作者：paulgraham
原文地址：http://www.paulgraham.com/genius.html
翻译：https://www.jdon.com/5341、高行行
November 2019
2019年十一月
Everyone knows that to do great work you need both natural ability and determination. But there’s a third ingredient that’s not as well understood: an obsessive interest in a particular topic.
每个人都知道，要做伟大工作，你既需要天赋也需要决心。但是，还有第三种因素尚未被很好地理解：对特定主题的痴迷兴趣。
To explain this point I need to burn my reputation with some group of people, and I’m going to choose bus ticket collectors. There are people who collect old bus tickets. Like many collectors, they have an obsessive interest in the minutiae of what they collect. They can keep track of distinctions between different types of bus tickets that would be hard for the rest of us to remember. Because we don’t care enough. What’s the point of spending so much time thinking about old bus tickets?
比如车票收藏者（ bus ticket collectors ）。像许多收藏家一样，他们痴迷于自己收藏品的细节。他们能记住不同类型车票之间的区别，我们其他人很难记住这些区别。因为我们不够在意。花这么多时间考虑旧车票有什么意义？
Which leads us to the second feature of this kind of obsession: there is no point. A bus ticket collector’s love is disinterested. They’re not doing it to impress us or to make themselves rich, but for its own sake.
这使我们想到了这种迷恋的第二个特征：没有意义。一位车票收藏家的爱是无私的。他们并不是为了打动我们或使自己致富，而是为了自己。（banq注：目的动机与做事统一，做好事不是为了得到奖励，付出不是为了回报，读书不是为了致富，编码不是赚钱）
When you look at the lives of people who’ve done great work, you see a consistent pattern. They often begin with a bus ticket collector’s obsessive interest in something that would have seemed pointless to most of their contemporaries. One of the most striking features of Darwin’s book about his voyage on the Beagle is the sheer depth of his interest in natural history. His curiosity seems infinite. Ditto for Ramanujan, sitting by the hour working out on his slate what happens to series.
当你查看工作出色的人们的生活时，你会看到一致的模式。他们通常以公交车票收藏者的痴迷兴趣开始，而这对于大多数当代人来说似乎毫无意义。达尔文关于小猎犬号航行的书中最惊人的特征之一就是他对自然历史的浓厚兴趣。他的好奇心似乎是无限的。著名数学家拉马努金可以坐一个小时努力研究系列赛会发生什么。
It’s a mistake to think they were “laying the groundwork” for the discoveries they made later. There’s too much intention in that metaphor. Like bus ticket collectors, they were doing it because they liked it.
认为他们为后来的发现“奠定基础”是错误的。在这个比喻中有太多的意图。就像公交车票收集者一样，他们之所以这样做是因为他们喜欢它。
But there is a difference between Ramanujan and a bus ticket collector. Series matter, and bus tickets don’t.
但是拉马努金和公交车票收集者之间有区别。系列Series很重要，而车票则没有
If I had to put the recipe for genius into one sentence, that might be it: to have a disinterested obsession with something that matters.
如果我不得不把天才的秘诀写成一句话，那就可能是：对一件重要的事情无私地痴迷。
Aren’t I forgetting about the other two ingredients? Less than you might think. An obsessive interest in a topic is both a proxy for ability and a substitute for determination. Unless you have sufficient mathematical aptitude, you won’t find series interesting. And when you’re obsessively interested in something, you don’t need as much determination: you don’t need to push yourself as hard when curiosity is pulling you.
我忘了其他两种成分吗？不是你那样想的，对主题的痴迷既是能力的代名词，又是决心的替代品。除非你具有足够的数学能力，否则你不会发现系列有趣。而且，当你对某事着迷时，你并不需要那么大的决心：当好奇心将你吸引时，你就不必费劲地推动自己了。
An obsessive interest will even bring you luck, to the extent anything can. Chance, as Pasteur said, favors the prepared mind, and if there’s one thing an obsessed mind is, it’s prepared.
强迫症甚至会给你带来好运。正如巴斯德所说，机会偏向有准备的人，如果有一件事情让痴迷的人有心，那就是有准备的。
The disinterestedness of this kind of obsession is its most important feature. Not just because it’s a filter for earnestness, but because it helps you discover new ideas.
这种痴迷的无私性是其最重要的特征。不仅因为它是认真的过滤器，还因为它可以帮助你发现新的想法。
The paths that lead to new ideas tend to look unpromising. If they looked promising, other people would already have explored them. How do the people who do great work discover these paths that others overlook? The popular story is that they simply have better vision: because they’re so talented, they see paths that others miss. But if you look at the way great discoveries are made, that’s not what happens. Darwin didn’t pay closer attention to individual species than other people because he saw that this would lead to great discoveries, and they didn’t. He was just really, really interested in such things.
导致新想法的途径似乎没有希望。如果他们看起来很有前途，那么其他人将已经探索过它们。从事出色工作的人如何发现别人忽略的这些路径？流行的故事是，他们只是拥有更好的视野：因为他们很有才华，所以他们看到了别人错过的道路。但是，如果你查看伟大发现的方式，那就不会发生了。达尔文没有比其他人更关注单个物种，因为他看到这将导致伟大的发现，而事实却并非如此。他只是对这些事情真的非常感兴趣。
Darwin couldn’t turn it off. Neither could Ramanujan. They didn’t discover the hidden paths that they did because they seemed promising, but because they couldn’t help it. That’s what allowed them to follow paths that someone who was merely ambitious would have ignored.
达尔文无法关闭这种兴趣，拉马努金也不行。他们没有发现他们所执行的隐藏路径，因为它们看起来很有希望，但是因为他们无能为力。这就是让他们遵循那些仅仅怀有雄心壮志的人会忽略的道路的原因。
What rational person would decide that the way to write great novels was to begin by spending several years creating an imaginary elvish language, like Tolkien, or visiting every household in southwestern Britain, like Trollope? No one, including Tolkien and Trollope.
哪个有理智的人会决定写伟大小说的方式是开始花费数年时间来创造一种虚构的精灵语言（例如托尔金），还是拜访英国西南部的每个家庭（例如特罗洛普）？没有人，包括托尔金和特罗洛普。
The bus ticket theory is similar to Carlyle’s famous definition of genius as an infinite capacity for taking pains. But there are two differences. The bus ticket theory makes it clear that the source of this infinite capacity for taking pains is not infinite diligence, as Carlyle seems to have meant, but the sort of infinite interest that collectors have. It also adds an important qualification: an infinite capacity for taking pains about something that matters.
公交车票理论类似于凯雷（Carlyle）对天才的著名定义，即天才具有无限的承受痛苦的能力。但是有两个区别。公交车票理论清楚地表明，这种无穷无尽的痛苦之源并非像卡莱尔所说的那样，是无限勤奋的，而是收藏家所拥有的那种无限的兴趣。它还增加了一个重要的条件：对重要事物不厌其烦的无限能力。
So what matters? You can never be sure. It’s precisely because no one can tell in advance which paths are promising that you can discover new ideas by working on what you’re interested in.
那么重要的是什么？你永远无法确定。正是因为没有人能提前告诉你哪些途径很有希望，你才能通过研究自己感兴趣的事物来发现新的想法。
But there are some heuristics you can use to guess whether an obsession might be one that matters. For example, it’s more promising if you’re creating something, rather than just consuming something someone else creates. It’s more promising if something you’re interested in is difficult, especially if it’s more difficult for other people than it is for you. And the obsessions of talented people are more likely to be promising. When talented people become interested in random things, they’re not truly random.
但是，你可以使用一些启发式方法来猜测强迫症是否很重要。例如，如果你正在创建某些东西，而不只是消费其他人创建的东西，那将更有希望。如果你感兴趣的事情很困难，那会更有希望，尤其是对其他人来说，比你对你的困难更大。对人才的痴迷更有希望。
But you can never be sure. In fact, here’s an interesting idea that’s also rather alarming if it’s true: it may be that to do great work, you also have to waste a lot of time.
In many different areas, reward is proportionate to risk. If that rule holds here, then the way to find paths that lead to truly great work is to be willing to expend a lot of effort on things that turn out to be every bit as unpromising as they seem.
在许多不同的领域，报酬与风险成正比。如果这条规则在这里成立，那么寻找通往真正伟大工作的道路的方法就是愿意花很多精力在那些看起来似乎毫无希望的事情上。
I’m not sure if this is true. On one hand, it seems surprisingly difficult to waste your time so long as you’re working hard on something interesting. So much of what you do ends up being useful. But on the other hand, the rule about the relationship between risk and reward is so powerful that it seems to hold wherever risk occurs. Newton’s case, at least, suggests that the risk/reward rule holds here. He’s famous for one particular obsession of his that turned out to be unprecedentedly fruitful: using math to describe the world. But he had two other obsessions, alchemy and theology, that seem to have been complete wastes of time. He ended up net ahead. His bet on what we now call physics paid off so well that it more than compensated for the other two. But were the other two necessary, in the sense that he had to take big risks to make such big discoveries? I don’t know.
我不确定这是否是真的。一方面，只要你正在努力做一些有趣的事情，似乎很难浪费时间。因此，你所做的许多事情最终都是有用的。但另一方面，关于风险与报酬之间关系的规则是如此强大，以至于似乎在发生风险的任何地方都成立了。 牛顿这种情况至少表明，风险/回报规则在这里成立。他以对他的一种特别的执着着称，事实证明这是空前的成果：使用数学来描述世界。但是他还有另外两个痴迷，炼金术和神学，这似乎完全是在浪费时间。他最终领先。他对我们现在所说的物理学的赌注取得了很好的回报，以至于可以弥补其他两个方面的不足。但是，就他必须冒很大的风险才能做出如此大的发现而言，其他两个是否必要？我不知道。
Here’s an even more alarming idea: might one make all bad bets? It probably happens quite often. But we don’t know how often, because these people don’t become famous.
这是一个更令人震惊的想法：一个人下所有赌注都可以吗？它可能经常发生。但是我们不知道多久一次，因为这些人并不出名。
It’s not merely that the returns from following a path are hard to predict. They change dramatically over time. 1830 was a really good time to be obsessively interested in natural history. If Darwin had been born in 1709 instead of 1809, we might never have heard of him.
不仅仅是难以预测的。它们会随着时间发生巨大变化。1830年是对自然历史产生浓厚兴趣的绝佳时机。如果达尔文出生于1709年而不是1809年，那么我们可能从未听说过他。
What can one do in the face of such uncertainty? One solution is to hedge your bets, which in this case means to follow the obviously promising paths instead of your own private obsessions. But as with any hedge, you’re decreasing reward when you decrease risk. If you forgo working on what you like in order to follow some more conventionally ambitious path, you might miss something wonderful that you’d otherwise have discovered. That too must happen all the time, perhaps even more often than the genius whose bets all fail.
面对这种不确定性，人们该怎么办？一种解决方案是对冲你的赌注，在这种情况下，这意味着遵循明显有希望的道路，而不是你自己的私人痴迷。但是，与任何对冲一样，当你降低风险时，你的回报就会减少。如果你放弃自己喜欢的工作以遵循一些传统上雄心勃勃的道路，则可能会错过本来会发现的奇妙事物。这也必须一直发生，甚至比那些下注都失败的天才还要频繁。
The other solution is to let yourself be interested in lots of different things. You don’t decrease your upside if you switch between equally genuine interests based on which seems to be working so far. But there is a danger here too: if you work on too many different projects, you might not get deeply enough into any of them.
另一个解决方案是让自己对很多不同的事物感兴趣。如果你在目前看来同样有效的兴趣之间进行切换，就不会降低自己的上行空间。但是这里也存在危险：如果你从事太多不同的项目，那么你对其中任何一个项目的了解可能都不足够。
One interesting thing about the bus ticket theory is that it may help explain why different types of people excel at different kinds of work. Interest is much more unevenly distributed than ability. If natural ability is all you need to do great work, and natural ability is evenly distributed, you have to invent elaborate theories to explain the skewed distributions we see among those who actually do great work in various fields. But it may be that much of the skew has a simpler explanation: different people are interested in different things.
关于公交车票理论的一件有趣的事情是，它可以帮助解释为什么不同类型的人在不同类型的工作中表现出色。兴趣比能力更不均匀地分布。如果只需要自然才能做出色的工作，并且自然才能平均分配，则你必须发明详尽的理论来解释我们在各个领域的实际出色工作中看到的偏斜分布。但这可能是因为大部分歪斜都有一个更简单的解释：不同的人对不同的事物感兴趣。
The bus ticket theory also explains why people are less likely to do great work after they have children. Here interest has to compete not just with external obstacles, but with another interest, and one that for most people is extremely powerful. It’s harder to find time for work after you have kids, but that’s the easy part. The real change is that you don’t want to.
公交车票理论还解释了为什么人们在生完孩子后不太可能从事出色的工作。在这里，利益不仅要与外部障碍竞争，而且还要与另一种利益竞争，而这对于大多数人来说是极其强大的。生完孩子后很难找到工作时间，但这很容易。真正的改变是你不想要。
But the most exciting implication of the bus ticket theory is that it suggests ways to encourage great work. If the recipe for genius is simply natural ability plus hard work, all we can do is hope we have a lot of ability, and work as hard as we can. But if interest is a critical ingredient in genius, we may be able, by cultivating interest, to cultivate genius.
但是，公交车票理论最令人兴奋的含义是它提出了鼓励出色工作的方法。如果说天才的秘诀是自然的能力加上努力的工作，那么我们所能做的就是希望我们有很多能力，并尽力而为。但是，如果兴趣是天才的重要组成部分，那么我们可以通过培养兴趣来培养天才。
For example, for the very ambitious, the bus ticket theory suggests that the way to do great work is to relax a little. Instead of gritting your teeth and diligently pursuing what all your peers agree is the most promising line of research, maybe you should try doing something just for fun. And if you’re stuck, that may be the vector along which to break out.
例如，对于雄心勃勃的人来说，公交车票理论表明，要做大事的方法是放松一点。全力以赴地寻求同行的认可是最有前途的研究方向，也许你应该尝试做一些有趣的事情。如果你被困住了，那可能就是爆发的载体。
I’ve always liked Hamming’s famous double-barrelled question: what are the most important problems in your field, and why aren’t you working on one of them? It’s a great way to shake yourself up. But it may be overfitting a bit. It might be at least as useful to ask yourself: if you could take a year off to work on something that probably wouldn’t be important but would be really interesting, what would it be?
我一直很喜欢 Hamming’s 著名的双管齐下的问题：你所在领域中最重要的问题是什么，为什么不解决其中一个问题？这是振作起来的好方法。但这可能有点不合适。问问自己至少可能是有用的：如果你可以休假一年来从事可能不重要但确实很有趣的事情，那会是什么？
The bus ticket theory also suggests a way to avoid slowing down as you get older. Perhaps the reason people have fewer new ideas as they get older is not simply that they’re losing their edge. It may also be because once you become established, you can no longer mess about with irresponsible side projects the way you could when you were young and no one cared what you did.
公交车票理论还提出了一种避免随着年龄增长而减速的方法。人们随着年龄的增长而拥有更少新想法的原因可能不仅是因为他们失去了优势。这也可能是因为一旦建立起来，就不再像年轻时就无所适从的不负责任的附带项目一样，没有人关心自己的所作所为。
The solution to that is obvious: remain irresponsible. It will be hard, though, because the apparently random projects you take up to stave off decline will read to outsiders as evidence of it. And you yourself won’t know for sure that they’re wrong. But it will at least be more fun to work on what you want.
解决办法很明显：保持不负责任。但是，这将很困难，因为你为避免下降而采取的表面上随机的项目将被外界了解，以此作为证明。而你自己也不会确定它们是错的。但是，至少可以根据自己的需求进行娱乐。
It may even be that we can cultivate a habit of intellectual bus ticket collecting in kids. The usual plan in education is to start with a broad, shallow focus, then gradually become more specialized. But I’ve done the opposite with my kids. I know I can count on their school to handle the broad, shallow part, so I take them deep.
甚至有可能我们可以养成在孩子们那里收集智能公交车票的习惯。在教育方面，通常的计划是从广泛，浅薄的重点开始，然后逐渐变得更加专业化。但是我和孩子们做相反的事情。我知道我可以指望他们的学校来处理较宽，较浅的部分，因此我将其深化。
When they get interested in something, however random, I encourage them to go preposterously, bus ticket collectorly, deep. I don’t do this because of the bus ticket theory. I do it because I want them to feel the joy of learning, and they’re never going to feel that about something I’m making them learn. It has to be something they’re interested in. I’m just following the path of least resistance; depth is a byproduct. But if in trying to show them the joy of learning I also end up training them to go deep, so much the better.
当他们对某事感兴趣时，无论他们多么随意，我都鼓励他们去做荒谬的事，收集公交车票，深入了解。我希望他们能感受到学习的乐趣，而他们永远也不会因为我正在使他们学习而感到那种乐趣，这一定是他们感兴趣的东西。深度是副产品。但是，如果试图向他们展示学习的乐趣，我最终也会训练他们更深入，那就更好了。
Will it have any effect? I have no idea. But that uncertainty may be the most interesting point of all. There is so much more to learn about how to do great work. As old as human civilization feels, it’s really still very young if we haven’t nailed something so basic. It’s exciting to think there are still discoveries to make about discovery. If that’s the sort of thing you’re interested in.
有效果吗？我不知道。但是不确定性可能是最有趣的一点。关于如何做出色的工作，还有很多要学习的东西。就像人类文明所感受到的那样古老，如果我们还没有钉牢如此基本的东西，那实际上还很年轻。令人惊奇的是，仍有许多发现需要进行发现。
Notes
[1] There are other types of collecting that illustrate this point better than bus tickets, but they’re also more popular. It seemed just as well to use an inferior example rather than offend more people by telling them their hobby doesn’t matter.
[1] 还有其他收集类型，比车票能更好说明这一点，它们也更流行。与其通过告诉人们他们的爱好不重要来冒犯他们，用一个较差例子，更好。
[2] I worried a little about using the word “disinterested,” since some people mistakenly believe it means not interested. But anyone who expects to be a genius will have to know the meaning of such a basic word, so I figure they may as well start now.
[2] 我有点担心使用“disinterested”这个词，因为有些人错误地认为它的意思是“不感兴趣”。但是，任何预期成为天才的人，都将知道这个基本单词的含义，所以我想他们可能现在就开始。
[3] Think how often genius must have been nipped in the bud by people being told, or telling themselves, to stop messing about and be responsible. Ramanujan’s mother was a huge enabler. Imagine if she hadn’t been. Imagine if his parents had made him go out and get a job instead of sitting around at home doing math.
On the other hand, anyone quoting the preceding paragraph to justify not getting a job is probably mistaken.
[3] 想一想天才被扼杀在萌芽状态的频率有多高，人们总是被告知，或是告诉自己，停止游手好闲，要有责任感。Ramanujan 的母亲是一个巨大赋能者。想象一下如果没有她。如果他的父母让他出去找一份工作，而不是坐在家里做数学。
另一方面，任何人引用上述段落来合理化“没有得到一份工作”，可能有所误解。
[4] 1709 Darwin is to time what the Milanese Leonardo is to space.
[4] 1709年，达尔文对于时间的意义，正如米兰的 Leonardo 对于空间的意义（ 1709 Darwin is to time what the Milanese Leonardo is to space ）。
[5] “An infinite capacity for taking pains” is a paraphrase of what Carlyle wrote. What he wrote, in his History of Frederick the Great, was “… it is the fruit of ‘genius’ (which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all)….” Since the paraphrase seems the name of the idea at this point, I kept it.
Carlyle’s History was published in 1858. In 1785 Hérault de Séchelles quoted Buffon as saying “Le génie n’est qu’une plus grande aptitude à la patience.” (Genius is only a greater aptitude for patience.)
[5]“天才，就是对痛苦的无限承受能力”，是对 Carlyle 著作的一种诠释。他在其 History of Frederick 中写道:“……它是‘天才’的成果(首先，它意味着，在克服困难方面的超凡能力)……”因为在这一点上，以上诠释似乎是以这个想法之名，所以，我保留了它。
Carlyle 的 History 出版于 1858 年。1785 年，Hérault 引用了 Buffon 的一句话:“天才只是更大的在耐心方面的天资（ Genius is only a greater aptitude for patience ）。”
[6] Trollope was establishing the system of postal routes. He himself sensed the obsessiveness with which he pursued this goal. It is amusing to watch how a passion will grow upon a man. During those two years it was the ambition of my life to cover the country with rural letter-carriers. Even Newton occasionally sensed the degree of his obsessiveness. After computing pi to 15 digits, he wrote in a letter to a friend: I am ashamed to tell you to how many figures I carried these computations, having no other business at the time. Incidentally, Ramanujan was also a compulsive calculator. As Kanigel writes in his excellent biography: One Ramanujan scholar, B. M. Wilson, later told how Ramanujan’s research into number theory was often “preceded by a table of numerical results, carried usually to a length from which most of us would shrink.”
[6] Trollope 建立邮政路线系统时，他自己也感觉到他追求这个目标时所拥有的执着。
看一个人的激情如何增长，很有趣。在这两年里，我的人生志向是，用乡村信使覆盖全国。
甚至牛顿偶尔也能感觉到自己的痴迷程度。将圆周率计算到 15 位数后，他在给朋友的信中写道：
我不好意思告诉你，我计算了多少数字，我当时没有别的事。
附带，Ramanujan 也是一个吸引人的计算器（compulsive calculator）。正如 Kanigel 在他的出色传记中所写：
一位 Ramanujan 学者 B. M. Wilson 随后告诉人们，Ramanujan 对数论的研究，有多经常“在数值结果表之前进行的，通常得出的长度是我们大多数人都可以从中得出的长度”。（此句见原文：how Ramanujan’s research into number theory was often “preceded by a table of numerical results, carried usually to a length from which most of us would shrink.” ）
[7] Working to understand the natural world counts as creating rather than consuming.
Newton tripped over this distinction when he chose to work on theology. His beliefs did not allow him to see it, but chasing down paradoxes in nature is fruitful in a way that chasing down paradoxes in sacred texts is not.
[7] 努力理解自然世界是以“创造”计数，而非消费（ natural world counts as creating rather than consuming）。
牛顿选择致力于神学时，就绊倒在这一区别。 他的信仰不允许他看到这一点，但是在自然界中追逐悖论是富有成效的，而在神圣文本中追逐悖论却没有。
[8] How much of people’s propensity to become interested in a topic is inborn? My experience so far suggests the answer is: most of it. Different kids get interested in different things, and it’s hard to make a child interested in something they wouldn’t otherwise be. Not in a way that sticks. The most you can do on behalf of a topic is to make sure it gets a fair showing — to make it clear to them, for example, that there’s more to math than the dull drills they do in school. After that it’s up to the child.
[8] 人们对一个话题产生兴趣倾向，有多少是天生的？从我目前经验来看，答案是：大部分。不同孩子对不同东西感兴趣，很难让一个孩子对他们本来不会感兴趣的东西感兴趣。不是以一种固定方式（ Not in a way that sticks ）。你能为一个主题所做的最多的，就是确保它得到一个公平展示——让他们清楚自己的兴趣所在。例如，除了他们在学校里做的枯燥的练习，数学还有更多东西。之后就看孩子的了。
Thanks to Marc Andreessen, Trevor Blackwell, Patrick Collison, Kevin Lacker, Jessica Livingston, Jackie McDonough, Robert Morris, Lisa Randall, Zak Stone, and my 7 year old for reading drafts of this.
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