聪明人的正确“顽固”，愚笨者的错误“坚持”

“正确的固执” 是一种极为罕见的能力，而 “错误的坚持” 是一种极为普遍的症状。

坚持（persistence）和顽固（头铁，stubborn，obstinacy），表面相似：这两种人都“不容易被阻止”，看上去都很“执着”。

坚持和顽固，本质不同：坚持者追求的是目标，愿意调整方法；而顽固者执着于自己的方法，不愿改变。

更重要的是，二者的“内部构成”完全不同，有结构性差异，极具观摩、学习和沉思价值：

“坚持” 并非动物的本能或者天赋，

而是一种需要构建和训练的综合能力。

二者在动力来源、面对问题时的反应、对待外部建议等方面，有本质区别。总结如下；

打一个比方，就是这样的：

如何构建“坚持”这一品质？

“坚持”这一心理模型的搭建，需要5个基本的“乐高砖块”(心理构件，building blocks)：

“思想咖啡” 时间

在Twitter上，有推友说喜欢读我的推文。我只是坚持每天费曼几条我的学习和思考，但是推友不吝赞美，说像品味“思想的咖啡” 🤣

这个比喻非常精准，我念念不忘，不是因为被网友正反馈了，而是它精准地总结了我在阅读一些“五星级”文章和书籍时的感受。

下面的这篇杂文（essay），来自硅谷创业教父、sam altman 的伯乐兼老师 paul graham。我不想加二级三级标题破坏作者本来的精美文章，所以把笔记和总结放在前面。文章是双语对照版本，值得阅读 5678 遍。

祝阅读愉快～

title：The Right Kind of Stubborn

author: paul graham

Successful people tend to be ⁠⁠persistent⁠⁠. New ideas often don't work at first, but they're not deterred. They keep trying and eventually find something that does.

⁠⁠成功人士往往非常坚持⁠⁠。新的想法在起初常常行不通，但他们并不会被吓退。他们不断尝试，最终找到了有效的方法。

Mere obstinacy, on the other hand, is a recipe for failure. ⁠⁠Obstinate people⁠⁠ are so annoying. They won't listen. They beat their heads against a wall and get nowhere.

而⁠⁠一味的执拗则是失败的秘诀⁠⁠。⁠⁠顽固的人⁠⁠很令人恼火——他们不听劝告，只会不停地拿头去撞南墙，结果一事无成。

But is there any real difference between these two cases? ⁠⁠Are persistent and obstinate people actually behaving differently?⁠⁠ Or are they doing the same thing, and we just label them later as persistent or obstinate depending on whether they turned out to be right or not?

但是，⁠⁠这两种情形之间真的有本质区别吗？坚持的人和顽固的人⁠⁠在行为上实际上有不同吗？还是说他们做的事情其实一样，只是我们事后根据结果是对是错，才给他们贴上“坚持”或“顽固”的标签？

If that's the only difference then there's nothing to be learned from the distinction. Telling someone to be persistent rather than obstinate would just be telling them to be right rather than wrong, and they already know that. Whereas if persistence and obstinacy are actually different kinds of behavior, it would be worthwhile to tease them apart. [1]

如果区别仅在结果⁠⁠，那从这种区分中就没什么可学的。告诉某人要“坚持”而不是“顽固”，无异于让他们“别错只对”，这道理他们早就懂。反之，⁠⁠如果坚持和顽固在行为方式上真有区别，⁠⁠那就值得将二者细细剖析开来。[1]

I've talked to a lot of determined people, and it seems to me that they're different kinds of behavior. I've often walked away from a conversation thinking either "Wow, that guy is determined" or "Damn, that guy is stubborn," and I don't think I'm just talking about whether they seemed right or not. That's part of it, but not all of it.

我与许多意志坚定的人交谈过，在我看来，他们的行为方式确实有所不同。我常常在一次谈话结束后心想：“哇，那家伙真有决心” 或者 “唉，那人真是顽固。” 我并不认为我只是根据他们看起来是否正确来下判断。这当然有影响，但并非全部。

There's something annoying about the obstinate that's not simply due to being mistaken. They won't listen. And that's not true of all determined people. I can't think of anyone more determined than the Collison brothers, and when you point out a problem to them, they not only listen, but listen with an almost predatory intensity. Is there a hole in the bottom of their boat? Probably not, but if there is, they want to know about it.

顽固之所以令人厌烦，有某些因素不只是因为他们错了。他们就是不愿意听。而并非所有坚决执着的人都这样。我想不出比科里森兄弟更坚定的人了，当你向他们指出一个问题时，他们不但会听，而且听得异常专注，仿佛猎食时一般。他们会想知道自己的船底是不是漏了洞？大概没有，但如果真的有，他们一定想知道。

It's the same with most successful people. They're never more engaged than when you disagree with them. Whereas the obstinate don't want to hear you. When you point out problems, their eyes glaze over, and their replies sound like ideologues talking about matters of doctrine. [2]

大多数成功人士也是如此。当你与他们意见相左时，他们反而表现得最为专注投入⁠⁠。相反，⁠⁠顽固之人却不想听你说什么。当你指出问题时，他们眼神呆滞，他们的回答听起来就像教条主义者在宣讲教义一般⁠⁠。[2]

howie：你在现实中观察到类似现象了吗？

The reason the persistent and the obstinate seem similar is that they're both hard to stop. But they're hard to stop in different senses. The persistent are like boats whose engines can't be throttled back. The obstinate are like boats whose rudders can't be turned. [3]

坚持者和顽固者看起来相似，是因为他们都很难被阻止。但他们难以阻止的方式是不同的。⁠⁠坚持者就像引擎无法减速的船；顽固者则像舵死死不转的船⁠⁠。[3]

In the degenerate case they're indistinguishable: when there's only one way to solve a problem, your only choice is whether to give up or not, and persistence and obstinacy both say no. This is presumably why the two are so often conflated in popular culture. It assumes simple problems. But as problems get more complicated, we can see the difference between them. The persistent are much more attached to points high in the decision tree than to minor ones lower down, while the obstinate spray "don't give up" indiscriminately over the whole tree.

在极端情况下，两者确实无法区分：当解决问题只有一条路时，你唯一的选择就是坚持还是放弃，而坚持和顽固都会选择不放弃。这大概也是为什么大众文化中常把两者混为一谈——它假定了问题都很简单。然而当问题变得更复杂，我们就能看出二者的区别。⁠⁠坚持者通常只会对决策树高处的重要节点保持执着，而对底部次要的节点则没那么在意；顽固者则对整棵决策树不分主次地一律奉行“决不放弃”的态度⁠⁠。

⁠⁠The persistent are attached to the goal. The obstinate are attached to their ideas about how to reach it.⁠⁠

⁠⁠坚持者执着于目标。顽固者执着于实现目标的自己那套想法⁠⁠。

Worse still, that means they'll tend to be attached to their first ideas about how to solve a problem, even though these are the least informed by the experience of working on it. So the obstinate aren't merely attached to details, but disproportionately likely to be attached to wrong ones.

更糟糕的是，这意味着他们往往会固守于自己最初想到的解决方案，尽管这些方案是最缺乏实践经验依据的。因此，顽固者不仅拘泥于细节，而且极有可能执着于那些错误的细节。

Why are they like this? Why are the obstinate obstinate? One possibility is that they're overwhelmed. They're not very capable. They take on a hard problem. They're immediately in over their head. So they grab onto ideas the way someone on the deck of a rolling ship might grab onto the nearest handhold.

为什么会这样？顽固者为什么那么顽固？一种可能是，他们被难题彻底压倒了。他们能力有限，却接下了一个艰巨的问题，立刻便陷入了力不从心的境地。于是他们像在颠簸甲板上的人紧抓最近的扶手一样，紧抓住自己的想法不放。

That was my initial theory, but on examination it doesn't hold up. If being obstinate were simply a consequence of being in over one's head, you could make persistent people become obstinate by making them solve harder problems. But that's not what happens. If you handed the Collisons an extremely hard problem to solve, they wouldn't become obstinate. If anything they'd become less obstinate. They'd know they had to be open to anything.

这是我最初的看法，但仔细一想并站不住脚。如果顽固只是因为难题超出了自身能力，那么你本可以通过给坚持者更难的问题来让他们变得顽固。但事实并非如此。如果你递给科里森兄弟一道极其困难的难题，他们不会变得顽固。恰恰相反，他们反而会更加开放。他们很清楚自己必须对一切保持开放态度。

Similarly, if obstinacy were caused by the situation, the obstinate would stop being obstinate when solving easier problems. But they don't. And if obstinacy isn't caused by the situation, it must come from within. It must be a feature of one's personality.

类似地，如果顽固是由环境情境造成的，那么解决较容易的问题时，顽固的人就该不再顽固了。但事实并非如此。所以，⁠⁠如果顽固不是由外部情境导致的，那一定是源自内心——是性格的一个特征。

⁠⁠Obstinacy is a reflexive resistance to changing one's ideas. This is not identical with stupidity, but they're closely related.⁠⁠ A reflexive resistance to changing one's ideas becomes a sort of ⁠⁠induced stupidity⁠⁠ as contrary evidence mounts. And obstinacy is a form of not giving up that's easily practiced by the stupid. You don't have to consider complicated tradeoffs; you just dig in your heels. It even works, up to a point.

⁠⁠顽固是一种对改变想法的下意识抵抗。它虽不等同于愚蠢，但两者密切相关。当相反的证据越积越多时，这种本能的抗拒会变成一种外部引发的愚蠢。⁠⁠顽固也是一种“不放弃”的方式，而且愚蠢的人最容易采用：你不必考虑复杂的权衡；你只需蛮干就行。甚至在一定程度上，这招还真管用。

The fact that obstinacy works for simple problems is an important clue. Persistence and obstinacy aren't opposites. The relationship between them is more like the relationship between the two kinds of respiration we can do: aerobic respiration, and the anaerobic respiration we inherited from our most distant ancestors. Anaerobic respiration is a more primitive process, but it has its uses. When you leap suddenly away from a threat, that's what you're using.

⁠⁠顽固在处理简单问题时管用⁠⁠这一事实提供了重要线索。⁠⁠坚持和顽固并非对立。它们之间的关系更像我们能进行的两种呼吸：一种是有氧呼吸，另一种是我们从远古祖先那里继承的无氧呼吸。无⁠⁠氧呼吸是更原始的过程，但也有其用途——当你突然躲避危险时，你用的正是它。

The optimal amount of obstinacy is not zero. It can be good if your initial reaction to a setback is an unthinking "I won't give up," because this helps prevent panic. But unthinking only gets you so far. The further someone is toward the obstinate end of the continuum, the less likely they are to succeed in solving hard problems. [4]

最理想的顽固程度并非为零。遇到挫折时，如果你的第一反应是不加思索地告诉自己“我绝不放弃”，这还有益处，因为它有助于防止你惊慌失措。但不经思考也只能带你到此为止。一个人越是走向顽固这一端，在解决难题时成功的可能性就越低。[4]

Obstinacy is a simple thing. Animals have it. But persistence turns out to have a fairly complicated internal structure.

顽固很简单。动物也具备这种特性。而坚持却有着相当复杂的内在结构。⁠⁠

One thing that distinguishes the persistent is their energy. At the risk of putting too much weight on words, they persist rather than merely resisting. They keep trying things. Which means the persistent must also be imaginative. To keep trying things, you have to keep thinking of things to try.

坚持者与常人不同之处之一在于他们精力充沛。冒着可能过度诠释字眼的风险来说，他们是在坚持（persist），而不仅仅是抵抗（resist）。他们会不停地尝试各种方法。这也意味着，坚持者必须富有想象力——要不停尝试，你就得不停想出新点子来尝试。

Energy and imagination make a wonderful combination. Each gets the best out of the other. Energy creates demand for the ideas produced by imagination, which thus produces more, and imagination gives energy somewhere to go. [5]

精力和想象力是绝佳的组合，二者可以将对方的长处发挥到极致⁠⁠。精力为想象力产出的点子创造了需求，因此想象力会激发出更多新点子；而想象力则为精力提供了用武之地，让充沛精力有处施展。[5]

Merely having energy and imagination is quite rare. But to solve hard problems you need three more qualities: resilience, good judgement, and a focus on some kind of goal.

仅仅拥有精力和想象力已经非常罕见。但要解决艰难的问题，你还需要另外三种品质：韧性、良好的判断力，以及对某种目标的专注。

Resilience means not having one's morale destroyed by setbacks. Setbacks are inevitable once problems reach a certain size, so if you can't bounce back from them, you can only do good work on a small scale. But resilience is not the same as obstinacy. Resilience means setbacks can't change your morale, not that they can't change your mind.

韧性意味着不会因挫折而丧失斗志。只要问题达到一定复杂程度，遭遇挫折便不可避免，所以如果你无法从挫折中重新振作，那你只可能在很小的范围内有所成就。但韧性并不等同于顽固。韧性意味着挫折无法动摇你的斗志，并不意味着挫折不能改变你的想法。

Indeed, persistence often requires that one change one's mind. That's where good judgement comes in. The persistent are quite rational. They focus on expected value. It's this, not recklessness, that lets them work on things that are unlikely to succeed.

实际上，坚持常常要求我们改变主意——这就需要良好的判断力。坚持者非常理性，他们着眼于预期的价值。正因如此（而非凭借鲁莽），他们才敢于去做那些成功概率不高的事情。

There is one point at which the persistent are often irrational though: at the very top of the decision tree. When they choose between two problems of roughly equal expected value, the choice usually comes down to personal preference. Indeed, they'll often classify projects into deliberately wide bands of expected value in order to ensure that the one they want to work on still qualifies.

不过，在一个节点上，坚持者常常显得不那么理性：那就是在决策树的顶端。当两个问题的预期价值大体相当时，他们的选择往往归结于个人偏好。实际上，他们常常会把项目划分到比较宽泛的预期价值区间里，以确保自己想做的那个项目依然算在“值得做”的范围内。

Empirically this doesn't seem to be a problem. It's ok to be irrational near the top of the decision tree. One reason is that we humans will work harder on a problem we love. But there's another more subtle factor involved as well: our preferences among problems aren't random. When we love a problem that other people don't, it's often because we've unconsciously noticed that it's more important than they realize.

从经验上看，这么做似乎并无大碍。在决策树的高处稍微不理性一点也可以。原因之一是，我们人类在面对自己热爱的难题时会更加努力。还有一个更微妙的原因：我们对待不同问题的偏好并非随机。当我们钟爱一个别人不看好的问题时，往往是因为我们无意识中注意到，这个问题其实比他人所意识到的更为重要。

Which leads to our fifth quality: there needs to be some overall goal. If you're like me you began, as a kid, merely with the desire to do something great. In theory that should be the most powerful motivator of all, since it includes everything that could possibly be done. But in practice it's not much use, precisely because it includes too much. It doesn't tell you what to do at this moment.

这就引出了第五种品质：你需要有某种总体目标。如果你像我一样，年少时心中只有一个愿望：做一番伟大的事业。理论上讲，那应该是最强大的动力，因为它把一切可能的成就都包括在内。但实际上，这种动力几乎派不上用场，原因恰恰在于它包罗万象——它并没有告诉你此时此刻该做些什么。

⁠⁠So in practice your energy and imagination and resilience and good judgement have to be directed toward some fairly specific goal.⁠⁠ Not too specific, or you might miss a great discovery adjacent to what you're searching for, but not too general, or it won't work to motivate you. [6]

⁠⁠所以在实践中，你的精力、想象力、韧性和良好判断力都必须指向一个相对具体的目标⁠⁠。目标不能过于具体，否则你可能会错过与你所追求的目标相邻的一些重大发现；但也不能过于泛泛，否则它无法真正激励你。[6]

When you look at the internal structure of persistence, it doesn't resemble obstinacy at all. It's so much more complex. ⁠⁠Five distinct qualities — energy, imagination, resilience, good judgement, and focus on a goal⁠⁠ — combine to produce a phenomenon that seems a bit like obstinacy in the sense that it causes you not to give up. But the way you don't give up is completely different. Instead of merely resisting change, you're driven toward a goal by energy and resilience, through paths discovered by imagination and optimized by judgement. You'll give way on any point low down in the decision tree, if its expected value drops sufficiently, but energy and resilience keep pushing you toward whatever you chose higher up.

当你观察 “⁠⁠坚持”的内在结构时，会发现它与顽固毫不相像——它复杂得多。精力、想象力、韧性、良好的判断力，以及对目标的专注，这五种截然不同的品质结合起来，产出了这样一种现象⁠⁠：它在“不放弃”这一点上看起来有点像顽固，但你坚持下去的方式却完全不同。你不是单纯地抗拒改变，而是由精力和韧性驱动着朝目标前进，走在由想象力发现并经判断力优化的道路上。对于决策树底部的任何一个环节，只要其预期价值显著下降，你都愿意做出让步；但精力和韧性会持续推动你朝向在高层选定的那个目标挺进。

Considering what it's made of, it's not surprising that the right kind of stubbornness is so much rarer than the wrong kind, or that it gets so much better results. Anyone can do obstinacy. Indeed, ⁠⁠kids and drunks and fools are best at it.⁠⁠ Whereas very few people have enough of all five of the qualities that produce right kind of stubbornness, but when they do the results are magical.

鉴于构成它的要素，不难理解为什么正确的固执要比错误的固执少见得多、成效也好得多。顽固谁都可以做到——小孩子、醉汉和傻瓜反倒最擅长。而能够兼备那五种品质从而造就“正确的固执”的人却凤毛麟角，但当这样的人出现时，其结果是惊人的。

Notes｜注释

[1] I'm going to use "persistent" for the good kind of stubborn and "obstinate" for the bad kind, but I can't claim I'm simply following current usage. Conventional opinion barely distinguishes between good and bad kinds of stubbornness, and usage is correspondingly promiscuous. I could have invented a new word for the good kind, but it seemed better just to stretch "persistent."

[1] 我将在文中用“persistent”（坚持者）指代好的那种固执，用“obstinate”（顽固者）指代坏的那种固执，但我不敢声称这是严格遵循现有用法。传统观点几乎不区分固执的好坏之分，因此这些词的使用也相当混乱。我本可以为好的那种固执创造一个新词，但觉得直接拓展 persistent（坚持）一词的含义来得更好。

[2] There are some domains where one can succeed by being obstinate. Some political leaders have been notorious for it. But it won't work in situations where you have to pass external tests. And indeed the political leaders who are famous for being obstinate are famous for getting power, not for using it well.

[2] 确实存在一些领域，可以通过顽固取得成功。一些政治领袖就以顽固出了名。但是在需要通过外部检验的情形下，这种做法行不通。而且，那些因为顽固而出名的政治领袖，出名的是他们如何获得权力，而不是如何善用权力。

[3] There will be some resistance to turning the rudder of a persistent person, because there's some cost to changing direction.

[3] 想让坚持者转舵仍会遇到些许阻力，因为改变航向总是需要付出代价的。

[4] The obstinate do sometimes succeed in solving hard problems. One way is through luck: like the stopped clock that's right twice a day, they seize onto some arbitrary idea, and it turns out to be right. Another is when their obstinacy cancels out some other form of error. For example, if a leader has overcautious subordinates, their estimates of the probability of success will always be off in the same direction. So if he mindlessly says "push ahead regardless" in every borderline case, he'll usually turn out to be right.

[4] 顽固者有时也能成功解决难题。其中一种途径是靠运气：就像停摆的时钟每天也有两次是准的那样，他们随便抓住了一个主意，结果碰巧是对的。另一种情况是当他们的顽固抵消了另一种错误。比如说，如果一位领导者的下属过于谨慎，那么他们对成功概率的估计总是会在同一个方向上出现偏差。所以如果这位领导者在每个边缘案例中都不假思索地喊“照样干下去”，那么他通常会被证明是对的。

[5] If you stop there, at just energy and imagination, you get the conventional caricature of an artist or poet.

[5] 如果仅止步于精力和想象力，那呈现出来的就是世人眼中典型的艺术家或诗人的形象。

[6] Start by erring on the small side. If you're inexperienced you'll inevitably err on one side or the other, and if you err on the side of making the goal too broad, you won't get anywhere. Whereas if you err on the small side you'll at least be moving forward. Then, once you're moving, you expand the goal.

[6] 一开始时宜将目标定小一点。如果你没有经验，难免会走向两个极端之一；若是目标定得太泛，你将一事无成，而如果目标定得小了，至少你还能往前推进。等到你在前进中积累了动能，再逐步扩大你的目标。

延展阅读

• 不把自己的人生，交给标准的流程。｜paul graham，founder mode
• 思考者和不思考者的阶层分化，来自这一个选择。｜paul graham, writes and write-nots
• 为什么读书要读 5678 遍？｜paul graham, how we read
• 热爱的踪迹：在钱多和喜欢之间，选哪个？| paul graham