How to Do Great Work

How to Do Great Work
我订阅有“硅谷教父”之称的 Paul Graham 的博客十几年了，他在创业和创新领域有无人能比拟的感召力。这篇文章是他今年最重磅的一篇，他自己也说准备了半年时间才写就。
文章长达两万字

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.

如果你收集很多做出色工作的技巧在许多不同的领域，那么他们的交集是什么？我决定找出来通过本篇文章。

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.”

我的目标之一是创建指南来被在各个领域工作的人使用。但是我也对这个交叉的形状干到好奇，这一次标识着他确实有一个明确的形状。
这不仅仅是要努力工作

The following recipe assumes you’re very ambitious.

recipe:

• 食谱
• 方法、秘诀

以下方法假设您非常雄心壮志。

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.

work on: 从事于

第一步是看你想做什么工作。你选择的工作需要有三个质量：
1、你有天然优势
2、你有深度兴趣
3、提供空间让你能做好工作

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

In practice: 实际上

实际上，你不需要担心太多第三个因素。
雄心壮志的人对此过于保守了。
所以，你需要做的，就是找到有天赋，并且感兴趣的。

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.

so while: 虽然，但是

这听起来很简单，但他往往是困难的。当你年轻的时候，你不知道自己擅长什么，也不知道不同种类的工作是什么。
一些工作，你最终要做的，可能还并不存在。
虽然一些人在 14 岁就知道他们要做什么，但大部分还是要在之后最终搞清楚他。

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.

一种搞清楚做什么的方式是工作。如果你不确定要做什么的话，请猜测。选择一件事儿开始做。你可能错误的推测一些事情，但那也还好。
这是好的去了解多种事情。一些大的发现会从意识到不同领域间的联系开始。

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.

do manage to: 设法做到

培养一个习惯在你自己的工程中。不要让工作变成一些事情，人们告诉你的那种事儿。
如果你正在管理 xx， 他可能会变成一个工程，你自己的。
如果有一天，你确实能做出出色的工作，他可能是在你自己的一个项目上。
他可能会是大项目， 但是你将要驱动关于你的部分。

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.

converge：汇聚、融合
Lego：乐高
calculus: 微积分

你的项目是什么？无论什么，你只要兴致勃勃的。当你成长，你在项目中的品味将会进化，兴奋和重要将会融合。
在 7 岁时，在 14 岁时，直到 21 岁时，你开始探索物理世界的未知。但始终保持兴奋。

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.

rudder: 舵
let it have its way: 顺其自然

这种令人兴奋的好奇是引擎和舵，对出色的工作来说。这将不仅仅驱动你，而且会让你有自己的方式 顺其自然，他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.

bore: 令人厌烦的

什么是你极端好奇的。好奇到这种程度，会让大多数人厌烦，那就是你正在找寻的。

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.

fractally: 分形的
from a distance: 从远处看
turn out to be: 最终变成

一旦你找到一些极端感兴趣的事情。下一步是学习充分的，让你能够走到这个知识的前沿。知识呈分形扩展,从远处看，他的边缘很光滑, 但是一旦你学习到足以接近他，他们充满间隙。

完全不能理解，什么叫边缘很光滑。

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

下一步是注意到它们。这需要一些技巧，因为你的大脑希望忽视这些差距，以便简化世界的模型。许多发现都来自于提出问题。对其他人都没有注意到的事物

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.

manufacture: 制造
a tincture of: 一丝，些许
tincture: 酊，酒精和药物制成的试剂

如果回答很奇怪，那可太好了。出色的作品经常有一丝的陌生。你可以看到这个从绘画到数学。这将被影响如果要尝试制造他，但是如果他出现了，请拥抱他。

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

bold: 大胆
chase: 追逐，追击
outlier: 异常

勇敢的追赶异常的点子，即使其他人不再对他们感兴趣。事实上，尤其是他们都不感兴趣，而你感兴趣一些其他人忽视的可能性，你能够有足够的专业知识去说他们都忽略的事情， 这是一次你发现的非常好的赌博。

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.

promising: 有前途的

四步，选择一个领域，学习到足够前沿，意识到障碍，探索有前途的领域。这是哪些做出色工作的人，在做的事情。从绘画到物理。

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.

empirical: 经验主义
scale: 规模、度
mortality: 死亡
mere: 仅仅
diligence: 勤奋

第二和第四需要努力工作。这可能不能证明你必须努力工作才能从事出色的事情。但是，, 那是原因，一个基础的致力于某些事，你需要深度感兴趣的。兴趣将驱动你工作的比仅仅勤奋更努力

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.

三个最强大的动机是好奇、开心和有足够的渴望做成一些印象深刻的事情。
偶尔，他们融合，这个组合是所有事务中非常强大的。

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.

一份大礼物是发现一个分形的芽 。你意识到裂缝在知识的表面， 撬开他，里面有整个世界。

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

overlap: 重叠、重合

让我们讨论一些复杂的业务，来弄清楚要做什么。一个主要的原因是这很困难，如果你不能告诉大多数种类的工作像什么，除非你正在做他。
这意味着，这四步有重合：你可能要做一些事多年，在你直到你多喜欢或者多擅长他之前。与此同时，你不做，你就不了解，大多数其他种类的工作。所以，糟糕的是，你的选择基于未完成的信息。

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.

nature: 本质、天然
exacerbate: 恶化，加重
form: 形式
precede: 在…之前
the former: 前者
the latter: 后者

野心的本质加剧了这个问题。野心有两种形式，一种是先于对某个主题的兴趣，另一种是由对该主题产生的兴趣。大多数出色工作的人都是混合的，而且前者越多，就越难决定做什么。

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.

pretend：假装
optimal: 优化
trajectory: 轨道
breakage: 破坏、碎裂

教育系统在大多数国家，都会假装他容易。他们期待你致力于一个领域长时间的，在你能知道这个领域是什么之前。
因此，一个雄心勃勃的人在一个优化后的轨道会经常将其视作破坏的案例。

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.

admit：承认
teenager: 青少年
lay down ： 放下；制定；铺设；主张
diagonal: 对角线

如果他们承认这件事，将会更好。如果他们承认这个系统不仅仅不能帮助你弄清楚正在做什么。但这只是一个假设，你无论怎样都需要作为一个青少年般进行神奇的推断。
他们不会告诉你，但是我会。当想要弄清楚在做什么的时候，你要听自己的。一些人是幸运的并且做出了正确的判断。但是剩余的将会发现他们自己沿着对角线跨越放置的轨迹，并假设每一个都这样做。

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

drift: 漂流

如果你是年轻且有野心的， 但是不知道要做什么之前，怎么办？
你不应该被动的随波逐流， 假设问题将会自己解决。你需要采取行动。但是这是没有一个系统性的过程，你可以跟随的。当你阅读传记，做出色工作的人，幸运的参与是着重标记的。他们发现做什么是因为一个有机会的会议，或者通过阅读一篇文章，他们偶然拾起的。所以你需要让你自己足够的幸运。这个方式是变得好奇。尝试许多事情，见很多人，读很多书，问很多问题。

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.

当处于疑问中， 请针对兴趣进行优化。 领域会改变，由于你阅读的越来越多。
数学家干的事情，举个例子，是非常不同的和你在大学数学中学习的。所以你需要给不同的类型的工作一个机会给你展示他们像什么。
但是，一个领域应该变得不断增加的幸运，随着你了解的更多。如果不是，那么他可能不适合你。

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.

few: 很少
a few of: 许多

不要担心，如果你发现，你是比其他人对一些不同的事情更感兴趣。越奇怪，你的品味在兴趣上，越好。其他的品味会经常增强这些，增项对工作的品味，意味着你将会富有生产力的。
你将更加可能找到一些新的事情，如果你正在找寻的， 一些很少有人已经看过的。

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.

tedious: 枯燥的
frightening: 可怕，吓人

你适合某种类型的一个标志是当你喜欢，甚至部分，其他人发现枯燥的或者可怕的。

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.

loyalty: 忠诚
owe: 欠、归功于
own: 拥有

但是领域不是人，你不能拥有他们任何忠诚， 如果在某个工作的阶段，你发现其他更加令人兴奋，不要害怕去切换。

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.

如果你在某些人做事，请确保这些事，是他们真的想要的。最好的方式，是做这些你自己想做的。
写一个故事，你想读的。构建一个工具，你想用的。
因为你的朋友可能有相似的兴趣，这也让你得到最初的观众

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

sophisticated: 精良，复杂
go down: 走下去

这应该遵循从兴奋规则。明显的，最令人兴奋的故事，去写，将是你想读的。
这个原因，我提及，这个例子明显是许多人误解他。
不是做他们想做的，而是尝试做一些想象中的，更复杂的观众想要的。
一旦你沿着这条路走下去，你将会迷失。

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.

astray: 迷路、歧途
pretentiousness: 自命不凡
eminent：杰出、著名、显赫
frauds: 欺诈、骗局
genuienly: 真心
proof: 证据

有许多的力量在引导你误入歧途，当你正在尝试弄清楚做什么。 子明不凡，时尚，恐惧，金钱，政治，其他人的希望， 著名的骗局， 但是如果你坚持于他， 不断的寻找天生兴奋，你将会是反对他们的证据，如果你感兴趣， 你将不会误入歧途。

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.

obstacle: 障碍

遵循你的兴趣，可能听起来像非常消极的策略，但是在实践中，他通常意味着跟随他们，克服所有的障碍。
你通常不得不冒着拒绝和失败的风险。所以这需要一些勇敢。

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.

variant: 变体，变形
invariant: 不变体、不变量
certain：肯定的、确定的；某些

但是当你需要勇敢，你不需要太多计划。通常来说，做出色工作的食谱是简单的。努力工作在令人兴奋的大工程中，一些好的礼物将会从中产生。不是做计划，而是执行他，你只需要尝试保留某些不变量?

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.

tenaciously: 顽强
pursue: 追赶、从事

计划的问题是只工作适用于成就感，那些你预先描绘的。你可以赢得金牌，或者变得富有通过决定作为在一个孩童时期，然后顽强追求那个目标。但是你不能发现自然选择。

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.

approach

• verb: 接近
• noun: 方法、途径
  upwind: 逆风
  stay upwind: 保持逆风

我认为大部分人，想要做出色工作的人，正确的策略不是计划太多。在每一个阶段，都做最感兴趣的，给你更好的选择对未来。我叫这个方法 “保持逆风”， 这是大多数做出色工作的在做的事情。

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.

leap: 跳

即使当你已经发现一些令人兴奋的事情，而去从事他，这个过程也不总是一帆风顺的。有时候，当一些点子让你在早晨跳下床，然后直接去工作。但是大部分时候，事情不是那样。

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.

sail:

• noun: 帆、扬帆
• verb: 扬帆、航海
  blow: 吹
  headwind：逆风
  currents: 洋流
  shoal: 浅滩

你不仅仅要扬帆起航，被灵感吹向远方。这儿有逆风，洋流和隐藏的浅滩。
有一些技巧去工作，同样的航海也是。

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.

diminishing: 递减
fatigue: 疲劳
yield: 出产、屈服

举个例子，当你必须努力工作，那可能是工作过于难。如果你发现你获取的递减的反馈。疲劳让你愚蠢，最终伤害你的健康。这点，哪一个工作产量递减回报依赖于这种类型。某些艰难的类型，你必须做他，一天 4 小时，或者 5 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.

To the extent you can：尽你所能的
shy away: 回避

理想情况下，这些时间是持续的。尽你所能， 尝试安排你的生活，以至于你有许多大块的时间去工作。你可能会因为害羞远离回避困难的工作，如果你知道你可能会被打断的。

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.

trick: 戏法、欺骗
flaw: 缺陷
correspond: 相应的
magnitude: 震级、幅度、大小、规模

这可能是困难的， 开始工作比持续工作。你将会不得不欺骗来度过初始的阈值。不要担心他。这是工作的必然。不是缺陷在你的性格中。工作有一个激活能量的顺序，每一天每一个项目都有。由于阈值是假的在感知上，所以这是比需要持续的能量更多的，请告诉你自己一个谎言，合适的幅度来克服它。

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.

reluctant: 勉强、不愿
off：离开

通常来讲，是一个错误的，对你自己撒谎，如果你想做好工作。但是这是稀少的不是错误的案例之一。当你不愿去在早晨开始工作时，我经常欺骗自己通过说，我只会读一些我已经读到的内容。五分钟后，我已经发现一些事情，似乎是错误或者未完成的。我离开了。

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?”

entail：需要

相似的技巧适用于开始新的项目。这是没问题的，对自己撒谎，一个项目将需要多少工作, 举个例子，许多出色的事情都是开始于人们说，他能有多难？

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.

optimistic: 乐观

这是一个案例，年轻人拥有优势。他们是更积极的，尽管他们优势的来源是无知。在这个案例中，无知可能有时会打败知识。

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.

tidiness: 整洁
exercise: 锻炼、运动、练习
experience: 体验、经历

尝试完成你开始的事情，尽管，他可能会变成超出你期待的更多的工作。完成事情不仅仅是一种练习，在自律和整洁上。在许多项目中， 许多好工作发生在最终阶段。

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

exaggerate: 夸大

另一个可许可的谎言是强调你工作的重要性。至少要在你的脑海里。如果帮你发现一些新的事情，这将不会是谎言。最终。

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

sense: 意义、感觉、道理、观念
procrastination: 拖延

因为有两个感知对开始工作， 天和项目。所以有两种形式的拖延. 项目的拖延是更加危险的。你会放下开始雄心勃勃的项目年复一年。因为这个时间不对。往你是在年为单位的拖延, 你可能做的很多事情没有完成。

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.

camouflage: 伪装、迷彩服、隐身
industry: 工业、产业、勤勉
sit aound doing noting: 坐着无所事事
set off: 出发、引起、分开

一个原因， 项目的拖延是如此的危险以至于他通常伪装成在工作, 你不仅仅坐在什么都不做的周围坐着无所事事，你还要勤勉的致力于其他的一些事情。所以项目的拖延不会引发警告像按天拖延那样。你太繁忙而不会注意他。

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

一种打败他的方式是停止偶然和常常问自己，我在做我想做的事情么？当你年轻的事情，这个问题也许是不，但这将变得越来越危险，随着你年纪越来越大。

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.

cost: 成本、代价
engage:

• 迷人、吸引人的
• 从事、聘用、聘请

出色的工作通常需要花费似乎对大多数人，没有理由的大量的时间在问题上。你不能认为这些时间是成本的，他太多了。你不得不找到 充分有吸引力的工作当他发生时。

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.

diligently: 勤奋
genuinely:
consistently: 一致、始终如一
take stock: 评估状况
take: 带、拿、服用、接受
stock: 股票

因为一些工作，你不得不工作勤奋的好几年在哪些你讨厌的事情，在你获得好的部分前。但这不是出色工作如何发生的。出色的工作发生在集中一致在你天生感兴趣的事情上，当你暂停去评估，你会惊讶你已经走了如此的远。

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.

cumulative: 积累

这个原因，我们惊讶的是我们低估积累的影响。写一页一天听起来没有很多，但是你每天都做，你将用一年写一本书。这是关键。持之以恒。做出色工作的人不会一天做很多，他们做一些事情，不是什么都不做。

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.

compound: 复合的
potential: 潜在的

• latent
  exponential：指数级
  conscious: 意识到
• subconscious: 潜意识
  phenomenon: 现象
  bring: 带来，让某人处于某种情况

如果你复合型工作， 你将会获得指数级的成长，大多数人无意识的，但是这是糟糕的停止考虑这些。学习，是这种现象的实例，你了解的越多，你学习的越容易。增长观众是其他：你的粉丝越多，越多的新粉丝将为你带来。

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.

curve: 曲线
cure: 治愈

• heal: 治愈
  intuitively: 直觉的
• intuition
• instinct
  underrate：低估

指数成长的问题是曲线的感觉平铺在开始。他不是，他是指数的曲线。我们不能抓到直觉, 所以我们低估指数的成长在早期的阶段。

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.

grammar: 语法
syntax: 句法
Grammar（语法）是指一种语言的整体结构和规则，包括词汇、句法、语义和语用等方面。它涉及到词的形态、句子的结构、语法关系以及句子的意义等。语法研究的是语言的组成部分以及它们如何组合成合乎规则的句子。
Syntax（句法）则是语法的一个子领域，专门研究句子的结构和组成成分之间的关系。它关注的是句子的语法结构，例如主语、谓语、宾语、定语、状语等成分的排列顺序和组合方式。句法研究的是句子的形式和结构，以及这些结构如何影响句子的意义。

extraordinary: 非凡
phase: 阶段
push through：完成

一些事情指数发生，变得有价值。这是糟糕的，通过做出极其努力去让他开始。因为我们低估的成长，在早期的时候。这也是大部分无意识的：人们完成这初始，不奖励阶段，学习一些新的东西，因为他们从经历中知道学习新的东西总是经历初始的推，或者他们增长他们的观众为任意粉丝，因为他们没有做的更好。如果人们意识到他们能够投资指数的成长，许多都能做的更好。

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.

frontal: 正面、前额

工作不仅仅发生在你尝试做的时候。一种无方向的思考， 当你漫步，洗澡，躺在床上的时候，都是有可能的。通过让你的大脑漫游一会儿，你通常会解决问题，那么你不能通过正面的袭击解决的。

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

interleaved: 交织
deliberate: 深思熟虑

你不得不努力工作在通常的情况下，从这种现象中收益。你不能只漫游在白日梦中。白日梦必须交织于深思熟虑的工作，那么提出问题

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.)

distraction: 分心
distract: 转移、分心

每一个人都知道要避免分心在工作是。但是这也是很重要的，避免他们在循环周期的一半。当你让你的大脑漫游的时候，他漫游在你此刻关心的部分。避免这种种类的分心，让你的工作推离顶点？你将会浪费思考的价值在分心中。异常例外：不要避免爱。

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.

有意识的培养你的品味在工作中在你的领域内。直到你知道什么是最好的，和什么构成他，之前不需要知道你正在做的目的。

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

worth/worse
all the shells that miss the target miss by falling short
所有未击中目标的炮弹都因为短期下降和错误。 引申出要看的更远。
a qualitatively different: 本质不同
vague: 模糊

那是你的目的，因为你不尝试成为最好，你将甚至不会做好。这个观察已经被许多人在许多领域做，这可能是一个值得，考虑这为什么是对的。他可能因为野心是一种现象，大多数错误都在一个方向，所有未击中目标的炮弹都因为短期下降和错误。 或者这可能是因为野心是最好是和想要变好在质上的本质差距。可能变好是太简单模糊的标准，可能所有的三个都对。

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.

net: 网、净、净值
net ahead: 净值领先
liberate: 解放
deliberate: 深思熟虑，因为一直没有解放，所以需要深思熟虑

幸运的是，还有经济规模的种类。尽管看起来你正在背着沉重的负担尝试做到最好。在实际上，你经常最终净值领先。这是兴奋和令人奇怪的解放。 他简化事情，某种形式上说， 这是简单的，做到最好而不是仅仅变好。

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.

contemporary: 当代、当下
genuinely: 真正的

一种目标更高的方式是尝试做一些事情，人们在百年间都在意的事情。不是因为他们的观点比当代人的重要，而是因为某些东西一直好在百年间是可能是真正的好。

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.

不要尝试做一些独特的风格。只尝试做你能做的最好的工作。你不能够帮助做他通过独特的方式。

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

affectation: 做作、矫揉造作

风格是独特的做事而不尝试。尝试是做作。

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

adapt:

• 适配
  adopt:
• 采用、采纳
• 收养

矫揉造作是一个影响来假装某些人而不是你正在工作的人。你 采用了令人印象深刻但是虚假的角色，虽然你很满意对这种印象，但是虚假在作品中展示出来。

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.

temptation: 诱惑

成为他人的诱惑，对年轻人来说是最好的。他们通常感觉像无人=无名小卒？但你是不需要担心问题。因为他是自解决的，如果你致力于充足的野心工程。如果你成功在一个野心勃勃的工程，你不是可有可无的。你是完成它的那个人。所以只需要工作， 你的身份自己会照顾好它。

“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.

earnest：认真、真诚
vice：恶习，副、副总

避免做作是一个非常有用的规则到目前为止，但是，你是怎么积极的表达想法的呢？你是怎么解释是什么，而不是，解释不是什么。这个最好的回答，是认真。如果你认真，你不仅避免仅仅做作，而是一个完整的集合，有着相似的恶习。

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?

intellectual: 智力、理智、知识分子。

认真的核心是理智上的诚实。我们在孩童时期就被告知诚实是一个无私的美德。作为奉献的一种。但是事实上，这也是力量的来源。为了看到一些新的想法，你需要额外擦亮双眼来找事实。你正在看到更多的事实，比哪些目前已经再看的人们 你正在比其他人迄今为止看到更多的真想。如果你在智力上不诚实, 你怎么能拥有尖锐的眼力来看到事实呢？

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

一种避免理智上不诚实的方案是维持轻微的积极的压力在反方向。心愿是承认你是错误的。一旦你承认你是错误的关于某些事情。你是自由的。直到你不得不携带它。

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.

subtle: 微妙
informality: 非正式的
formal: 正式的、拘谨的、有条理的

另一种更微妙的组件是非正式的, 非正式是比他语法上消极的名字暗示更重要的。这不仅仅是缺少某些事物。更意味这要集中在重要的事情而不是非重要的事情上。

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.

spend/expend
nerd: 鬼才、书呆子、讨厌鬼
come out of: 由什么产生

正式和做作的共性是尽可能的做好工作，你在尝试似乎一种确定的方式，当你正在做的时候。但是许多来源于内心能量流进你的外表上。那是一个原因，书呆子有优势做出色工作：他们花费很少努力在看起来的一些事情上。事实上，那是书呆子的一些基础定义。

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.

sit back: 休息，不采取行动
sit back and look unconcerned: 坐视不管
criticism: 批评

书呆子是一种天真的勇敢，那是你在工作中需要的。不是学习的。而是从孩童时期保留而来。所以只需要握住它。成为那个把事情摆出来，而不是一个不采取行动，并提供听起来复杂的批评的人。“批评很容易”在任何字面感觉上都是对的，然而出色工作的路不容易

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.

The Old Testament: 旧约

许多工作需要的优势是严谨，但是如果你要想做出色的工作，他需要的优势是乐观，尽管这意味这，你将冒着看起来偶尔有点儿傻的风险。一个老传统是唱反调。旧约说保持安静而不是看起来像傻瓜更好。但是这个建议似乎是聪明，如果你真的想要发现一些新的事情，你要冒一些告诉别人你的想法的风险。

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

either: 任何
suffice： 足够
doubt that it is be possible to do: 怀疑做什么是可能的吗？
accommodate: 适应
distortion: 扭曲、变形、曲解
orthodox: 正统、东正教

一些人是天生的认真，和其他人需要有意识的努力。任何一种认真都足够了。 但是我怀疑如果不认真就不可能做出色的工作。这是困难的即使你愿意。你没有足够的空间应对这些错误、比如适应引入影响、智力上的不诚实、正统、时尚或者酷而带来的扭曲

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.

all of a piece: 整体

出色的工作是始终如一的，不仅仅是谁去做，而是仅关乎自己。通常是一个整体。所以即使你面对一个决定在做某事的中期，问一下，什么选择是更加一致的。

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?

status quo: 现状

你可能不得不抛一些东西然后重新做他。你不需要必须，但是你必须乐意的。这要付出一些努力。当一些事情你重做的时候，现状偏见和懒惰将组合在一起让你拒绝他。请打败这个问题，如果我已经做出改变，我还想恢复我现在拥有的东西吗？

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.

自信的剪切。不要保持一些东西，不能适应，只因为你对他们很骄傲，或者因为他们花费你大量的努力。

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.

strip: 剥夺、脱、脱衣舞
essence: 本质、精华、精髓

• Take the essence and discard the dross：取其精华，弃其糟粕
  concentrate: 集中

确实，在某些类别的工作中，剥离你正在做的事情的本质是好事，结果将会更加的集中；你将理解它更好。你将不能够对你自己撒谎关于是否有一些真实在这。

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.

term:

• 学期、任期
• 术语、名词

数学工程的优雅可能听起像单纯的隐喻， 源自艺术。那是我认为，当我第一听到优雅一词的证据。但是现在，我怀疑他只是概念优先，主要的成分在艺术优雅是数学优雅。在任何比例下，他都是一个实用的标准超越数学。

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.

laborious: 勤劳、困难、费力
labor: 劳动力
prestige: 威望、声望

优雅可能是一个长期的赌注，尽管。费力解决方案经常有更多的威望在短期。他们花费一些努力和艰难的理解，但这两点让所有人印象深刻，至少短期内。

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.

in a sense: 某种意义上
dont’t have to: 不必

然而，一些非常好的工作就像，花费相比少的努力，应该这某种意义上已经存在了。他不必被构建，只能看见。有一个很好的标记是，当他是很难的说，是否你正在创建一些事情或者发现它。

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.

err: 宁可
take their natural shape: 采用自然形状。

当你正在做工作，被认为是有创造性或者探索性的，宁可在探索的一边。尝试把自己作为一个简单的渠道，通过这个渠道，想法自然形成。

(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.)

很奇怪，一个例外是选择一个问题去工作的问题。这通常被认为是搜索，但是最好的案例是，这更多的像创建一些东西，最好的案例是，你创建一个字段在探索的过程中。

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.

gratuitously: 无偿，无理由的

相似的， 如果你尝试构建一个强力工具， 让它无偿的无限制。一个强力工具几乎在定义上来说，被用在你不期望的方式，所以宁可多减少限制，尽管你不知道受益在哪。

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.

implication: 暗示

出色工作通常是像工具一样，某种意义上，正在成为他人在构建依赖的某些东西。所以，这是一个好的标记，如果你创建一个想法，其他人可以用，或者暴露问题他人可以回答的。最好的点子在许多领域都有暗示。

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

intend: 打算

如果你表达你的点子在大多数通用的表单中，他们会变得真实比你试图做的。

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.

对是不足够的， 好的点子是对且新的。这将需要相当数量的能力去看到新的点子，甚至你已经学习到成为领域的前沿

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.

extent:

• 长度、面积、范围
• 程度
  respect:
• 尊重
  • regard
• 细节、方面
  • aspect
    originality: 原创性

在英语中，我们给这个能力命名像原创性、创造力和想象力。似乎是有原因的合理的去给他一个单独的名称，因为他似乎某种程度上有一些单独的技巧。这是可能在其他的方面有大量的能力， 为了拥有很多通常叫做技术能力，然而还未有许多关于他。

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.

angle: 角度

• angel: 天使
  grinder: 粉碎机、磨床

我不喜欢这个名词，创造性工程。这似乎是有误导性的。原创性不是过程， 是大脑的习惯。原创的思考着，不断的抛出新的点子，无论他们集中于什么。像角磨机抛出火花一样。他们无能为力。

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.

roughly: 大致
spectacularly: 壮观
nature: 自然、天性、本质

如果他们集中在一些，他们不理解的事情上。新的点子可能不会很好. 其中一个我知道的原创思考者决定集中约会在离婚后。他对约会大致的了解像 15 岁和结果是多彩的。但是看和它的专业分离的原创性就像让它的天性本质一直很清晰。

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

make the most of: 充分利用
slightly: 轻微

我不知道是否，培养原创性是可能的，但是一个明显的方式是充分利用你拥有的一切。举个例子，你可能有一个原创的想法，当你致力于某事。原创想法不会从尝试有原创想法来。他们会从尝试构建或者理解一些稍微困难的东西来?

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.

sort:

• 排序
• 种类

讨论或者写下关于你感兴趣的东西，是一个很好的生产新的点子的方式。当你尝试将思维诉诸文字，那些错失的点子将会创建一种真空。确实，有一种思考只能通过写下完成。

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

dislodge: 驱逐

改变你的环境可能是有帮助的。如果你参观一个新的地方，你将会经常找到一些新的点子。旅途本身经常驱逐他们。但是你可能不需要去远的地方去得到益处。有时，漫步就已经足够了。

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.

surface: 表面
analogy: 类比
fruitful: 富有成效、硕果累累

在一个有主题的空间旅行也是有帮助的。你将有更多的新点子，如果你探索许多不同的主题，部分是因为他们为角磨机提供更多的工作的表面空间，部分是因为类比是新想法特别有效的来源。

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 

power law: 幂次定律

不要分离你的注意力在太多主题中。你将会分散自己太细。你想要分配他根据类似能量规律的东西。

Be professionally curious about a few topics and idly curious about many more.

professionally: 专业、职业
professor: 教授
idly: 空闲

请对少数的主题职业好奇，并且对更多的部分闲散好奇

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.

好奇心和原创是关联的。好奇心支撑原创性，通过给他一些在从事的新的事情。但是关系比那种更近。好奇是原创的一种。他大致等价于一个回答原创性是什么的问题。由于最好的问题是一个回答的大部分，最好的好奇心是他的创造力量

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?

拥有新的点子是奇怪的游戏，因为他通常和看见的东西一致，那些就在你鼻下的。一旦你看见新的点子，它似乎是明显的。为什么没有其他人在之前发现呢？

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

simultaneously: 同时
novel:

• 小说
• 新颖的

当一个点子似乎同时是新颖和明显的。他可能是好的。

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.

empirically: 基于经验、基于数据的实证
apparent: 明显、显而易见

• transparent：透明的
  • clarity
    contradiction: 矛盾

看到一些很明显的事情听起来很容易，然而，基于经验，拥有一个新注意是困难的。明显的矛盾的来源是什么？看到一些新的点子通常需要改变你看世界的方式。我们看世界通过模型，帮助和限制我们。当你修复一个坏的模型，新的点子往往变得明显。但是意识到和修复一个坏的模型是很难的。一个新的点子是怎么既明显但困难去发现。他们是容易的看见，在你做出一些困难的事情。

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.

bash: 痛击、猛击
understatement: 轻描淡写
perspective: 视角
retrospect: 回顾
conspicuous: 显眼、引人注目的
however:

• 但是
• 无论如何

一种发现坏模型的事情是变得比其他人更加的严格。坏的模型世界上，会留下一些线索的印记，他们和现实对抗。大多数人不想看到这些线索。这将会是一个 xx 来说他们贴近他们当前的模型。轻描淡写地说，他们依附于当前的模式。这是他们在思考的。所以他们将有意识的忽视这些线索的痕迹，通过破坏他，无论事后看起来多么明显。

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.

not so much: 与其说
equation: 方程

为了找到一些新的点子， 你不得不抓住一些破坏的标记而不是环顾四周。那是爱因斯坦做的。 他能看见一些来自麦克斯韦方程的疯狂的意义，与其说他正在寻找一些新的点子，不如说因为他是严格的人。

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.

paradoxical: 自相矛盾、悖论
implicit: 隐含的

其他的事情， 你需要的是愿意破坏规则。 尽管听起来自相矛盾， 如果你想要修复你关于世界的模型，这是有帮助的，你成为这种怡然的破坏规则的人。从这个旧模型视角的观点中，每一个人包括你自己开始分享， 这个新的模型通常至少破坏不清晰的规则。

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.

astronomer: 天文学家
astronaut: 宇航员
heliocentric: 以太阳为中心

很少的理解规则破坏的度，因为新的点子似乎更多的保留，一旦他们成功。他们似乎是有理由的完美的，一旦你们是适用新的世界模型，他们用他带来的。但是他们没有这样做在这时在那时。花了大半个世纪日心说的普遍接受，即使在天文学家中，因为它感觉如此的错误。

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.

or:

• 或者
• 否则
  tend to: 往往，趋向于

确实， 如果你考虑他，一个好点子似乎对大多数人是坏的，否则某人已经探索过它。所以你在寻找的东西是那些看似疯狂，但是正确种类的疯狂的点子。你怎么识别出这些？你不能有确定性。经常性的，似乎是坏的点子就是坏的。但是那些是正确的疯狂的点子是令人兴奋的。他们是富有含义的；然而仅仅糟糕的点子往往令人沮丧

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.

indifferent: 淡漠、漠视
aggressively: 大举、积极、有侵略性的

• 有侵略性，主动做什么
  active: 积极的、主动的
  passive: 被动的
  positive: 积极的

有两种方式可以舒服的破坏规则，享受破坏他们， 和对他们漠视。我叫这两个案例积极和被动的独立思考。

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.

naughty: 顽皮的

• badly behaved
• suggestive of sexual improperiety
  suggestive: 提示、暗示
  improperiety: 不正当的
  sheer: 纯粹、陡峭、薄
  shelf: 货架
  audacity: 大胆、无畏
  supply: 提供

主动的，独立思考是顽皮的那个。规则不仅仅是失败在停止无法停止他们。破坏规则给他们巨大的能量。对于这种人，高兴于工程纯粹，大胆，有时。提供足够激活的能量来让她开始。

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.

immunity: 免疫力
institution: 机构
conventional: 惯例、传统

另一种破坏规则的方式，不是是不关心他们，或者甚至不是知道他们存在。这是为什么没有恶习和外出新手和局外人往往能做出新发现的原因。对于某些领域无知的假设扮演了短暂的被动的独立思考的来源。 xx 也似乎有一种对传统信念的免疫力。几个我知道的说，这帮助他们有新的点子。

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.

trivial: 琐碎的、微不足道的

严格加上破坏规则听起来是奇怪的组合。在现代文化中，他们是相反的。但是现代文化在这种视角下，是破坏的模型。他暗中假设那个问题是琐碎的, 在一个琐碎的事情上，严格和破坏规则是相对的。但是在实际重要的问题中，只要破坏规则才是真正的严格。

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.

shoot it down：击落它
controversial: 争议

一个重视被忽视的想法经常不会半途而废，你可以看到他，潜意识里，但是你潜意识的另一部分会否决他， 因为他是非常奇怪，危险，太多工作，太多争议的。这建议一个令人兴奋的可能性：如果你关上这些过滤器， 你可以看到更多的点子。

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.

else to do

一种方式是问，好点子对于那些探索的人来说是什么 对于某些人还剩哪些好点子可以去探索。接下来， 你的潜意识不会否认他，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.

obscure:
make less visible or unclear
遮掩

cherish: 关心、珍视、珍爱
be fond of \ be attached to：喜欢

你可能发现，重视的想法通过用其他的方向工作，比如通过从那些遮掩他们的地方开始。每一个珍视但是错误的原则是被一些有价值的想法包围的死亡区域。他们没有被探索过，因为他们是矛盾的。

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

region: 区域
religion: 宗教

• nationality, creed, race, religion
• 国籍，肤色、种族、宗教
  copernicus: 哥白尼
  darwin： 达尔文

宗教是一个 珍视但是错误的原则的集合，所以任何事情字面上和隐喻上都可以认为，宗教，有一个有价值的未被探索的点子在他的阴影下。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?

evident: 明显的

人们在你的领域，对什么有宗教信仰，感知上喜欢某些原则的，可能不是如他们所想的不言自明。什么是你可能会抛弃他的。如果你抛弃他，什么将会发生？

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.

suck:

• 吸
  get sucked into: 被卷入

人们展示更多的原创性在解决问题上，而不是决定什么问题被解决。即使最聪明的人也是令人惊讶的保守，当决定做什么工作的时候。人们不会梦想变得时尚在任何其他的方式，被卷入在处理时尚问题上

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.

as well： 也

一个原因，人们变得保守，当选择问题超过方案，是选择是很大的赌资。问题可能占据你数年。然而探索解决方案只会花几天。但是甚至我认为大多数人太过于保守。他们不仅应对风险，而且也应对时尚，不时尚的问题是低价值的。

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.

take: 利用
tap: 拍，敲打

• exploit: 开采，开发
• draw from: 从…中得到
  tap out: 敲打出
  deter：阻止
  skepticism: 怀疑

非时尚的问题中最感兴趣的种类之一是这些问题，人们认为已经充分探索，但是还没有。出色工作经常 利用 这些，已经存在的东西，和展示他潜在的潜力。xx 和 怀特都做他。所以如果你对这个领域感兴趣，其他人认为被开发过的。 不要让她们的怀疑阻止你。人们经常是错误的关于这个

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.

hype: 炒作、骗局
hoax: 骗局
solidity: 坚固

处理非时尚的问题可能是非常开心的。没有炒作或者急促。机会主义和批评主义都是被其他占据的。存在的工作经常有一个老派的坚固性. 有一些令人满意的感觉，对经济，培养想法~~，否则~~本来是浪费的。

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.

indulgent: 放纵、溺爱
tuning: 调、调音、调整

最通用的被忽视的问题类型不是从过时意义上明显的非时尚。这似乎不和他实际做的一样重要。你怎么找到这些的？通过自我放纵，让你的好奇心有他自己的方式，xx，至少短期内，小声音在你的脑袋里，说你应该做一些重要的问题。

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.

serious：严肃的

你需要做一些重要的问题， 但是几乎每一个人是太保守的关于什么算是重要的。如果有一个重要的，但是在你的旁边被忽视的，可能是已经在你的潜意识的雷达屏幕上。所以尝试问自己，如果你将从严肃的工作中休息一下，去做那些仅仅是真实有趣的，你想要做什么？回答是比他似乎是什么更重要。

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.

原创性，在选择问题时，似乎比在解决问题时的原创性更加重要。那是使这些发现整个新的领域的人独特的部分。所以，尽管，似乎可能仅仅是第一步，决定做什么，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.

compose: 组成、谱曲
composition:

• 创作
• 构成，成分
  ratio: 比例
• the ratio of question to answer: 问题和回答的比例
  insight: 洞察力

很少能抓住这个， 最大的误解是关于新的想法的，是问题和回答的比例来回答，在他们的创作上。 人们认为大的想法是回答，但是真实的洞察力是问题。

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.

brief: 简洁、暂时
particle: 粒子
rise: 升起

• the sun rise: 太阳升起
  arise:
• 发生、产生
• 起身、起床
  territory：领土、版图

部分我们低估问题的原因是他们在学校中使用的方式。在学校中，他们往往仅仅暂时存在，在被回答前，比如不稳定的粒子. 但是真正好的问题是比那多的。一个好的问题是一个部分的发现。新的物种是怎么产生的？这个力量，让东西跌到地面和保持行星在他们的轨道的力量是一样的吗？通过问例如这样的问题，你们已经令人兴奋的新奇的领土、版图之中。

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.

未回答的问题可能是不舒服一直让你携带的东西。但是，你携带的越多，意识到解决方案的机会越大。可能甚至更加的令人兴奋，意识到，两个未回答的问题是一样的。

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，你携带的问题一段时间。出色的工作通常来自于一个多年前你第一次注意问题的回报。在你的孩童时期，甚至从未停止过考虑他。人们对保持年轻的梦想的重要性谈论的很多，但是保持你年轻时的问题一样很重要。

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.

expertise: 专业知识
expert: 专家
so long as: 只要
puzzle：困惑

这是许多专业知识实际非常不同与流行图片中的他地方中的一个。在流行图片中，专家是确认的。但是实际上，你越多的困惑，只要 (a) 你为重要的东西困惑， (b) 和没有其他人可以理解他们。

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

太什么，以至于
so … that …
… enough that …

考虑在此刻发生了什么，在一个新的想法被发现前。通常情况下， 一些人有着充足的专业技能，被一些事情锁困惑，这意味着原创性部分包含困惑，你不得不足够舒服和充满着谜题的世界以至于你乐意看见他们，但不是那么舒服以至于你不想解决他们。

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.

lead to：导致

这是很好的事情，变得富有在未回答的问题中。这是这些环境之一，富有的人变得越来越富有。因为最好的方式，获取新的问题是尝试回答存在的问题。问题不会引导到回答，而是更多的问题。 问题不仅仅会带来答案，还会带来更多的问题

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.

paradigm: 范式

protrude:

• 突出、伸出
• 1. extend out or project in space
     synonymous： [stick out](dic://stick out), [jut out](dic://jut out), jut, project

let alone to: 更不用说

unravel: 解开、拆开

最好的问题在回答中生成，你意识到一个线从当前的范式中伸出和尝试拉取中。他变得越来越长。所以不要需求一个问题，变得显眼的大，在你尝试回答它之前。你可以很少预测它。这是足够艰难即使是意识到这个线，更不用说预测如果你拉取他，将会拆开多少

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.

promiscuous：混乱的

变得好奇是更好的。拉取一些线，和看到发生什么。大事开始都很小。初始版本，大事情经常仅仅是实验性的，或者业余项目，或者谈论，然后成长为某些更大的事情。所以开始需要小事情。

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

prolific: 多产的
intellectual：智力上
intelligent quotient: 智商
quotient: 商，商数

变得 多产是被低估的。更多不同的事情，你尝试的，更好的机会，发现一些新的事情。理解，尽管，尝试许多事情将意味着许多事情不起作用。你不能有许多好点子，如果没有许多坏的话。

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.

responsible: 负责任的
stuff: 事物、东西
puzzle: 谜题，拼图

尽管听起来更加的负责任通过开始一些之前已经被做过的事情。你将会学习的更快，和有更多的乐趣，通过尝试事情。你将理解过去的工作，更好的，当你关注它的时候。所以, 宁可在开始的时候就这么做。这样是简单的，当开始意味着从小的地方开始；这些两个点子合拍的像拼图两个部分。

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.

你怎么从开始做一些事情更好中得到呢？通过做出成功的版本。出色的事情几乎总是被成功的版本所制作。你从一些小事中开始，和进化，最终版本总是聪明的和雄心壮志的，比你之前的计划的部分。

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.

successive: 连续的

这尤其的有用，在做连续的版本，当你正在为别人做一些事情的时候。做出初始的的版本在前期，快速的，然后迭代它基于他们的响应。

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.

通过尝试最简单的事情来开始可能是有用的。经常令人惊讶的是，确实如此。如若不然，至少你开始做了。

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.

cram: 填、塞满、临时抱佛脚、补习
ship：

• verb: 船
• noun: 运输

不要尝试填太多新的东西到任何一个版本中。有许多名字，做这个在第一次的版本中（花费很长来运输），第二次，（第二次系统影响），但是这些仅仅是更多通用的原则的实例。

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

follow:

• 跟随
• 遵循

一个项目更早期的版本将有时被误认为玩笑。这是一个好的标志，当人们做这个的时候。这意味着，他有一个新的点子需要的除了规模外的一切东西。和趋向于遵循。 规模往往会随之而来

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.

从一些小事开始和迭代它的替代品是预先计划你将要做什么。计划通常似乎更加令人尊重选择。这听起来更加的有条理的，说：我们将要做 x 然后 y 然后 z 比 我们将要尝试 x 看看什么会发生。他是更有条理的，只是没有很好的起作用。

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.

coordinate: 协调
unforgiving: 无情

计划每一个点不是好的。这偶尔是需要的。但是是一个必须的邪恶？一个回应给无情的条件。这是一些事情，你不得不做的。因为你正在通过不灵活的媒体工作，或者因为你需要协调许多人的努力。如果你保持项目很小，和使用灵活的媒体，你不需要计划太多，和你的设计可以不断的进化。

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.

efficient: 有效的、高效的
proportionate: 对称、正比

尽可能冒你能支出的风险。在一个充足有效的市场是，风险正比于奖励。所以不用找寻确定性，但是带着一个高度期待的值的赌注。如果你不会偶然失败，那么你将可能太过于保守主义。

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.

inexperience: 缺乏经验

尽管保守主义通常和老人联系起来，但是现在年轻人也趋向于犯这个错误。缺乏经验让他们害怕风险，但是这是你年轻时最能支付他的时间。

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.

territory: 领土、地区
slightly: 稍微
too hard: 太困难

即使一个项目失败，也可能是宝贵的。在致力于它的过程是，你将经历很少有人看见的领域，遇到这些问题很少有人回答的。可能不会有问题的来源比这些你在尝试做一些小事儿中遇到的更好。稍微太困难了。

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.

efficiency: 效率
latter: 后者
former: 前者

使用年轻人的优势，当你有时，和年龄的优势，一旦你拥有他们。年轻人的优势是能量，时间，积极，自由。年龄的优势，是知识，效率，金钱，力量。使用努力，你可以获得后者的一些当年轻时，和保持前者的一些当年长时。

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.

frivolous: 不重要的、无意义的
freakishly: 异常的
freakish: 异想天开的
freak: 怪胎

年老的人也有一些认知上的优势。年轻人通常拥有那些不需要意识它的。最大的可能是时间，年轻人没有主意，他们当前有多富裕。最好的方式，将时间转化为优势是使用它通过无意义的的方式。了解一些你不需要了解的，仅仅出于好奇心，或者尝试构建一些事情，因为它将会很酷或者变得异常好在某些事情上。

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

qualify： 使具有资格
qualification: 资格

名词 “slightly” 是很重要的资格。花费时间当你年轻时，但不要简单的浪费它。在做一些事情你担心可能是浪费时间和做一些你了解一定是浪费时间是有非常大的不同的。前者至少是一次赌博，可能好于你认知上。

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

subtle：微妙
be used to: 习惯于
jab: 刺

最微妙的优势在年轻时，或者更加精确的缺乏经验， 是你通过新鲜的眼睛看每一件事情。当你的头脑拥抱想法第一次时，偶尔，这两者不会完美契合。通常的问题是在你的大脑上。偶尔也在你的想法上。当你想到它的时候，它的一部分笨拙的伸出来，然后刺你 。人们，习惯于忽视他们，但是你有机会不这么做。

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.

misgiving: 疑虑
viable：可行、存活

所以当你了解某些事情，第一次的时候，集中精力到某些看起来错误或者忽视缺失的东西上。你将会趋向于忽视他们，因为他们有 99% 的可能在你身上。你可能不得不放下你的疑虑临时的，来保持成功进步。但是你不会忘记他们。当你获取更远的在主题上，回来和检查，是否他们仍然存在。如果他们仍然可行在你的当前的知识中。他们可能代表是一个未被发现的点子。

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.

hardly: 几乎不

多数珍贵的知识种类之一，你从经历中获取出来的是知道你不需要担心某些东西。年轻人知道所有的事情可能是重要的，但是不是关联的重要性。所以你平等的担心每一件事情。当你应该担心更多的几件事情和几乎不担心剩下的。

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.

adult: 成年
child: 童年
neighbour： 邻居

但是你不知道的仅仅是一半缺乏经验的问题。另一半你知道的也不是这样。你到达成年时光，你无意义的头脑，坏习惯你已经获取到的和错的事情你已经被教的。你不能够做出色工作直到你清楚远离，至少无意义的东西。在无论什么类型的工作中，你想要做的。
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.

identical: 等价于
warp: 扭曲

多数无意义留在你的脑袋中的是在学校留在哪的。我们习惯于学校，我们潜意识中对待去学校等价于学习，但是，事实上，学校有许多奇怪的品质，会扭曲我们的想法关于学习和思考。

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.

induce: 导致，诱发
class：

• 级别
• 课
• 班级、年纪
• 种类
  intrinsic：本质
  artifact：人造物

举个例子，学校导致被动。由于你们是小孩子，所以有权限有一个权威在年纪班级的前列，告诉你们所有人你不得不学习然后评估是否你这么做了。但是没有课程或者测试是本质来学习。他们仅仅人造物的方式，学校通常设计的。

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.

vice versa: 反之亦然

你越快克服这些消极，越好。如果你仍然在学校，尝试认为你的教育为你的工程，你的老师是为你工作而不是反之亦然。那可能是伸缩的，但是不仅仅是一个有一些奇怪的想法带有实验性质的。这是事实，经济学的，最好的案例，这是在智力上也是事实。最好的老师不想成为你的老板，他们更想要，你来推进，利用他们作为建议的来源，而不是被他们拉着通过材料。

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.

soluble: 可溶的

学校给你误导的感受，工作像什么。在学校，他们告诉你问题是什么。他们几乎总是可溶的的你已经被教的目前为止。在真的生活中，你不得不搞清楚，问题是什么，你经常不知道是否他们是可溶的。

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.

skimp: 吝啬

但是可能，最糟糕的事情，学校做的对你来说，是训练你赢通过破解这个测试。你不能做出色工作通过做他。你不能欺骗上帝。所以停止寻找快捷的种类捷径。一种方式，击败系统是集中在问题和解决方案其他人忽视的，而不是吝啬在工作他自己。

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.

不要认为你自己依赖于一些门卫给你一个巨大的破坏。即使这是对的。最好的方式获取他，是集中在做好的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.

committee: 委员会
admission：招生
officer: 官员
prize： 奖品
extent：

• 面积、范围
• 程度、限度

不要拒绝内心的声音。这种 xx 非常不同于这些出色工作需要的。xx 的决定只对扩展有意义，他们是反馈的部分和非常 xx 。
不要把委员会的拒绝放在心上。给招生官员和评奖委员会留下深刻印象的品质与出色工作所需的品质有很大不同。选拔委员会的决定只有在成为反馈循环的一部分的 程度 时才有意义，但很少有这样的情况。

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.

inherently: 本质、天生
inherit: 继承
neither: 既不
nor: 也不
absent: 缺席
present: 出席

• verb: 呈现、提出、赠送
• noun: 现在、礼物

人们来到一个新的领域的，通常拷贝存在的工作。对此是没有需要抱歉的这本身并没有什么坏处。没有更好的方式去了解事务怎么工作的，比尝试重现它。拷贝也不会让你的工作非原创。原创性是新点子的呈现。而不是老点子的缺失。

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

furtively: 偷偷摸摸
misattributed: 误导
superiority: 优越性
suboridination: 从属

有一个好的方式来拷贝和一个坏的方式。如果你将要拷贝一些东西，请公开而不是偷偷摸摸， 或者更糟糕的，无意识的。这意味着，一个著名的误导短语，出色的艺术家偷盗，真正危险的拷贝，这个类型给拷贝一个坏的名字，是没意识的被做，因为你没有比一个在被某些人放置的轨道上运行的火车做的更多。但是，在其他的极端下，拷贝可能是一个优越标志而不是从属。

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.

inevitable: 不可避免的
evitable: 可以避免的
arise: 出现、升起
vacuum：真空
arise in a vaccum: 凭空产生
start out:

• 启程、出发
• 开始做
  derive: 衍生
  derivative: 衍生物
  familiar：熟悉

在许多领域，你早点工作将会有某些意义几乎是无可避免的在其他人眼中。项目很少凭空产生。他们通常是过去工作的一个反应。当你第一次开始做，你没有任何过去的工作，如果你正要到一些事情反应，这不得不是其他人的。一旦你建立，你可以对你自己反应。但是往前者被叫做衍生物后者不会。从结构上来说，这两个案例比看起来似乎更相似？

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.

vocabulary: 词汇
conceive:

• 有想法
• 怀孕

足够奇怪的，大部分新奇的点子的新颖性有时会让他们似乎第一次变得更加的衍生性比他们之前。新的发现通常不得不被视为已经存在的物体的变体，即使他们的发现者，因为还未有概括性的词语表达他们。

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.

尽管抄袭是明显有一些危险的。其中之一，是你往往抄袭老的东西，在他们那个时代是前沿知识，但现在不是

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.

manner:

• 方式
• 行为
  eminent: 著名的
  poem: 诗
  renaissance： 文艺复兴
  idiom: 成语、习语、谚语

当你抄袭一些东西，不要抄袭每一个特点。一些让你滑稽，如果你做了。不要抄袭行为，50 岁著名老教授，如果你 18 岁。举个例子，上百年后，文艺复兴时期的诗歌的习语。

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.

flaw: 缺陷
imitate: 模仿

一些东西的特点，你羡慕的，是他们成功的羽毛尽管是尽管有缺陷，但是他们成功了。确实，这些特征，是最容易的模仿的是最可能成为缺陷的。

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.

jerk: 混蛋、白痴

这是绝对正确的行为。一些有天赋的人是混蛋的，有时让似乎缺乏经验的人们认为变成一个混蛋是天赋的一部分。这不是的。变得有天赋仅仅是他们远离它的方式。

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.

deliberately: 刻意、有意的
give a hand: 举手之劳。

最有力的复制种类之一是复制从一个领域到另一个。历史是充满偶然发现，因此可能值得通过刻意学习其他类型的工作来帮助机会。你可能收获想法从相当远的领域，如果你让他们是隐喻

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.

反面例子可能是和积极的一样令人鼓舞的。事实上，你可能有时了解更多，从做的坏的比做的好的，有时它仅仅会变得清楚，什么是需要的，当错过的时候。

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

for a while: 一段时间

如果许多最好的人在你的领域被收集在一个地方，通过一个好主意是拜访他们一段时间。这会增加你的雄心壮志，也会通过展示你，这些人只是人而已，增加你的自信心。

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.

genuinely: 真心的

如果你是最真诚的，你可能得到热情的欢迎比你可能期待的。大多人是非常擅长某事的人是开心和任何感兴趣的人讨论的。如果他们是真的擅长他们的工作，然后他们可能有一个爱好的兴趣关于它，爱好者总是想讨论他们的爱好。

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.

prestige: 声望
fiction：

• 小说、虚构
  polite: 礼貌
  vary: 差别
  immensely: 非常

这可能花费一些努力去寻找，这些真的好的人。做出色的工作有如此的声望，在某些地方，尤其是大学，有一种礼貌的说法，任何人都参加它。那可能离真实有些远。在大学中的人们不会公开说，但是工作完成的品质在不同的部门差别很大。一些部分让人们做出色的工作，其他的在过去是的，其他的从来不。

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.

colleague: 同事
schoolmate: 同学

抓住最好的同事。许多项目不能单独做，即使你正在从事他，让其他人鼓励你和提出想法是好的。

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

同事不仅仅影响你的工作，他们也影响你，所以和他想要变成的人一起工作，因为你将会。

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.

make the difference: 决定

品质是更重要的比数量在同事之间。这是更好的拥有 1 个或两个更好比一个许多好的。事实上，这不仅仅更好，而且必须，从历史上判断。出色工作发生在集体的程度暗示一个人的同事通常会决定做出色工作和不做。

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.

a handful of: 一小撮
on your toes: 保持警觉
threshold:

• 阈值
• 门槛

你怎么知道，什么时候，你有足够好的同事？在我的经历中，当你做的时候，你就知道。这意味着，如果你不确定，你可能没有。但是，这可能是可能的给一个更加精确的答案比那个。这是一个尝试，充分好的同事提供令人惊讶的视角。他们可以看到，做一些事情你不能的。所以，如果你有几个的同事足够好来保持警觉，在这个意义上，你可能跨过门槛啦。

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

aptitude: 天资、天分
attitude: 态度

我们中的大多数从和同事中的合作中收益。但是一些项目需要人在更大的规模上？开始其中之一不是适合于每一个人。如果你想运行一个项目像那样，你将变成一个经理，管理 xx 和兴趣良好的管理需要天分和兴趣，像任何其他种类的工作。如果你没有他们，没有中间道路：你必须强制你自己去学习管理作为第二语言，或者避免类似的项目。

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.

morale： 士气，斗志
husband:

• 丈夫
• 节约的使用
  nurture：培育

节约使用你的斗志，这是任何事情的基础，当你从事雄心壮志的项目时。你不得不培育和保护它像存活的器官

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.

斗志和你对生活的视角一起开始。你更可能做出色的工作，如果你是积极主义者，更可能，如果你认为你是幸运比认为自己是一个受害者

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.

serve as: 担任
refuge:

• 避难所
• 避难、逃避

确实，工作能够某些程度上保护你远离你的问题。如果你选择工作，那是纯净的，他的困难将担任每一天生活的困难的避难所。如果这是逃避主义，那是非常有生产力的形式，被一些历史上出色的想法使用的。

Boost 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.

via: 通过

通过工作，提供士气：高士气帮你做好的工作，增加你的士气，帮你做更好的工作，但是这个循环也在另一个方向起作用，如果你没有做好的工作，那可能会减弱你的士气，让你更加困难。由于这是重要的对这个循环来说，运行在一个正确的方向，所以这个可能是一个好的点子，切换到一个简单的工作，当你被困住，只要开始做一些事情。

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.

setbacks: 挫折
inoculate: 接种

最大的错误之一，雄心壮志的人犯的，是允许挫折来摧毁他们的士气立刻，像气球爆炸。你可能接种你自己抵抗它通过清晰的考虑挫折是你的过程中的一部分。解决困难的问题总是参与一些回溯。

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.

做出色的工作是深度优先搜索哪一个根节点是渴望的。所以，“如果你第一次没有成功，尝试，再次尝试”， 不完全正确。他应该是， 如果第一次，你没有成功，再次尝试或者回溯后，再次尝试

“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.

eject: 弹出
corollary: 推论

从不放弃也不完全正确，明显的，有时候，正确的选择是弹出. 更加精确的版本是，不要让挫折让你恐惧进入回溯超过你需要的部分，推论：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.

struggle：斗争
any more than:

• 和 xx 一样

这不是必须的坏标记，如果工作是努力的斗争，就像，气喘吁吁当跑步时。这依赖你正在跑的多快。所以学习变得辨别好的伤痛从坏的标记。好的伤痛是努力的标记，坏的伤痛是伤害的标志。

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.

scholar: 学者
peer: 同行
dedicate: 专注
sustain: 维系

一个观众是极其重要的士气的部分。如果你是一个学者，你的观众可能是你的同行；在艺术中，传统意义可能是观众。他不需要很大。观众的价值不会和他的尺寸线性变化。这是坏的消息，如果你是著名的，但是好的消息，如果你刚刚开始，因为这意味这一个小但是专注的观众可能足够维系你。如果有几个人真诚的爱你在做的事情，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

intermidiary:

• 中间人
• 中介

为了这个你能做到的程度，避免让中间人到来在你和你的观众之间。在某些类型的工作中，这是无可避免的，但是这是如此的自由来逃避它，以至于你可能会更好，切换到一个相邻类型，如果那会让你笔直向前。

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.

precedence: 优先次序

你花费时间在一起的人将有巨大的影响对你的士气。你将找到一些能增加你的能力，另外会减少它。一些人有的影响不总是你期待的。抓住那些人，增加你的能力的，和避免那些减少它的。尽管当然，如果你需要照顾一些人，那就优先。

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.

不要和一些不能理解你需要工作或者认为你的工作是为了你的注意力比赛的那些人。如果你有野心，你需要工作。这就像一个医学条件。所以一些人不让你工作，不理解你，或者就算理解也不在乎。

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

最终的士气是身体上的。你用你的身体思考，所以照顾好它很重要。那意味这有规律的锻炼，吃和好好的睡眠，避免更多的危险的药品。跑步和漫步是极其好的形式，锻炼，因为他们有助于思考

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.

做出色工作的人们不必比每一个人都快乐，但是他们比他们如果不做更快乐。事实上，如果你是聪明和有野心的，没有生产力是危险的。那些聪明和有野心的人但是没有收获太多往往变得很苦。

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.

fame: 名声

想要让其他人印象深刻是可以的，但是选择对的人。人的观点，你尊重的是信号。名声，更大的组织的观点，你可能尊重或不尊重，仅仅添加噪音。

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.

prestige: 威望、声望
trail：尾随
track: 轨迹
indicator：指标
at best：最好只是

一个类型的工作的声望最好也只是跟踪指标和偶尔完全错误的。如果你做一些事情足够好，你将会使他有威望。所以问题的回答关于这种类型的工作不是他拥有多少威望，而是他可能被做的多好。

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.

get drawn into:

• 被吸引，陷入

比赛可能是一个高效的催化剂。但是不要让他为你选择问题，不要让你自己陷入追赶某些事情仅仅是因为其他人在做。事实上，不要让你的对手让你做更多事情比认真工作。

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

好奇心是最好的指南，你的好奇心从来不撒谎，它知道更多比你做的，关于什么是值得集中注意力的。

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.”

oracle：

• 预言
• 神谕

意识到，单词出现的频次。如果你问一个神谕这个做出色工作的秘密，他会回复一个单词，我打赌是“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.

那不会直接翻译成建议。这对好奇心来说是不足够的。你不能命令好奇心，你但是能够培养他，让他驱动你。

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.

gap: 缺口，裂隙

好奇心是一个做出色工作的所有四步的钥匙：他将为你选择领域，带你到前沿，让你意识到其中的缺口，驱动你去探索他们。整个的过程是一场和好奇心的舞蹈。

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.

相信它或者不信，我尝试让这篇文章尽可能短的。但是他的长度至少意味着它表现的像一个过滤器。如果你做了这么长做到这一步，你一定对做出色工作感兴趣。如果你已经比你可能意识到的走的更远，因为这群人乐意想要的是少数。

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?

explosion: 爆炸

因子在做出色工作是因子在写作、数学感觉，他们是：能力，兴趣，努力，幸运。幸运通过定义，你不能做一些事情关于他。所以我们忽视它。我们假设努力，如果你真的想做出色的工作，所以这个问题落到能力和兴趣上。你能找到一类工作，你的能力和兴趣将组合在一些来产出新的想法的爆发。

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.

ground:

• 地面、广场
• 理由
  comically: 滑稽的
  comedy: 喜剧
  comics：连环画、漫画、喜剧演员

这有一些积极主义者的理由。有许多不同的方式来做出色的工作，甚至有更多是仍然没有发现的。在所有这些不同种类的工作之中，有一个，你最适合，可能是非常贴近匹配的。可能是滑稽的匹配。接下来的问题仅仅是找到它，你的能力和兴趣可以带你走到多远。你只能回答他，通过尝试。

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.

hold back: 退缩、阻止
presumptuous: 自以为是的、冒昧的
presumably: 据推测
presume: 假定

• suppose\assume\guess\hypothesis
• hypothesis 书面用词，指有待作进一步检验或证实的假设。
• assumption 侧重主观推测或主观设想。
• presumption 着重指以可能性为依据的假设。
• supposition 可与assumption换用，还可表某种试探性的主观看法或建议。

尝试做出色工作的人比实际上做的多得多. 阻碍他们的是谨慎和恐惧的组合。似乎是冒昧的尝试成为牛顿或者莎士比亚。这也是困难的，确定你在尝试某些事像那样，你就会失败。据推测，这个计算是很少清晰。很少有人有意识的决定不去尝试出色工作。但是他是在潜意识中持续的，他们害羞的原理这个问题。

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，我正在玩鬼把戏在你身上。你想做出色工作，还是不想？现在你不得不有意识的决定。抱歉关于它。我将不会让他为一个普通的观众这么做，但是我们已经知道你是感兴趣的。

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.

不要担心关于自以为是。你不需要告诉任何人。如果它太难和你失败了，那又怎么样？许多人有糟糕的多的问题比那个。事实上，你将会幸运的，如果有一个糟糕的问题。

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’.

burden:

• 负担
• 船的装载量
  burdensome: 繁重

是的，你必须努力工作。但是，许多人都不得不努力工作。如果你从事某些你发现非常有趣的事情，你需要乐意，如果你在正确的道路上，工作将可能感受更少的繁重比许多你的伙伴。

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

发现在哪儿，等待被做。为什么不呢？

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

[21] Derived from Linus Pauling’s “If you want to have good ideas, you must have many ideas.”
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[28] Corollary: Building something that enables people to go around intermediaries and engage directly with their audience is probably a good idea.
[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.