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For success, attitude is equally as important as ability. 要想获得成功，态度和能力同样重要。
When you can do what you love & they pay you to do it, that’s one of the best parts of life. 能够做自己喜欢的事，并为此而得到回报，这是生活中最美好的地方之一。
When I said I was speaking at a high school, my friends were curious. What will you say to high school students? So I asked them, what do you wish someone had told you in high school? Their answers were remarkably similar. So I’m going to tell you what we all wish someone had told us.
当我说要在一所中学做演讲的时候，我的朋友们都很好奇，问我打算给高中生说些什么。我就问他们，如果能回到高中，你最希望别人那会儿告诉你什么。他们的回答竟都高度相似，所以我打算告诉你们那些我们希望别人老早就告诉过我们的事情。
I’ll start by telling you something you don’t have to know in high school: what you want to do with your life. People are always asking you this, so you think you’re supposed to have an answer. But adults ask this mainly as a conversation starter. They want to know what sort of person you are, and this question is just to get you talking. They ask it the way you might poke a hermit crab in a tide pool, to see what it does.
首先，我会先告诉你在高中时尚不需要知道的事情——你想要什么样的人生。人们经常会问这个问题，所以你觉得你应该有个答案。但是，大人们问这个问题，主要是想以此作为谈话的开端，他们想知道你是哪种性格的人，问这个问题就是想让你打开话匣子。这就像你去戳一戳退潮后水洼里的寄居蟹，只是想看看它有什么反应。
If I were back in high school and someone asked about my plans, I’d say that my first priority was to learn what the options were. You don’t need to be in a rush to choose your life’s work. What you need to do is discover what you like. You have to work on stuff you like if you want to be good at what you do.
假如我回到高中时代，如果有人问这个问题，我会告诉他，我想我会先搞清楚我都有哪些选择。所以你不需要急着选择你一生的事业是什么。你需要做的是发现你的热爱。从事热爱的工作你才有可能做得出色。
It might seem that nothing would be easier than deciding what you like, but it turns out to be hard, partly because it’s hard to get an accurate picture of most jobs. Being a doctor is not the way it’s portrayed on TV. Fortunately you can also watch real doctors, by volunteering in hospitals.
你可能会觉得，决定自己最喜欢的是什么还不容易么。其实，明确自己的热爱是有难度的，这很大程度上是因为，对于大多数的工作而言，我们很难清楚地对它们有一个全面的了解。从事医生的工作并不是像电视里演绎的那样，幸运的是，如果在医院做志愿者，你就有机会观察到真正的医生是怎样工作的。
But there are other jobs you can’t learn about, because no one is doing them yet. Most of the work I’ve done in the last ten years didn’t exist when I was in high school. The world changes fast, and the rate at which it changes is itself speeding up. In such a world it’s not a good idea to have fixed plans.
但是，有很多其他工作我们是无法去观察了解的，因为目前还没有任何人正在从事它们。过去这十年间，我从事的大多数工作在我高中时是根本不存在的。世界变化迅速，而且变化的速度也正在加快。在这样一个瞬息万变的世界里，恪守一成不变的计划可不是什么好事情。
Upwind |保持“上升”趋势
I think the solution is to work in the other direction. Instead of working back from a goal, work forward from promising situations. This is what most successful people actually do anyway.
解决这个问题的方法就是从反方向入手，与其从未来目标入手，倒不如从当下的选择出发。事实上，这是大多数成功人士的真正做法。
In the graduationspeech approach, you decide where you want to be in twenty years, and then ask: what should I do now to get there? I propose instead that you don’t commit to anything in the future, but just look at the options available now, and choose those that will give you the most promising range of options afterward.
如果用通常毕业演讲里说的方法，你会先决定二十年后自己想做什么，然后再自问，我现在该怎么做才能达到那个目标。但我建议，相反地，你不必现在给未来做任何设定，只要着眼当下的种种选择，选择那些会给你的未来带来广泛选择的事情。
It’s not so important what you work on, so long as you’re not wasting your time. Work on things that interest you and increase your options, and worry later about which you’ll take.
只要你不是在浪费时间，现在做什么并不重要。最重要的是做自己感兴趣的、能为自己未来增加选择的事情，今后要具体从事什么工作，晚点考虑也不迟。
Suppose you’re a college freshman deciding whether to major in math or economics. Well, math will give you more options: you can go into almost any field from math. If you major in math it will be easy to get into grad school in economics, but if you major in economics it will be hard to get into grad school in math.
假设你是大一新生，正在考虑决定该选修什么专业，是数学还是经济？是这样的，数学专业会给你的未来带来更多选择：修数学专业，今后可以进入数学衍生的任何领域中，也很容易进入经济学院的研究生院；反之就很难。
How do you do that, though? Even if math is upwind of economics, how are you supposed to know that as a high school student?
但是，如何做到这一点？即便是数学相比经济学更具“上升趋势”，作为一个高中生，要知道这一点是不容易的。
Well, you don’t, and that’s what you need to find out. Look for smart people and hard problems. Smart people tend to clump together, and if you can find such a clump, it’s probably worthwhile to join it. But it’s not straightforward to find these, because there is a lot of faking going on.
是的，这一点你尚不知道，而这就是你需要去弄明白的事情。方法有两种，寻找聪明的人群和解决难题。聪明的人常会扎堆在一起，如果你能找到这样的人群，加入他们很有必要。但是，找到这样的人群也不是简单的事情，因为有太多的像是这样圈子的圈子存在。
The best protection is always to be working on hard problems. Writing novels is hard. Reading novels isn’t. Hard means worry: if you’re not worrying that something you’re making will come out badly, or that you won’t be able to understand something you’re studying, then it isn’t hard enough. There has to be suspense.
最好的防守就是知难而上。阅读小说不是难题，只有写小说才是。因为难，所以这意味着你会担心事情的结果，如果你不会因为担心出现糟糕的结果或者为了真正去理解某样东西而努力的话，那么它都不算是难题。悬而未决未必不是好事情。
Ambition |抱负
If I had to go through high school again, I’d treat it like a day job. I don’t mean that I’d slack in school. Working at something as a day job doesn’t mean doing it badly. It means not being defined by it. I mean I wouldn’t think of myself as a high school student, just as a musician with a day job as a waiter doesn’t think of himself as a waiter. And when I wasn’t working at my day job I’d start trying to do real work.
A friend who doesn’t celebrate your success is not a friend. 不为你的成功而高兴的朋友，并非真朋友。
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. 学习昨天，活在今天，期待明天。
如果我要再上一次高中，我会把做学生当成一份日常工作。这样说并不是意味着我会在学校应付了事。把一件事当作日常工作来做并不意味着不会把这件事做好，而是说不必用“高中生”这个字眼来定义自己。我的意思是说，我不把自己当作高中生看待，就像一个暂时委身服务员身份的乐者不会觉得自己是一个服务员。而当我可以抽身于“高中生”这份日常工作之外时，我会尝试着做一些真正意义上的工作。
When I ask people what they regret most about high school, they nearly all say the same thing: that they wasted so much time. If you’re wondering what you’re doing now that you’ll regret most later, that’s probably it.
当我问朋友们，对于高中生活，他们最遗憾的是什么，回答几乎一样：浪费了太多的时间。如果你在思考将来可能会对现在的哪些所作所为最感后悔，答案很可能也就是这个。
I’m not saying you shouldn’t hang out with your friends—that you should all become humorless little robots who do nothing but work. Hanging out with friends is like chocolate cake. You enjoy it more if you eat it occasionally than if you eat nothing but chocolate cake for every meal. No matter how much you like chocolate cake, you’ll be pretty queasy after the third meal of it. And that’s what the malaise one feels in high school is: mental queasiness.
我并不是说你不应该和朋友们外出消磨时间——如果只学习你们都会变成没有幽默感的小机器人。外出消磨时间这件事就像是吃巧克力蛋糕，偶尔吃一次你会很享受它的味道，但是如果餐餐都吃就不那么回事了。不管你有多喜欢巧克力蛋糕，连续三餐下来，你一定反胃。而这也是在高中生中间存在的一种情绪：精神层面上的反胃。
You may be thinking, we have to do more than get good grades. We have to have extracurricular activities. But you know perfectly well how bogus most of these are. Collecting donations for a charity is an admirable thing to do, but it’s not hard. It’s not getting something done. What I mean by getting something done is learning how to write well, or how to program computers, or what life was really like in preindustrial societies, or how to draw the human face from life. This sort of thing rarely translates into a line item on a college application.
你可能会想，我们做的不只是取得好成绩，也不得不参加一些课外活动。但是你已经很清楚这些事情有多么虚伪了。为慈善机构募捐是值得敬佩的事情，但这不是困难的事情。我所说的“搞定一些事情”是指如何写出更好的文章，如何编写程序，如何让自己像是在未工业化的社会中生活一样（暗指学校“工业化”培养人才的方式），或者如何勾画出生活中人物的面容。但是诸如此类的事情却很少转化成申请大学过程中考查的一项指标。
Corruption |现实
Right now most of you feel your job in life is to be a promising college applicant. But that means you’re designing your life to satisfy a process so mindless that there’s a whole industry devoted to subverting it. No wonder you become cynical. The malaise you feel is the same that a producer of reality TV shows or a tobacco industry executive feels. And you don’t even get paid a lot.
目前，你们中的大多数人都会认为自己的全部工作就是成为一个合格的大学申请者。但是这就意味着你正在迎合一个过程，这个过程毫无生气，以至于有一个行业在致力于颠覆它。难怪你会变得愤世嫉俗。你的这种反胃的感觉就像是电视剧的制片人或是烟草行业的执行官的感觉——从中的收获并不多。
So what do you do? What you should not do is rebel. That’s what I did, and it was a mistake.
你应该怎么做？你最不应该做的事情就是反抗。这是我曾经做的事情，我现在认识到它是错误的。
In retrospect this was stupid. It was like someone getting fouled in a soccer game and saying, hey, you fouled me, that’s against the rules, and walking off the field in indignation. Fouls happen. The thing to do when you get fouled is not to lose your cool. Just keep playing.
现在想来，反抗是愚蠢的，这就好像在一场足球赛中有人对你犯规，你跟对方说“嘿，伙计，你犯规了，这明显是违规行为”，然后说完就愤愤离场一样。犯规的事经常发生，你被人犯规的时候需要做的就是保持冷静，一切继续。
Rebellion is almost as stupid as obedience. In either case you let yourself be defined by what they tell you to do. The best plan, I think, is to step onto an orthogonal vector. Don’t just do what they tell you, and don’t just refuse to. Instead treat school as a day job. As day jobs go, it’s pretty sweet. You’re done at 3 o’clock, and you can even work on your own stuff while you’re there.
和反抗一样愚蠢的是顺从，顺从就相当于你的身份被他人的言论所定义。我认为，最好的做法是置身于一个正交向量中：既不要完全按照他们要求的事情去做，也不要拒绝。相反地，把在学校生活当成是一份日常工作，这样，你将会过得非常愉快，你可以早早地完成学校的日常任务，甚至可以同时去发展你的爱好。
Curiosity |好奇心
And what’s your real job supposed to be? Unless you’re Mozart, your first task is to figure that out. What are the great things to work on? Where are the imaginative people? And most importantly, what are you interested in? The word “aptitude” is misleading, because it implies something innate. The most powerful sort of aptitude is a consuming interest in some question, and such interests are often acquired tastes.
那么你真正要做的事情是什么？除非你是莫扎特（从小就知道），否则你的首要任务就是找出这个问题的答案。从事什么工作最有成就感？想象力丰富的人都在哪里？最重要的，你自己对什么最感兴趣？天赋是一个容易误导你的东西，因为它暗示与生俱来。对于我们来说，真正强大的天赋就是“把兴趣用于解决一些问题，并从中获得乐趣。”
Curiosity turns work into play. For Einstein, relativity wasn’t a book full of hard stuff he had to learn for an exam. It was a mystery he was trying to solve. So it probably felt like less work to him to invent it than it would seem to someone now to learn it in a class.
好奇心会让你觉得工作很有趣。对爱因斯坦而言，相对论并不是为准备考试而学习的一本满是难题的书。对他来说相对论是他想要解开的一个谜题，所以他研究相对论和我们在教室学习相对论，这个恐怕是两码事。
You probably need about the amount you need to go running. I’m often reluctant to go running, but once I do, I enjoy it. And if I don’t run for several days, I feel ill. It’s the same with people who do great things. They know they’ll feel bad if they don’t work, and they have enough discipline to get themselves to their desks to start working. But once they get started, interest takes over, and discipline is no longer necessary.
你可能需要一些自制力来帮助你行动起来。我刚开始跑步的时候极不情愿，但是一旦我开始跑步，便很享受，只有要几天没跑，身体就感觉不舒服。同样的，一些人之所以能够做成了不起的事情是因为他们意识到如果不去做的话他们会感觉很糟糕，所以他们有足够的自制力能够确保他们去做，一旦开始后，兴趣就逐渐浓厚，也就不再需要自制力的支持了。
Do you think Shakespeare was gritting his teeth and diligently trying to write Great Literature? Of course not. He was having fun. That’s why he’s so good.
你难道认为莎士比亚那些伟大的文学作品是绞尽脑汁、呕心沥血写出来的？当然不是，他找到了写作的乐趣。所以他能如此成功。
If you want to do good work, what you need is a great curiosity about a promising question. The critical moment for Einstein was when he looked at Maxwell’s equations and said, what the hell is going on here?
所以如果你想从事伟大事业，就需要很强的好奇心和一个充满无限可能的问题。爱因斯坦的关键时刻就是当他看着麦克斯韦尔的方程式，然后问自己，这究竟怎么回事？
Life always brings us wounds all over the body. But the wounds will certainly become the greatest strength finally. 生活总是让我们遍体鳞伤，但到后来，那些受伤的地方一定会变成我们最强壮的地方。
Don’t set your goals by what other people deem important. Only you know what is best for you. 别人认为重要的, 并不就是你的追求。只有自己才知道什么最适合自己。
The great mathematician G. H. Hardy said he didn’t like math in high school either. He only took it up because he was better at it than the other students. Only later did he realize math was interesting—only later did he start to ask questions instead of merely answering them correctly.
伟大的数学家哈迪说自己高中时也不喜欢数学，那时学数学仅仅是因为他比别的小孩学得好。之后他才发现数学很有趣——这是当他开始提出问题而不再仅仅是正确地回答问题的时候。
And not only in intellectual matters. Henry Ford’s great question was, why do cars have to be a luxury item? What would happen if you treated them as a commodity? Franz Beckenbauer’s was, in effect, why does everyone have to stay in his position? Why can’t defenders score goals too?
而且，智力并是决定一切的因素。福特的问题是，为什么汽车必须是奢侈品，把它作为一件普通商品看待会发生什么事情？贝肯鲍尔的问题是，为什么每个球员都必须待在自己的位置上？为什么后卫不能射门得分？
Now |从现在开始
The way to get a big idea to appear in your head is not to hunt for big ideas, but to put in a lot of time on work that interests you, and in the process keep your mind open enough that a big idea can take roost. Einstein, Ford, and Beckenbauer all used this recipe. They all knew their work like a piano player knows the keys. So when something seemed amiss to them, they had the confidence to notice it.
要想让伟大的问题出现在你的脑海里，并不是去寻找，而是要花费大量的时间研究你感兴趣的内容，在研究的过程中保持开放的心，好让伟大的问题生根发芽。爱因斯坦、福特和贝肯鲍尔都是这样做的。他们对自己从事的事情了如指掌，就像钢琴演奏家熟悉琴键那样熟练。所以当有些事情对他们来说似乎不寻常的时候，他们有能力发现。
Put in time how and on what? Just pick a project that seems interesting: to master some chunk of material, or to make something, or to answer some question. Choose a project that will take less than a month, and make it something you have the means to finish. Do something hard enough to stretch you, but only just, especially at first. If you’re deciding between two projects, choose whichever seems most fun. If one blows up in your face, start another. Repeat till, like an internal combustion engine, the process becomes selfsustaining, and each project generates the next one. (This could take years.)
把时间用在发现和解决问题上。选一个看上去有趣的项目，例如精通某样东西、做出某样东西，或者去回答一些问题。你可以选一个小项目，设法在1个月内完成；也可以选择一个挑战性十足的项目，足以让你将将好涅磐的那种，尤其是在最初选择的时候。如果你在两个项目之间选择，选那个看起来最有趣的，假如搞砸了其中的一个，那就换另一个做。重复做，就像内燃机引擎工作一样，每一步都是一种自发状态，而且每个项目完成后都将会引出另外一个。
It may be just as well not to do a project “for school,” if that will restrict you or make it seem like work. Involve your friends if you want, but not too many, and only if they’re not flakes. Friends offer moral support (few startups are started by one person), but secrecy also has its advantages. There’s something pleasing about a secret project. And you can take more risks, because no one will know if you fail.
选择项目时不局限于从“为了学业”其实挺不错，受此局限的话你本身会束缚自己，或者这会让项目看起来是一份任务。如果愿意让你的朋友们加入进来，但是人数不要太多，而且只要他们不会随时离开团队。朋友之间可以提供精神上的支持（很少有创业公司是一个人单打独斗做起来的），但独干也有本身的好处，悄无声息地进行一个项目也会带来愉悦感，而且你可以大胆尝试各种风险，尝试失败了也没人会知道。
Don’t worry if a project doesn’t seem to be on the path to some goal you’re supposed to have. Paths can bend a lot more than you think. So let the path grow out the project. The most important thing is to be excited about it, because it’s by doing that you learn.
不要担心你选择的项目与你的人生道路没什么关联，人生的道路远远比你想象的要多，所以让你的人生道路因为你的项目而一步步扩展吧。最重要的是，你为从这个项目学到的东西而感到兴奋。
Don’t disregard unseemly motivations. One of the most powerful is the desire to be better than other people at something. Hardy said that’s what got him started, and I think the only unusual thing about him is that he admitted it. Another powerful motivator is the desire to do, or know, things you’re not supposed to. Closely related is the desire to do something audacious. Sixteen year olds aren’t supposed to write novels. So if you try, anything you achieve is on the plus side of the ledger; if you fail utterly, you’re doing no worse than expectations.
一些你也许不齿的动机可不容小觑。其中想要比别人做得更好的愿望最能给你提供力量。数学家哈迪说过他就是这样走上研究数学这条路的，我能理解这种说法，但是我没想到他会承认这一点。另外一个动力是强烈的愿望想去做、去了解你本不该知道的事情。这一点和想要冒险的愿望很像。人们觉得16岁的人不会写小说，所以，如果你尝试这样做了，得到的任何收获都是提分的砝码；就算你失败了，在那些觉得16岁的人写不出小说的人眼里，一切仍都很正常。
The important thing is to get out there and do stuff. Instead of waiting to be taught, go out and learn.
重要的是要主动走出去并且去搞定一些事情，而不是等着被教育，主动学习吧！
Your life doesn’t have to be shaped by admissions officers. It could be shaped by your own curiosity. It is for all ambitious adults. And you don’t have to wait to start. In fact, you don’t have to wait to be an adult. There’s no switch inside you that magically flips when you turn a certain age or graduate from some institution. You start being an adult when you decide to take responsibility for your life. You can do that at any age.
你的生活不是由学校所塑造，而是由你的好奇心所塑造的。这对所有的成年人都适用，而且不要等着事情发生，不要等着成为成年人以后才行动。你的身体里面没有神奇的成年开关，当你到达一定的年龄或是从学校毕业就会触动。成年是在你开始真正对自己的人生负责的时候开始的，你可以在任何年龄“成年”。
This may sound like bullshit. I’m just a minor, you may think, I have no money, I have to live at home, I have to do what adults tell me all day long. Well, most adults labor under restrictions just as cumbersome, and they manage to get things done. If you think it’s restrictive being a kid, imagine having kids.
这听上去好像是一堆废话，你可能会认为，我没钱，我不得不住在家里，不得不做大人们让我做的事情。你要知道，大多数的成年人同样会受限制，但是他们仍然会设法去自己搞定一些事情。如果你觉得做小孩受到各种限制，想象自己有小孩。
The only real difference between adults and high school kids is that adults realize they need to get things done, and high school kids don’t. That realization hits most people around 23. But I’m letting you in on the secret early. So get to work. Maybe you can be the first generation whose greatest regret from high school isn’t how much time you wasted.
成年人和高中生的唯一的差别在于成年人意识到他们需要去搞定一些事情，而高中生则没有这种意识。大多数人只有在23岁左右才会有一个较大的转变，但是我现在让你早早地知道这个秘密。所以尽情去“工作”吧，也许你们会成为在毕业后不觉得最后悔的事情是浪费了时间的那第一代人。
注：篇幅所限，文章有删节，建议找到博客阅读全文。
When you can do what you love & they pay you to do it, that’s one of the best parts of life. 能够做自己喜欢的事，并为此而得到回报，这是生活中最美好的地方之一。
When I said I was speaking at a high school, my friends were curious. What will you say to high school students? So I asked them, what do you wish someone had told you in high school? Their answers were remarkably similar. So I’m going to tell you what we all wish someone had told us.
当我说要在一所中学做演讲的时候，我的朋友们都很好奇，问我打算给高中生说些什么。我就问他们，如果能回到高中，你最希望别人那会儿告诉你什么。他们的回答竟都高度相似，所以我打算告诉你们那些我们希望别人老早就告诉过我们的事情。
I’ll start by telling you something you don’t have to know in high school: what you want to do with your life. People are always asking you this, so you think you’re supposed to have an answer. But adults ask this mainly as a conversation starter. They want to know what sort of person you are, and this question is just to get you talking. They ask it the way you might poke a hermit crab in a tide pool, to see what it does.
首先，我会先告诉你在高中时尚不需要知道的事情——你想要什么样的人生。人们经常会问这个问题，所以你觉得你应该有个答案。但是，大人们问这个问题，主要是想以此作为谈话的开端，他们想知道你是哪种性格的人，问这个问题就是想让你打开话匣子。这就像你去戳一戳退潮后水洼里的寄居蟹，只是想看看它有什么反应。
If I were back in high school and someone asked about my plans, I’d say that my first priority was to learn what the options were. You don’t need to be in a rush to choose your life’s work. What you need to do is discover what you like. You have to work on stuff you like if you want to be good at what you do.
假如我回到高中时代，如果有人问这个问题，我会告诉他，我想我会先搞清楚我都有哪些选择。所以你不需要急着选择你一生的事业是什么。你需要做的是发现你的热爱。从事热爱的工作你才有可能做得出色。
It might seem that nothing would be easier than deciding what you like, but it turns out to be hard, partly because it’s hard to get an accurate picture of most jobs. Being a doctor is not the way it’s portrayed on TV. Fortunately you can also watch real doctors, by volunteering in hospitals.
你可能会觉得，决定自己最喜欢的是什么还不容易么。其实，明确自己的热爱是有难度的，这很大程度上是因为，对于大多数的工作而言，我们很难清楚地对它们有一个全面的了解。从事医生的工作并不是像电视里演绎的那样，幸运的是，如果在医院做志愿者，你就有机会观察到真正的医生是怎样工作的。
But there are other jobs you can’t learn about, because no one is doing them yet. Most of the work I’ve done in the last ten years didn’t exist when I was in high school. The world changes fast, and the rate at which it changes is itself speeding up. In such a world it’s not a good idea to have fixed plans.
但是，有很多其他工作我们是无法去观察了解的，因为目前还没有任何人正在从事它们。过去这十年间，我从事的大多数工作在我高中时是根本不存在的。世界变化迅速，而且变化的速度也正在加快。在这样一个瞬息万变的世界里，恪守一成不变的计划可不是什么好事情。
Upwind |保持“上升”趋势
I think the solution is to work in the other direction. Instead of working back from a goal, work forward from promising situations. This is what most successful people actually do anyway.
解决这个问题的方法就是从反方向入手，与其从未来目标入手，倒不如从当下的选择出发。事实上，这是大多数成功人士的真正做法。
In the graduationspeech approach, you decide where you want to be in twenty years, and then ask: what should I do now to get there? I propose instead that you don’t commit to anything in the future, but just look at the options available now, and choose those that will give you the most promising range of options afterward.
如果用通常毕业演讲里说的方法，你会先决定二十年后自己想做什么，然后再自问，我现在该怎么做才能达到那个目标。但我建议，相反地，你不必现在给未来做任何设定，只要着眼当下的种种选择，选择那些会给你的未来带来广泛选择的事情。
It’s not so important what you work on, so long as you’re not wasting your time. Work on things that interest you and increase your options, and worry later about which you’ll take.
只要你不是在浪费时间，现在做什么并不重要。最重要的是做自己感兴趣的、能为自己未来增加选择的事情，今后要具体从事什么工作，晚点考虑也不迟。
Suppose you’re a college freshman deciding whether to major in math or economics. Well, math will give you more options: you can go into almost any field from math. If you major in math it will be easy to get into grad school in economics, but if you major in economics it will be hard to get into grad school in math.
假设你是大一新生，正在考虑决定该选修什么专业，是数学还是经济？是这样的，数学专业会给你的未来带来更多选择：修数学专业，今后可以进入数学衍生的任何领域中，也很容易进入经济学院的研究生院；反之就很难。
How do you do that, though? Even if math is upwind of economics, how are you supposed to know that as a high school student?
但是，如何做到这一点？即便是数学相比经济学更具“上升趋势”，作为一个高中生，要知道这一点是不容易的。
Well, you don’t, and that’s what you need to find out. Look for smart people and hard problems. Smart people tend to clump together, and if you can find such a clump, it’s probably worthwhile to join it. But it’s not straightforward to find these, because there is a lot of faking going on.
是的，这一点你尚不知道，而这就是你需要去弄明白的事情。方法有两种，寻找聪明的人群和解决难题。聪明的人常会扎堆在一起，如果你能找到这样的人群，加入他们很有必要。但是，找到这样的人群也不是简单的事情，因为有太多的像是这样圈子的圈子存在。
The best protection is always to be working on hard problems. Writing novels is hard. Reading novels isn’t. Hard means worry: if you’re not worrying that something you’re making will come out badly, or that you won’t be able to understand something you’re studying, then it isn’t hard enough. There has to be suspense.
最好的防守就是知难而上。阅读小说不是难题，只有写小说才是。因为难，所以这意味着你会担心事情的结果，如果你不会因为担心出现糟糕的结果或者为了真正去理解某样东西而努力的话，那么它都不算是难题。悬而未决未必不是好事情。
Ambition |抱负
If I had to go through high school again, I’d treat it like a day job. I don’t mean that I’d slack in school. Working at something as a day job doesn’t mean doing it badly. It means not being defined by it. I mean I wouldn’t think of myself as a high school student, just as a musician with a day job as a waiter doesn’t think of himself as a waiter. And when I wasn’t working at my day job I’d start trying to do real work.
A friend who doesn’t celebrate your success is not a friend. 不为你的成功而高兴的朋友，并非真朋友。
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. 学习昨天，活在今天，期待明天。
如果我要再上一次高中，我会把做学生当成一份日常工作。这样说并不是意味着我会在学校应付了事。把一件事当作日常工作来做并不意味着不会把这件事做好，而是说不必用“高中生”这个字眼来定义自己。我的意思是说，我不把自己当作高中生看待，就像一个暂时委身服务员身份的乐者不会觉得自己是一个服务员。而当我可以抽身于“高中生”这份日常工作之外时，我会尝试着做一些真正意义上的工作。
When I ask people what they regret most about high school, they nearly all say the same thing: that they wasted so much time. If you’re wondering what you’re doing now that you’ll regret most later, that’s probably it.
当我问朋友们，对于高中生活，他们最遗憾的是什么，回答几乎一样：浪费了太多的时间。如果你在思考将来可能会对现在的哪些所作所为最感后悔，答案很可能也就是这个。
I’m not saying you shouldn’t hang out with your friends—that you should all become humorless little robots who do nothing but work. Hanging out with friends is like chocolate cake. You enjoy it more if you eat it occasionally than if you eat nothing but chocolate cake for every meal. No matter how much you like chocolate cake, you’ll be pretty queasy after the third meal of it. And that’s what the malaise one feels in high school is: mental queasiness.
我并不是说你不应该和朋友们外出消磨时间——如果只学习你们都会变成没有幽默感的小机器人。外出消磨时间这件事就像是吃巧克力蛋糕，偶尔吃一次你会很享受它的味道，但是如果餐餐都吃就不那么回事了。不管你有多喜欢巧克力蛋糕，连续三餐下来，你一定反胃。而这也是在高中生中间存在的一种情绪：精神层面上的反胃。
You may be thinking, we have to do more than get good grades. We have to have extracurricular activities. But you know perfectly well how bogus most of these are. Collecting donations for a charity is an admirable thing to do, but it’s not hard. It’s not getting something done. What I mean by getting something done is learning how to write well, or how to program computers, or what life was really like in preindustrial societies, or how to draw the human face from life. This sort of thing rarely translates into a line item on a college application.
你可能会想，我们做的不只是取得好成绩，也不得不参加一些课外活动。但是你已经很清楚这些事情有多么虚伪了。为慈善机构募捐是值得敬佩的事情，但这不是困难的事情。我所说的“搞定一些事情”是指如何写出更好的文章，如何编写程序，如何让自己像是在未工业化的社会中生活一样（暗指学校“工业化”培养人才的方式），或者如何勾画出生活中人物的面容。但是诸如此类的事情却很少转化成申请大学过程中考查的一项指标。
Corruption |现实
Right now most of you feel your job in life is to be a promising college applicant. But that means you’re designing your life to satisfy a process so mindless that there’s a whole industry devoted to subverting it. No wonder you become cynical. The malaise you feel is the same that a producer of reality TV shows or a tobacco industry executive feels. And you don’t even get paid a lot.
目前，你们中的大多数人都会认为自己的全部工作就是成为一个合格的大学申请者。但是这就意味着你正在迎合一个过程，这个过程毫无生气，以至于有一个行业在致力于颠覆它。难怪你会变得愤世嫉俗。你的这种反胃的感觉就像是电视剧的制片人或是烟草行业的执行官的感觉——从中的收获并不多。
So what do you do? What you should not do is rebel. That’s what I did, and it was a mistake.
你应该怎么做？你最不应该做的事情就是反抗。这是我曾经做的事情，我现在认识到它是错误的。
In retrospect this was stupid. It was like someone getting fouled in a soccer game and saying, hey, you fouled me, that’s against the rules, and walking off the field in indignation. Fouls happen. The thing to do when you get fouled is not to lose your cool. Just keep playing.
现在想来，反抗是愚蠢的，这就好像在一场足球赛中有人对你犯规，你跟对方说“嘿，伙计，你犯规了，这明显是违规行为”，然后说完就愤愤离场一样。犯规的事经常发生，你被人犯规的时候需要做的就是保持冷静，一切继续。
Rebellion is almost as stupid as obedience. In either case you let yourself be defined by what they tell you to do. The best plan, I think, is to step onto an orthogonal vector. Don’t just do what they tell you, and don’t just refuse to. Instead treat school as a day job. As day jobs go, it’s pretty sweet. You’re done at 3 o’clock, and you can even work on your own stuff while you’re there.
和反抗一样愚蠢的是顺从，顺从就相当于你的身份被他人的言论所定义。我认为，最好的做法是置身于一个正交向量中：既不要完全按照他们要求的事情去做，也不要拒绝。相反地，把在学校生活当成是一份日常工作，这样，你将会过得非常愉快，你可以早早地完成学校的日常任务，甚至可以同时去发展你的爱好。
Curiosity |好奇心
And what’s your real job supposed to be? Unless you’re Mozart, your first task is to figure that out. What are the great things to work on? Where are the imaginative people? And most importantly, what are you interested in? The word “aptitude” is misleading, because it implies something innate. The most powerful sort of aptitude is a consuming interest in some question, and such interests are often acquired tastes.
那么你真正要做的事情是什么？除非你是莫扎特（从小就知道），否则你的首要任务就是找出这个问题的答案。从事什么工作最有成就感？想象力丰富的人都在哪里？最重要的，你自己对什么最感兴趣？天赋是一个容易误导你的东西，因为它暗示与生俱来。对于我们来说，真正强大的天赋就是“把兴趣用于解决一些问题，并从中获得乐趣。”
Curiosity turns work into play. For Einstein, relativity wasn’t a book full of hard stuff he had to learn for an exam. It was a mystery he was trying to solve. So it probably felt like less work to him to invent it than it would seem to someone now to learn it in a class.
好奇心会让你觉得工作很有趣。对爱因斯坦而言，相对论并不是为准备考试而学习的一本满是难题的书。对他来说相对论是他想要解开的一个谜题，所以他研究相对论和我们在教室学习相对论，这个恐怕是两码事。
You probably need about the amount you need to go running. I’m often reluctant to go running, but once I do, I enjoy it. And if I don’t run for several days, I feel ill. It’s the same with people who do great things. They know they’ll feel bad if they don’t work, and they have enough discipline to get themselves to their desks to start working. But once they get started, interest takes over, and discipline is no longer necessary.
你可能需要一些自制力来帮助你行动起来。我刚开始跑步的时候极不情愿，但是一旦我开始跑步，便很享受，只有要几天没跑，身体就感觉不舒服。同样的，一些人之所以能够做成了不起的事情是因为他们意识到如果不去做的话他们会感觉很糟糕，所以他们有足够的自制力能够确保他们去做，一旦开始后，兴趣就逐渐浓厚，也就不再需要自制力的支持了。
Do you think Shakespeare was gritting his teeth and diligently trying to write Great Literature? Of course not. He was having fun. That’s why he’s so good.
你难道认为莎士比亚那些伟大的文学作品是绞尽脑汁、呕心沥血写出来的？当然不是，他找到了写作的乐趣。所以他能如此成功。
If you want to do good work, what you need is a great curiosity about a promising question. The critical moment for Einstein was when he looked at Maxwell’s equations and said, what the hell is going on here?
所以如果你想从事伟大事业，就需要很强的好奇心和一个充满无限可能的问题。爱因斯坦的关键时刻就是当他看着麦克斯韦尔的方程式，然后问自己，这究竟怎么回事？
Life always brings us wounds all over the body. But the wounds will certainly become the greatest strength finally. 生活总是让我们遍体鳞伤，但到后来，那些受伤的地方一定会变成我们最强壮的地方。
Don’t set your goals by what other people deem important. Only you know what is best for you. 别人认为重要的, 并不就是你的追求。只有自己才知道什么最适合自己。
The great mathematician G. H. Hardy said he didn’t like math in high school either. He only took it up because he was better at it than the other students. Only later did he realize math was interesting—only later did he start to ask questions instead of merely answering them correctly.
伟大的数学家哈迪说自己高中时也不喜欢数学，那时学数学仅仅是因为他比别的小孩学得好。之后他才发现数学很有趣——这是当他开始提出问题而不再仅仅是正确地回答问题的时候。
And not only in intellectual matters. Henry Ford’s great question was, why do cars have to be a luxury item? What would happen if you treated them as a commodity? Franz Beckenbauer’s was, in effect, why does everyone have to stay in his position? Why can’t defenders score goals too?
而且，智力并是决定一切的因素。福特的问题是，为什么汽车必须是奢侈品，把它作为一件普通商品看待会发生什么事情？贝肯鲍尔的问题是，为什么每个球员都必须待在自己的位置上？为什么后卫不能射门得分？
Now |从现在开始
The way to get a big idea to appear in your head is not to hunt for big ideas, but to put in a lot of time on work that interests you, and in the process keep your mind open enough that a big idea can take roost. Einstein, Ford, and Beckenbauer all used this recipe. They all knew their work like a piano player knows the keys. So when something seemed amiss to them, they had the confidence to notice it.
要想让伟大的问题出现在你的脑海里，并不是去寻找，而是要花费大量的时间研究你感兴趣的内容，在研究的过程中保持开放的心，好让伟大的问题生根发芽。爱因斯坦、福特和贝肯鲍尔都是这样做的。他们对自己从事的事情了如指掌，就像钢琴演奏家熟悉琴键那样熟练。所以当有些事情对他们来说似乎不寻常的时候，他们有能力发现。
Put in time how and on what? Just pick a project that seems interesting: to master some chunk of material, or to make something, or to answer some question. Choose a project that will take less than a month, and make it something you have the means to finish. Do something hard enough to stretch you, but only just, especially at first. If you’re deciding between two projects, choose whichever seems most fun. If one blows up in your face, start another. Repeat till, like an internal combustion engine, the process becomes selfsustaining, and each project generates the next one. (This could take years.)
把时间用在发现和解决问题上。选一个看上去有趣的项目，例如精通某样东西、做出某样东西，或者去回答一些问题。你可以选一个小项目，设法在1个月内完成；也可以选择一个挑战性十足的项目，足以让你将将好涅磐的那种，尤其是在最初选择的时候。如果你在两个项目之间选择，选那个看起来最有趣的，假如搞砸了其中的一个，那就换另一个做。重复做，就像内燃机引擎工作一样，每一步都是一种自发状态，而且每个项目完成后都将会引出另外一个。
It may be just as well not to do a project “for school,” if that will restrict you or make it seem like work. Involve your friends if you want, but not too many, and only if they’re not flakes. Friends offer moral support (few startups are started by one person), but secrecy also has its advantages. There’s something pleasing about a secret project. And you can take more risks, because no one will know if you fail.
选择项目时不局限于从“为了学业”其实挺不错，受此局限的话你本身会束缚自己，或者这会让项目看起来是一份任务。如果愿意让你的朋友们加入进来，但是人数不要太多，而且只要他们不会随时离开团队。朋友之间可以提供精神上的支持（很少有创业公司是一个人单打独斗做起来的），但独干也有本身的好处，悄无声息地进行一个项目也会带来愉悦感，而且你可以大胆尝试各种风险，尝试失败了也没人会知道。
Don’t worry if a project doesn’t seem to be on the path to some goal you’re supposed to have. Paths can bend a lot more than you think. So let the path grow out the project. The most important thing is to be excited about it, because it’s by doing that you learn.
不要担心你选择的项目与你的人生道路没什么关联，人生的道路远远比你想象的要多，所以让你的人生道路因为你的项目而一步步扩展吧。最重要的是，你为从这个项目学到的东西而感到兴奋。
Don’t disregard unseemly motivations. One of the most powerful is the desire to be better than other people at something. Hardy said that’s what got him started, and I think the only unusual thing about him is that he admitted it. Another powerful motivator is the desire to do, or know, things you’re not supposed to. Closely related is the desire to do something audacious. Sixteen year olds aren’t supposed to write novels. So if you try, anything you achieve is on the plus side of the ledger; if you fail utterly, you’re doing no worse than expectations.
一些你也许不齿的动机可不容小觑。其中想要比别人做得更好的愿望最能给你提供力量。数学家哈迪说过他就是这样走上研究数学这条路的，我能理解这种说法，但是我没想到他会承认这一点。另外一个动力是强烈的愿望想去做、去了解你本不该知道的事情。这一点和想要冒险的愿望很像。人们觉得16岁的人不会写小说，所以，如果你尝试这样做了，得到的任何收获都是提分的砝码；就算你失败了，在那些觉得16岁的人写不出小说的人眼里，一切仍都很正常。
The important thing is to get out there and do stuff. Instead of waiting to be taught, go out and learn.
重要的是要主动走出去并且去搞定一些事情，而不是等着被教育，主动学习吧！
Your life doesn’t have to be shaped by admissions officers. It could be shaped by your own curiosity. It is for all ambitious adults. And you don’t have to wait to start. In fact, you don’t have to wait to be an adult. There’s no switch inside you that magically flips when you turn a certain age or graduate from some institution. You start being an adult when you decide to take responsibility for your life. You can do that at any age.
你的生活不是由学校所塑造，而是由你的好奇心所塑造的。这对所有的成年人都适用，而且不要等着事情发生，不要等着成为成年人以后才行动。你的身体里面没有神奇的成年开关，当你到达一定的年龄或是从学校毕业就会触动。成年是在你开始真正对自己的人生负责的时候开始的，你可以在任何年龄“成年”。
This may sound like bullshit. I’m just a minor, you may think, I have no money, I have to live at home, I have to do what adults tell me all day long. Well, most adults labor under restrictions just as cumbersome, and they manage to get things done. If you think it’s restrictive being a kid, imagine having kids.
这听上去好像是一堆废话，你可能会认为，我没钱，我不得不住在家里，不得不做大人们让我做的事情。你要知道，大多数的成年人同样会受限制，但是他们仍然会设法去自己搞定一些事情。如果你觉得做小孩受到各种限制，想象自己有小孩。
The only real difference between adults and high school kids is that adults realize they need to get things done, and high school kids don’t. That realization hits most people around 23. But I’m letting you in on the secret early. So get to work. Maybe you can be the first generation whose greatest regret from high school isn’t how much time you wasted.
成年人和高中生的唯一的差别在于成年人意识到他们需要去搞定一些事情，而高中生则没有这种意识。大多数人只有在23岁左右才会有一个较大的转变，但是我现在让你早早地知道这个秘密。所以尽情去“工作”吧，也许你们会成为在毕业后不觉得最后悔的事情是浪费了时间的那第一代人。
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