創造你自己想要的東西 (1/2)

原文：https://www.paulgraham.com/greatwork.html

好奇心

最強大的動機有三個：好奇心、愉悅和想要做出令人印象深刻的事情的願望。有時它們會融合在一起，那種組合是最強大的。

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.

創造你自己想要的東西

如果你要為人們創造某些東西，請確保這是他們真正想要的。做到這一點最好的方法是創造你自己想要的東西。寫下你想閱讀的故事；建造你想使用的工具。由於你的朋友們可能有類似的興趣，這也會為你帶來最初的觀眾群。

這應該遵循激動人心的規則。顯然，最讓人興奮的故事將是你想閱讀的那個。我之所以明確提到這個案例，是因為太多人做錯了。他們不是創造自己想要的東西，而是試圖創造一些想像中的、更有文化的觀眾想要的東西。一旦你走上這條路，你就迷失了。

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.

迷失方向的因素

當你試圖弄清楚要從事什麼工作時，有很多因素會讓你迷失方向。做作、時尚、恐懼、金錢、政治、他人的期望、顯赫的騙子。但如果你堅持做自己真正感興趣的事情，你將能抵抗所有這些誘惑。如果你感興趣，你就不會迷路。

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.

正確的策略不是計劃太多

雖然你需要勇敢，但通常不需要太多規劃。在大多數情況下，做出偉大工作的秘訣簡單來說就是：努力工作於令人激動的雄心勃勃的項目上，好的成果自然會隨之而來。與其制定計劃然後執行，不如嘗試保持某些不變的原則。

計劃的問題在於，它只適用於你事先能描述的成就。你可以通過從小就決定並堅持不懈地追求這個目標來贏得金牌或致富，但你不能用這種方式發現自然選擇。

我認為，對於大多數想要做出偉大工作的人來說，正確的策略不是計劃太多。在每個階段做看起來最有趣且為未來提供最佳選擇的事情。我稱這種方法為“保持迎風”。這就是大多數做出偉大工作的人似乎所採取的方法。

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.

這有多難呢？

許多偉大的事物都始於有人說：“這有多難呢？”

這是年輕人擁有優勢的一種情況。他們更樂觀，儘管他們樂觀的部分原因是無知，在這種情況下，無知有時可以戰勝知識。

儘管如此，嘗試完成你開始的事情，即使它證明是比你預期的更多工作。完成事情不僅僅是整潔或自律的練習。在許多項目中，很多最好的工作發生在原本應該是最後階段的時候。

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.

可以累積的工作

如果你做的是可以累積的工作，你將獲得指數級增長。大多數這樣做的人都是無意識地這樣做，但值得停下來思考一下。例如，學習就是這種現象的一個實例：你對某件事了解得越多，學習更多就越容易。吸引觀眾也是如此：你擁有的粉絲越多，他們就會為你帶來更多新粉絲。

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.

一百年後仍然會關心的東西

追求高目標的一種方式是嘗試創造一些人們在一百年後仍然會關心的東西。這不是因為他們的意見比你的同時代人更重要，而是因為在一百年後仍然看起來很好的東西更有可能是真正的好東西。

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.

像書呆子一樣專注於重要的事情

誠懇的另一個更微妙的組成部分是非正式性。非正式性比它語法上的負面名稱所暗示的要重要得多。它不僅僅是缺乏某些東西。它意味著專注於重要的事情而不是無關緊要的事情。

正式和假裝的共同點是，在做工作的同時，你還試圖表現出某種特定的方式。但投入到你看起來如何的精力會從做得好中抽走。這就是為什麼書呆子在做偉大工作時有優勢的一個原因：他們幾乎不努力表現出任何特定的樣子。事實上，這基本上就是 Nerd 的定義。

Nerds 擁有一種天真的勇敢，這正是做偉大工作所需要的。這不是學來的；它是從童年保存下來的。所以要堅持住。成為那個把東西拿出來的人，而不是坐在後面提供看起來很有深度的批評的人。 “批評很容易”在最字面的意義上是真的，而通往偉大工作的路從不容易。

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.

想起幾個自認為值得學習的創業家，的確都是保持好奇心、樂觀還有 Geek 級別的專注（甚至到執著），未完待續。