法时，有时两者并不完全契合。通常问题出在你的大脑上，但偶尔也在想法上。想法的一部分突兀地伸出来，当你思考它时会刺痛你。习惯了这个想法的人已经学会忽视它，但你有机会不这样做。[24]

So when you’re learning about something for the first time, pay attention to things that seem wrong or missing. You’ll be tempted to ignore them, since there’s a 99% chance the problem is with you. And you may have to set aside your misgivings temporarily to keep progressing. But don’t forget about them. When you’ve gotten further into the subject, come back and check if they’re still there. If they’re still viable in the light of your present knowledge, they probably represent an undiscovered idea.

所以，当你第一次学习某件事情时，要注意那些似乎错误或缺失的东西。你会忍不住忽视它们，因为有99%的机会问题出在你身上。你可能需要暂时搁置你的疑虑以便继续前进。但别忘了它们。当你深入到这个主题中，回来检查它们是否还在。如果在你现在的知识照耀下它们仍然存在，那么它们可能代表着一个未被发现的想法。

One of the most valuable kinds of knowledge you get from experience is to know what you don’t have to worry about. The young know all the things that could matter, but not their relative importance. So they worry equally about everything, when they should worry much more about a few things and hardly at all about the rest.

你从经验中获得的最有价值的一种知识就是知道你不必担忧什么。年轻人知道所有可能有关的事情，但不知道它们的相对重要性。所以他们对所有事情都同样担忧，但他们应该对几件事更加担忧，而对其他的几乎不用担心。

But what you don’t know is only half the problem with inexperience. The other half is what you do know that ain’t so. You arrive at adulthood with your head full of nonsense — bad habits you’ve acquired and false things you’ve been taught — and you won’t be able to do great work till you clear away at least the nonsense in the way of whatever type of work you want to do.

但你不知道的只是经验不足问题的一半。另一半是你所知道的错误的事情。你带着满头的胡说八道走向成年——你已经养成的坏习惯和你被教导的错误的东西——直到你至少把阻碍你想做的任何类型的工作的胡说八道清理掉，你才能做出伟大的工作。

Much of the nonsense left in your head is left there by schools. We’re so used to schools that we unconsciously treat going to school as identical with learning, but in fact schools have all sorts of strange qualities that warp our ideas about learning and thinking.

你头脑中留下的很多胡说八道都是学校留下的。我们习惯于上学，以至于我们下意识地把上学和学习等同起来，但实际上学校有各种奇怪的特性，扭曲了我们对学习和思考的观念。

For example, schools induce passivity. Since you were a small child, there was an authority at the front of the class telling all of you what you had to learn and then measuring whether you did. But neither classes nor tests are intrinsic to learning; they’re just artifacts of the way schools are usually designed.

比如，学校会诱发被动性。自你还是个小孩，班级前方的权威就告诉你们所有人需要学习什么，然后检测你是否做到了。但课程和测试并非学习的本质；它们只是学校通常设计的产物。

The sooner you overcome this passivity, the better. If you’re still in school, try thinking of your education as your project, and your teachers as working for you rather than vice versa. That may seem a stretch, but it’s not merely some weird thought experiment. It’s the truth, economically, and in the best case it’s the truth intellectually as well. The best teachers don’t want to be your bosses. They’d prefer it if you pushed ahead, using them as a source of advice, rather than being pulled by them through the material.

你越早克服这种被动性，就越好。如果你还在上学，试着把你的教育视为你的项目，把你的老师视为为你工作，而不是相反。这可能看起来有些牵强，但它不仅仅是某种奇特的思维实验。在经济上，这是事实，最好的情况下，在智力上也是事实。最好的老师不希望成为你的上司。他们更希望你能够前进，把他们当作一种建议来源，而不是被他们拉着走过这个材料。

Schools also give you a misleading impression of what work is like. In school they tell you what the problems are, and they’re almost always soluble using no more than you’ve been taught so far. In real life you have to figure out what the problems are, and you often don’t know if they’re soluble at all.

学校还会给你一个误导性的工作印象。在学校里，他们会告诉你问题在哪里，而且这些问题几乎总是可以用你到目前为止所学的知识解决。但在现实生活中，你必须找出问题在哪里，而且你往往不知道它们是否可以解决。

But perhaps the worst thing schools do to you is train you to win by hacking the test. You can’t do great work by doing that. You can’t trick God. So stop looking for that kind of shortcut. The way to beat the system is to focus on problems and solutions that others have overlooked, not to skimp on the work itself.

但学校对你做的最糟糕的事情可能就是训练你通过应试技巧赢得胜利。你不能通过这样做来做出伟大的工作。你不能欺骗神。所以，停止寻找那种捷径。打败系统的方法是专注于其他人忽视的问题和解决方案，而不是在工作本身上偷工减料。

Don’t think of yourself as dependent on some gatekeeper giving you a “big break.” Even if this were true, the best way to get it would be to focus on doing good work rather than chasing influential people.

不要将自己视为依赖于某个看门人给你一个“大机会”。即使这是真的，获得它的最好方法也是专注于做好工作，而不是追逐有影响力的人。

And don’t take rejection by committees to heart. The qualities that impress admissions officers and prize committees are quite different from those required to do great work. The decisions of selection committees are only meaningful to the extent that they’re part of a feedback loop, and very few are.

也不要把委员会的拒绝放在心上。给招生官员和奖项委员会留下深刻印象的品质与做出伟大工作所需的品质大相径庭。选拔委员会的决定只有在它们是反馈循环的一部分时才有意义，而很少有委员会是这样。

People new to a field will often copy existing work. There’s nothing inherently bad about that. There’s no better way to learn how something works than by trying to reproduce it. Nor does copying necessarily make your work unoriginal. Originality is the presence of new ideas, not the absence of old ones.

初涉某个领域的人往往会复制现有的工作。这本身并没有什么坏处。试图重现它是了解某物如何运作的最好方式。也并不是说复制就一定使你的工作失去原创性。原创性在于新思想的存在，而不是旧思想的消除。

There’s a good way to copy and a bad way. If you’re going to copy something, do it openly instead of furtively, or worse still, unconsciously. This is what’s meant by the famously misattributed phrase “Great artists steal.” The really dangerous kind of copying, the kind that gives copying a bad name, is the kind that’s done without realizing it, because you’re nothing more than a train running on tracks laid down by someone else. But at the other extreme, copying can be a sign of superiority rather than subordination. [25]

有好的复制方式，也有坏的。如果你要复制某物，那就公开地复制，而不是偷偷摸摸地，更糟糕的是，无意识地复制。这就是那句名言“伟大的艺术家偷窃”所要表达的意思。真正危险的复制，给复制带来坏名声的那种，是那种你并未意识到的复制，因为你只不过是在别人铺设的轨道上运行的列车。但在另一个极端，复制可能是优越性的标志，而不是从属关系。[25]

In many fields it’s almost inevitable that your early work will be in some sense based on other people’s. Projects rarely arise in a vacuum. They’re usually a reaction to previous work. When you’re first starting out, you don’t have any previous work; if you’re going to react to something, it has to be someone else’s. Once you’re established, you can react to your own. But while the former gets called derivative and the latter doesn’t, structurally the two cases are more similar than they seem.

在许多领域，你的早期工作几乎肯定会在某种程度上基于其他人的工作。项目很少会在真空中产生。它们通常是对以前工作的反应。当你刚开始时，你没有任何以前的工作; 如果你要对某事做出反应，那就必须是别人的。一旦你成立，你可以对你自己的作品做出反应。但是，虽然前者被称为衍生性的，而后者则没有，但在结构上，这两种情况比它们看起来更相似。

Oddly enough, the very novelty of the most novel ideas sometimes makes them seem at first to be more derivative than they are. New discoveries often have to be conceived initially as variations of existing things, even by their discoverers, because there isn’t yet the conceptual vocabulary to express them.

奇怪的是，最新颖的想法的新颖性有时会使它们起初看起来比它们实际上更衍生。新的发现往往最初要被视为现有事物的变化，甚至对发现者来说也是如此，因为还没有概念词汇来表达它们。

There are definitely some dangers to copying, though. One is that you’ll tend to copy old things — things that were in their day at the frontier of knowledge, but no longer are.

虽然复制有一些危险，其中一个是你会倾向于复制旧事物——那些在当时位于知识前沿，但现在不再是的事物。

And when you do copy something, don’t copy every feature of it. Some will make you ridiculous if you do. Don’t copy the manner of an eminent 50 year old professor if you’re 18, for example, or the idiom of a Renaissance poem hundreds of years later.

当你要复制某物时，不要复制它的每一个特征。如果你这么做，有些特征会让你显得可笑。比如，如果你只有18岁，就不要模仿一位杰出的50岁教授的方式，或者在几百年后模仿文艺复兴时期的诗歌的语言。

Some of the features of things you admire are flaws they succeeded despite. Indeed, the features that are easiest to imitate are the most likely to be the flaws.

你所欣赏的东西的一些特征，可能就是他们成功的缺点。事实上，最容易模仿的特征最有可能是缺点。

This is particularly true for behavior. Some talented people are jerks, and this sometimes makes it seem to the inexperienced that being a jerk is part of being talented. It isn’t; being talented is merely how they get away with it.

这对于行为特别真实。有些有才华的人是混蛋，这有时会让没有经验的人认为，成为混蛋是有才华的一部分。其实并不是这样；有才华只是他们能够得过且过的方式。

One of the most powerful kinds of copying is to copy something from one field into another. History is so full of chance discoveries of this type that it’s probably worth giving chance a hand by deliberately learning about other kinds of work. You can take ideas from quite distant fields if you let them be metaphors.

最强大的复制方式之一就是从一个领域复制某物到另一个领域。历史上充满了这种类型的偶然发现，所以可能值得我们刻意去学习其他类型的工作，以便助运一臂之力。如果你让这些观点成为隐喻，你可以从相当遥远的领域中获得灵感。

Negative examples can be as inspiring as positive ones. In fact you can sometimes learn more from things done badly than from things done well; sometimes it only becomes clear what’s needed when it’s missing.

消极的例子可以像积极的例子一样激发灵感。事实上，你有时候可以从做得不好的事情中学到比做得好的事情更多的东西；有时候，只有当某样东西缺失的时候，我们才能清楚地看到需要什么。

If a lot of the best people in your field are collected in one place, it’s usually a good idea to visit for a while. It will increase your ambition, and also, by showing you that these people are human, increase your self-confidence. [26]

如果你所在领域的许多最优秀的人都集中在一个地方，通常去那里待一段时间是个好主意。这样做可以提高你的抱负，同时，通过让你看到这些人也是普通人，可以增强你的自信。[26]

If you’re earnest you’ll probably get a warmer welcome than you might expect. Most people who are very good at something are happy to talk about it with anyone who’s genuinely interested. If they’re really good at their work, then they probably have a hobbyist’s interest in it, and hobbyists always want to talk about their hobbies.

如果你是真诚的，你可能会得到比你预期的更热情的欢迎。大多数在某件事情上非常出色的人都愿意与真正感兴趣的人谈论这件事。如果他们真的擅长他们的工作，那么他们可能对此有爱好者的兴趣，而爱好者总是想要谈论他们的爱好。

It may take some effort to find the people who are really good, though. Doing great work has such prestige that in some places, particularly universities, there’s a polite fiction that everyone is engaged in it. And that is far from true. People within universities can’t say so openly, but the quality of the work being done in different departments varies immensely. Some departments have people doing great work; others have in the past; others never have.

不过，找到那些真正优秀的人可能需要一些努力。做出伟大的工作具有如此的威望，以至于在某些地方，尤其是大学，有一种礼貌的虚构，那就是每个人都在从事这样的工作。而这远非事实。大学内的人不能公开说出这个事实，但是不同部门所做的工作质量差异巨大。有些部门有人在做伟大的工作；有些部门过去曾经有过；还有些部门从未有过。

Seek out the best colleagues. There are a lot of projects that can’t be done alone, and even if you’re working on one that can be, it’s good to have other people to encourage you and to bounce ideas off.

寻找最好的同事。有许多项目是无法单独完成的，即使你正在进行可以独自完成的项目，有其他人鼓励你并与你碰撞思想也是有益的。

Colleagues don’t just affect your work, though; they also affect you. So work with people you want to become like, because you will.

然而，同事不仅影响你的工作，他们也会影响你自己。所以，和你希望变得像他们那样的人一起工作，因为你会变得像他们一样。

Quality is more important than quantity in colleagues. It’s better to have one or two great ones than a building full of pretty good ones. In fact it’s not merely better, but necessary, judging from history: the degree to which great work happens in clusters suggests that one’s colleagues often make the difference between doing great work and not.

在同事的选择上，质量比数量更重要。拥有一两个优秀的同事要比拥有一栋楼满是还不错的同事要好。实际上，从历史来看，这不仅仅是更好，而且是必要的：伟大工作在集群中发生的程度表明，同事往往是决定你能否做出伟大工作的关键。

How do you know when you have sufficiently good colleagues? In my experience, when you do, you know. Which means if you’re unsure, you probably don’t. But it may be possible to give a more concrete answer than that. Here’s an attempt: sufficiently good colleagues offer surprising insights. They can see and do things that you can’t. So if you have a handful of colleagues good enough to keep you on your toes in this sense, you’re probably over the threshold.

你怎么知道你有足够好的同事呢？根据我的经验，当你有的时候，你就知道了。也就是说，如果你不确定，那么你可能没有。但可能可以给出比这更具体的答案。这里是一个尝试：足够好的同事提供惊人的洞察力。他们能看到和做你不能做的事情。所以，如果你有一小撮足够让你在这个意义上保持警惕的优秀同事，那么你可能已经达到了阈值。

Most of us can benefit from collaborating with colleagues, but some projects require people on a larger scale, and starting one of those is not for everyone. If you want to run a project like that, you’ll have to become a manager, and managing well takes aptitude and interest like any other kind of work. If you don’t have them, there is no middle path: you must either force yourself to learn management as a second language, or avoid such projects. [27]

我们大多数人都可以从与同事的合作中受益，但有些项目需要大规模的人力，启动这样的项目并不适合每个人。如果你想要运行这样的项目，你就必须成为一名经理，而优秀的管理就像其他任何一种工作一样需要才能和兴趣。如果你没有这些，就没有中庸之道：你必须强迫自己将管理作为第二语言来学习，或者避免这样的项目。[27]

Husband your morale. It’s the basis of everything when you’re working on ambitious projects. You have to nurture and protect it like a living organism.

珍视你的士气。当你从事雄心勃勃的项目时，士气是一切的基础。你必须像照顾和保护生物一样，照顾和保护你的士气。

Morale starts with your view of life. You’re more likely to do great work if you’re an optimist, and more likely to if you think of yourself as lucky than if you think of yourself as a victim.

士气始于你对生活的看法。如果你是乐观主义者，你更有可能做出伟大的工作，如果你认为自己是幸运的人，而不是把自己当作受害者，你也更有可能做出伟大的工作。

Indeed, work can to some extent protect you from your problems. If you choose work that’s pure, its very difficulties will serve as a refuge from the difficulties of everyday life. If this is escapism, it’s a very productive form of it, and one that has been used by some of the greatest minds in history.

事实上，工作在某种程度上可以保护你免受你的问题的困扰。如果你选择的工作是纯粹的，那么工作本身的困难就会成为你避开日常生活困难的避难所。如果这是逃避，那它是一种非常有生产力的逃避形式，历史上一些最伟大的思想家都曾使用过。

Morale compounds via work: high morale helps you do good work, which increases your morale and helps you do even better work. But this cycle also operates in the other direction: if you’re not doing good work, that can demoralize you and make it even harder to. Since it matters so much for this cycle to be running in the right direction, it can be a good idea to switch to easier work when you’re stuck, just so you start to get something done.

士气通过工作得到加强：高士气帮助你做出好的工作，这又提高了你的士气，帮助你做出更好的工作。但这个循环也会在反方向运作：如果你没有做出好的工作，那可能会使你士气低落，让工作变得更难。由于这个循环在正确的方向上运作是非常重要的，所以当你遇到困难时，转向更容易的工作可能是个好主意，只是为了让你开始完成一些事情。

One of the biggest mistakes ambitious people make is to allow setbacks to destroy their morale all at once, like a balloon bursting. You can inoculate yourself against this by explicitly considering setbacks a part of your process. Solving hard problems always involves some backtracking.

雄心勃勃的人犯的最大错误之一是允许挫折一次性摧毁他们的士气，就像气球突然破裂一样。你可以通过明确地将挫折视为你的工作过程的一部分，来预防这种情况。解决困难问题总是需要一些回溯。

Doing great work is a depth-first search whose root node is the desire to. So “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” isn’t quite right. It should be: If at first you don’t succeed, either try again, or backtrack and then try again.

做出伟大工作是一种深度优先搜索，其根节点是欲望。所以，“初试不成，再接再厉”并不完全正确。它应该是：如果初次未能成功，要么再试一次，要么回溯然后再试一次。

“Never give up” is also not quite right. Obviously there are times when it’s the right choice to eject. A more precise version would be: Never let setbacks panic you into backtracking more than you need to. Corollary: Never abandon the root node.

“永不放弃”也并不完全正确。显然，有时候选择放弃是正确的选择。更精确的版本应该是：永远不要让挫折让你过度恐慌地回溯。推论：永远不要放弃根节点。

It’s not necessarily a bad sign if work is a struggle, any more than it’s a bad sign to be out of breath while running. It depends how fast you’re running. So learn to distinguish good pain from bad. Good pain is a sign of effort; bad pain is a sign of damage.

如果工作是一场挣扎，那并不一定是个坏兆头，就像跑步时气喘吁吁并不一定是个坏兆头。这取决于你跑得有多快。所以学会区分好的痛苦和坏的痛苦。好的痛苦是努力的标志；坏的痛苦是伤害的标志。

An audience is a critical component of morale. If you’re a scholar, your audience may be your peers; in the arts, it may be an audience in the traditional sense. Either way it doesn’t need to be big. The value of an audience doesn’t grow anything like linearly with its size. Which is bad news if you’re famous, but good news if you’re just starting out, because it means a small but dedicated audience can be enough to sustain you. If a handful of people genuinely love what you’re doing, that’s enough.

观众是士气的关键组成部分。如果你是学者，你的观众可能是你的同行；在艺术领域，它可能是传统意义上的观众。无论哪种方式，你的观众都不需要大量。观众的价值并不像其规模那样线性增长。这对于名人来说可能是坏消息，但对于刚起步的人来说，这是个好消息，因为这意味着一个小而忠诚的观众足以支持你。如果有少数人真心喜欢你所做的事，那就足够了。

To the extent you can, avoid letting intermediaries come between you and your audience. In some types of work this is inevitable, but it’s so liberating to escape it that you might be better off switching to an adjacent type if that will let you go direct. [28]

尽可能避免让中介人插手你与你的观众之间的交流。在某些类型的工作中，这是无法避免的，但逃离这种束缚是如此的解放，以至于你可能更愿意转向相邻的类型，如果那能让你直接接触观众。[28]

The people you spend time with will also have a big effect on your morale. You’ll find there are some who increase your energy and others who decrease it, and the effect someone has is not always what you’d expect. Seek out the people who increase your energy and avoid those who decrease it. Though of course if there’s someone you need to take care of, that takes precedence.

你花时间相处的人也会对你的士气产生重大影响。你会发现有些人能增加你的精力，有些人会降低你的精力，而某个人的影响并不总是你所预期的。寻找那些能增加你精力的人，避开那些降低你精力的人。当然，如果有人需要你照顾，那就优先考虑。

Don’t marry someone who doesn’t understand that you need to work, or sees your work as competition for your attention. If you’re ambitious, you need to work; it’s almost like a medical condition; so someone who won’t let you work either doesn’t understand you, or does and doesn’t care.

不要嫁给不理解你需要工作，或者把你的工作视为争夺你注意力的竞争对手的人。如果你有雄心壮志，你就需要工作；这几乎就像是一种医学条件；所以，不让你工作的人要么就是不理解你，要么就是理解你却不在乎。

Ultimately morale is physical. You think with your body, so it’s important to take care of it. That means exercising regularly, eating and sleeping well, and avoiding the more dangerous kinds of drugs. Running and walking are particularly good forms of exercise because they’re good for thinking. [29]

士气最终是物理性的。你用身体思考，所以照顾好它很重要。这意味着要定期锻炼，保证良好的饮食和睡眠，避免更危险的种类的药物。跑步和散步是特别好的锻炼方式，因为它们有助于思考。[29]

People who do great work are not necessarily happier than everyone else, but they’re happier than they’d be if they didn’t. In fact, if you’re smart and ambitious, it’s dangerous not to be productive. People who are smart and ambitious but don’t achieve much tend to become bitter.

做出伟大工作的人并不一定比其他人更快乐，但他们比不工作时更快乐。事实上，如果你聪明且有雄心壮志，不产出成果是危险的。那些聪明且有雄心壮志但没有实现多少的人，往往会变得痛苦。

It’s ok to want to impress other people, but choose the right people. The opinion of people you respect is signal. Fame, which is the opinion of a much larger group you might or might not respect, just adds noise.

向别人炫耀是可以的，但你需要选择正确的人。你尊重的人的意见是信号。而名声，这是一个更大的群体的意见，你可能尊重也可能不尊重，只会增加噪音。

The prestige of a type of work is at best a trailing indicator and sometimes completely mistaken. If you do anything well enough, you’ll make it prestigious. So the question to ask about a type of work is not how much prestige it has, but how well it could be done.

一种工作的声望最多只是一个滞后的指标，有时甚至完全错误。如果你做任何事情都做得足够好，你就会使它具有声望。所以，关于一种工作的问题不是它有多少声望，而是它能做得多好。

Competition can be an effective motivator, but don’t let it choose the problem for you; don’t let yourself get drawn into chasing something just because others are. In fact, don’t let competitors make you do anything much more specific than work harder.

竞争可以是有效的激励手段，但不要让它为你选择问题；不要让自己因为别人在追求而被拉进去。实际上，不要让竞争对手让你做任何具体的事情，除了更努力地工作。

Curiosity is the best guide. Your curiosity never lies, and it knows more than you do about what’s worth paying attention to.

好奇心是最好的指导。你的好奇心永不会撒谎，它比你更了解什么值得关注。

Notice how often that word has come up. If you asked an oracle the secret to doing great work and the oracle replied with a single word, my bet would be on “curiosity.”

注意这个词出现的频率。如果你问一个神谕做出伟大工作的秘诀，神谕用一个词回答，我会押注在“好奇心”。

That doesn’t translate directly to advice. It’s not enough just to be curious, and you can’t command curiosity anyway. But you can nurture it and let it drive you.

这并不能直接转化为建议。仅仅拥有好奇心是不够的，你也不能命令好奇心。但你可以培养它，让它驱动你。

Curiosity is the key to all four steps in doing great work: it will choose the field for you, get you to the frontier, cause you to notice the gaps in it, and drive you to explore them. The whole process is a kind of dance with curiosity.

好奇心是做出伟大工作的四个步骤中的关键：它会为你选择领域，带你到前沿，让你注意到其中的空白，并驱使你去探索它们。整个过程都是与好奇心的一种舞蹈。

Believe it or not, I tried to make this essay as short as I could. But its length at least means it acts as a filter. If you made it this far, you must be interested in doing great work. And if so you’re already further along than you might realize, because the set of people willing to want to is small.

信不信由你，我尽力让这篇文章尽可能短。但至少，它的长度起到了一种筛选作用。如果你能坚持到这里，那就说明你对做出伟大的工作很感兴趣。如果是这样，那么你可能已经比你意识到的要走得更远了，因为愿意去做的人群其实并不大。

The factors in doing great work are factors in the literal, mathematical sense, and they are: ability, interest, effort, and luck. Luck by definition you can’t do anything about, so we can ignore that. And we can assume effort, if you do in fact want to do great work. So the problem boils down to ability and interest. Can you find a kind of work where your ability and interest will combine to yield an explosion of new ideas?

做出伟大工作的因素在字面上、数学意义上都是因素，它们包括：能力、兴趣、努力和运气。运气你无法控制，所以我们可以忽略。如果你确实想要做出伟大的工作，我们可以假设你会付出努力。所以问题就归结为能力和兴趣。你能否找到一种工作，其中你的能力和兴趣可以结合起来产生新思想的爆炸？

Here there are grounds for optimism. There are so many different ways to do great work, and even more that are still undiscovered. Out of all those different types of work, the one you’re most suited for is probably a pretty close match. Probably a comically close match. It’s just a question of finding it, and how far into it your ability and interest can take you. And you can only answer that by trying.

在这里，我们有理由保持乐观。有许多不同的方式可以做出伟大的工作，而且还有更多的方式尚待发现。在所有这些不同类型的工作中，你最适合的那一种可能是相当接近的。可能是让人啼笑皆非的接近。问题只是在于找到它，以及你的能力和兴趣能让你在这个领域走多远。这个问题只能通过尝试来回答。

Many more people could try to do great work than do. What holds them back is a combination of modesty and fear. It seems presumptuous to try to be Newton or Shakespeare. It also seems hard; surely if you tried something like that, you’d fail. Presumably the calculation is rarely explicit. Few people consciously decide not to try to do great work. But that’s what’s going on subconsciously; they shy away from the question.

实际上，有更多的人可以尝试做出伟大的工作。阻止他们的是一种谦虚和恐惧的混合体。试图成为牛顿或莎士比亚似乎过于狂妄。这也似乎很难；如果你试图做这样的事情，你肯定会失败。这种计算很少是明确的。很少有人会有意识地决定不去尝试做伟大的工作。但这就是他们在潜意识中的想法；他们对这个问题避而不谈。

So I’m going to pull a sneaky trick on you. Do you want to do great work, or not? Now you have to decide consciously. Sorry about that. I wouldn’t have done it to a general audience. But we already know you’re interested.

所以，我打算用一个小把戏来对付你。你想做出伟大的工作，还是不想呢？现在你必须有意识地决定。对不起，我不会对一般的听众这么做。但我们已经知道你是有兴趣的。

Don’t worry about being presumptuous. You don’t have to tell anyone. And if it’s too hard and you fail, so what? Lots of people have worse problems than that. In fact you’ll be lucky if it’s the worst problem you have.

不用担心自己过于狂妄。你不必告诉任何人。而且，如果事情太难，你失败了，那又怎样呢？许多人面临的问题比这更糟糕。事实上，如果这是你面临的最糟糕的问题，你将是幸运的。

Yes, you’ll have to work hard. But again, lots of people have to work hard. And if you’re working on something you find very interesting, which you necessarily will if you’re on the right path, the work will probably feel less burdensome than a lot of your peers’.

是的，你必须努力工作。但再次说明，有很多人必须努力工作。如果你正在做一件你觉得非常有趣的事情，如果你走在正确的道路上，那么工作可能会比许多同伴感觉到的负担要轻一些。

The discoveries are out there, waiting to be made. Why not by you?

发现就在那里，等待被发掘。为什么不是你呢？

Notes

[1] I don’t think you could give a precise definition of what counts as great work. Doing great work means doing something important so well that you expand people’s ideas of what’s possible. But there’s no threshold for importance. It’s a matter of degree, and often hard to judge at the time anyway. So I’d rather people focused on developing their interests rather than worrying about whether they’re important or not. Just try to do something amazing, and leave it to future generations to say if you succeeded.

[1] 我认为，你无法精确地定义什么算是伟大的工作。做出伟大的工作意味着做某件重要的事情，并做得如此出色以至于扩大了人们对可能性的认识。但重要性并没有一个门槛。它是程度的问题，而且往往很难在当时就做出判断。所以，我宁愿人们专注于发展他们的兴趣，而不是担心它们是否重要。只需尽力去做出令人惊艳的事情，让未来的一代来判断你是否成功。

[2] A lot of standup comedy is based on noticing anomalies in everyday life. “Did you ever notice…?” New ideas come from doing this about nontrivial things. Which may help explain why people’s reaction to a new idea is often the first half of laughing: Ha!

[2] 许多的喜剧都基于观察日常生活中的反常现象。“你有没有注意到……？”新的想法来源于对非琐碎事物的这样的观察。这也许能解释为什么人们对新想法的反应往往是笑的前半部分：哈！

[3] That second qualifier is critical. If you’re excited about something most authorities discount, but you can’t give a more precise explanation than “they don’t get it,” then you’re starting to drift into the territory of cranks.

[3] 这第二个修饰语至关重要。如果你对大多数权威人士都忽视的东西感到兴奋，但你不能给出比“他们不懂”更精确的解释，那么你开始向偏执狂的领域漂移了。

[4] Finding something to work on is not simply a matter of finding a match between the current version of you and a list of known problems. You’ll often have to coevolve with the problem. That’s why it can sometimes be so hard to figure out what to work on. The search space is huge. It’s the cartesian product of all possible types of work, both known and yet to be discovered, and all possible future versions of you.

There’s no way you could search this whole space, so you have to rely on heuristics to generate promising paths through it and hope the best matches will be clustered. Which they will not always be; different types of work have been collected together as much by accidents of history as by the intrinsic similarities between them.

[4] 找到工作并不仅仅是找到当前版本的你和已知问题之间的匹配。你往往需要与问题共同发展。这就是为什么有时候很难确定应该做什么工作。搜索空间巨大。它是所有可能类型的工作（已知和尚待发现的）和所有可能的未来版本的你的笛卡尔积。

你无法搜索整个空间，所以你必须依赖启发式来生成穿越它的有希望的路径，并希望最佳匹配会聚集在一起。虽然并非总是这样；不同类型的工作被集合在一起，与其说是因为它们之间的内在相似性，不如说是历史的偶然。

[5] There are many reasons curious people are more likely to do great work, but one of the more subtle is that, by casting a wide net, they’re more likely to find the right thing to work on in the first place.

[5] 好奇的人更可能做出伟大的工作有很多原因，但其中一个较为微妙的原因是，通过广泛的搜索，他们更可能首先找到正确的工作。

[6] It can also be dangerous to make things for an audience you feel is less sophisticated than you, if that causes you to talk down to them. You can make a lot of money doing that, if you do it in a sufficiently cynical way, but it’s not the route to great work. Not that anyone using this m.o. would care.

[6] 对于你认为比自己水平低的观众制作东西也可能是危险的，如果这导致你对他们居高临下。如果你以足够冷酷的方式做这件事，你可以赚很多钱，但这不是走向伟大工作的路径。不过，使用这种方法的人可能并不关心。

[7] This idea I learned from Hardy’s A Mathematician’s Apology, which I recommend to anyone ambitious to do great work, in any field.

[7] 这个观点我从哈代的《一个数学家的辩白》中学到的，我推荐给任何有志于在任何领域做出伟大工作的人。

[8] Just as we overestimate what we can do in a day and underestimate what we can do over several years, we overestimate the damage done by procrastinating for a day and underestimate the damage done by procrastinating for several years.

[8] 正如我们高估了我们一天内可以做的事情，低估了我们几年内可以做的事情，我们也高估了拖延一天造成的损害，低估了拖延几年造成的损害。

[9] You can’t usually get paid for doing exactly what you want, especially early on. There are two options: get paid for doing work close to what you want and hope to push it closer, or get paid for doing something else entirely and do your own projects on the side. Both can work, but both have drawbacks: in the first approach your work is compromised by default, and in the second you have to fight to get time to do it.

[9] 你通常不能得到为做你想做的事情的报酬，特别是在早期。有两个选择：通过做接近你想做的工作得到报酬，并希望能推动它更接近，或者通过做完全不同的事情得到报酬，并在旁边做你自己的项目。这两种方法都可以，但都有缺点：在第一种方法中，你的工作默认是被妥协的，而在第二种方法中，你必须奋斗以找到时间去做。

[10] If you set your life up right, it will deliver the focus-relax cycle automatically. The perfect setup is an office you work in and that you walk to and from.

[10] 如果你正确地设置了你的生活，它将自动提供焦点-放松的循环。最完美的设置是你工作的办公室，你可以步行往返。

[11] There may be some very unworldly people who do great work without consciously trying to. If you want to expand this rule to cover that case, it becomes: Don’t try to be anything except the best.

[11] 可能有一些非常超脱世俗的人在并未刻意尝试的情况下做出了伟大的工作。如果你想将这个规则扩展到覆盖那种情况，它变为：除了最好的，不要试图成为任何其他的。

[12] This gets more complicated in work like acting, where the goal is to adopt a fake persona. But even here it’s possible to be affected. Perhaps the rule in such fields should be to avoid unintentional affectation.

[12] 在像演戏这样的工作中，目标是采用一个假的人格，这会更复杂。但即使在这里，也有可能受到影响。也许在这样的领域，规则应该是避免无意的做作。

[13] It’s safe to have beliefs that you treat as unquestionable if and only if they’re also unfalsifiable. For example, it’s safe to have the principle that everyone should be treated equally under the law, because a sentence with a “should” in it isn’t really a statement about the world and is therefore hard to disprove. And if there’s no evidence that could disprove one of your principles, there can’t be any facts you’d need to ignore in order to preserve it.

[13] 只有当你的信念是无法被证伪的，你才可以把它们当作毋庸置疑的。例如，你可以坚持法律下每个人应该被平等对待的原则，因为带有“应该”字样的句子并不是真正关于世界的陈述，因此很难被证伪。如果没有任何证据可以证伪你的一项原则，那么就不会有任何你需要忽视的事实来保护它。

[14] Affectation is easier to cure than intellectual dishonesty. Affectation is often a shortcoming of the young that burns off in time, while intellectual dishonesty is more of a character flaw.

[14] 做作比知识上的不诚实更容易治愈。做作往往是年轻人的短暂缺点，随着时间的推移会消退，而知识上的不诚实更像是一个性格上的瑕疵。

[15] Obviously you don’t have to be working at the exact moment you have the idea, but you’ll probably have been working fairly recently.

[15] 很明显，你并不需要在刚有想法的那一刻就开始工作，但你可能已经近期内工作过。

[16] Some say psychoactive drugs have a similar effect. I’m skeptical, but also almost totally ignorant of their effects.

[16] 有些人说精神活性药物有类似的效果。我持怀疑态度，但同时我对它们的影响几乎一无所知。

[17] For example you might give the nth most important topic (m-1)/m^n of your attention, for some m > 1. You couldn’t allocate your attention so precisely, of course, but this at least gives an idea of a reasonable distribution.

[17] 例如，你可能会将第n个最重要的主题给予(m-1)/m^n的关注，对于某个m>1。当然，你不能如此精确地分配你的注意力，但这至少提供了一个合理分布的想法。

[18] The principles defining a religion have to be mistaken. Otherwise anyone might adopt them, and there would be nothing to distinguish the adherents of the religion from everyone else.

[18] 定义一个宗教的原则必须是错误的。否则，任何人都可能接受它们，那就没有什么可以区分这个宗教的信徒和其他所有人的。

[19] It might be a good exercise to try writing down a list of questions you wondered about in your youth. You might find you’re now in a position to do something about some of them.

[19] 尝试写下一个列表，列出你在年轻时曾经想过的问题，可能会是一个好的练习。你可能会发现你现在有能力对其中的一些问题做些什么。

[20] The connection between originality and uncertainty causes a strange phenomenon: because the conventional-minded are more certain than the independent-minded, this tends to give them the upper hand in disputes, even though they’re generally stupider.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

[20] 原创性和不确定性之间的联系导致了一个奇怪的现象：因为传统思维的人比独立思维的人更加确定，这使他们在争论中往往占上风，尽管他们通常更加愚蠢。

最好的人全无信念，最糟糕的人

充满了激情的强度。

[21] Derived from Linus Pauling’s “If you want to have good ideas, you must have many ideas.”

[21] 源自Linus Pauling的“如果你想有好的想法，你必须有许多想法”。

[22] Attacking a project as a “toy” is similar to attacking a statement as “inappropriate.” It means that no more substantial criticism can be made to stick.

[22] 把一个项目当作“玩具”来攻击类似于把一个陈述当作“不恰当”来攻击。这意味着不能再有更实质的批评。

[23] One way to tell whether you’re wasting time is to ask if you’re producing or consuming. Writing computer games is less likely to be a waste of time than playing them, and playing games where you create something is less likely to be a waste of time than playing games where you don’t.

[23] 判断你是否在浪费时间的一个方法是问你是在生产还是在消费。写电脑游戏比玩电脑游戏更不可能是浪费时间，玩你可以创造某物的游戏比玩你不能创造任何东西的游戏更不可能是浪费时间。

[24] Another related advantage is that if you haven’t said anything publicly yet, you won’t be biased toward evidence that supports your earlier conclusions. With sufficient integrity you could achieve eternal youth in this respect, but few manage to. For most people, having previously published opinions has an effect similar to ideology, just in quantity 1.

[24] 另一个相关的优点是，如果你还没有公开发表任何观点，你就不会偏向于支持你之前的结论的证据。如果你足够正直，你可以在这方面永葆青春，但很少有人能做到。对于大多数人来说，之前公开发表的观点有类似于意识形态的影响，只不过数量是1。

[25] In the early 1630s Daniel Mytens made a painting of Henrietta Maria handing a laurel wreath to Charles I. Van Dyck then painted his own version to show how much better he was.

[25] 1630年代初，Daniel Mytens画了一幅画，画的是Henrietta Maria把月桂花环交给Charles I。然后Van Dyck画了他自己的版本，以显示他多么优秀。

[26] I’m being deliberately vague about what a place is. As of this writing, being in the same physical place has advantages that are hard to duplicate, but that could change.

[26] 我对什么是一个地方故意保持模糊。就我写这篇文章时，身处同一物理空间有一些很难复制的优势，但这可能会改变。

[27] This is false when the work the other people have to do is very constrained, as with SETI@home or Bitcoin. It may be possible to expand the area in which it’s false by defining similarly restricted protocols with more freedom of action in the nodes.

[27] 当其他人需要做的工作非常受限制时，这是错误的，比如SETI@home或比特币。通过定义具有更多自由行动的节点的类似限制性的协议，可能可以扩大这个错误的区域。

[28] Corollary: Building something that enables people to go around intermediaries and engage directly with their audience is probably a good idea.

[28] 推论：建造一些东西，使人们可以绕过中介，直接与他们的受众打交道，可能是个好主意。

[29] It may be helpful always to walk or run the same route, because that frees attention for thinking. It feels that way to me, and there is some historical evidence for it.

[29] 一直走或跑同样的路线可能会有帮助，因为这会释放出注意力进行思考。对我来说感觉就是这样，而且有一些历史证据支持这一点。

英文原文链接：http://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html

《黑客与画家》作者、Y Combinator创始人、硅谷教父保罗·格雷厄姆（Paul Graham）最近在写了一篇极佳的文章”How to do great work”，在这篇长文里保罗·格雷厄姆介绍了如何选择自己工作的领域，如何通过好奇心驱使自己做出伟大的工作。

保罗·格雷厄姆大概花费了半年时间写成了这篇长文，我相信在尝试做自己项目，希望make difference的人都能从中得到自己的启发。值得沐浴更衣，找个悠闲的午后，给自己来杯咖啡去阅读，去感受。