热爱的踪迹：在钱多和喜欢之间，选哪个？| paul graham

当你无法决定走哪条路时，几乎总是源于无知。事实上，你通常同时困于三种无知：你不知道什么让你快乐，不知道各种工作的真相，也不知道你在这些工作上能做到什么程度。

Title: When to Do What You Love

Written by: Paul Graham

Translated by: GPT-4o & @howie.serious（排名有先后，这是AI 翻译测试）

激情的踪迹

There's some debate about whether it's a good idea to "follow your passion." In fact, the question is impossible to answer with a simple yes or no. Sometimes you should, and sometimes you shouldn't, but the boundary between should and shouldn't is very complicated. The only way to give a general answer is to trace it.

关于“追随你的激情”是否是个好主意，始终存在争议。其实，这个问题并不能用简单的“是”或“否”来回答。有时候你应该追随激情，有时候不应该，但这两者之间的界限极为模糊而复杂。唯一能够给出普遍答案的方法，就是不断追寻激情的踪迹。

When people talk about this question, there's always an implicit "instead of." All other things being equal, why wouldn't you work on what interests you the most?

当人们讨论这个问题时，总有一个潜在的“而不是”隐含其中。如果其他条件都相同，怎么会有人不去做自己最感兴趣的事情呢？

兴趣与赚钱的权衡

So even raising the question implies that all other things aren't equal, and that you have to choose between working on what interests you the most and something else, like what pays the best.

所以，仅仅提出这个问题就意味着：其他条件并不相同，你必须在做最感兴趣的事情和其他事情之间作出抉择，比如选择一份报酬最高的工作。

And indeed, if your main goal is to make money, you usually can't afford to work on what interests you the most. People pay you for doing what they want, not what you want. But there's an obvious exception: when you both want the same thing. For example, if you love football, and you're good enough at it, you can get paid a lot to play it.

事实上，如果你的主要目标是赚钱，你通常不能奢望做自己最感兴趣的事情。人们付钱给你，是为了让你做他们想要的事情，而不是你自己想做的事情。但有一个显而易见的例外：当你们的目标一致时。比如，如果你热爱足球，而且足够出色，你就能通过踢球赚到很多钱。

Of course, the odds are against you in a case like football, because so many other people like playing it too. This is not to say you shouldn't try though. It depends on how much ability you have and how hard you're willing to work.

当然，在像足球这样的领域，机会对你并不利，因为有太多其他人也喜欢踢球。但这并不是说你不应该尝试。这取决于你的天赋有多强，以及你愿意付出多少努力。

The odds are better when you have strange tastes: when you like something that pays well and that few other people like.

当你拥有一些奇特的兴趣时，成功的几率会更高：比如你喜欢的事情既有高报酬，又很少有人愿意做。

For example, it's clear that Bill Gates truly loved running a software company. He didn't just love programming, which a lot of people do. He loved writing software for customers. That is a very strange taste indeed, but if you have it, you can make a lot by indulging it.

例如，很明显比尔·盖茨真正热爱经营软件公司。他不仅仅喜欢编程——这一点很多人也喜欢——他更喜欢为客户编写软件。这的确是一种非常特别的兴趣，但如果你有这样的兴趣，你可以通过这种热情获得丰厚的回报。

There are even some people who have a genuine intellectual interest in making money. This is distinct from mere greed. They just can't help noticing when something is mispriced, and can't help doing something about it. It's like a puzzle for them.

甚至有些人对赚钱有真正的智力兴趣。这与单纯的贪婪不同。他们无法忽视当某样东西被错误定价时所带来的机会，也无法忍住不采取行动。这对他们来说就像是一个谜题。

（These examples show why it's a mistake to assume that economic inequality must be evidence of some kind of brokenness or unfairness. It's obvious that different people have different interests, and that some interests yield far more money than others, so how can it not be obvious that some people will end up much richer than others? In a world where some people like to write enterprise software and others like to make studio pottery, economic inequality is the natural outcome.）

（这些例子表明，认为经济不平等必然是某种制度缺陷或社会不公正的证据，是不正确的。显然，不同的人有不同的兴趣，而有些兴趣比其他兴趣更能带来丰厚的财富，那么有些人最终比其他人富有也是显而易见的。在一个有人喜欢编写企业软件，有人喜欢制作陶器的世界里，经济不平等是自然的结果。）

极端情况：创业

In fact, there's an edge case here so spectacular that it turns all the preceding advice on its head. If you want to make a really huge amount of money — hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars — it turns out to be very useful to work on what interests you the most. The reason is not the extra motivation you get from doing this, but that the way to make a really large amount of money is to start a startup, and working on what interests you is an excellent way to discover startup ideas.

事实上，有一个极端的例子，它如此惊人，以至于颠覆了之前所有的建议。如果你想赚取巨额财富——数亿甚至数十亿美元——那么从事你最感兴趣的事情将非常有用。原因并不在于你会从中获得额外的动力，而在于赚取巨额财富的途径是创办一家初创公司，而发现初创公司创意的绝佳方式恰恰是做你你真正感兴趣的事情。

Many, if not most, of the biggest startups began as projects the founders were doing for fun. Apple, Google, and Facebook all began that way.

许多最成功的初创公司，甚至大多数，都是创始人为了好玩而开始的项目。苹果、谷歌和脸书都是这样起步的。

Why is this pattern so common? Because the best ideas tend to be such outliers that you'd overlook them if you were consciously looking for ways to make money. Whereas if you're young and good at technology, your unconscious instincts about what would be interesting to work on are very well aligned with what needs to be built.

为什么这种模式如此普遍？因为最好的想法往往是如此的特立独行，以至于如果你有意识地去寻找赚钱的方法，你很可能会忽略它们。而如果你年轻并且擅长技术，你对“做什么事情才真正有趣”的无意识本能，往往与真正需要被构建的东西高度一致。

赚钱与兴趣的“钟形曲线”

So there's something like a "midwit peak" for making money. If you don't need to make much, you can work on whatever you're most interested in; if you want to become moderately rich, you usually can't afford to; but if you want to become super-rich, and you're young and good at technology, working on what you're most interested in becomes a good idea again.

所以，对于赚钱这件事，存在一个“钟形曲线”规律：如果你不需要赚很多钱，你可以去做你最感兴趣的事情；如果你想变得中等富有，通常你负担不起这种选择；但如果你想变得超级富有，并且你年轻且擅长技术，那么做你最感兴趣的事情又变成了一个好主意。

What if you're not sure what you want? What if you're attracted to the idea of making money and more attracted to some kinds of work than others, but neither attraction predominates? How do you break ties?

如果你不确定自己想要什么呢？如果你被赚钱的想法吸引，但同时被某种感兴趣的工作吸引，但哪种吸引力都没占据主导地位呢？你该如何打破僵局？

The key here is to understand that such ties are only apparent. When you have trouble choosing between following your interests and making money, it's never because you have complete knowledge of yourself and of the types of work you're choosing between, and the options are perfectly balanced. When you can't decide which path to take, it's almost always due to ignorance. In fact, you're usually suffering from three kinds of ignorance simultaneously: you don't know what makes you happy, what the various kinds of work are really like, or how well you could do them.

这里的关键在于，这种僵局只是表面上的。当你在追随兴趣与赚钱之间难以抉择时，从来不是因为你对自己以及你所选择的工作类型有了完全的了解，并且这些选项完全平衡。当你无法决定走哪条路时，几乎总是源于无知。事实上，你通常同时困于三种无知：你不知道什么让你快乐，不知道各种工作的真相，也不知道你在这些工作上能做到什么程度。

（Difficulty choosing between interests is a different matter. That's not always due to ignorance. It's often intrinsically difficult. I still have trouble doing it.）

（在不同兴趣之间做出选择则是另一回事。这并不总是由于无知。选择在本质上就是困难的。我到现在仍然难于选择。）

In a way, this ignorance is excusable. It's often hard to predict these things, and no one even tells you that you need to. If you're ambitious, you're told you should go to college, and this is good advice so far as it goes, but that's where it usually ends. No one tells you how to figure out what to work on, or how hard this can be.

在某种程度上，这种无知是可以被原谅的。预测这些事情往往很难，甚至没有人告诉你需要这样做。如果你有抱负，人们会告诉你应该上大学，这是个不错的建议，但通常也就到此为止了。没有人告诉你如何弄清楚要做什么工作，或者这件事到底有多难。

获取更多的确定性

What do you do in the face of uncertainty? Get more certainty. And probably the best way to do that is to try working on things you're interested in. That will get you more information about how interested you are in them, how good you are at them, and how much scope they offer for ambition.

面对不确定性时，你该怎么做？获取更多的确定性。而最好的方法，可能就是去尝试做你感兴趣的事情。这会让你获得更多的信息：你对它们的兴趣程度，你在这些事情上的能力，以及它们为你的抱负提供的空间。

Don't wait. Don't wait till the end of college to figure out what to work on. Don't even wait for internships during college. You don't necessarily need a job doing x in order to work on x; often you can just start doing it in some form yourself. And since figuring out what to work on is a problem that could take years to solve, the sooner you start, the better.

不要等待。不要等到大学结束才弄清楚要做什么工作，甚至不要等到大学期间的实习。你不一定需要找到一份做 x 的工作来做 x；你通常可以自己以某种形式开始做它。弄清楚要做什么工作可能需要数年时间，所以越早开始越好。

One useful trick for judging different kinds of work is to look at who your colleagues will be. You'll become like whoever you work with. Do you want to become like these people?

判断不同工作的一种有用技巧是看看你的同事会是谁。你会变得像你一起工作的人。你想变成这些人中的一个吗？

Indeed, the difference in character between different kinds of work is magnified by the fact that everyone else is facing the same decisions as you. If you choose a kind of work mainly for how well it pays, you'll be surrounded by other people who chose it for the same reason, and that will make it even more soul-sucking than it seems from the outside. Whereas if you choose work you're genuinely interested in, you'll be surrounded mostly by other people who are genuinely interested in it, and that will make it extra inspiring.

确实，不同类型工作的性格差异由于每个人都面临与你相同的选择而被放大。如果你选择了一种主要为了报酬的工作，你会被其他同样因这个理由选择这份工作的人包围，这会使这份工作比外界看起来更加消磨人的灵魂。而如果你选择了自己真正感兴趣的工作，你周围的人也大多对这项工作充满兴趣，这会使它格外鼓舞人心。

（You can't always take people at their word on this. Since it's more prestigious to work on things you're interested in than to be driven by money, people who are driven mainly by money will often claim to be more interested in their work than they actually are. One way to test such claims is by doing the following thought experiment: if their work didn't pay well, would they take day jobs doing something else in order to do it in their spare time? Lots of mathematicians and scientists and engineers would. Historically, lots have. But I don't think as many investment bankers would. This thought experiment is also useful for distinguishing between university departments.）

（你不能总是相信人们在这方面的话。因为从事自己感兴趣的事情比被金钱驱动更具声望，主要被金钱驱动的人往往会声称他们对自己的工作更有兴趣。测试这种说法的一种方法是做以下思维实验：如果他们的工作报酬不高，他们会不会在业余时间做其他工作以便从事它？许多数学家、科学家和工程师会这样做，历史上也有很多人这样做。但我认为不会有那么多投资银行家这样做。这个思维实验对于区分大学科系也很有用。）

待在“上风口”

The other thing you do in the face of uncertainty is to make choices that are uncertainty-proof. The less sure you are about what to do, the more important it is to choose options that give you more options in the future. I call this "staying upwind." If you're unsure whether to major in math or economics, for example, choose math; math is upwind of economics in the sense that it will be easier to switch later from math to economics than from economics to math.

面对不确定性时，你还可以做的另一件事是做出防范不确定性的选择。你越不确定该做什么，选择未来给你更多选择的选项就越重要。我称之为“待在上风口”。例如，如果你不确定是主修数学还是经济学，那就选择数学；数学在经济学的上风方向，这意味着从数学转到经济学比从经济学转到数学要容易得多。

There's one case, though, where it's easy to say whether you should work on what interests you the most: if you want to do great work. This is not a sufficient condition for doing great work, but it is a necessary one.

不过，有一种情况很容易判断你是否应该做自己最感兴趣的工作：如果你想做出伟大的工作。这不是做出伟大工作的充分条件，但却是必要条件。

There's a lot of selection bias in advice about whether to "follow your passion," and this is the reason. Most such advice comes from people who are famously successful, and if you ask someone who's famously successful how to do what they did, most will tell you that you have to work on what you're most interested in. And this is in fact true.

关于是否“追随你的激情”的建议中有很多选择偏差，这就是原因所在。大多数这样的建议来自那些著名的成功人士，如果你问一个著名的成功人士如何达到他们的成就，大多数人会告诉你，你必须去做你最感兴趣的事情。这其实是对的。

That doesn't mean it's the right advice for everyone. Not everyone can do great work, or wants to. But if you do want to, the complicated question of whether or not to work on what interests you the most becomes simple. The answer is yes. The root of great work is a sort of ambitious curiosity, and you can't manufacture that.

这并不意味着对每个人来说这都是正确的建议。并不是每个人都能做出伟大的工作，或者想要做出伟大的工作。但如果你确实想要，关于是否做你最感兴趣的事情的复杂问题就变得简单了。答案是肯定的。伟大工作的根源是一种雄心勃勃的好奇心，而你无法制造这种好奇心。