文章目录[隐藏]

Why the Real Thing Matters
做真正的事情为什么重要
The Strategy for Success Looks Obvious
成功的策略看起来显而易见
The Real Thing is Hard
做真正的事情很难
Rules for Doing the Real Thing
做真正事情的法则
A Meaningful Life Depends on Doing Real Things
有意义的生活取决于做真正的事情

Success largely boils down to a simple distinction. It’s glaringly obvious once you see it, but also easy to find ingenious ways of ignoring it: do the real thing and stop doing fake alternatives.

成功很大程度上可以归结为一个简单的区别。一旦你看到了，它就变得耀人地显眼，但也很容易找到聪明的办法不予理会：做真正的事情，停止做虚假的替代选择。

Consider one person who wrote to me saying she turned down a job working in French. She didn’t feel her French was good enough yet. So instead, she planned to listen to podcasts at home every day until she was ready.

考虑这个例子。一个人写信给我，说她拒绝了一个到法国工作的机会，因为她觉得自己的法语还不够好，所以计划在家每天听广播，直到自己准备好。

You know what would have helped her get good at French? Working at the job in French.

你知道什么有助于她学好法语吗？做那份在法国的工作。

Working at a job in the language she wanted to speak was the real thing for her. Listening to podcasts at home to prepare was the fake alternative she chose instead.

对她而言，在她想要学习的那门语言的环境下工作，才是真正的事情。在家听广播做准备不过是她选择的虚假替代行为。

Or consider another person I spoke with who wanted to get better at writing music. He had come up with a complex analysis project. He was going to do a deep dive into past hits, figuring out what made them great. In all this complexity he ignored the obvious, real thing he should be doing: writing more songs. When I asked how many he had written so far, he said it was just three.

或者考虑另一个人的例子。他告诉我说自己想要写更好的音乐。他提出了一个复杂的分析项目：他要深入研究过去的成功人士，找出是什么造就了他们的伟大。在整个复杂的项目中，他忽视了自己应该做的最明显的、真正的事：写更多曲子。当我问他目前为止写过多少首歌时，他回答只有三首。

Business owners who spend more time printing business cards than finding clients. Students who create elaborate multicolored folders for their classes instead of sitting down and studying. People trying to get in shape who buy fancy workout gear instead of exercising. Pretend activity instead of the real thing.

花更多时间印名片而不是找客户的企业主，为不同课程制作复杂的彩色文件夹而不是坐下来学习的学生，购买花哨练习器材而不是开始锻炼的健身人士，都在假装忙碌而不是做真正的事。

I’m not immune to this tendency. If anything, I succumb to it more often than most. I’ve spent months dreaming up elaborate projects that precisely avoid doing the real work. Creativity and intelligence can be an enemy here, as they allow ever more elaborate rationalizations into doing fake work.

我自己也难以抵御这种倾向。如果有什么区别的话，就是我比大多数人都更常受此折磨。我曾经花费好几个月构想复杂的项目，而恰恰避免了开始真正的工作。创造性和智慧在此可能成为敌人，因为它们以更精妙的方式去合理化虚假的工作。

Why the Real Thing Matters

做真正的事情为什么重要

The fact that a direct strike on a problem often works better than an oblique attack isn’t surprising. But the problem is even more acute than most people would expect.

面对一个问题，正面直接迎击总比迂回的进攻效果更好，这个事实并不新奇。但这个问题比大多数人认为的要更严重。

There’s an enormous literature about the narrowness of acquired skills. Learn to do X, and then switch to doing Y, and you often take a huge performance hit even if X and Y are superficially similar.

关于已掌握技能的有限性，存在大量文献。学习做X，然后转到做Y。即使表面上看X和Y很相似，你的表现仍然会受到很大影响。

This applies most obviously to formal education. In countless studies, students are found to not be able to perform on tasks that their classes should have prepared them for. Studying economics then not being able to do better on questions of economic reasoning. Taking one psychology class and not having it help when taking a later one. Physics students failing to solve problems that differ slightly from those taught in class.

这在正式教育中表现得最为明显。无数研究发现，学生不会做课程原本应该已经教过的内容。学习了经济学，结果对于经济理论的问题并没有表现得更好。上过一门心理学课程，对于之后学另外一门并没有帮助。学物理的学生无法解决与课上教的只有微小差别的问题。

But the truth is probably deeper than just a failure of our education system. One researcher I spoke with mentioned how this applies even to very basic skills. With practice, for instance, you can get better at discriminating vertical lines. But switch the test to horizontal lines and the benefit of training goes away.

但真相或许不只教育体制的失败这么简单。一位研究人员在和我聊天时提到，这种现象甚至适用于所有基础技能。比如，经过练习，你可以更好地辨认出垂线。但换成测试辨认水平线，之前练习获得的收益就消失了。

This specificity of training means fake alternatives often accomplish a lot less than you’d naively expect.

训练的这种专门性意味着，虚假替代选择的效果，往往远低于你天真地以为的。

The Strategy for Success Looks Obvious

成功的策略看起来显而易见

When you examine case studies of people who have had major accomplishments, you expect there to be some trick or shortcut. Some amazing technique they used that others weren’t clever enough to recognize.

在仔细研究取得重大成就的人的例子时，你期待着有什么窍门或捷径。他们使用了某种神奇的技术，其他人不够聪明所以没能看出来。

More often, however, the strategy used is dead simple: doing the real thing.

然而，更常见的情况是，他们使用的策略非常简单：做真正的事。

Tristan de Montebello went from near-zero speaking experience to a finalist for the World Championship of Public Speaking in seven months. How? By getting on stage and speaking constantly, sometimes as often as twice in a day.

特里斯坦·德蒙特贝洛（Tristan de Montebello）几乎从零开始，经过7个月，入围世界公共演讲锦标赛决赛。他是怎么做到的？方法是频繁登上舞台演讲，有时甚至多达一天两次。

I found many other examples when researching my book:

在为写书做研究时，我发现了其他许多例子：

Eric Barone, who went on to sell millions of copies of his game, overcame his struggles at creating art by making and remaking the art assets for his game dozens of times.
Vat Jaiswal, was struggling to land work as a new architect, until he committed himself to mastering the software and style practiced at actual firms.
Countless polyglots show that being able to speak a language depends, critically, on spending a lot of time speaking it. Playing with apps alone doesn’t count. Why then, if the way forward is so straight, do we insist on taking detours?

埃里克·巴罗内（Eric Barone），他的游戏卖出了上百万份，靠的是几十次为他的游戏制作和重制艺术素材，克服艺术创作上的困难。瓦特·贾斯瓦尔（Vat Jaiswal），作为初出茅庐的建筑师难以找到工作，直到他致力于掌握了公司中实际应用的软件和设计风格。无数通晓多门外语的人表明，能够说一门外语，很大程度上靠的是花大量时间说，光是使用应用软件并不算数。那么，如果前行的道路如此一目了然，为什么我们还坚持要绕弯路呢？

The Real Thing is Hard

做真正的事情很难

Real things require real difficulty. Fake stuff never does.

真正的事情需要克服真正的困难，而假的东西从不需要。

This doesn’t mean fake work is effortless. Instead, pretend activity always has just enough difficulty to allow you to trick yourself into thinking you’re doing something that matters. But, conveniently, it avoids any of the truly difficult things the real situation would create.

这不是说虚假的行为就不用付出努力。相反，假装的活动通常同样困难，从而让你欺骗自己，觉得自己正在做某件重要的事情。但它方便地避免了真实情境会产生的所有真正困难的事情。

Consider the examples above. My friend’s music analysis project is definitely a lot of work. However, it conveniently misses the real frustration and challenge of struggling to write your own songs. It requires effort, but always in a way that feels doable and safe. Listening to language learning podcasts for hours is mildly strenuous. She can feel like she’s doing “something” even though it probably won’t prepare her for working in French.

考虑上面的例子。我朋友的音乐分析项目无疑需要大量工作，但它方便地错过了努力写出自己的歌时面临的真正挑战与挫败。它需要付出努力，但通常是以某种让人觉得可行且安全的方式。听几小时学习语言的广播是有点费力。她可能觉得自己在做“什么事”，尽管那可能无法为她到法国工作做好准备。

Real things have risk. They have the possibility of failure. They have frustration. They force you to confront the possibility that maybe you just aren’t good enough.

真正的事情有风险。它们有可能失败，会带来挫折，迫使你面对这种可能，即你也许就是不够优秀。

Fake activity is great for making yourself feel better, but lousy for actual results.

虚假的活动对于让你感觉良好效果不错，但对于实际结果效果糟糕。

Rules for Doing the Real Thing

做真正事情的法则

I can think of a few guidelines to try to crystallize the attitude I want to encourage:

我能想到一些行动原则，来具体说明我想要鼓励的态度：

1. Nothing is often better than something.

1. “什么都不做”经常比“做”好

We’re trained to think that something is better than nothing. This is true, but only if it’s a real something. Fake somethings not only fail to create progress, they numb you to the possibility of real striving.

我们被训练得认为，做总比不做好。确实如此，但前提是做的是真正的事情。虚假的事情不仅无法取得进展，还使你对真正的努力麻木无知。

Fill your days with enough fake activity, and you get into the situation where you fail to make meaningful progress on any of your goals, but still feel exhausted at the end of the day.

把一天填充满虚假的活动，你就会陷入一种状态，即无法朝任何目标取得有意义的进展，却在一天结束时仍然感到精疲力竭。

Doing nothing, in contrast, is restorative. It fosters the urge to do something, rather than draining it away.

相比之下，什么都不做是在恢复元气。它培养想做某件事的欲望，而不是将其逐渐耗尽。

2. The hard way is the easy way.

2. 困难的道路就是容易的道路

The starting point for any new effort should be to ask yourself, “How would I do this, if doing it well were all that mattered?”

任何新的努力的起点都应该是自问：“如果最重要的就是将这件事做好，我会怎么做？”

Difficulty is paradoxical. The hardest things often become the easiest once we’re fully committed to them. What’s difficult is the commitment, not the action; the word, not the deed.

困难是有两面性的。一旦你全身心投入了，最困难的事情通常就变成了最容易的。困难在于身心投入，而不是行为本身。

Taking the real thing as your starting point, the deviations you must take to overcome obstacles tend to be minor. Taking a fake and convenient substitute as the starting point, and you can often never work back to the original thing that mattered.

以真正的事情作为起点，你为了克服困难而必须走的弯路通常是微不足道的。而如果以虚假的方便替代行为作为起点，常常永远回不到最初真正重要的事。

3. If you’re not sure what the real thing is, just ask.

3. 如果你不确定什么是真正的事情，只管问。

Those who have been there before know what the real path is. If you ask them, they can instantly spot the difference between strategies that attack the heart of the problem and fanciful projects that lead nowhere.

曾经到过这里的那些人知道哪条路是真正的通途。如果你开口询问，他们立刻就能发现直击问题核心的策略与不会有任何结果的花哨项目之间的区别。

In case it’s unclear what you should be working on the solution is simple: ask. Find someone who has been there before. Tell them your plan and ask them if they think it’s direct enough. Forums, Quora, LinkedIn and many other places exist where you can ask the question, so saying you don’t know anyone who has done it before is no longer an excuse.

假使你不清楚应该做什么，解决办法很简单：问。找到某位经历过这些的人，告诉他们你的计划，询问他们认为这是否足够直接。论坛、问答网站、领英，以及其他许多地方都可以提出问题，因此再说你不认识谁曾经做过这件事已经不能作为借口了。

A Meaningful Life Depends on Doing Real Things

有意义的生活取决于做真正的事情

There’s a feeling that goes along with real work. It’s not always positive. It often has fear, frustration or the sense that maybe you’ve bit off more than you can chew.

真正的工作伴随着一种感受，它不总是积极的。通常有恐惧、挫败，或者感到自己心有余而力不足。

But doing the real thing matters. Days wasted on fake activity may keep you busy, but they never seem to go anywhere. A life spent on real work may not always be the easiest or most entertaining, but it’s the one that adds up in the end.

但做真正的事至关重要。浪费在虚假活动上的日子或许让你始终忙碌，但它们不会有任何结果。花在真正事情上的一生，或许不总是容易的，或者不总是快乐的，但这些事情最终能够积少成多。

做真正的事情