萨姆·奥尔特曼：成功之道

如何取得成功？我观察过数千位创业者，并深入思考过如何赚取巨额财富或创造重要事物。通常，人们最初渴望前者，最终却向往后者。以下是关于如何实现这种非典型成功的13点思考。一旦你通过特权或努力达到了基本的成功水平，并希望进一步付出努力将其转化为非典型成功，那么以下所有内容都会变得更容易做到。

How to be successful. I've observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of money or to create something important. Usually, people start off wanting the former and end up wanting the latter. Here are 13 thoughts about how to achieve such outlier success. Everything here is easier to do once you've already reached a baseline degree of success through privilege or effort and want to put in the work to turn that into outlier success.

第一，但其中许多内容适用于任何人。第一，让自己复利增长。复利是神奇的，要处处寻找它。指数曲线是财富创造的关键。

One, but much of it applies to anyone. One, compound yourself. Compounding is magic. Look for it everywhere. Exponential curves are the key to wealth generation.

一家每年价值增长50%的中型企业，会在很短的时间内变得极其庞大。世界上真正具有网络效应和极高可扩展性的企业寥寥无几，但随着技术的发展，越来越多的企业将具备这些特性，因此值得付出巨大努力去发现并创造它们。你也应该让自己成为复利增长的载体，你的生活应追求一条持续向上、向右延伸的轨迹。

A medium sized business that grows 50% in value every year becomes huge in a very short amount of time. Few businesses in the world have true network effects and extreme scalability. But with technology, more and more will it's it's worth a lot of effort to find them and create them. You also want to be an exponential cove yourself. You should aim for your life to follow an ever increasing up into the right trajectory.

选择一个具有复利效应的职业至关重要。大多数职业的发展是线性的。你不想从事一种职业，其中干了两年的人和干了二十年的人一样有效。你的学习速度必须始终保持高位。随着职业生涯的发展，你所做的每一份工作都应产生越来越多的成果。

It's important to move towards a career that has a compounding effect. Most careers progress fairly linearly. You don't wanna be in a career where people who have been doing it for two years can be as effective as people who've been doing it for twenty. Your rate of learning should always be high. As your career progresses, each unit of work you do should generate more and more results.

获得这种杠杆的方式有很多，比如资本、技术、品牌、网络效应和管理人才。专注于将你定义的成功指标——无论是金钱、地位、对世界的影响，还是其他——再增加一个零，这很有用。我愿意在项目之间花尽可能多的时间，去寻找我的下一个目标。但我始终希望从事一个项目：如果成功，它将让我的整个职业生涯看起来都像一个注脚。大多数人被线性机会所束缚，要愿意放弃小机会，专注于可能带来质变的机遇。

There are many ways to get this leverage, such as capital, technology, brand, network effects, and managing people. It's useful to focus on adding another zero to whatever you define as your success metric, money, status, impact on the world, or whatever. I am willing to take as much time as needed between projects to find my next thing. But I always wanted to be a project that, if successful, will make the rest of my career look like a footnote. Most people get bogged down in linear opportunities, be willing to let small opportunities go to focus on potential step changes.

我认为，无论是对企业还是个人职业而言，最大的竞争优势都是具有长远眼光，并能广泛理解世界不同系统如何协同作用。复利增长的一个显著特点是，最远期的年份最为重要。在一个几乎没有人真正具备长期视角的世界里，市场会丰厚回报那些拥有长期视角的人。相信指数增长，保持耐心，并惊喜于结果。第二，拥有近乎过度的自信。

I think the biggest competitive advantage in business, either for a company or for an individual's career, is long term thinking with a broad view of how different systems in the world are going to come together. One of the notable aspects of compound growth is that the furthest out years are the most important. In a world where almost no one takes a truly long term view, the market richly rewards those who do. Trust the exponential, be patient, and be pleasantly surprised. Two, have almost too much self belief.

自信具有极其强大的力量。我认识的最成功的人，几乎到了近乎妄想的地步相信自己。要尽早培养这种特质。当你积累越来越多的证据，证明你的判断正确且能持续交付成果时，就更加信任自己。如果你不相信自己，就很难产生关于未来的非主流观点。

Self belief is immensely powerful. The most successful people I know believe in themselves almost to the point of delusion. Cultivate this early. As you get more data points that your judgment is good and you can consistently deliver results, trust yourself more. If you don't believe in yourself, it's hard to let yourself have contrarian ideas about the future.

但正是在这里，大部分价值被创造出来。我记得多年前埃隆·马斯克带我参观了SpaceX工厂，他详细讲述了火箭每个部件的制造过程。但让我印象最深的是，当他谈到将大型火箭送往火星时，脸上那种绝对坚定的神情。我离开时心想：这就是信念该有的样子。

But this is where most value gets created. I remember when Elon Musk took me on a tour of the SpaceX factory many years ago. He talked in detail about manufacturing every part of the rocket. But the thing that sticks in memory was the look of absolute certainty on his face when he talked about sending large rockets to Mars. I left thinking, So that's the benchmark for what conviction looks like.

管理好自己的士气以及团队的士气，是大多数事业中最大的挑战之一。如果没有强烈的自我信念，这几乎是不可能做到的。而不幸的是，你越有雄心，世界就越会试图打压你。大多数极其成功的人，至少曾在某一个时刻准确预见了未来，而那时人们却认为他们错了。否则，他们将面临更多的竞争。

Managing your own morale and your team's morale is one of the greatest challenges of most endeavors. It's almost impossible without a lot of self belief. And, unfortunately, the more ambitious you are, the more the world will try to tear you down. Most highly successful people have been really right about the future at least once at a time when people thought they were wrong. If not, they would have faced much more competition.

自我信念必须与自我认知相平衡。我过去痛恨任何形式的批评，并积极回避它。现在，我会试着以“批评可能是对的”为前提去倾听，然后再决定是否采纳。追求真相是艰难且常常痛苦的，但它正是区分自我信念与自我欺骗的关键。这种平衡也能帮助你避免显得傲慢或脱离现实。

Self belief must be balanced with self awareness. I used to hate criticism of any sort and actively avoided it. Now, I try to always listen to it with the assumption that it's true, and then decide if I want to act on it or not. Truth seeking is hard and often painful, but it is what separates self belief from self delusion. This balance also helps you avoid coming across as entitled and out of touch.

第三，学会独立思考。创业是很难被教授的，因为原创性思维本身就极难传授。学校体系并不旨在培养这种能力，事实上，它通常奖励的是相反的东西。因此，你必须自己去培养它。

Three, learn to think independently. Entrepreneurship is very difficult to teach, because original thinking is very difficult to teach. School is not set up to teach this. In fact, it generally rewards the opposite. So you have to cultivate it on your own.

从第一性原理出发思考，尝试产生新想法很有趣，而找到能与你交流这些想法的人，是提升这种能力的绝佳方式。下一步是寻找简单快速的方法，在现实世界中测试这些想法。创业者的方式就是：我会失败很多次，但只要有一次真正对了就够了。你必须给自己足够多的机会去碰上好运。其中最有力的一课是：即使面对看似无解的局面，你也能找到出路。

Thinking from first principles and trying to generate new ideas is fun, and finding people to exchange them with is a great way to get better at this. The next step is to find easy, fast ways to test these ideas in the real world. I will fail many times, and I will be really right once is the entrepreneur's way. You have to give yourself a lot of chances to get lucky. One of the most powerful lessons to learn is that you can figure out what to do in situations that seem to have no solution.

你这样做的次数越多，就越会相信它。韧性来自学习。跌倒后你能重新爬起来，经历挫折后能变得擅长销售。单靠自我信念是不够的，你还必须能够说服他人相信你的信念。

The more times you do this, the more you will believe it. Grit comes from learning. You can get back up after you get knocked down, fire, get good at sales. Self belief alone is not sufficient. You also have to be able to convince other people of what you believe.

所有伟大的事业，在某种程度上都变成了销售工作。你必须向客户、潜在员工、媒体、投资者等宣传你的计划。这需要一个鼓舞人心的愿景、强大的沟通能力、某种程度的个人魅力，以及执行力的证明。提升沟通能力，尤其是书面沟通能力，是一项值得投入的投资。我关于清晰沟通的最佳建议是：先确保你的思维清晰，然后使用简洁平实的语言。

All great careers, to some degree, become sales jobs. You have to evangelize your plans to customers, prospective employees, the press, investors, etcetera. This requires an inspiring vision, strong communication skills, some degree of charisma, and evidence of execution ability. Getting good at communication, particularly written communication, is an investment worth making. My best advice for communicating clearly is to first make sure your thinking is clear and then use plain concise language.

做好销售的最好方法是真正相信你所销售的东西。销售你真正相信的产品会让你感觉很棒，而试图推销劣质产品则让人感到糟糕。提升销售能力就像提升任何其他技能一样，只要经过有意识的练习，任何人都能变得更好。

The best way to be good at sales is to genuinely believe in what you're selling. Selling what you truly believe in feels great. And trying to sell snake oil feels awful. Getting good at sales is like improving at any other skill. Anyone can get better at it with deliberate practice.

但不知为何，也许因为感觉不舒服，许多人认为销售是无法学习的。我的另一个重要销售建议是：在重要的场合一定要亲自到场。当我刚起步时，我总是愿意搭飞机前往。虽然很多时候这并不必要，但有三次，它为我带来了改变职业生涯的关键转折点，否则结果可能会完全不同。第五，让冒险变得容易。

But for some reason, perhaps because it feels distasteful, many people treat it as something unlearnable. My other big sales tip is to show up in person whenever it's important. When I was first starting out, I was always willing to get on a plane. It was frequently unnecessary, but three times it led to career making turning points for me that otherwise would have gone the other way. Five, make it easy to take risks.

大多数人高估了风险，低估了回报。冒险很重要，因为你不可能总是对的。你必须尝试许多事情，并在学习过程中快速调整。在职业生涯早期，冒险往往更容易。因为你没什么可失去的，却可能获得巨大回报。

Most people overestimate risk and underestimate reward. Taking risks is important because it's impossible to be right all the time. You have to try many things and adapt quickly as you learn more. It's often easier to take risks early in your career. You don't have much to lose, and you potentially have a lot to gain.

一旦你解决了基本的义务，就应该努力让冒险变得更容易。寻找那些如果你错了只会损失一倍，但成功了却能获得百倍回报的小赌注，然后朝着这个方向加大投入。但也不要囤积太久。在YC，我们经常发现，那些曾在谷歌或Facebook工作很久的创始人存在一个问题：当人们习惯了舒适的生活、稳定的工作，以及无论做什么都能成功的声誉时，就很难放弃这一切。人们有一种惊人的能力，总是把自己的生活方式与下一年的薪水匹配起来。

Once you've gotten yourself to a point where you have your basic obligations covered, you should try to make it easy to take risks. Look for small bets you can make where you lose one x if you're wrong, but make 100 x if it works, then make a bigger bet in that direction. Don't save up for too long though. At YC, we've often noticed a problem with founders that have spent a lot of time working at Google or Facebook. When people get used to a comfortable life, a predictable job, and a reputation of succeeding at whatever they do, It gets very hard to leave that behind, and people have an incredible ability to always match their lifestyle to next year salary.

即使他们真的离开了，重返旧路的诱惑依然巨大。人类天性倾向于优先考虑短期收益和便利，而非长期满足。但当你不再被推着跑时，你就能追随直觉，花时间去探索那些可能真正有趣的事情。尽可能长时间地保持生活廉价而灵活，是实现这一点的有力方式，但显然也伴随着权衡。第六，专注。

Even if they do leave, the temptation to return is great. It's easy in human nature to prioritize short term gain and convenience over long term fulfillment. But when you aren't on the treadmill, you can follow your hunches and spend time on things that might turn out to be really interesting. Keeping your life cheap and flexible for as long as you can is a powerful way to do this, but, obviously, comes with trade offs. Six, focus.

专注是工作效率的倍增器。我认识的几乎每个人，都会因为花更多时间思考该专注什么而受益。比起工作时长，选择做正确的事重要得多。大多数人把大部分时间浪费在无关紧要的事情上。一旦你弄清楚该做什么，就要坚定不移地快速完成你那少数几项优先事项。

Focus is a force multiplier on work. Almost everyone I've ever met would be well served by spending more time thinking about what to focus on. It is much more important to work on the right thing than it is to work many hours. Most people waste most of their time on stuff that doesn't matter. Once you have figured out what to do, be unstoppable about getting your small handful of priorities accomplished quickly.

我从未见过一个行动缓慢却极其成功的人，他们只是努力工作。你只需聪明地工作或拼命地工作，就能达到你所在领域的前10%，这已经是很了不起的成就了。但要进入前1%，则需要两者兼备。你将与同样才华横溢的人竞争，他们拥有绝佳的点子，也愿意付出大量努力。极端的人，才能获得极端的成果。

I have yet to meet a slow moving person who is very successful, who work hard. You can get to about the ninetieth percentile in your field by working either smart or hard, which is still a great accomplishment. But getting to the ninety ninth percentile requires both. You will be competing with other very talented people who will have great ideas and and be willing to work a lot. Extreme people get extreme results.

拼命工作伴随着巨大的人生取舍，决定不这么做完全是理性的。但它也有很多优势，因为在大多数情况下，积累效应会不断放大，成功会带来更多的成功，而且往往非常有趣。人生中一大乐事就是找到自己的使命，精通它，并发现自己的影响力对超越自我的更大事物有意义。一位YC创始人最近对离开大公司后，全力追求最大影响力时所感受到的更大幸福感和满足感感到非常惊讶。

Working a lot comes with huge life trade offs, and it's perfectly rational to decide not to do it. But it has a lot of advantages, as in most cases, momentum compounds and success begets success. And it's often really fun. One of the great joys in life is finding your purpose, excelling at it, and discovering that your impact matters to something larger than yourself. A YC founder recently expressed great surprise about how much happier and more fulfilled he was after leaving his job at a big company and working towards his maximum possible impact.

努力工作理应受到赞扬。我不太清楚为什么在美国某些地区，努力工作反而成了负面的事。但在世界其他地方，情况绝非如此。美国以外的创业者所展现的能量与驱动力，正迅速成为新的标杆。你必须学会如何努力工作而不至于耗尽自己。

Working hard at that should be celebrated. It's not entirely clear to me why working hard has become a bad thing in certain parts of The US. But this is certainly not the case in other parts of the world. The amount of energy and drive exhibited by entrepreneurs outside of The US is quickly becoming the new benchmark. You have to figure out how to work hard without burning out.

人们会找到自己的策略。但几乎总是有效的办法是：从事你喜欢的工作，并与你乐意长时间相处的人共事。你不想进入一种职业，其中干了两年的人和干了二十年的人效率一样。你的学习速度应该始终保持在高位。随着职业生涯推进，你所做的每一份工作都应产生越来越多的成果。

People find their own strategies for this. But one that almost always works is to find work you like doing with people you enjoy spending a lot of time with. You don't wanna be in a career where people who have been doing it for two years can be as effective as people who have been doing it for twenty. Your rate of learning should always be high. As your career progresses, each unit of work you do should generate more and more results.

获得这种杠杆效应的方式有很多，比如资本、技术、品牌、网络效应和管理团队。专注于将你定义的成功指标——无论是金钱、地位、对世界的影响——再增加一个零，会很有帮助。我愿意在项目之间花尽可能多的时间，去寻找我的下一个目标。但我始终希望，这个目标一旦成功，能让我的整个职业生涯看起来都像一个注脚。大多数人却困在了线性机会中。

There are many ways to get this leverage, such as capital, technology, brand, network effects, and managing people. It's useful to focus on adding another zero to whatever you define as your success metric, money status, impact on the world, or whatever. I am willing to take as much time as needed between projects to find my next thing. But I always want it to be a project that, if successful, will make the rest of my career look like a footnote. Most people get bogged down in linear opportunities.

要愿意放弃小机会，专注于可能带来质变的机遇。我认为，无论是对企业还是个人职业发展而言，最大的竞争优势在于长期思维，以及对世界不同系统如何协同演化的宏观视野。复利增长的一个显著特点是：最遥远的年份往往最重要。在一个几乎没人真正放眼长远的世界里，市场会丰厚回报那些愿意这样思考的人。相信复利的力量，保持耐心，然后惊喜地收获成果。

Be Be willing to let small opportunities go to focus on potential step changes. I think the biggest competitive advantage in business, either for a company or for an individual's career, is long term thinking with a broad view of how different systems in the world are gonna come together. One of the notable aspects of compound growth is that the furthest out years are the most important. In a world where almost no one takes a truly long term view, the market richly rewards those who do. Trust the exponential, be patient, and be pleasantly surprised.

第二，要有近乎过度的自信。自信的力量极其强大。我认识的最成功的人，几乎都自信到近乎妄想的地步。要尽早培养这种特质。当你积累越来越多的证据，证明你的判断正确、能持续交付成果时，就更应相信自己。

Two, have almost too much self belief. Self belief is immensely powerful. The most successful people I know believe in themselves almost to the point of delusion. Cultivate this early. As you get more data points that your judgment is good and you can consistently deliver results, trust yourself more.

如果你不相信自己，就很难产生关于未来的反主流想法。但正是这些想法创造了最大的价值。我记得多年前埃隆·马斯克带我参观SpaceX工厂时，他详细讲述了火箭每个部件的制造过程，但最让我印象深刻的是，当他谈到将大型火箭送往火星时，脸上那种绝对笃定的表情。我离开时心想：这就是信念应有的样子。

If If you don't believe in yourself, it's hard to let yourself have contrarian ideas about the future. But this is where most value gets created. I remember when Elon Musk took me on a tour of the SpaceX factory many years ago. He talked in detail about manufacturing every part of the rocket, but the thing that sticks in memory was the look of absolute certainty on his face when he talked about sending large rockets to Mars. I left thinking, So that's the benchmark for what conviction looks like.

管理好自己的士气和团队的士气，是大多数事业中最大的挑战之一。如果没有强烈的自信，这几乎是不可能的。而不幸的是，你越有抱负，世界就越会试图打压你。大多数极其成功的人，至少在某个时刻，对未来的判断是正确的，而那时人们却认为他们错了。如果不是这样，他们将面临更多的竞争。

Managing your own morale and your team's morale is one of the greatest challenges of most endeavors. It's almost impossible without a lot of self belief. And, unfortunately, the more ambitious you are, the more the world will try to tear you down. Most highly successful people have been really right about the future at least once at a time when people thought they were wrong. If not, they would have faced much more competition.

自信必须与自知之明相平衡。我过去痛恨任何形式的批评，并积极回避它。现在，我会试着总是以“批评可能是对的”为前提去倾听，然后再决定是否采纳。追求真相是艰难且常常痛苦的，但它正是区分自信与自欺的关键。这种平衡也能帮助你避免显得傲慢和脱离现实。

Self belief must be balanced with self awareness. I used to hate criticism of any sort and actively avoided it. Now, I try to always listen to it with the assumption that it's true and then decide if I want to act on it or not. Truth seeking is hard and often painful, but it is what separates self belief from self delusion. This balance also helps you avoid coming across as entitled and out of touch.

第三，学会独立思考。创业非常难以传授，因为原创性思维很难被教授。学校体系并不旨在培养这种能力，事实上，它通常奖励的是相反的行为。因此，你必须靠自己去培养它。

Three, learn to think independently. Entrepreneurship is very difficult to teach because original thinking is very difficult to teach. School is not set up to teach this. In fact, it generally rewards the opposite. So you have to cultivate it on your own.

从第一性原理出发思考，并尝试产生新想法，是非常有趣的。找到志同道合的人交流这些想法，是提升这种能力的绝佳方式。下一步是寻找简单、快速的方法，在现实世界中测试这些想法。创业者的方式就是：我会失败很多次，但只要有一次真正对了就够了。你必须给自己足够多的机会，才能碰上好运。

Thinking from first principles and trying to generate new ideas is fun. And finding people to exchange them with is a great way to get better at this. The next step is to find easy, fast ways to test these ideas in the real world. I will fail many times and I will be really right once is the entrepreneur's way. You have to give yourself a lot of chances to get lucky.

最有力的教训之一是：你可以在看似无解的处境中找到出路。你越多次做到这一点，就越会相信自己能做到。坚韧源于学习——你跌倒后，总能重新站起来。斗志。

One of the most powerful lessons to learn is that you can figure out what to do in situations that seem to have no solution. The more times you do this, the more you will believe it. Grit comes from learning. You can get back up after you get knocked down. Fire.

学会销售。单靠自信是不够的，你还必须能够说服他人相信你的信念。所有伟大的事业，在某种程度上都变成了销售工作。你必须向客户、潜在员工、媒体、投资者等热情地传播你的计划。

Get good at sales. Self belief alone is not sufficient. You also have to be able to convince other people of what you believe. All great careers, to some degree, become sales jobs. You have to evangelize your plans to customers, prospective employees, the press, investors, etcetera.

这需要一个鼓舞人心的愿景、强大的沟通能力、一定程度的个人魅力，以及执行力的证明。提升沟通能力，尤其是书面沟通能力，是一项值得投入的投资。我关于清晰沟通的最佳建议是：首先确保你的思维清晰，然后使用简单、简洁的语言。做好销售的最好方式，就是真心相信你所销售的东西。销售你真正相信的事物，感觉会非常好。

This requires an inspiring vision, strong communication skills, some degree of charisma, and evidence of execution ability. Getting good at communication, particularly written communication, is an investment worth making. My best advice for communicating clearly is to first make sure your thinking is clear and then use plain, concise language. The best way to be good at sales is to genuinely believe in what you're selling. Selling what you truly believe in feels great.

试图推销劣质产品感觉非常糟糕。精通销售就像提升任何其他技能一样，只要经过有意识的练习，任何人都能变得更好。但不知为何，也许因为销售让人感到不适，许多人把它当成一种无法学会的东西。我的另一个重要销售建议是：在重要时刻，一定要亲自到场。

And trying to sell snake oil feels awful. Getting good at sales is like improving at any other skill. Anyone can get better at it with deliberate practice. But for some reason, perhaps because it feels distasteful, many people treat it as something unlearnable. My other big sales tip is to show up in person whenever it's important.

我刚起步时，总是愿意搭飞机出行。虽然很多时候并不必要，但有三次，这种出行成了改变我职业生涯的关键转折点，否则事情可能会走向完全不同的方向。第五，让冒险变得容易。大多数人高估了风险，低估了回报。冒险很重要，因为你不可能总是对的。

When I was first starting out, I was always willing to get on a plane. It was frequently unnecessary, but three times it led to career making turning points for me that otherwise would have gone the other way. Five, make it easy to take risks. Most people overestimate risk and underestimate reward. Taking risks is important because it's impossible to be right all the time.

你必须尝试很多事，并在学习过程中快速调整。在职业生涯早期，冒险往往更容易。那时你没什么可失去的，却可能获得巨大回报。一旦你解决了基本的义务，就应该设法让冒险变得更容易。寻找那些你输掉1倍代价，但成功时能获得100倍回报的小赌注，然后朝着这个方向加大投入。

You have to try many things and adapt quickly as you learn more. It's often easier to take risks early in your career. You don't have much to lose and you potentially have a lot to gain. Once you've gotten yourself to a point where you have your basic obligations covered, you should try to make it easy to take risks. Look for small bets you can make where you lose one x if you're wrong, but make 100 x if it works, then make a bigger bet in that direction.

但也不要存太久钱。在YC，我们经常发现，那些曾在谷歌或Facebook长期工作过的创始人存在一个问题：稳定的工作、以及无论做什么都能成功的声誉，让他们很难摆脱这一切。人们有一种惊人的能力，总是把自己的生活方式与下一年的薪水匹配。即使他们真的离开了，重返旧路的诱惑也依然巨大。

Don't save up for too long though. At YC, we've often noticed a problem with founders that have spent a lot of time working at Google or Facebook. Predictable job, and a reputation of succeeding at whatever they do, it gets very hard to leave that behind. And people have an incredible ability to always match their lifestyle to next year salary. Even if they do leave, the temptation to return is great.

人类天性容易优先考虑短期收益和便利，而非长期的满足感。但当你不再被生活推着走时，你就能追随直觉，花时间在那些可能真正有趣的事情上。尽可能长时间地保持生活廉价而灵活，是一种强大的方式，但显然也伴随着权衡。第六，专注。专注是工作效率的倍增器。

It's easy in human nature to prioritize short term gain and convenience over long term fulfillment. But when you aren't on the treadmill, you can follow your hunches and spend time on things that might turn out to be really interesting. Keeping your life cheap and flexible for as long as you can is a powerful way to do this, but obviously comes with trade offs. Six, focus. Focus is a force multiplier on work.

我认识的几乎每个人，都会因为花更多时间思考该专注什么而受益。做对的事情，远比做很多小时的工作更重要。大多数人把大部分时间浪费在无关紧要的事情上。一旦你弄清楚该做什么，就要坚定不移地快速完成你那少数几项优先事项。我至今还没见过一个行动迟缓却非常成功的人。

Almost everyone I've ever met would be well served by spending more time thinking about what to focus on. It is much more important to work on the right thing than it is to work many hours. Most people waste most of their time on stuff that doesn't matter. Once you have figured out what to do, be unstoppable about getting your small handful of priorities accomplished quickly. I have yet to meet a slow moving person who is very successful.

谁？努力工作。你通过聪明地工作或拼命工作，都能达到你所在领域的前10%——这已经是很了不起的成就了。但要进入前1%，则必须两者兼备。你将与同样才华横溢的人竞争，他们既有好点子，也愿意付出大量努力。

Who? Work hard. You can get to about the ninetieth percentile in your field by working either smart or hard, which is still a great accomplishment. But getting to the ninety ninth percentile requires both. You will be competing with other very talented people who will have great ideas and be willing to work a lot.

极端的人会得到极端的结果。拼命工作会带来巨大的生活权衡，因此决定不这么做完全是理性的。但它也有很多优势。就像大多数情况一样，势头会不断累积，成功会带来更多的成功，而且通常也真的很有趣。

Extreme people get extreme results. Working a lot comes with huge life trade offs, and it's perfectly rational to decide not to do it. But it has a lot of advantages. As in most cases, momentum compounds and success begets success. And it's often really fun.

人生中最大的快乐之一，就是找到自己的使命，精通它，并发现自己的影响对超越自我的更大事物至关重要。一位YC创始人最近对离开大公司后，专注于实现最大可能影响力时所感受到的更大幸福感和满足感感到非常惊讶。为这样的目标努力工作应当被庆祝。我不太清楚为什么在美國某些地方，努力工作反而成了坏事。但在世界其他地方，情况显然并非如此。

One of the great joys in life is finding your purpose, excelling at it, and discovering that your impact matters to something larger than yourself. A YC founder recently expressed great surprise about how much happier and more fulfilled he was after leaving his job at a big company and working towards his maximum possible impact. Working hard at that should be celebrated. It's not entirely clear to me why working hard has become a bad thing in certain parts of The US. But this is certainly not the case in other parts of the world.

美国以外的创业者所展现的能量和驱动力，正迅速成为新的标杆。你必须找到在不耗尽自己的前提下努力工作的方法。人们会找到自己的策略，但几乎总是有效的方法是：找到你喜欢做的工作，以及和你愿意花大量时间相处的人一起工作。我认为，那些声称你可以在不长时间努力的情况下获得巨大职业成功的人，实际上是在误导他人。事实上，工作耐力似乎是长期成功最重要的预测因素之一。

The amount of energy and drive exhibited by entrepreneurs outside of The US is quickly becoming the new benchmark. You have to figure out how to work hard without burning out. People find their own strategies for this, but one that almost always works to find work you like doing with people you enjoy spending a lot of time with. I think people who pretend you can be super successful professionally without working most of the time for some period of your life are doing a disservice. In fact, work stamina seems to be one of the biggest predictors of long term success.

再谈一点努力工作的事：在你职业生涯初期就去做。努力工作就像复利，越早开始，你就越有时间让收益显现。当你承担的其他责任较少时，努力工作也更容易——而这通常（但并非总是）发生在你年轻的时候。八。

One more thought about working hard. Do it at the beginning of your career. Hard work compounds like interest, and the earlier you do it, the more time you have for the benefits to pay off. It's also easier to work hard when you have fewer other responsibilities, which is frequently, but not always the case when you're young. Eight.

要大胆。我相信，做一家困难的初创公司，比做一家容易的初创公司更容易。人们渴望参与令人兴奋的事业，并感到自己的工作有意义。如果你正在解决一个重要的问题，就会不断有愿意帮助你的人为你助力。让你自己变得更加雄心勃勃，不要害怕去追求你真正想做的事。

Be bold. I believe that it's easier to do a hard startup than an easy startup. People want to be part of something exciting and feel that their work matters. If you are making progress on an important problem, you will have a constant tailwind of people wanting to help you. Let yourself grow more ambitious, and don't be afraid to work on what you really want to work on.

如果别人都在创办表情包公司，而你想创办一家基因编辑公司，那就去做吧，别犹豫。追随你的好奇心。对你而言令人兴奋的事，往往也会让别人感到兴奋。九、要有意志力。一个巨大的秘密是：你可以让世界屈从于你的意志。

If everyone else is starting meme companies and you want to start a gene editing company, then do that and don't second guess it. Follow your curiosity. Things that seem exciting to you will often seem exciting to other people too. Nine, be willful. A big secret is that you can bend the world to your will.

令人惊讶的是，大多数人甚至根本不去尝试，只是接受现状。人们拥有巨大的能力去创造改变。自我怀疑、过早放弃和不够努力，阻止了绝大多数人接近自己的潜力。大胆提出你的需求。通常，你得不到回应，而且拒绝往往令人痛苦。

A surprising percentage of the time, most people don't even try and just accept that things are the way that they are. People have an enormous capacity to make things happen. A combination of self doubt, giving up too early, and not pushing hard enough prevents most people from ever reaching anywhere near their potential. Ask for what you want. Usually, you won't get it, and often the rejection will be painful.

但当它奏效时，效果出奇地好。几乎总是那些说‘我会坚持下去，直到它成功’的人，无论遇到什么挑战，他们都决心克服，并且说到做到，最终取得了成功。他们足够坚韧，足以给自己一个好运降临的机会。Airbnb 就是我对此的标杆。

But when this works, it works surprisingly well. Almost always, the people who say, I am gonna keep going until this works. And no matter what the challenges are, I'm gonna figure them out and mean it, go on to succeed. They are persistent long enough to give themselves a chance for luck to go their way. Airbnb is my benchmark for this.

他们讲述的许多故事，我都不建议去复制：比如用满额的信用卡塞进孩子们用来收藏棒球卡的九孔活页夹里，每顿饭都吃一美元商店的麦片，一次次与根深蒂固的强大利益集团抗争，如此种种。但他们坚持了下来，足够久到让好运站在了他们这边。要意志坚定，你必须乐观。希望这是一种可以通过练习改善的性格特质。我从未见过一个非常成功的悲观主义者。

There are so many stories they tell that I wouldn't recommend trying to reproduce, keeping maxed out credit cards in those nine slot three ring binder pages kids use for baseball cards, eating dollar store cereal for every meal, battle after battle with powerful entrenched interest, and on and on. But they managed to survive long enough for luck to go their way. To be willful, you have to be optimistic. Hopefully, this is a personality trait that can be improved with practice. I have never met a very successful pessimistic person.

10. 让自己难以被竞争。大多数人明白，如果一家公司难以被竞争，它的价值就更高。这一点重要且显而易见。但这一点对个人也同样适用。

10. Be hard to compete with. Most people understand that companies are more valuable if they are difficult to compete with. This is important and obviously true. But this this holds true for you as an individual as well.

如果你做的事别人也能做，最终它一定会被别人以更低的成本做掉。让自己难以被竞争的最佳方式，是建立杠杆。例如，你可以通过建立强大的个人品牌，或精通多个不同领域的交叉点来实现。还有许多其他策略，但你必须找到一种方法。大多数人只是随波逐流。

If what you do can be done by someone else, it eventually will be and for less money. The best way to become difficult to compete with is to build up leverage. For example, you can do it with, personal relationships by building a strong personal brand, or by getting good at the intersection of multiple different fields. There are many other strategies, but you have to figure out some way to do it. Most people do whatever.

大多数人和他们混在一起的人一样做事。这种模仿行为通常是错误的。如果你做的和别人一模一样，你就不会难以被竞争。11. 建立人脉。伟大的工作需要团队。

Most people they hang out with do. This mimetic behavior is usually a mistake. If you're doing the same thing everyone else is doing, you will not be hard to compete with. 11, build a network. Great work requires teams.

建立一个由有才华的人组成的人脉网络——有时紧密合作，有时松散联系——是卓越职业生涯的重要组成部分。你所认识的真正有才华的人的数量，往往成为你所能达成成就的限制因素。建立人脉的有效方式，是尽可能多地帮助他人。长期坚持这样做，为我带来了大部分最好的职业机会，以及四次最佳投资中的三次。我不断惊讶于，十年前我帮助过的一位创始人，如今竟会以某种方式给我带来好运。

Developing, a network of talented people to work with, sometimes closely, sometimes loosely, is an essential part of a great career. The size of the network of really talented people, you know, often becomes the limiter for what you can accomplish. An effective way to build a network is to help people as much as you can. Doing this over a long period of time is what lead to most of my best career opportunities and three of my four best investments. I'm continually surprised how often something good happens to me because of something I did to help a founder ten years ago.

建立人脉的最佳方式之一，是树立起一个认真照顾与你共事之人的声誉。在分享成果时，要格外慷慨。这种付出终将十倍回报于你。同时，学会识别他人擅长什么，并将他们安排在合适的岗位上。这是我从管理中学到的最重要的一课，但关于这一点，我读过的资料却很少。

One of the best ways to build a network is to develop a reputation for really taking care of the people who work with you. Be overly generous with sharing the upside. It will come back to you 10 x. Also, learn how to evaluate what people are great at and put them in those roles. This is the most important thing I have learned about management and, haven't read much about it.

你希望树立一种声誉：激励他人足够努力，让他们实现超越自我预期的成就，但又不至于逼到他们精疲力尽。每个人擅长的事情都不同。用你的优势定义自己，而不是用你的弱点。承认你的弱点，并想办法绕过它们，但别让它们阻止你做想做的事。我经常听到创业者说‘我不能做X，因为我Y不擅长’，这几乎总是缺乏创造力的表现。

You wanna have a reputation for pushing people hard enough that they accomplish more than they thought they could, but not so hard they burn out. Everyone is better at some things than others. Define yourself by your strengths, not your weaknesses. Acknowledge your weaknesses and figure out how to work around them, but don't let them stop you from doing what you wanna do. I can't do x because I'm not good at y is something I hear from entrepreneurs surprisingly often and almost always reflects a lack of creativity.

弥补弱点的最佳方式，是招聘与你能力互补的团队成员，而不是只雇用和你擅长同样事情的人。建立人脉网络中特别有价值的一点，是学会发现尚未被发掘的人才。随着实践增多，快速识别智慧、动力和创造力会变得容易得多。学习的最简单方法就是多认识人，并记录下哪些人后来让你印象深刻，哪些人没有。记住，你主要寻找的是进步的速度，而不是过度看重经验或当前的成就。

The best way to make up for your weaknesses is to hire complimentary team members instead of just hiring people who are good at the same things you are. A particularly valuable part of building a network is to get good at discovering undiscovered talent. Quickly, spotting intelligence, drive, and creativity gets much easier with practice. The easiest way to learn is just to meet a lot of people and keep track of who goes on to impress you and who doesn't. Remember that you are mostly looking for rate of improvement, and don't overvalue experience or current accomplishment.

每次遇到新的人，我都会问自己：这个人是不是一种自然力量？这是一个很好的启发式标准，用于发现可能成就非凡的人。建立人脉网络的一个特殊案例，是在职业生涯早期找到一位有声望的人愿意为你押注。最有效的方法，毫不意外，就是主动提供帮助。同时要记住，你迟早也要把这份善意传递下去。

I try to always ask myself when I meet someone new, is this person a force of nature? It's a pretty good heuristic for finding people who are likely to accomplish great things. A special case of developing a network is finding someone eminent to take a bet on you, ideally, early in your career. The best way to do this, no surprise, is to go out of your way to be helpful. And remember that you have to pay this forward at some point later.

最后，记得多和积极支持你抱负的人相处。第12条：致富靠的是拥有资产。我童年最大的经济误解，是以为人们靠高薪致富。虽然有少数例外，比如艺人，但历史上几乎没有人是靠薪水登上福布斯榜的。真正致富的方式，是拥有那些价值快速上升的资产。

Finally, remember to spend your time with positive people who support your ambitions. 12, you get rich by owning things. The biggest economic misunderstanding of my childhood was that people got rich from high salaries. Though there are some exceptions, entertainers, for example, almost no one in the history of the Forbes list has gotten there with a salary. You get truly rich by owning things that increase rapidly in value.

这些资产可以是企业的股份、房地产、自然资源、知识产权或其他类似的东西。但无论如何，你需要拥有某种权益，而不仅仅是出售你的时间。时间的回报是线性的。让价值快速上升的最佳方式，就是大规模地制造人们真正需要的东西。第13条：要有内在驱动力。

This can be a piece of a business, real estate, natural resource, intellectual property, or other similar things. But somehow or other, you need to own equity in something instead of just selling your time. Time only scales linearly. The best way to make things that increase rapidly in value is by making things people want at scale. 13, be internally driven.

大多数人主要受外部驱动。他们做事是因为想给别人留下好印象。这有很多弊端，但这里有两点尤其重要。第一，你会专注于共识性想法和共识性职业路径，你会比自己意识到的更在意别人是否认为你做的是对的事。

Most people are primarily externally driven. They do what they do because they want to impress other people. This is bad for many reasons, but here are two important ones. First, you will work on consensus ideas and on consensus career tracks. You will care a lot much more than you realize if other people think you're doing the right thing.

这很可能阻止你从事真正有趣的工作。即使你做到了，别人迟早也会做出来。第二，你通常会错误评估风险。你会极度关注与他人保持同步，甚至在短期内也不愿在竞争游戏中落后。聪明人尤其容易陷入这种外部驱动的行为模式。

This will probably prevent you from doing truly interesting work. And even if you do, someone else would have done it anyway. Second, you will usually get risk calculations wrong. You'll be very focused on keeping up with other people and not falling behind in competitive games even in the short term. Smart people seem to be especially at risk of such externally driven behavior.

意识到这一点有帮助，但帮助有限，你很可能需要极其努力才能避免陷入模仿的陷阱。我认识的最成功的人，主要都是由内在动力驱动的。他们做自己所做的事情，是为了让自己满意，并且因为他们感到必须让世界发生某些改变。当你赚到足够多的钱，可以买下任何想要的东西，也获得了足够的社会地位，以至于再往上爬已经不再有趣时，这是我所知道的唯一能继续推动你达到更高表现水平的力量。这就是为什么一个人的动机问题如此重要。

Being aware of it helps, but only a little, you will likely have to work super hard to not fall in the mimetic trap. The most successful people I know are primarily internally driven. They do what they do to impress themselves and because they feel compelled to make something happen in the world. After you've made enough money to buy whatever you want and gotten enough social status that it stops being fun to get more, this is the only force I know of that will continue to drive you to higher levels of performance. This is why the question of a person's motivation is so important.

这是我试图理解一个人时首先关注的事情。正确的动机很难用一套明确的规则来定义，但当你看到时，你就能认出来。杰西卡·利文斯顿和保罗·格雷厄姆就是我衡量这一点的标杆。YC在最初的几年里被广泛嘲笑，几乎没人认为它会取得巨大成功。但他们相信，如果它成功了，世界会因此变得更好；他们热爱帮助他人，并坚信自己的新模式优于现有模式。

It's the first thing I try to understand about someone. The right motivations are hard to define a set of rules for, but you know it when you see it. Jessica Livingston and Paul Graham are my benchmarks for this. YC was widely mocked for the first few years, and almost no one thought it would be a big success when they first started. But But they thought it would be great for the world if it worked, and they love helping people, and they were convinced their new model was better than the existing model.

最终，你会以在对你重要的领域中做出卓越工作来定义自己的成功。你越早开始朝这个方向前进，就能走得越远。如果你不痴迷于某件事，就很难在那件事上取得巨大的成功。

Eventually, you will define your success by performing excellent work in areas that are important to you. The sooner you can start off in that direction, the further you will be able to go. It is hard to be wildly successful at anything you aren't obsessed with.