 September 2024 二〇二四年九月 There's some debate about whether it's a good idea to "follow your passion." In fact the question is impossible to answer with a simple yes or no. Sometimes you should and sometimes you shouldn't, but the border between should and shouldn't is very complicated. The only way to give a general answer is to trace it. 关于“追随你的激情”是否是一个好主意，有一些争论。“事实上，这个问题不可能用简单的是或否来回答。有时你应该，有时你不应该，但应该和不应该之间的界限非常复杂。唯一能给出一般性答案的方法就是追踪它。 When people talk about this question, there's always an implicit "instead of." All other things being equal, why wouldn't you work on what interests you the most? So even raising the question implies that all other things aren't equal, and that you have to choose between working on what interests you the most and something else, like what pays the best. 当人们谈论这个问题时，总是有一个隐含的“代替”。“在其他条件都相同的情况下，你为什么不去做你最感兴趣的事情呢？所以，即使提出这个问题也意味着其他所有事情都是不平等的，你必须在你最感兴趣的工作和其他事情之间做出选择，比如报酬最高的工作。 And indeed if your main goal is to make money, you can't usually afford to work on what interests you the most. People pay you for doing what they want, not what you want. But there's an obvious exception: when you both want the same thing. For example, if you love football, and you're good enough at it, you can get paid a lot to play it. 事实上，如果你的主要目标是赚钱，你通常负担不起你最感兴趣的工作。人们付钱给你是因为你做了他们想做的事，而不是你想做的事。但有一个明显的例外：当你们都想要同样的东西时。例如，如果你热爱足球，而且你踢得很好，你可以得到很多报酬。 Of course the odds are against you in a case like football, because so many other people like playing it too. This is not to say you shouldn't try though. It depends how much ability you have and how hard you're willing to work. 当然，像足球这样的事情对你来说可能性很小，因为很多人也喜欢踢足球。这并不是说你不应该尝试。这取决于你有多大的能力和你愿意付出多大的努力。 The odds are better when you have strange tastes: when you like something that pays well and that few other people like. For example, it's clear that Bill Gates truly loved running a software company. He didn't just love programming, which a lot of people do. He loved writing software for customers. That is a very strange taste indeed, but if you have it, you can make a lot by indulging it. 当你有奇怪的品味时，机会就更好了：当你喜欢的东西报酬很高，很少有人喜欢。例如，很明显，比尔·盖茨真的很喜欢经营一家软件公司。他不只是喜欢编程，很多人都喜欢编程。他喜欢为客户编写软件。这是一个非常奇怪的味道确实，但如果你有它，你可以通过放纵它做很多。 There are even some people who have a genuine intellectual interest in making money. This is distinct from mere greed. They just can't help noticing when something is mispriced, and can't help doing something about it. It's like a puzzle for them. [1] 甚至有些人对赚钱有着真正的智力兴趣。这与单纯的贪婪不同。他们总是忍不住会注意到某样东西被错误定价，并忍不住要做些什么。对他们来说，这就像一个谜。[1]第一章 In fact there's an edge case here so spectacular that it turns all the preceding advice on its head. If you want to make a really huge amount of money — hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars — it turns out to be very useful to work on what interests you the most. The reason is not the extra motivation you get from doing this, but that the way to make a really large amount of money is to start a startup, and working on what interests you is an excellent way to discover startup ideas. 事实上，这里有一个极端的例子，它是如此壮观，以至于它把前面所有的建议都颠倒过来了。如果你想赚一大笔钱--数亿甚至数十亿美元--那么做你最感兴趣的事情是非常有用的。原因不是你从这样做中获得的额外动力，而是赚大钱的方法是创业，而从事你感兴趣的工作是发现创业想法的绝佳方式。 Many if not most of the biggest startups began as projects the founders were doing for fun. Apple, Google, and Facebook all began that way. Why is this pattern so common? Because the best ideas tend to be such outliers that you'd overlook them if you were consciously looking for ways to make money. Whereas if you're young and good at technology, your unconscious instincts about what would be interesting to work on are very well aligned with what needs to be built. 许多（如果不是大多数的话）最大的创业公司都是创始人为了好玩而做的项目。苹果、谷歌和 Facebook 都是这样开始的。为什么这种模式如此普遍？因为最好的想法往往是这样的离群值，你会忽略他们，如果你有意识地寻找赚钱的方法。然而，如果你年轻并且擅长技术，你关于什么是有趣的工作的无意识本能与需要建立的东西非常一致。 So there's something like a midwit peak for making money. If you don't need to make much, you can work on whatever you're most interested in; if you want to become moderately rich, you can't usually afford to; but if you want to become super rich, and you're young and good at technology, working on what you're most interested in becomes a good idea again. 所以有一个类似于赚钱的中年人高峰。如果你不需要赚很多钱，你可以做任何你最感兴趣的事情;如果你想成为中等富裕的人，你通常负担不起;但是如果你想成为超级富裕的人，你又年轻又擅长技术，那么做你最感兴趣的事情再次成为一个好主意。 What if you're not sure what you want? What if you're attracted to the idea of making money and more attracted to some kinds of work than others, but neither attraction predominates? How do you break ties? 如果你不确定自己想要什么呢？如果你被赚钱的想法所吸引，并且对某些工作的吸引力大于其他工作，但这两种吸引力都不占主导地位，那该怎么办？你怎么打破关系？ The key here is to understand that such ties are only apparent. When you have trouble choosing between following your interests and making money, it's never because you have complete knowledge of yourself and of the types of work you're choosing between, and the options are perfectly balanced. When you can't decide which path to take, it's almost always due to ignorance. In fact you're usually suffering from three kinds of ignorance simultaneously: you don't know what makes you happy, what the various kinds of work are really like, or how well you could do them. [2] 这里的关键是要明白，这种联系只是表面上的。当你在追随自己的兴趣和赚钱之间难以选择时，这绝不是因为你对自己和你所选择的工作类型有完全的了解，而且这些选择是完全平衡的。当你不能决定走哪条路时，几乎总是由于无知。事实上，你通常同时遭受着三种无知的折磨：你不知道什么让你快乐，各种各样的工作到底是什么样的，或者你能把它们做得多好。[二]《中国日报》 In a way this ignorance is excusable. It's often hard to predict these things, and no one even tells you that you need to. If you're ambitious you're told you should go to college, and this is good advice so far as it goes, but that's where it usually ends. No one tells you how to figure out what to work on, or how hard this can be. 在某种程度上，这种无知是可以原谅的。通常很难预测这些事情，甚至没有人告诉你你需要这样做。如果你有野心，你被告知你应该去上大学，这是一个很好的建议，但这通常是它结束的地方。没有人告诉你如何弄清楚要做什么，或者这有多难。 What do you do in the face of uncertainty? Get more certainty. And probably the best way to do that is to try working on things you're interested in. That will get you more information about how interested you are in them, how good you are at them, and how much scope they offer for ambition. 面对不确定性，你会怎么做？获得更多的确定性。也许最好的方法就是尝试做你感兴趣的事情。这会让你了解到你对它们有多感兴趣，你有多擅长它们，以及它们为你的野心提供了多大的空间。 Don't wait. Don't wait till the end of college to figure out what to work on. Don't even wait for internships during college. You don't necessarily need a job doing x in order to work on x; often you can just start doing it in some form yourself. And since figuring out what to work on is a problem that could take years to solve, the sooner you start, the better. 别等了不要等到大学毕业才想清楚该做什么，甚至不要等到大学期间去实习。你不一定需要一份做 x 的工作来做 x;通常你可以自己开始以某种形式做它。既然弄清楚要做什么是一个可能需要数年时间才能解决的问题，那么你越早开始越好。 One useful trick for judging different kinds of work is to look at who your colleagues will be. You'll become like whoever you work with. Do you want to become like these people? 判断不同类型的工作的一个有用的技巧是看看你的同事会是谁。你就会变得和你的同事一样。你想成为像这些人吗？ Indeed, the difference in character between different kinds of work is magnified by the fact that everyone else is facing the same decisions as you. If you choose a kind of work mainly for how well it pays, you'll be surrounded by other people who chose it for the same reason, and that will make it even more soul-sucking than it seems from the outside. Whereas if you choose work you're genuinely interested in, you'll be surrounded mostly by other people who are genuinely interested in it, and that will make it extra inspiring. [3] 事实上，不同类型的工作之间的性格差异被放大了，因为每个人都面临着和你一样的决定。如果你选择一份工作主要是因为它的报酬，那么你周围的人都会因为同样的原因而选择它，这将使它比表面上看起来更吸引人。然而，如果你选择了你真正感兴趣的工作，你会被真正感兴趣的人包围，这将使它更加鼓舞人心。[3]第一章 The other thing you do in the face of uncertainty is to make choices that are uncertainty-proof. The less sure you are about what to do, the more important it is to choose options that give you more options in the future. I call this "staying upwind." If you're unsure whether to major in math or economics, for example, choose math; math is upwind of economics in the sense that it will be easier to switch later from math to economics than from economics to math. 面对不确定性，你要做的另一件事是做出不确定性的选择。你越是不确定该做什么，选择那些在未来给你更多选择的选项就越重要。我称之为“逆风而行。“例如，如果你不确定是主修数学还是经济学，那就选择数学;数学是经济学的上风，因为从这个意义上说，从数学转到经济学比从经济学转到数学更容易。 There's one case, though, where it's easy to say whether you should work on what interests you the most: if you want to do great work. This is not a sufficient condition for doing great work, but it is a necessary one. 然而，有一种情况很容易判断你是否应该做你最感兴趣的事情：如果你想做伟大的工作。这不是做伟大工作的充分条件，但却是必要条件。 There's a lot of selection bias in advice about whether to "follow your passion," and this is the reason. Most such advice comes from people who are famously successful, and if you ask someone who's famously successful how to do what they did, most will tell you that you have to work on what you're most interested in. And this is in fact true. 在关于是否“追随你的激情”的建议中有很多选择偏见，这就是原因。大多数此类建议来自著名成功人士，如果你问著名成功人士如何做他们所做的事情，大多数人会告诉你，你必须致力于你最感兴趣的事情。事实上也确实如此。 That doesn't mean it's the right advice for everyone. Not everyone can do great work, or wants to. But if you do want to, the complicated question of whether or not to work on what interests you the most becomes simple. The answer is yes. The root of great work is a sort of ambitious curiosity, and you can't manufacture that. 这并不意味着它对每个人都是正确的建议。不是每个人都能做好工作，或者想做好工作。但如果你确实想这样做，是否要做你最感兴趣的事情的复杂问题就变得简单了。答案是肯定的。伟大工作的根源是一种雄心勃勃的好奇心，你不能制造它。 Notes 注意到 [1] These examples show why it's a mistake to assume that economic inequality must be evidence of some kind of brokenness or unfairness. It's obvious that different people have different interests, and that some interests yield far more money than others, so how can it not be obvious that some people will end up much richer than others? In a world where some people like to write enterprise software and others like to make studio pottery, economic inequality is the natural outcome. [1]这些例子说明了为什么认为经济不平等一定是某种破碎或不公平的证据是错误的。很明显，不同的人有不同的利益，有些利益比其他利益产生更多的钱，所以怎么可能不明显，有些人最终会比其他人更富有？在一个有些人喜欢编写企业软件而另一些人喜欢制作工作室陶器的世界里，经济不平等是自然的结果。 [2] Difficulty choosing between interests is a different matter. That's not always due to ignorance. It's often intrinsically difficult. I still have trouble doing it. [2]在利益之间做出选择的困难是另一回事。这并不总是因为无知。这往往是内在的困难。我做起来还是有困难。 [3] You can't always take people at their word on this. Since it's more prestigious to work on things you're interested in than to be driven by money, people who are driven mainly by money will often claim to be more interested in their work than they actually are. One way to test such claims is by doing the following thought experiment: if their work didn't pay well, would they take day jobs doing something else in order to do it in their spare time? Lots of mathematicians and scientists and engineers would. Historically lots have. But I don't think as many investment bankers would. [3]你不能总是相信别人的话。因为做你感兴趣的事情比被金钱驱使更有声望，那些主要被金钱驱使的人往往会声称对他们的工作比他们实际上更感兴趣。检验这种说法的一种方法是做下面的思想实验：如果他们的工作报酬不高，他们会在业余时间做其他的工作吗？很多数学家、科学家和工程师都会这么做。历史上有很多。但我不认为很多投资银行家会这么做。 This thought experiment is also useful for distinguishing between university departments. 这个思想实验对于区分大学的院系也很有用。 Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Paul Buchheit, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, Harj Taggar, and Garry Tan for reading drafts of this. 感谢 Trevor Blackwell，Paul Buchheit，Jessica Livingston，Robert Morris，Harj Taggar，以及 Garry Tan 阅读本文. |