Introduction

看了一篇文章，记录在此。

原文

How to Do Great Work

July 2023

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.

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.”

The following recipe assumes you’re very ambitious.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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]

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?”

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.

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.

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]

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]

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.)

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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

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]

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.

“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.

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?

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

(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.)

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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]

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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]

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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’.

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

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.

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Daniel Gackle, Pam Graham, Tom Howard, Patrick Hsu, Steve Huffman, Jessica Livingston, Henry Lloyd-Baker, Bob Metcalfe, Ben Miller, Robert Morris, Michael Neilsen, Courtenay Pipkin, Joris Poort, Mieke Roos, Rajat Suri, Harj Taggar, Garry Tan, and my younger son for suggestions and for reading drafts.

GPT4 翻译

来源：tw@HiTw93

如果你收集了很多不同领域做出伟大工作的技巧列表，那么它们的交集会是什么样子呢？我决定通过实践来找出答案。

部分原因是我希望创造一个可以被任何领域的工作者使用的指南。但同时我也对这个交集的形状感到好奇。这个练习展示的一点是，它确实有一个明确的形状；它并不只是一个被标签为“努力工作”的点。

以下的秘诀是为你这种雄心壮志的人准备的。

首先，你要决定从事什么工作。你选择的工作需要具备三个品质：你有天生的适应能力，你对它有深厚的兴趣，同时它还要能提供展现你伟大工作的空间。

实际上，你不必过于担心第三个条件。雄心壮志的人往往在这方面过于保守。所以你只需找到你有能力且有强烈兴趣的事情即可。

这听起来很直接，但实际上往往很困难。当你年轻的时候，你不知道你擅长什么或者各种工作是什么样的。你最后可能会做的一些工作可能现在还不存在。所以，虽然有些人在 14 岁的时候就知道他们想做什么，但大多数人还是需要自己去摸索。

找出要从事什么工作的方法是通过实际操作。如果你不确定应该做什么，就猜。但是必须选择一件事情并开始行动。你可能有时会猜错，但没关系。了解多样性的事物是有益的，很多重大的发现都源于注意到不同领域之间的联系。

养成自我研究项目的习惯。不要让“工作”只是别人告诉你要做的事。如果你真的能做出伟大的工作，可能会在你自己的项目中。这可能会在某个更大的项目内，但你将是驱动你那部分的人。

你的项目应该是什么？对你来说，什么都可能是令人兴奋的挑战。随着你年纪的增长和项目口味的演变，刺激和重要会汇聚在一起。在 7 岁的时候，建造 Lego 大作可能会让你觉得挑战重重，然后在 14 岁的时候，自学微积分可能会让你觉得挑战重重，到 21 岁的时候，你可能开始探索物理学中未解的问题。但是，始终保持那份激情。

有一种兴奋的好奇心是伟大工作的引擎和舵。它不仅能驱使你前进，而且如果你让它自由发挥，它还会告诉你应该做什么。

你对什么过于好奇——到让大多数其他人都觉得无聊的程度？这就是你要找的。

一旦你找到了你非常感兴趣的东西，下一步就是学习足够多的知识，让你能够达到知识的前沿。知识是以分形的方式扩展的，从远处看，边缘看起来很平滑，但是一旦你学得足够多以接近它们，你会发现它们其实充满了缺口。

下一步就是去发现这些缺口。这需要一些技巧，因为你的大脑希望忽视这些缺口，以便构建一个更简单的世界模型。许多发现都来自于对大家都视为理所当然的事情提出疑问。

如果答案看起来很奇怪，那就更好了。伟大的工作往往带有一点奇特的气质。你从绘画到数学都能看到这一点。试图刻意制造它可能会显得做作，但如果它自然出现，就拥抱它。

大胆地追求异常的想法，即使其他人对它们不感兴趣——实际上，尤其是在他们不感兴趣的情况下。如果你对所有人都忽视的某种可能性感到兴奋，而你又有足够的专业知识来精确指出他们都忽视了什么，那么这就是你能找到的最好的选择。

四个步骤：选择领域，学习足够的知识以到达前沿，发现缺口，探索有前景的缺口。这就是几乎所有做出伟大工作的人都是如何做到的，从画家到物理学家。

第二步和第四步需要付出艰辛的努力。也许不能证明你必须努力工作才能做出伟大的事情，但实证证据是与证明人会死一样有力。这就是为什么你需要投身于你深感兴趣的事情。兴趣能驱使你比单纯的勤奋工作更努力。

最强大的三种动力是好奇心、喜悦和希望做出令人印象深刻的事情。有时它们会交汇，那种组合是最有力的。

真正的大奖就是发现一个新的分形芽。你发现知识表面上的一条裂缝，将其撬开，里面竟是一个完整的世界。

让我们再多谈一点关于如何找出要从事什么工作这个复杂问题。主要难点在于，除非亲自去做，否则你无法了解大部分工作是什么样的。这意味着四个步骤是交叠的：你可能需要在某项工作上花费几年的时间，才能知道你对它有多喜欢或者你在这方面有多能干。而与此同时，你并未从事，因此也未能了解大部分其他类型的工作。因此，在最坏的情况下，你可能会在获取的信息非常不完整的情况下做出迟来的选择。[4]

野心的本质使得这个问题更加棘手。野心有两种形式，一种是对主题感兴趣之前的野心，一种是从对主题的兴趣中生长出来的野心。做出伟大工作的大多数人都有这两种野心的混合体，你对前者的拥有越多，决定要做什么就越困难。

大多数国家的教育系统假装这很容易。他们希望你在知道这个领域真正是什么样子之前就致力于它。结果就是，一个处在最佳轨迹上的有抱负的人在系统中往往会被认为是有问题的。

如果他们至少承认这一点——如果他们承认这个系统不仅不能帮助你找出要从事什么工作，而且还是建立在你将以某种神奇的方式作为青少年来猜测的假设上——那就好了。他们没有告诉你，但我会告诉你：当你试图弄清楚该做什么时，你就是自己的主人。有些人运气好，猜对了，但其他人可能会发现自己在一个基于每个人都会这样做的假设而铺设的轨道上横冲直撞。

如果你年轻有抱负，但不知道该做什么，你应该做什么？你绝不能漫无目标地漂流，假设问题会自行解决。你需要采取行动。但是没有系统的程序可以遵循。当你阅读做过伟大工作的人的传记时，你会发现运气在其中起了多大的作用。他们通过偶然的会面，或者阅读他们碰巧选到的书，发现了应该做什么。所以，你需要使自己成为运气的大目标，而做到这一点的方法是保持好奇心。尝试许多事情，遇见许多人，阅读许多书，提出许多问题。[5]

在疑惑之际，优化有趣性。随着你对它们了解得越来越多，领域会发生变化。例如，数学家所做的事情与你在高中数学课上所做的事情非常不同。所以你需要给不同类型的工作一个机会，让他们向你展示他们是什么样的。但是，当你对一个领域了解得越多，它应该变得越来越有趣。如果没有，那么它可能就不适合你。

如果你发现自己对其他人不感兴趣的事情感兴趣，不要担心。你的有趣口味越奇怪，就越好。奇怪的口味通常是强烈的口味，对工作的强烈口味意味着你会有生产力。而且，如果你在鲜有人走过的地方寻找，你更有可能找到新事物。

你适合某种工作的一个标志是，你喜欢其他人觉得枯燥或者恐怖的部分。

但是，领域不是人；你不欠它们任何忠诚。如果在做某件事的过程中，你发现了另一件更让人兴奋的事情，不要害怕转换。

如果你正在为人们制作一些东西，一定要确保那是他们真正想要的东西。做到这一点的最好办法就是制作你自己想要的东西。写你想读的故事；制作你想用的工具。由于你的朋友可能有相似的兴趣，这也会为你赢得你的初始观众。

这应该遵循让人兴奋的规则。显然，最让人兴奋的故事将是你想读的故事。我特别提到这个例子是因为有太多的人弄错了。他们没有制作他们想要的，而是尝试制作一些他们想象中的，更成熟的观众想要的东西。一旦你走上那条路，你就迷失了。[6]

在你试图找出要做什么时，有许多力量会让你走错路。矫饰、时尚、恐惧、金钱、政治、别人的愿望、声名狼藉的骗子。但是，如果你坚持你真正感兴趣的事情，你就能抵挡住所有这些。如果你感兴趣，你就不会迷路。

追求你的兴趣可能听起来像是一种相当被动的策略，但在实践中，它通常意味着你需要冒着各种困难去追求它。你通常需要冒着被拒绝和失败的风险。所以，这确实需要相当大的勇气。

但是，虽然你需要勇气，但通常不需要太多的规划。在大多数情况下，做出伟大的工作的秘诀简单来说就是：努力工作，从事令人兴奋的雄心勃勃的项目，这样就会有好的结果。你无需制定一个计划然后去执行它，你只需要尽力保持某些不变的东西。

规划的问题在于，它只适用于你可以提前描述的成就。你可以在儿童时期决定要赢得金牌或者变富有，然后坚持不懈地追求这个目标，但你不能以这种方式发现自然选择。

我认为对于大多数想要做出伟大工作的人来说，正确的策略不是过多地规划。在每个阶段，做最有趣的事情，并为未来保留最好的选项。

我称这种方法为“顺风而行”。这似乎是大多数做出优秀工作的人所采用的方式。

即使你找到了令人兴奋的工作，进行工作并不总是直截了当的。有些时候，新的想法会让你早晨从床上跳起来，直接开始工作。但也有很多时候，事情并非如此。

你并不是简单地扬起帆，让灵感吹动你前进。存在逆风、潮流和隐秘的浅滩。所以，工作就像航海一样，有其技巧。

例如，你必须努力工作，但是也有可能工作过度，如果这样的话，你会发现收获递减：疲劳会让你变得愚蠢，最终甚至会损害你的健康。工作的回报递减的点取决于工作的类型。最难的类型你可能每天只能做四五个小时。

理想情况下，这些小时应该是连续的。只要你能做到，尽量安排你的生活，使你有大块的时间用来工作。如果你知道可能会被打断，你就会避开艰难的任务。

可能开始工作比继续工作更难。你经常需要欺骗自己才能跨越那个初始阈值。不用担心这个；这是工作的性质，不是你性格的缺陷。工作有一种启动能量，既有每天的，也有每个项目的。而且，因为这个阈值是虚假的，它比继续下去所需的能量要高，所以你完全可以告诉自己一个相应的谎言来跨越它。

如果你想做出伟大的工作，通常向自己撒谎是错误的，但这是极少数例外的情况。当我早上不愿意开始工作时，我经常通过对自己说“我只是看看到目前为止我做了些什么”来欺骗自己。五分钟后我发现了一些错误或不完整的地方，我就开始工作了。

类似的技巧也适用于开始新项目。对自己撒谎，说一个项目需要做多少工作，也是可以的。很多伟大的事情都始于某人说“这有多难呢？”

这是年轻人具有优势的一种情况。他们更乐观，尽管他们乐观的一个来源是无知，但在这种情况下，无知有时候可以打败知识。

尽管如此，你要尽量完成你开始的工作，即使它比你预期的要花更多的工作。完成事情不仅仅是一种整洁或自律的锻炼。在许多项目中，最好的工作常常发生在本应是最后阶段的地方。

另一个允许的谎言是，在你的心中夸大你正在做的事情的重要性。如果这有助于你发现新事物，那么它可能原来就不是谎言。

由于工作有两种开始方式 —— 每天和每个项目 —— 所以也有两种形式的拖延。每个项目的拖延远比每天的拖延更危险。你把开始那个雄心勃勃的项目一年又一年地推迟，因为时间总不是恰到好处。当你以年为单位拖延时，你可能会做不了很多事情。

每个项目的拖延之所以如此危险，是因为它通常会伪装成工作。你并不是只是坐在那里什么也不做；你在另一件事情上工作勤奋。所以，每个项目的拖延不会触发每天的拖延的警告。你太忙了，没时间注意到它。

战胜它的方法是，偶尔停下来问自己：“我在做我最想做的事吗？”当你年轻的时候，答案偶尔是不行也可以，但随着你变老，这越来越危险。

伟大的工作通常需要花费对大多数人来说看似过多的时间来解决问题。你不能把这个时间看作是成本，否则它看起来就太高了。你必须找到足够引人入胜的工作。

可能有些工作需要你在你讨厌的事情上认真工作几年才能进入好的部分，但这不是伟大工作的方式。伟大的工作是通过持续地专注于你真正感兴趣的事情来实现的。当你停下来审视时，你会惊讶于你已经走了多远。

我们感到惊讶的原因是我们低估了工作的累积效应。每天写一页看起来不像多大的事，但如果你每天都做，你一年就能写一本书。关键是：一致性。做伟大事情的人每天不会完成很多事情。他们做了一些事情，而不是什么都没做。

如果你做的工作可以产生复合效应，你就会得到指数增长。大多数这样做的人都是在无意识

中做的，但值得停下来思考。学习，例如，就是这种现象的一个例子：你对某件事学的越多，学习更多的东西就越容易。吸引观众也是一样：你拥有的粉丝越多，他们就会为你带来更多的新粉丝。

指数增长的问题在于，曲线在开始时感觉平坦。它并不平坦；它仍然是美妙的指数曲线。但我们无法直观地理解这一点，所以我们在初期低估了指数增长。

一个能指数增长的事物可以变得如此有价值，以至于值得我们付出非常的努力来启动它。但由于我们在早期低估了指数增长，这也主要是在无意识中完成的：人们在学习新事物的初期付出初始的努力，因为他们从经验中知道学习新事物总是需要初始的推动，或者他们一次吸引一个粉丝，因为他们没有更好的事情做。如果人们意识到他们可以投资于指数增长，会有更多的人去做。

工作并不仅仅在你努力时发生。当你走路、洗澡或躺在床上的时候，你会进行一种无目的的思考，这种思考可能非常有力。让你的思绪稍微游走一下，你经常会解决你无法通过正面攻击解决的问题。

然而，你必须以正常的方式努力工作，才能从这种现象中获益。你不能只是四处游荡做白日梦。白日梦必须与刻意的工作交织在一起，为它提供问题。[10]

每个人都知道在工作中避免干扰，但在循环的另一半中避免干扰也很重要。当你让你的思绪游走时，它会游到你在那一刻最关心的事情上。所以避免那种会把你的工作从首位挤出去的干扰，否则你会把这种有价值的思考方式浪费在干扰上。（例外：不要避免爱情。）

在你所在领域的工作中，有意识地培养你的品味。直到你知道哪个是最好的，以及使它如此的原因，你才知道你在追求什么。

而那就是你要追求的，因为如果你不试图成为最好的，你甚至都不会变得很好。这种观察已经被许多人在许多不同的领域中提出，因此值得思考为什么它是真的。可能是因为野心是一种几乎所有的错误都在一个方向上的现象——几乎所有偏离目标的炮弹都是偏低了。或者是因为对成为最好的野心和对成为好的野心是质的不同。或者可能只是因为好是一个过于模糊的标准。这三个原因可能都是对的。[11]

幸运的是，这里有一种规模经济。尽管试图成为最好的可能看起来你要承担重大的负担，但实际上你经常会最终获得收益。这是激动人心的，也是奇特地令人感到自由。它简化了事情。在某些方面，试图成为最好比只试图变得好更容易。

要有高远的目标，你可以试图创造出人们在一百年后仍然会关心的东西。不是因为他们的观点比你的同时代人更重要，而是因为一百年后仍然看起来好的东西更可能真的很好。

不要试图用独特的风格工作。只要尽力做好你的工作；你将不由自主地以独特的方式去做。

风格是在不试图做到的情况下以独特的方式做事情。试图做到就是矫揉造作。

矫揉造作实际上是假装不是你在做工作。你采用了一个令人印象深刻但假冒的人格，虽然你对其令人印象深刻感到满意，但在工作中显现出来的是假冒的一面。[12]

对于年轻人来说，想成为别人的诱惑最大。他们常常感觉自己是无名小卒。但你永远不需要担心这个问题，因为如果你在足够雄心勃勃的项目上工作，这个问题会自行解决。如果你在一个雄心勃勃的项目上成功，你就不是一个无名小卒；你就是做到了的那个人。所以只要做工作，你的身份就会自我照顾。

“避免矫揉造作”是一个有用的规则，只要它可以走得足够远，但你怎么才能以积极的方式表达这个想法呢？你要怎么说出你要成为什么，而不是不要成为什么呢？最好的答案是诚实。如果你是诚实的，你就可以避免不仅是矫揉造作，还有一整套类似的恶习。

诚实的核心是诚实。我们从小就被教导要诚实，这是一种无私的美德——一种牺牲。但实际上它也是一种力量来源。要看到新的想法，你需要对真相有一个异常敏锐的眼光。你正在尝试看到迄今为止别人还没有看到的更多真相。如果你不诚实，你怎么能对真相有一个敏锐的眼光呢？

避免诚实的一种方法是保持稍微的正压。积极地愿意承认你是错的。一旦你承认你在某件事上错了，你就自由了。在那之前，你必须承受它。[13]

另一个更微妙的诚实成分是非正式。非正式比它在语法上否定的名字意味的要重要得多。

它不仅仅是缺乏某件东西。它意味着把焦点放在重要的事情上，而不是不重要的事情。

正式和矫揉造作有共同之处，那就是在做工作的同时，你也试图看起来某种方式。但任何进入你看起来怎样的能量都会减少你的好。这就是为什么书呆子在做伟大的工作上有优势：他们在看起来像什么上花费的努力很小。实际上，这基本上就是书呆子的定义。

书呆子有一种天真的大胆，这正是你在做伟大工作时所需要的。这不是后天学来的；这是从童年时代保留下来的。所以要坚持下去。成为一个把事情摆出来的人，而不是一个坐在后面提供听起来很复杂的批评的人。”批评很容易”在最字面的意义上是真的，而通向伟大工作的路永远不容易。

可能有一些工作在你是愤世嫉俗和悲观的时候有优势，但如果你想做出伟大的工作，那么乐观是一个优势，即使这意味着你有时会看起来像个傻瓜。有一种古老的传统恰恰相反。旧约圣经说，最好保持沉默，免得你看起来像个傻瓜。但那是为了看起来聪明的建议。如果你真的想发现新的东西，最好冒险告诉人们你的想法。

有些人天生就是诚实的，有些人则需要刻意的努力。任何一种诚实都足够。但我怀疑在没有诚实的情况下能否做出伟大的工作。即使你是诚实的，做起来也很难。你没有足够的错误边际来容纳被影响、诚实、正统、时髦或酷的扭曲。[14]

伟大的作品不仅与创作者一致，也与其自身一致。它通常都是完整的一体。因此，如果你在工作中遇到决定，问问哪个选择更一致。

你可能需要丢掉一些东西，然后重新做。你不一定必须这样做，但你必须愿意这样做。这可能需要一些努力；当有些东西需要你重做时，现状偏见和懒惰会结合在一起，让你对此事保持否认态度。要击败这种情况，问问自己：如果我已经做出了改变，我是否想要恢复到现在的状态？

要有剪切的信心。如果某样东西不合适，不要仅仅因为你为之骄傲，或者它花费了你大量的努力就保留它。

实际上，在某些类型的工作中，把你正在做的事情剥离到本质是好的。结果会更集中；你会更理解它；你也无法对自己撒谎，说那里有真实的东西。

数学优雅可能听起来只是一个来自艺术的隐喻。当我第一次听到“优雅”被用来形容一个证明时，我就是这么想的。但现在我怀疑它在概念上是更早的——艺术优雅的主要成分是数学优雅。无论如何，它在数学之外还是一个有用的标准。

然而，优雅可以是一个长期的赌注。繁琐的解决方案在短期内通常会有更高的声望。它们需要大量的努力，而且难以理解，这两点都会给人留下印象，至少是暂时的。

而一些最好的工作看起来好像并没有花费太多的努力，因为在某种意义上，它们已经存在了。它们不需要被建造，只需要被看见。当你难以判断你是在创造还是在发现某件事时，这是一个非常好的迹象。

当你做的工作可以被看作是创造或发现时，倾向于发现。试着将自己看作是一个单纯的通道，让思想自然地形成。

奇怪的是，选择要做什么问题的问题是一个例外。这通常被视为搜索，但在最好的情况下，它更像是创造某样东西。在最好的情况下，你在探索过程中创造了领域。

同样，如果你试图建造一个强大的工具，使其毫无限制地宽松。强大的工具几乎就是定义上将会被以你意想不到的方式使用，所以倾向于消除限制，即使你不知道这会带来什么好处。

伟大的工作往往具有工具性，即它是其他人建设的基础。所以，如果你正在创造其他人可以使用的思想，或者揭示其他人可以回答的问题，那是一个好的迹象。最好的思想在许多不同的领域都有含义。

如果你以最一般的形式表达你的思想，它们会比你预期的更真实。

当然，仅仅真实是不够的。伟大的想法必须是真实且新颖的。即使你已经学习到足够的知识来到达知识的前沿，看到新的想法也需要一定的能力。

在英语中，我们将这种能力称为原创性、创造性和想象力。给它一个单独的名字似乎是合理的，因为在某种程度上它确实是一个单独的技能。有可能在其他方面有很强的能力——有很多所谓的“技术能力”——但是在这方面可能没有那么多。

我从未喜欢过“创造性过程”这个词。它似乎有些误导。原创性不是一个过程，而是一种思维习惯。原创性思考者在他们关注的任何事情上都会产生新的想法，就像角磨机抛出火花一样。他们禁不住。

如果他们关注的东西是他们不太理解的东西，这些新的想法可能不是好的。我知道的最具原创性的思考者之一在离婚后决定专注于约会。他对约会的了解大致与一般 15 岁的孩子相同，结果色彩斑斓。但看到原创性与专业知识如此分离，让其本质更加明显。

我不知道是否可以培养原创性，但肯定有方法可以充分利用你所拥有的。例如，当你在做某件事时，你更有可能有原创的想法。原创的想法不是来自于试图有原创的想法。它们来自于试图建立或理解一些稍微困难的东西。

谈论或写关于你感兴趣的事情是产生新想法的好方法。当你试图将想法转化为文字时，缺失的想法会创造一种吸引它出现的真空。事实上，有一种思考只能通过写作来完成。

改变你的环境也有帮助。如果你访问一个新的地方，你通常会发现自己在那里有新的想法。旅程本身往往会将它们搅动出来。但你可能不需要走得很远就能得到这个好处。有时候，只需散散步就足够了。

在话题空间中旅行也有助于此。如果你探索很多不同的主题，你会有更多的新想法，部分原因是因为这为角磨机提供了更大的工作表面，部分原因是因为类比是新想法的一个特别丰富的来源。

但是，不要把你的注意力平均分配在许多主题上，否则你会分散自己的精力。你应该根据更像一个幂律的东西来分配它。对少数几个主题保持专业的好奇心，对更多的主题保持闲散的好奇心。

好奇心和原创性密切相关。好奇心通过给原创性提供新的工作对象来滋养它。但关系比这更紧密。好奇心本身就是一种原创性；它大致上是问题的原创性，就如同原创性是答案的。既然问题在最好的情况下是答案的一个大部分，好奇心在最好的情况下就是一个创造性的力量。

拥有新想法是一种奇怪的游戏，因为它通常包括看到那些就在你鼻子下面的事情。一旦你看到一个新想法，它往往看起来是显而易见的。为什么之前没人想到这个呢？

当一个想法看起来既新颖又显而易见时，它可能是一个好主意。

看到一些显而易见的事情听起来很容易。然而，从经验上看，拥有新的想法是困难的。这种明显矛盾的来源是什么呢？那就是看到新的想法通常需要你改变看世界的方式。我们通过既有助于我们也限制我们的模型来看待世界。当你修复一个破碎的模型时，新的想法就变得显而易见。但是注意到并修复一个破碎的模型是困难的。这就是新的想法既显而易见又难以发现的原因：你做了一些困难的事情之后，它们就容易被看到。

发现破碎模型的一种方法是比其他人更严格。世界的破碎模型在与现实冲突的地方留下了线索的痕迹。大多数人不想看到这些线索。说他们对当前的模型有所依恋简直是轻描淡写；这就是他们的思维方式；所以他们往往会忽视模型破碎留下的线索，无论这在回顾时看起来多么明显。

要找到新的想法，你必须抓住破碎的迹象，而不是转过头去。这就是爱因斯坦做的。他能够看到麦克斯韦方程的狂野含义，并不是因为他在寻找新的想法，而是因为他更为严格。

你需要的另一件事是愿意打破规则。尽管听起来自相矛盾，但如果你想修复你对世界的模型，成为一个习惯于打破规则的人会有所帮助。从旧模型的观点来看，新模型通常至少会打破一些内在的规则，而这旧模型是每个人包括你自己最初都会认同的。

很少有人理解所需的打破规则的程度，因为新的想法在成功之后看起来更保守。一旦你使用他们带来的新的世界模型，他们看起来完全合理。但在当时他们并不是这样的；即使在天文学家中，也花了大约一个世纪的时间才普遍接受地心说，因为它感觉错了。

的确，如果你仔细想想，一个好的新想法对大多数人来说必须看起来是坏的，否则已经有人去探索它了。所以你在寻找的是那些看起来疯狂，但是疯狂得恰到好处的想法。你如何认出这些呢？你不能确定。通常看起来坏的想法就是坏的。但是恰到好处的疯狂的想法往往是令人兴奋的；他们富含含义；而那些仅仅是坏的想法往往让人沮丧。

有两种方式可以舒适地打破规则：喜欢打破它们，或对它们漠不关心。我把这两种情况称为积极独立思考和被动独立思考。

积极独立思考的人是顽皮的。规则不仅不能阻止他们；打破规则给他们提供了额外的能量。对于这种人来说，对一个项目的胆大妄为有时可以提供足够的活化能量让它开始。

打破规则的另一种方式是不在乎它们，或甚至不知道它们存在。这就是为什么新手和局外人经常发现新事物；他们对一个领域假设的无知作为一种临时的被动独立思维的来源。Aspies 也似乎对传统观念有一种免疫力。我知道的几个人说这帮助他们有新的想法。

严格性和打破规则听起来像是一种奇怪的组合。在流行文化中，它们是对立的。但在这方面，流行文化有一个破碎的模型。它暗含地假定问题是微不足道的，而在微不足道的事情上，严格性和打破规则是对立的。但在真正重要的问题上，只有打破规则的人才能真正严格。

一个被忽视的想法通常要到半决赛才会输。你在潜意识里看到了它，但然后你的另一部分潜意识将它打倒，因为它会太奇怪，太冒险，太费力，太有争议。这提出了一个令人兴奋的可能性：如果你能关闭这种过滤器，你就能看到更多的新想法。

一种做到这一点的方法是问什么对别人来说是好的想法去探索。然后你的潜意识就不会射击它们来保护你。

你也可以从另一个方向发现被忽视的想法：从掩盖它们的东西开始。每一个珍视但错误的原则都被一片死寂的有价值的想法所包围，这些想法因为与它相矛盾而未被探索。

宗教就是一些珍视但错误的原则的集合。所以任何可以被文字或比喻形式描述为宗教的东西，都会有有价值的未探索的想法在它的阴影下。哥白尼和达尔文都做出了这种类型的发现。

你的领域的人们在什么方面有宗教感，意思是他们对某个可能并不像他们认为的那么不言而喻的原则过于依恋？如果你舍弃它，会变得可能？

人们在解决问题时的创新性远远超过在决定要解决哪些问题时的创新性。即使是最聪明的人在决定要做什么时也可能出奇地保守。那些在其他任何方式上都不梦想成为流行的人，却被吸引到做流行的问题上来。

人们在选择问题时比选择解决方案更保守的一个原因是，问题是更大的赌注。一个问题可能占据你几年的时间，而探索一个解决方案可能只需要几天。但即便如此，我认为大多数人都太保守了。他们不仅在回应风险，也在回应流行。不流行的问题被低估了。

最有趣的不流行问题之一就是人们认为已经被充分探索过，但实际上并没有的问题。伟大的工作经常是拿已经存在的东西，展示其潜在的潜力。杜勒和瓦特都做到了这一点。所以如果你对别人认为已经耗尽的领域感兴趣，不要让他们的怀疑阻止你。人们经常在这一点上错。

从事一个不流行的问题可以是非常愉快的。没有炒作或匆忙。机会主义者和批评者都在别处忙碌。现有的工作通常具有老派的稳固性。并且，在培养那些否则会被浪费的想法时，有一种满足的经济感。

但是，最常见的被忽视的问题并不是在意义上明确地不流行，也就是说，它并不是过时的。它只是看起来并不像实际上那么重要。你怎么找到这些呢？通过自我放纵——让你的好奇心尽情地放飞，至少暂时地忽

略你的头脑里那个说你只应该工作在“重要”问题上的小声音。

你确实需要处理重要的问题，但几乎每个人对什么算重要都太保守了。如果你的附近有一个重要但被忽视的问题，那它可能已经在你的潜意识的雷达屏幕上了。所以，试着问问自己：如果你要从“认真”的工作中抽出时间，仅仅是因为它真的很有趣，你会做什么？答案可能比你认为的更重要。

在选择问题时的独创性似乎比在解决它们时的独创性更重要。这就是区别开创全新领域的人的特点。所以可能看起来只是第一步——决定要做什么——在某种意义上是整个游戏的关键。1/N

很少有人理解这一点。关于新想法的最大误解之一是它们构成中的问题与答案的比例。人们认为大思想是答案，但往往真正的洞见在问题中。

我们低估问题的部分原因是它们在学校中的使用方式。在学校中，它们往往只在被回答之前短暂存在，就像不稳定的粒子。但是一个真正好的问题可以更多。一个真正好的问题是部分发现。新物种是如何产生的？使物体坠向地球的力量是否和使行星保持在它们轨道上的力量相同？即使提出这样的问题，你已经进入了令人兴奋的新领域。

未回答的问题可以是你身边不舒服的东西。但你携带的越多，发现解决方案的机会就越大，或者可能更令人兴奋的是，发现两个未回答的问题是相同的。

有时候你会携带一个问题很长时间。伟大的工作常常来自于返回到你多年前首次注意到的问题——甚至是在你的童年——并且不能停止思考。人们经常谈论保持你的青春梦想的重要性，但保持你的青春问题同样重要。

这是实际专业知识与其流行形象最大的差异之一。在流行的形象中，专家是肯定的。但实际上，你越是困惑，就越好，只要（a）你困惑的事情很重要，而且（b）别人也不理解它们。

想想在新想法被发现的那一刻之前发生了什么。通常，有足够专业知识的人对某件事感到困惑。这意味着，独创性部分包含在困惑中——在混乱中！你必须足够舒服地看到世界充满了谜题，但又不能那么舒服到你不想解决它们。

富含未回答的问题是一件伟大的事情。这是那些富人越来越富的情况之一，因为获取新问题的最好方式是尝试回答现有的问题。问题不仅会引导到答案，而且会引导到更多的问题。

最好的问题在回答中增长。你注意到当前范式突出的一条线，尝试拉它，它就越来越长。所以不要求问题在你尝试回答之前显然很大。你很少能预测那个。甚至注意到线条都已经很难，更不用说预测如果你拉它会有多少会解开。

更好的做法是滥好奇——在很多线上拉一点，看看会发生什么。大事情从小事情开始。大事情的初始版本通常只是实验，或者是副业，或者是谈话，然后扩大成更大的东西。所以开始很多小事情。

高产是被低估的。你尝试的事情越多，发现新事物的机会就越大。但要明白，尝试很多事情意味着尝试很多不起作用的事情。你不能有很多好主意，而不也有很多坏主意。

虽然从头开始研究已经完成的所有事情听起来更负责任，但你通过尝试东西会学得更快，也会更有趣。当你看它时，你会更好地理解以前的工作。所以在开始上偏向错误。当开始意味着从小开始时，这更容易；这两个想法就像两块拼图一样。

你是如何从小开始做大事呢？通过制作连续的版本。伟大的事物几乎总是通过连续的版本制作出来的。你从一件小事开始，发展它，最终版本既比你计划的更聪明，也比你计划的更有野心。

特别是当你为人们制作东西时，制作连续的版本非常有用——快速地把初始版本放在他们面前，然后根据他们的反应来发展它。

首先尝试可能有效的最简单的事情。出乎意料的是，它经常能做到。如果不能，这至少能让你开始。

不要试图在任何一个版本中塞入太多新的东西。这种做法在第一个版本（发货时间过长）和第二个版本（第二系统效应）都有名字，但这都只是一个更普遍的原则的实例。

新项目的早期版本有时会被轻视为玩具。当人们这样做时，这是个好兆头。这意味着它拥有新想法需要的一切，只是规模不足，但这种规模往往会随之而来。

从小东西开始并发展它的替代方法是提前计划你要做什么。而规划通常看起来是更负责任的选择。说”我们将要做 x，然后是 y，然后是 z”听起来比”我们将尝试 x，看看会发生什么”更有组织；而且它更有组织，只是效果不太好。

规划本身并不好。有时候它是必要的，但它是一种必要的恶——对无情条件的回应。这是你必须做的事情，因为你在处理不灵活的媒体，或者因为你需要协调很多人的努力。如果你保持项目小而使用灵活的媒体，你不需要做太多的计划，你的设计可以代替发展。

承担你能承受的风险。在一个有效的市场里，风险与回报成正比，所以不要寻找确定性，而是寻找预期价值高的赌注。如果你偶尔不失败，你可能过于保守。

尽管保守主义通常与老年人关联在一起，但是年轻人更容易犯这个错误。经验不足使他们害怕风险，但你年轻的时候才能承受最多的风险。

即使失败的项目也可能有价值。在处理它的过程中，你会走过很少有人见过的领域，遇到很少有人提问的问题。可能没有比你试图做些太难的事情时遇到的问题更好的问题来源了。

当你有年轻的优势时，利用它们，一旦你有了那些优势，利用年龄的优势。年轻的优势是能量，时间，乐观，和自由。年龄的优势是知识，效率，钱，和权力。你可以在年轻的时候努力获取一些后者，并在老年时保持一些前者。

老年人还有知道他们有哪些优势的优势。年轻人往往在没有意识到的情况下拥有它们。最大的可能是时间。年轻人不知道他们在时间上有多富有。将这个时间转化为优势的最好方法是以稍微轻浮的方式使用它：出于好奇学习你不需要知道的东西，或者尝试建造一些东西只是因为它会很酷，或者变得在某事上异常好。

那个”稍微”是一个重要的限定词。当你年轻的时候，大方地花时间，但不要简单地浪费它。做你担心可能浪费时间的事情和做你知道肯定会浪费时间的事情之间有很大的区别。前者至少是一个赌注，可能比你认为的更好。

年轻，或者更准确地说，经验不足的最微妙的优势，就是你用新眼光看待一切。当你的大脑第一次接受一个想法时，有时两者并不完全匹配。通常问题在于你的大脑，但偶尔问题在于想法。它的一部分突出，当你考虑它时刺痛你。习惯了这个想法的人已经学会忽视它，但你有机会不这样做。

所以当你第一次学习某件事时，注意那些看起来不对或者缺失的东西。你会被诱导忽视他们，因为有 99%的机会问题出在你身上。你可能需要暂时把你的疑虑放在一边才能继续进步。但不要忘记它们。当你进一步了解主题时，回头检查他们是否还在。如果他们在你现有知识的光照下仍然可行，那么他们可能代表了一个未被发现的想法。

从经验中获取的最有价值的一种知识就是知道你不必担心什么。年轻人知道所有可能重要的事情，但他们不知道这些事情的相对重要性。所以他们会对所有事情都感到担忧，而实际上他们应该更加关心少数几件事，对其他的事几乎不必担忧。

但你不知道的只是经验不足问题的一半。另一半是你以为你知道的事实其实是错的。你以满头的荒诞无稽的观念进入成年世界——你获得的坏习惯和你被教导的错误事实——你要做出伟大的工作，就必须至少清除掉阻碍你想做的工作类型的那些荒诞无稽的想法。

你头脑中剩下的很多荒谬观念是由学校留下的。我们已经习惯了上学，我们不自觉地把上学和学习视为一样的事情，但实际上学校有各种各样的奇怪特性，这些特性扭曲了我们对学习和思考的理解。

例如，学校会引发被动性。自从你还是个小孩子，班级前面的权威就告诉你们所有人必须学习什么，然后测量你是否做到了。但是课堂和测试并不是学习的固有部分；它们只是学校通常设计方式的产物。

你越早克服这种被动性就越好。如果你还在上学，试着把你的教育看作你的项目，把你的老师看作是为你工作，而不是反过来。这可能看起来有些牵强，但这并不仅仅是某种奇怪的思想实验。这在经济上是事实，而在最好的情况下，它在智力上也是事实。最好的老师并不希望成为你的老板。他们更希望你能推进前行，把他们当作建议的来源，而不是由他们带领你穿越学习的材料。

学校还给你一种对工作的误导印象。在学校里，他们会告诉你问题是什么，并且几乎总是可以用你到目前为止学过的东西来解决。但在现实生活中，你需要找出问题是什么，而且你往往不知道它们是否可以被解决。

但可能学校对你做的最糟糕的事情是训练你通过作弊去赢。你不能通过这样做来做出伟大的工作。你不能欺骗上帝。所以停止寻找那种类型的捷径。打败系统的方法是专注于别人忽视的问题和解决方案，而不是偷懒不去做事。

不要把自己想象成依赖于某个门卫给你一个“大机会”。即使这是真的，获得它的最好方式也是专注于做好工作，而不是追逐有影响力的人。

也不要把委员会的拒绝放在心上。使招生官员和奖项委员会印象深刻的品质与做出伟大工作所需的品质大不相同。选拔委员会的决定只有在它们是反馈循环的一部分时才有意义，而这种情况非常少见。

新进入某个领域的人往往会模仿现有的工作。这本身没有什么坏处。没有比尝试复制它更好的方式来了解某件事情是如何运作的。而且模仿并不一定会使你的工作失去原创性。原创性是新思想的存在，而不是旧思想的缺乏。

有好的模仿方式，也有坏的模仿方式。如果你要复制某件事，应该公开地去做，而不是偷偷地，或者更糟糕的，不自觉地去做。这就是被误传的名言“伟大的艺术家偷窃”所指的。真正危险的模仿，那种让模仿名声扫地的，是那种你甚至没有意识到你在模仿，因为你只不过是在别人铺好的轨道上运行的火车。但在另一个极端，模仿可以是优越性的表现，而不是从属关系。 [25]

在很多领域，你的早期工作几乎必然会在某种程度上基于他人的工作。项目很少在真空中产生。它们通常是对以前工作的反应。当你刚开始的时候，你没有任何以前的工作；如果你要对某件事做出反应，那只能是别人的。一旦你确立了地位，你就可以对你自己的工作做出反应。但是虽然前者被称为衍生性的，后者并没有，结构上两种情况比看起来更相似。

奇怪的是，最新颖的观点的新奇性有时使它们最初看起来比实际更加模仿。新发现往往必须最初被想象成现有事物的变体，甚至是由他们的发现者，因为还没有概念性的词汇来表达它们。

然而，模仿确实有一些危险。其中一个是你会倾向于复制旧的东西——那些在他们的时代位于知识前沿的东西，但现在已经不再是。

当你复制某样东西时，不要复制它的所有特性。有些特性如果你模仿，你会变得荒谬。比如，你如果是 18 岁，就不要模仿一个 50 岁的著名教授的举止，或者在几百年后模仿文艺复兴诗歌的语言。

你所崇敬的事物中的一些特性，是它们尽管存在缺陷但依然成功。实际上，最容易模仿的特性最有可能是缺陷。

这在行为上尤其真实。有些有才华的人是混蛋，这有时会让没有经验的人觉得成为混蛋是有才华的一部分。这不是事实；有才华只是他们得以逃脱后果的方式。

模仿的最强大的一种方式是从一个领域复制某些东西到另一个领域。历史上充满了这种类型的偶然发现，所以可能值得通过主动学习其他类型的工作来帮助偶然发生。如果你让这些成为隐喻，你可以从相当远的领域获取灵感。

消极的例子可以和积极的例子一样鼓舞人心。实际上，你有时候可以从做得糟糕的事情中学到比从做得好的事情中更多的东西；有时候，只有当某些东西缺失时，才能明确地看到需要什么。

如果你的领域中的很多最好的人都聚集在一个地方，那么通常去那里逗留一段时间是一个好主意。这将提升你的雄心壮志，并且，通过向你展示这些人也是人类，提升你的自信。[26]

如果你是真诚的，你可能会得到比你预期更热烈的欢迎。大多数在某事上非常出色的人都愿意和任何真正感兴趣的人谈论这件事。如果他们真的很擅长他们的工作，那么他们可能对它有一种业余爱好者的兴趣，而业余爱好者总是愿意谈论他们的爱好。

然而，找到真正出色的人可能需要一些努力。做出伟大工作有这样的威望，以至于在一些地方，特别是大学，有一种礼貌的虚构，即每个人都在从事这种工作。而这远非事实。大学内的人不能公开地说出这个，但在不同部门中所做的工作的质量差异非常大。有些部门有人在做出伟大的工作；有些部门在过去曾经做出过；有些部门从来没有。

寻找最好的同事。有很多项目是不能一个人完成的，即使你正在从事可以独立完成的项目，有其他人鼓励你并提供想法也是有好处的。

同事不仅影响你的工作，他们也影响你。所以，和你想变得像他们的人一起工作，因为你会变得像他们。

在同事中，质量比数量更重要。拥有一两个伟大的同事比拥有一栋楼满的还不错的同事要好。事实上，这不仅仅是更好，而是必要的，从历史来看：伟大的工作在一群人中发生的程度表明，同事往往决定了你是否能做出伟大的工作。

你如何知道你的同事足够好呢？根据我的经验，当你的同事足够好时，你会知道的。这意味着如果你不确定，你可能还没有。但可能可以给出比这更具体的答案。这是一个尝试：足够好的同事提供令人惊讶的洞察力。他们能看到和做你无法做的事情。所以，如果你有一小部分足够好的同事能在这个意义上让你保持警惕，你可能就已经超过了门槛。

我们大多数人都可以从与同事合作中受益，但有些项目需要更大规模的人，开始这样的项目并不适合每个人。如果你想运行这样的项目，你必须成为一个管理者，而优秀的管理需要才能和兴趣，就像任何其他类型的工作一样。如果你没有这些，那就没有中间道路：你必须强迫自己把管理当作第二语言学习，或者避免这样的项目。[27]

保持你的士气。当你致力于雄心勃勃的项目时，这是一切的基础。你必须像照顾和保护一个活生生的有机体一样，照顾和保护它。

士气始于你的人生观。如果你是乐观主义者，你更可能做出伟大的工作，如果你认为自己是幸运的，那么你也更可能，而如果你把自己当成受害者看待，那就相反了。

事实上，工作在一定程度上可以保护你免受你的问题的困扰。如果你选择纯粹的工作，其困难本身将成为你从日常生活的困扰中逃避的庇护所。如果这是一种逃避，那它是一种非常富有成效的形式，历史上一些最伟大的思想家都曾使用过它。

士气可以通过工作得到积累：高士气帮助你做好工作，这又提高了你的士气，帮助你做得更好。但这个循环也有反方向的操作：如果你没有做好工作，那会使你士气低落，使你更难做好。由于这个循环在正确的方向上运转的重要性，当你陷入困境时，转向更简单的工作可能是个好主意，只要你开始做些事情就行。

雄心壮志的人犯的最大错误之一是允许挫折一下子摧毁他们的士气，就像气球破裂一样。你可以通过明确地把挫折视为你工作过程的一部分，来对自己进行预防接种。解决难题总是涉及到一些回溯。

做出伟大的工作是一个深度优先搜索，其根节点是你的愿望。所以”如果一开始你没有成功，就一直尝试”并不完全正确。它应该是：如果一开始你没有成功，要么再试一次，要么回溯然后再试一次。

“永不放弃”也不完全正确。显然，有时候选择放弃是正确的选择。更精确的版本应该是：永远不要让挫折让你恐慌地比你需要的更多地回溯。推论：永远不要放弃根节点。

如果工作是一种挣扎，这并不一定是坏事，正如跑步时喘不过气来并不一定是坏事。这取决于你跑得有多快。所以，学会区分好的疼痛和坏的疼痛。好的疼痛是努力的标志；坏的疼痛是伤害的标志。

观众是士气的关键组成部分。如果你是学者，你的观众可能是你的同行；在艺术领域，可能是传统意义上的观众。不管怎样，它不需要很大。观众的价值并不是随着其大小线性增长的。这对于名人来说是坏消息，但对于刚起步的人来说是好消息，因为这意味着一个小而忠实的观众就足以支撑你。如果有一小部分人真心喜欢你正在做的事情，那就够了。

尽可能地避免让中间人介入你和你的观众之间。在某些类型的工作中，这是不可避免的，但是逃脱它的感觉如此令人解放，你可能会更愿意转向一个相邻的类型，只要这样可以让你直接面对。[28]

你花时间的人也会对你的士气产生很大影响。你会发现有些人会增加你的能量，有些人会减少它，而某个人的影响并不总是你预期的那样。寻找那些能增加你能量的人，并避开那些减少你能量的人。当然，如果有人需要你照顾，那是优先的。

不要和一个不理解你需要工作，或者把你的工作看作是对你注意力的竞争的人结婚。如果你有野心，你需要工作；这几乎就像是一种医疗条件；所以不让你工作的人要么是不理解你，要么就是理解你但不在乎。

最终，士气是物理的。你用你的身体思考，所以照顾好它很重要。这意味着定期锻炼，吃得好，睡得好，避免使用更危险的种类的药物。跑步和步行是特别好的锻炼方式，因为它们有利于思考。[29]

做出伟大工作的人并不一定比其他人更快乐，但他们比不这样做的时候更快乐。实际上，如果你聪明并且有野心，不生产是危险的。那些聪明且有野心但没有实现多少的人往往会变得痛苦。

向别人展示自己是可以的，但选择好要展示给谁。你尊重的人的观点是信号。而名声，也就是你可能尊重或可能不尊重的更大群体的观点，只会增加噪音。

一种工作的威望最好是滞后指标，有时候完全是误解。如果你做任何事情做得足够好，你就会使它具有威望。所以对一种工作的问题不是它有多少威望，而是它可以做得多好。

竞争可以是一个有效的动力，但不要让它为你选择问题；不要让自己被拉进去，仅仅因为其他人在追求某件事。事实上，不要让竞争者让你做任何比更努力工作更具体的事情。

好奇心是最好的指南。你的好奇心从不撒谎，它比你更知道哪些值得关注。

注意那个词经常出现。如果你问一个神谕做出伟大工作的秘诀，神谕以一个单词回答，我会打赌那个词是”好奇心”。

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

好奇心是做出伟大工作的所有四个步骤的关键：它会为你选择领域，带你到前沿，让你注意到其中的空白，并驱动你去探索。整个过程就像是与好奇心的一场舞蹈。

信不信由你，我尽量让这篇文章尽可能短。但它的长度至少意味着它起到了过滤的作用。如果你能看到这里，你一定对做出伟大的工作感兴趣。如果是这样，你已经比你可能意识到的要进展得更远了，因为愿意希望的人数很少。

做出伟大工作的因素是字面上、数学意义上的因素，它们是：能力、兴趣、努力和运气。运气你无法控制，所以我们可以忽略。如果你确实想做出伟大的工作，我们可以假设你会努力。所以问题就归结为能力和兴趣。你能否找到一种工作，你的能力和兴趣可以结合起来产生新的想法的爆炸？

在这里有理由保持乐观。有许多不同的方式可以做出伟大的工作，而且还有更多尚未被发现的方式。在所有那些不同类型的工作中，你最适合的那一种可能是非常接近的匹配。可能是滑稽地接近的匹配。这只是一个问题，找到它，以及你的能力和兴趣可以带你进入多深。你只能通过尝试来回答这个问题。

有更多的人可以尝试做出伟大的工作。阻止他们的是一种谦虚和恐惧的组合。试图成为牛顿或莎士比亚似乎过于自大。这也似乎很困难；如果你尝试那样的事情，你肯定会失败。大概计算很少是明确的。很少有人有意识地决定不去尝试做出伟大的工作。但这就是在潜意识里发生的事情；他们回避这个问题。

所以我要对你进行一次偷偷的技巧。你想做出伟大的工作，还是不想呢？现在你必须有意识地决定。对不起。我不会对一般的听众这么做。但我们已经知道你有兴趣。

不要担心被认为自大。你不必告诉任何人。如果它太难，你失败了，那又怎样呢？许多人有比这更严重的问题。实际上，如果这是你最大的问题，你将会很幸运。

是的，你必须努力工作。但再次，许多人必须努力工作。而如果你在做你觉得非常有趣的事情，你一定会的，如果你在正确的路径上，那么工作可能会感觉比许多同行的工作要轻松。

发现就在那里，等待被发现。为什么不是你呢？2/N
备注
[1] 我不认为你能给出一个准确的定义来界定什么是伟大的工作。做伟大的工作意味着你以非常出色的方式做一些重要的事情，从而扩展人们对可能性的想象。但是，重要性没有一个阈值。它是一个程度的问题，而且通常在当时很难判断。所以我宁愿人们专注于发展他们的兴趣，而不是担心它们是否重要。只要尝试做一些令人惊叹的事情，让未来的世代来评判你是否成功。

[2] 很多的单口喜剧都是基于在日常生活中注意到的异常现象。”你有没有注意到…？”新的想法来自对这些非琐碎事物的观察。这可能有助于解释人们对新想法的反应往往是笑声的前半部分：哈！

[3] 第二个限定词非常关键。如果你对大多数权威忽视的事物感到兴奋，但你不能给出比“他们不懂”更精确的解释，那么你开始进入狂热者的领域了。

[4] 找到可以工作的事物并不仅仅是在当前版本的你和已知问题列表之间找到匹配的问题。你通常需要和问题共同发展。这就是为什么有时候找出该从事什么工作可能非常困难。搜索空间是巨大的。它是所有可能的工作类型（已知和待发现的）和所有可能的未来版本的你的笛卡尔积。

你无法搜索整个空间，所以你必须依赖启发式方法来生成通过它的有前景的路径，并希望最好的匹配会集中在一起。但他们并不总是这样；不同类型的工作被集合在一起更多的是由历史的偶然事件而不是它们之间的内在相似性。

[5] 好奇的人更有可能做出伟大的工作有很多原因，但其中一个更微妙的原因是，通过广泛的探索，他们更有可能找到首要的工作内容。

[6] 如果你认为你的听众比你水平低，为他们创作东西也可能会很危险，因为这可能会导致你对他们傲慢。如果你用足够愤世嫉俗的方式来做这个，你可以赚很多钱，但这并不是通向伟大工作的道路。使用这种方式的人并不会在乎。

[7] 这个想法我从哈代的《一个数学家的道歉》中学到的，我向任何有野心想要做伟大工作的人推荐这本书，无论他们是在哪个领域。

[8] 就像我们高估了我们一天能做的事情，低估了我们几年能做的事情，我们也高估了拖延一天所造成的损害，低估了拖延几年所造成的损害。

[9] 你通常无法通过做你完全想做的事情来获得报酬，特别是在早期。有两种选择：通过做接近你想做的工作来获得报酬，并希望推动它更接近，或者通过做完全不同的事情来获得报酬，并在业余时间做你自己的项目。两种方式都可以，但都有缺点：在第一种方式中，你的工作默认被妥协，在第二种方式中，你必须努力获得做自己项目的时间。

[10] 如果你正确地安排你的生活，它会自动提供焦点-放松周期。完美的设置是一个你在其中工作，并且你步行往返的办公室。

[11] 可能有一些非常不务实际的人在没有有意识地尝试的情况下做出了伟大的工作。如果你想扩展这个规则以涵盖那种情况，它变成：除了做到最好以外，不要试图成为任何事。

[12] 在像表演这样的工作中，目标是采取一个假的角色，这变得更加复杂。但即使在这里，也有可能受到影响。也许在这样的领域，规则应该是避免无意的装腔作势。

[13] 只有在你的信仰是无法被证伪的情况下，你才能安全地持有你认为不可质疑的信念。例如，你可以安全地持有法律应该平等对待所有人的原则，因为一个句子中含有”应该”的句子其实并不是关于世界的陈述，因此很难被证明是错误的。如果你的原则没有任何证据可以证明它是错误的，那么就不会有任何事实你需要忽视以保持它。

[14] 装腔作势比知识上的不诚实更易于治愈。装腔作势往往是年轻人的缺点，随着时间的推移会消退，而知识上的不诚实更多的是一个人格的瑕疵。

[15] 显然，你不需要在产生想法的那一刻正在工作，但你可能刚刚完成了一些工作。

[16] 有人说，精神活性药物也有类似的效果。我对此持怀疑态度，但也对它们的效果几乎一无所知。

[17] 例如，你可能会将第 n 个最重要的话题的关注度设为 (m-1)/m^n，其中 m>1。当然，你无法如此精确地分配你的关注度，但这至少给出了一个合理的分配方案的想法。

[18] 定义一种宗教的原则必须是错误的。否则，任何人都可能采用它们，那么就没有什么能区分该宗教的信徒和其他所有人。

[19] 尝试写下你年轻时所思考的问题列表可能是一个很好的练习。你可能会发现你现在已经有能力去处理其中的一些问题。

[20] 原创性和不确定性之间的关联导致了一个奇怪的现象：因为守旧者比独立思考者更确定，这倾向于在争论中让他们占上风，尽管他们通常更愚蠢。
“最好的人都没有信念，而最差的人充满了激烈的激情。”
[21] 这一观点源自林纳斯·鲍林的 “如果你想有好的想法，你必须有很多想法。”

[22] 将一个项目贬低为“玩具”就像将一个陈述贬低为“不恰当”一样。这意味着不能对其做出更有实质性的批评。

[23] 判断你是否在浪费时间的一个方法是问你自己是在生产还是在消费。编写电脑游戏比玩游戏更不可能是浪费时间，而玩那些需要你创造东西的游戏比玩那些不需要你创造东西的游戏更不可能是浪费时间。

[24] 另一个相关的优点是，如果你还没有公开发表过任何东西，你就不会偏向于支持你早先的结论的证据。如果你有足够的诚实，你可以在这方面保持永远的年轻，但很少有人能做到。对于大多数人来说，之前发布的观点会产生类似于意识形态的影响，只是数量为 1。

[25] 在 1630 年代早期，丹尼尔·麦蒂恩斯创作了一幅画，描绘了亨丽埃塔·玛丽亚向查尔斯一世递交月桂冠的场景。然后，范戴克画了他自己的版本，以展示他有多好。

[26] 我故意对什么是“地点”保持模糊。就目前而言，处于同一物理位置有一些很难复制的优势，但这可能会改变。

[27] 当其他人必须做的工作非常受限制时，这是错误的，比如 SETI@home 或比特币。通过定义具有更多自由行动节点的类似的受限协议，可能可以扩大这个错误的范围。

[28] 推论：建立一个使人们能够绕过中间人直接与他们的观众接触的东西可能是个好主意。

[29] 始终走或跑相同的路线可能会有所帮助，因为这样可以让你有更多的注意力去思考。我有这种感觉，而且有一些历史证据支持这一点。也许仅仅是因为这样的路线比较熟悉，因此不那么让人分心。

[30] 把推动理解边界的工作视为目标而不是任务可能会有所帮助。

[31] 当你不能确定一个情况还要持续多久，但你知道它不会太久时，这个情况就要反转了。这在商业中（当一个泡沫即将破裂时）、物理系统中（当一个大坝的裂缝即将崩溃时）和社会现象中（当一个时尚即将变得不时尚时）都是如此。

[32] 启动投资者愿意冒那么大的风险的一个原因是，创业公司的奖励就像专业运动中的奖励：不成比例。

[33] 可能还有一种感觉，即当你还没有准备好处理一个好的想法时，它会看起来很有希望。

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