#772 - 奥利弗·伯克曼 - 为何我们对效率的痴迷全错了

为什么你认为我们中这么多人对高效生产力如此痴迷？

Why do you think that so many of us have such an obsession with being productive?

哇。这类因果问题总是让人觉得可以从多个层面回答，对吧？这可能涉及新教工作伦理，关于英美文化中那种宗教观念——为了得到上帝的眷顾，你必须终生勤奋。也可能与资本主义有关。

Wow. These these kind of causal questions, always feel like you can answer on so many levels. Right? So this could be an this could be an answer about the Protestant work ethic, about sort of Anglo American culture and the religious idea that to try to get on the right side of God, you have to spend your life being very industrious. Could be like a capitalism.

这是个资本主义角度的解释，但也可能是晚期资本主义的论点，解释为何今天我们如此强烈地感受到这点。从心理治疗角度看，我们许多人从小就被灌输需要证明自我价值的观念，认为只有通过成就才能获得世界的爱，而非仅仅做自己。当然也存在更积极、不那么悲观的解释：在这个时代，普通人也有机会做激动人心、有意义的事，这在其他时期可能难以实现。所以思考如何实现这些可能性是件很棒的事。

That is a capitalism argument, but it could be a sort of late capitalism argument about how we feel that so intensely today. It could be psychotherapeutic about how so many of us are raised with some kind of sense that we need to prove ourselves that we're gonna be that we're that we get love from the world for through our accomplishments instead of just being ourselves. And, you know, then there's kind of more positive and less less pessimistic accounts. Like, we live in times when it's possible for all sorts of reasons, for relatively, you know, ordinary people to do exciting and interesting and meaningful things that, you know, in a very different era they might not have been able to. So it's it's cool to try to figure out how to make sure that happens.

我一直在思考这些问题。新教工作伦理是我二十多岁时深有体会的，我甚至曾因事情进展顺利但自己没遭受足够痛苦而感到内疚，在取得成就时尤其如此。

I think about all of those things all the time. The Protestant work ethic was something I was intimately familiar with, especially in my twenties. I I even used to feel guilty if something had gone well, but I hadn't suffered enough Right. In the achievement of it. Yeah.

是的。这是我们讨论中最病态的一种表现。

Yeah. It's a particularly malignant version of what we're talking about.

完全同意。某种程度上，把事情搞复杂反而更容易——这种颠倒的逻辑。我想在这方面，我、你和许多听众都一样：当思考某件事是否可以很简单时，反而会感到怪异、危险甚至叛逆。

Yeah. Totally. That, that way in which it is easier, it's actually easier to ex to have it be hard in a in a sort of upside down way. And that for lots of us, I I expect in this respect, we are similar, me and you and plenty of people in the audience. It actually feels kind of strange or or dangerous or subversive or something to to wonder if something could actually be quite quite easy.

我在《纽约时报》一篇报道的评论区看到个病毒式传播的留言（这很少见），有位女性提到她提出的'最低能耗原则'——其实很多时候'敷衍了事'才是正确做法。这个概念源于我们总被要求做事要'全力以赴'，但这根本说不通，也不该是这样。

I read a there was a comment to a New York Times piece that that where the comment went viral on social media, which doesn't often happen, where a woman was was referring to this concept that she'd come to call maximum economy of ass about how actually, often it's the right thing to do to half ass things. That's where the idea comes from, right? The idea that you should always be spending as much ass as possible in the in the completion of a task, it just makes no sense. Right? It doesn't it's not how it's not how it should work.

如果某件事对你来说轻而易举，那么做起来就应该感到轻松，而你应该把精力和自律留给那些不那么容易的事情——这种想法本不应让人感到羞耻。

There should be no shame in the idea that if something comes easily to you, it should feel easy to do, and then you save your your efforts and self discipline for the things that don't easy.

没错。这个观点非常精辟。很奇怪，我...我在想这其中有多少成分是...你又提到了我另一个深有感触的点，就是我们许多人与世界之间那种奇怪的价值交换——仿佛只有让自己足够有用、足够有价值，才会被接纳。

Yeah. That's a very good point. It's so strange. I I I wonder how much of it is is that. I wonder how much of it again, you hit on another one of my favorites, this sort of weird value exchange that lots of us have with the world, that if only I make myself sufficiently useful and valuable, then I will be accepted.

我记得...这完全是种兄弟会式的反思，但二十多岁时我试图通过被人需要来建立关系。我很有用，是个非常称职的中间人，但这与被真心渴望不同。不过从功能上说，结果却是一样的。或许我本可以...但因为我一心只想通过被需要来实现被渴望，这其实回避了问题的本质。最终我始终无法与人建立更深层的联系——毕竟我构建的多数关系本质都是交易性的，这就是我设定的框架。

I remember I I this is total sort of bro science reflective stuff, but I think in my twenties, what I tried to do was I made myself needed to people. I was useful. I was a very useful intermediary, which wasn't the same as being wanted, but functionally, it ended up being the same. And maybe I could have mean, but because all I was trying to do was get to being wanted through being needed, I kind of begged the question, and, no, I I wasn't ever able to connect with people on a on a deeper level in any case because, of course, all of the relationships or many of the relationships I had were transactional because that was the frame that I'd set them in.

是啊。

Yeah.

从存在主义或心理学角度看，这也是我们很多人与世界互动的方式：只要我能足够成功，就能被周围人渴望、获得安全感、被需要、被接纳。仿佛只要达到某个地位、财富、智慧、学术成就或职业目标的高度...嗯...就能实现这一切。

And, I mean, whatever, existentially, psychologically, this is the same way that we relate a lot of us relate to the world. If only I can be sufficiently accomplished, then I will be wanted and and safe and secure and and desired by the people around me. I will be accepted. And and I if I just reach this particular level of status or wealth or usefulness or acclaim or wisdom or intellect or academic achievement or career goal or whatever it might be, then Mhmm. There we are.

不，完全同意。说得太透彻了。我几乎能听到某些左派评论家会说：'没错，因为这个社会让你觉得除非这么做，否则就会从社会阶梯上跌落，对吧？'

No. Totally. That's so well put. And, of course, I can I can almost hear, like, a certain kind of commentator, critic from from the left basically saying, like, yeah, that's because we live in a world that makes you feel like you're gonna fall off the bottom of the ladder of society unless you do this? Right?

所以确实存在这种现实环境压力。但最惊人的是人们将其内化，甚至主动配合这种机制。

So there are these kind of real circumstantial pressures to act that way. But what's so striking is that people internalize it. They collaborate with it.

他们很久之后才这样做。在这里，我也是自己的暴君。

They do it long after. I'm my own tyrant here as well.

不，绝对如此。而且他们很久之后才这样做，那时他们自己并不处于需要那样做的位置。于是你最终陷入这种荒谬的境地，我们拥有的那种，你知道的，那些在地位上做得非常好的人群，企业生活的高层以及其他世界领域，被所谓的‘不安分的成功者’所主导。对吧？

No. Absolutely. And they do it long after and when they're not themselves in a position where that's necessary. And so you end up with this absurd situation where that we have, where, you know, the the ranks of people doing really well for themselves in terms of status, upper ranks of corporate life and and and other areas of the world are dominated by what what's been called insecure overachievers. Right?

这些人被驱使着，但驱使他们的是深深的不足感，即使他们在这场非常激烈的竞争中胜出，也并没有享受到任何乐趣。

People who are driven, but driven by a deep sense of inadequacy and are not having any fun even though they've supposedly won this this very, competitive race.

是的，这非常奇怪。我花了很多时间，尤其是搬到美国后。奥斯汀是人才聚集的热点。前几天我参加了一个晚宴，埃隆·马斯克也在场。

Yeah. It's it's very bizarre. I've spent a lot of time, especially since moving to America. Austin's a hotbed for people coming through. I was at a dinner a couple of nights ago where Elon Musk was there.

所以，你知道，我周围都是那些在其他人看来很重要，或者也许所有人都认为很重要的人物。但根据我的经验，如果你观察这些人如何攀登这个无尽的阶梯，你实际上是在筛选那些平均而言比普通人更痛苦的人。我认为，你爬得越高，你筛选出的越是那些导致他们到达那里的病态、强迫和驱动力。是的。

So, you know, I'm floating around people that are at the top of totem poles that other people seem to think are important or whatever, and maybe everyone thinks is is important. I don't know. But in my experience, it's if you look at those people as they rise up through this infinite ladder, you're selecting for people, I think, on average, that are more miserable than the average person. I think that the higher you get up, what you're selecting for are the pathologies and compulsions and drives that have caused someone to get there. Yeah.

所以，这又像是在问，效果发生在原因之前。对吧？或者说，原因正是推动人们登上顶端的动力。

So, again, it's kind of begging the like, the the the the effect is happening before the cause. Right? Or, like, the cause is what's driving people up to the top of that.

是的，不，这完全说得通。这让我想起一个稍微不同的背景，因为这里你谈论的，我认为是金钱、地位之类的东西。但也包括传统意义上的名声。

Yeah. No. That makes total sense. And it reminds me in a slightly different context, because here you're talking about, I think, money and status and and, and things like that. But also just in terms of the old fashioned kind of fame.

对吧？好莱坞电影明星。如果我们仔细观察，对大多数人来说相当明显的是，名人恰恰是那些缺乏普通人所拥有的东西的人，即不需要那种崇拜的能力。这并不意味着他们中没有一些非常优秀的演员，也不意味着他们最终不会在世界上传播许多快乐和幸福，但是，那种驱使你登上顶峰的动机，很多时候是在填补空虚，而不是仅仅表达对活着的喜悦之类的东西。

Right? Hollywood movie celebrity. It it's I think it's fairly obvious to most of us if you look closely that celebrities are those people who lack something that non celebrities have, right, which is an ability to not need that kind of adulation. Doesn't mean there aren't some very good actors among their ranks and that they end up spreading lots of pleasure and happiness in the world, but, like, the drive that takes you to the top there is, I think, a lot of the time is is is filling a void rather than, just expressing joy at being alive or something.

是的。我的一个朋友亚历克斯说，人们看向高成就者，试图找到他们拥有而普通人没有的东西，但他们搞反了。那些高成就者缺少的正是其他人都有的东西，那就是一个‘关闭按钮’。

Yeah. One of my friends, Alex, says people look to high achievers to try and find something that they have that the normal person doesn't, but they've got it the wrong way around. The people who are the high achievers are lacking something everyone else does have, which is an off button.

对。是的。

Right. Yeah.

而且我认为这是真的。我在我自己身上也看到了这一点。我现在正在经历一个相当大的个人转变，试图感受情感，试图专注于情绪，并弄清楚为什么。这些动机是从我内心的哪里来的？就像，真的深入到核心。

And I think that's true. And I I I see it I see it in myself. I'm going through quite a big sort of personal transformation at the moment, trying to feel feelings, trying to sort of focus on emotion and working out why. What are these where are these motivations coming from within me? Like, really getting sort of deep down to the core of this.

而且我越看越觉得，首先，我想请你回来的一个原因是我一直很喜欢《不完美主义者》，这是你的通讯，每个人都应该去订阅。

And the more and more that I see it, it it it appears to me like well, first off, one of the reasons that I wanted to bring you back on is I've been loving The Imperfectionist, which is your newsletter that everyone should go and subscribe to.

哦，

Oh,

谢谢。其次，看起来你的大部分工作基本上是指出控制和试图获得和重新获得控制的讽刺和悖论。在我看来，主要的关系是控制和我们的情绪之间的关系。我们的情绪状态在某种程度上受到了干扰，而控制，我不知道，像是以某种方式解决了它，帮助我们不那么强烈地感受情感。

thank you. Secondly, it seems like much of your work is basically pointing out the ironies and the paradoxes of control and us trying to gain and regain control. And it seems to me that the relationship the primary relationship is between control and our emotions. Our emotional state is perturbed in some way, and control, I don't know, like, solves it somehow kind of it helps us to to not feel feelings so much.

是的，说得太好了。我觉得你刚刚总结了我整个兴趣领域的核心。

Yeah. That that's so well. I think you've just summarized my entire field of interest

我们做到了。

We did it.

比我迄今为止所能表达的更好。人们总让我描述我的写作主题之类，现在我终于有了答案。没错，这就是本质——我们渴望的那种掌控，其实是人类终究无法拥有、即便获得也未必真正想要的终极控制权，对吧？

Better than I've managed yet to do. People are always asking me, like, to describe what I write about and stuff, and I now have now I have an answer. I think that yeah. I think this is exactly it, and there are so many different ways into this, but it's it's essentially a kind of control that we the control that we crave is a control that you don't get to have as a human being, ultimately, and that you wouldn't actually want if you achieved it. Right?

比如在简单场景中就能看出：回想我人生中的高光时刻或庆幸遇见的人，没有哪件事能归功于我的周密计划。尽管多年来我痴迷于日程安排和时间管理，但这些相遇从不源于此，反而常与之相悖。嗯。就连和老友相聚时最有趣的谈资，往往也是计划出错的时刻。

I mean, you you can see this in such simple settings like, you know, if you for me anyway, if I think back about sort of amazing highlights in my life to this point or people I've met who I'm incredibly glad that I that I met, In in no cases can I sort of attribute that to a plan that I made and carried out? It happened, you know, even though I've been obsessed with, scheduling and time boxing and trying to figure out how to run my life for years, it's it's never as a result of those things that these encounters come. It's always, you know, in in spite of them. Mhmm. So even just something like that, the way that, you know, half the sort of funniest things that you'll talk about if you get together with old friends are when things went in some sense wrong in with some Mhmm.

关于某个失败的计划。有句老话说得好：所有经历要么成为美好时光，要么成为精彩故事。禅宗老师约翰·塔兰特在书中提出个有趣观点：中世纪的人根本不会相信这种对生活的掌控是可能的。

With some plan that you had. There's that old quote, almost everything is either a good time or a good story. And that that that that really sums it up. And there's a there's a really interesting historical perspective here. We don't need to go into massive detail, but, like, I was I was reading a section of book by a Zen teacher called John Tarrant, where he makes this really interesting point that, like, in medieval times, you would not have fallen for the notion that this kind of control over your life was possible.

对吧？即便你是中世纪权贵（尤其不是的话），每天可能遭遇瘟疫、劫掠军队或饥荒，你不懂科学原理也无法预测。若像现代人这样把生活条件化——『等消除所有威胁、感觉掌控局面后再建大教堂』——那就什么都做不成。现代世界仿佛在欺骗我们，让我们以为通过数字技术、心理学或自助方法...

Right? You'd even if you were pretty powerful in medieval times, but especially if you weren't, you'd go through your life and like any day there could be a plague or a marauding army or, you know, famine, you wouldn't have any understanding of the science of of what brought these things about. You wouldn't have been able to predict them. You you if you'd if you'd made your life conditional in the way that we do and you said, like, well, I'm not gonna start building this cathedral until, until we've got all these threats out of the way and I feel like I'm in charge of things, then nothing would ever have been done. So I do think there is this sense in which the modern world, like, tricks us, basically, makes us feel like it must be possible, either through, you know, digital technology or psychological technologies, self help and stuff or something.

总有什么方法能掌控人生。结果你忙着追求这种掌控，反而忘了真正去生活。

It must be possible somehow to get this kind of handle on our lives. And then you set about trying to get the handle on your life instead of doing stuff, I guess.

我一直在思考这个问题，基本上，在过去一百年的某个时刻，人类曾相信我们完全掌控了环境。这导致了一种对确定性不切实际的期待。

I I think about that all the time that, basically, we at some point in the last hundred years, humans believed that we had complete control over the environment. And what that led to was a unrealistic expectation of certainty

嗯。

Mhmm.

以及对任何看似扰乱这种掌控的事物特别反感。嗯。而正如你所说，以前没有细菌理论时，人们会说‘把腿截掉吧’。我们...你懂我的意思吗？

And a particular aversion to anything that looks like a perturbment of of that. Mhmm. Whereas, like you say, previously, like, hey. If you don't have germ theory, chop the leg off. Like, we you know what?

我确信人们并不乐意被截肢，但这就是当时的做法。放血疗法、用水蛭吸血、随便怎样。开始建造大教堂。

Just we it's I'm sure that people weren't happy about having their legs chopped off, but, like, this is just what you do. Like, do the bloodletting. Get the leeches on me. Like, whatever. Start the cathedral.

那个设计圣家堂的建筑师叫什么？是高迪吗？就是巴塞罗那那个？

Who was the guy that did, Is it Gaudi? Is that the dude that did, the, Sagrada Familia in, Barcelona?

我记得巴塞罗那大教堂是叫这个名字。是的。

I believe that's the name of the Barcelona Cathedral. Yeah.

对。这座教堂至今仍在建造中。他大概在1908年左右开工的，你知道，已经花了一百年...估计还要一百五十年才能完工。我们这种控制欲、自我中心主义、以及社会层面的集体自恋和自负，就像集体潜意识里的东西...

Yes. And that's still going. And he started that in, like, '27 nineteen o eight or something. And it's, you know, it's taken a hundred it's gonna take a hundred and fifty years to finish or something like that. And, yeah, I I our control and like, solipsism and sort of narcissism and egotism as a a society, the sort of collective unconscious of everyone of, like, yeah.

我们已经把这个世界的事情安排得明明白白。我们可以预测天气。你知道，我们可以环游世界。是的。但那种确定性

We've got this we've got this world thing sorted. We can predict the weather. You know, we can fly around the world. Yeah. But that degree

的

of

程度让我们的视野、我们的偏好膨胀得比我们控制它们膨胀范围的能力还要快。

certainty has allowed our sights, our preferences to just expand quicker than our ability to control the things they're expanding beyond.

没错，正是如此。所有这些发展的效果就是让人觉得达到那种控制水平的时刻越来越近。而你知道，除此之外，当它没有实现时，只会让人更加沮丧。

Yeah. Exactly. And the the the effect of all those kinds of developments is to make it seem like the moment of arrival at that level of control is getting closer and closer. And that, you know, apart from anything else, that makes it all the more frustrating when it when it doesn't happen.

而且感觉很不公平。

And it feels it feels unfair.

对，没错。感觉就像你应该能够拥有那种控制权。我不知道我是否在上一本书里尝试写过这个，但我不确定是否有相关研究。但在我看来，某种对排队的急躁、路怒症，或者社交媒体上因为别人不接受你的观点或自我展示而产生的各种愤怒，肯定因为五分钟后你就能在智能手机上瞬间查到四千英里外的天气而变得更糟。

Right. Yeah. Exactly. It feels like it feels like you ought to be able to have that control. And I don't know if I in my last book, I sort of tried to write about this, but I don't know if there's been any research done on it, but it seems to me like it ought to be obvious that a certain kind of impatience with waiting in lines or road rage or all sorts of, you know, anger on social media when people don't just accept your position on things or your presentation of yourself or something must be worse as a result of the fact that five minutes later, you can find out the weather 4,000 miles away in a second on your smartphone.

对吧？这有点像在说：看，我在这里像个神一样，为什么我不能在那里也当个神？这远比接受你并非无所不能的事实要糟糕得多。

Right? That's sort of like, look, I'm a god over here, so why don't I get to be a god over here as well? It's much, much worse than just accepting that you're not a god, you know, all around.

你是如何接受生活中这种控制与压力的平衡的？

How have you come to imbibe or accept this tension of control in life?

我的意思是，某些哲学理念和实践对我很重要，我很乐意谈谈这些。不过一开始我想说，对于那些试图撰写这类内容、传递有趣建议的人来说，一个令人不安的可能性是——其中很大部分可能只是生命周期的自然规律。对吧？

I mean, certain kinds of philosophies have been important to me, certain practices. I can happily talk about them. I do just wanna say at the beginning though that I think that an alarming possibility it's alarming for anybody who tries to sort of write about this stuff and, you know, pass on interesting advice or something. An alarming possibility is that a chunk of it is just life cycle. Right?

仅仅是因为我比从前年长，而年纪越大，这类体会就越多。稍微令人担忧的是，似乎这些道理只能通过亲身经历才能真正领悟。

Just I'm the older than I was, and the older you get, the more these kind of things. The the slightly the slight worry is that, like, you can only learn these lessons by just living through life.

我们真是志同道合。在你分享方法之前——我曾记录过这个发现，这对一个初入生产力领域的人来说相当幻灭。做这个节目的头两年，我痴迷于效率提升。番茄工作法，还邀请过大卫·艾伦来做节目。

We are kindred spirits here. Before you get into your techniques, I've had this I I wrote it, and it's incredibly, disenchanting as a fledgling productivity guy. You know, the first two years of this show, I was obsessed with productivity. Mhmm. Pomodoro technique, and David Allen comes on.

所有方法，无一遗漏。后来我在笔记里写下这个观察，并深入思考：我们沾沾自喜的个人成长，有多少只是年龄增长的副产品？尤其像我这样崇尚主观能动性和刻意行动的人，总坚信是自己推动了事情发生。

All of the every all the things. All the things. And then I I wrote it down in my notes, and then I had to write about it longer. And I said, how much of the personal development that we congratulate ourselves for is just a byproduct of getting older? Like, how much and especially, I'm someone that adores agency and intentionalism, and I love this idea that I make things happen.

我确实做到了。上次交谈时我在英国，现在已在美国——这个重大的人生转折就是我主动实现的。

And I certainly do. Know, I've ended I'm last time we spoke, I was in The UK. Now I'm in America. I made that thing happen. That was a, you know, real hard orthogonal turn, and I did it.

是我促成了改变。但那些深刻的 existential 顿悟呢？有多少只是生命旅程的自然馈赠？我们却还在鞭策自己：要多冥想、多读书等等。就像药物试验中人们说'看服药后改善多大'，其实——你懂的。

I made the thing happen. But, like, real existential realizations and stuff, how many of them just come along for the ride? And you're there, you know, sort of whipping yourself or whipping something else into oh, I could do the meditation, and I must read the more books and blah blah blah. It's like it's kind of like, you know, when they do, studies with drugs, and they say, well, look at how much better people got when they took the drug. And it's like, yeah.

但如果他们不把药物仅仅当作时间的副产品，他们的状况能改善多少呢？

But how much better would they have got had they not taken the drug as just a byproduct of time?

我认为确实如此。我觉得这非常真实。我不认为——我的意思是，或许这是一种合理化解释，但作为一个在这个领域进行写作和演讲、希望能提供有用见解的人，我最终得出的结论是：我之所以能对他人有所帮助，是因为我在年龄和见解上都略领先半步——毕竟我整天都在阅读和思考这些内容，而不仅仅是利用业余时间。因此，我认为确实存在这样一种情况（我自己也曾是接受者），某些见解正在你内心等待萌芽，而外界完全可以加速这个过程。

And I think yeah. And I think that's it's so true. I don't think it I mean, the the sort of maybe this is a rationalization, but the place I've ended up as someone who does sort of writing and talking and stuff in this space of, like, hopefully having something useful to say is that actually the I can be of use to people for that I'm sort of a half step ahead of both age wise and just maybe in, like, insights because I get to spend my days reading about this stuff instead of only my spare time and thinking about it. So I think that there's definitely a a situation, and I've had been on the other the receiving end of this too, right, where there's some insight that is waiting to to germinate in you, and that can totally be helped along. It can happen,

你知道

you know

是的。可能提前几个月或一年实现突破。所以我认为这确实有其合理性。至于因果方向？当我提到深入研究道家思想对我很重要时——

Yes. Some months or maybe a year sooner than it than it otherwise would have. So I think there's some real validity there. So, yeah, who knows about the cause of direction? When I say that I think that, you know, reading a bit more into Taoism, for example, was really important for me.

也许并非如此。或许改变已经发生，而道家学说只是我恰好想研读的内容。

Maybe it wasn't. Maybe I'd made the change, and Taoism was just the thing I wanted to read about.

事后合理化你的所有行为。好了，请分享些你采用的方法。关于生活中控制与放任的张力，你最依赖哪些实践或洞见？

Retroactively justifying whatever it is that you did. Okay. So give us give us some of the things that you do. Tension of control that we have in our lives. What are some of the, practices or insights that you rely on most?

首先得说，成为父母绝对是让人彻底明白自己缺乏控制的强烈方式——你既无法按计划度过完美一天（但多数时候你会庆幸这种失控，至少不是最初几个月那种抓狂状态），也意识到其实你根本不需要绝对掌控。对吧？

Well, again, so I'll just I guess it starts by talking about a circumstantial change, but, but but becoming a parent will certainly is certainly one very powerful way of making it clear to yourself that you don't really have very much control. And that both that you can't sort of plan a day and then have it unfold exactly as you want. Also that you kind of are glad of that, at least most of the time, not not all the time and maybe not in those first few months. And also that you don't really need it. Right?

因为你总能找到方法，比如在白天有空闲时挤出几小时开始写作，而不是固执地认为必须早上7:30准时开工并保持三小时不受打扰——毕竟这种理想状态未必总能实现。就我个人生活管理实践而言，这意味着采用各种能提供结构但极具弹性的方法。嗯...我现在试着举个具体例子。虽然有些人适用，但我已基本放弃了那种严格时间块划分的工作日计划方式。

Because you find ways to kind of, you know, start the writing once the day clears up enough for you to get a couple of hours rather than fixating on the notion that you always need to begin at 07:30 and work for three hours undisturbed because that just might not be an option. So on the level of sort of practices for managing my life, I guess that has meant I mean, all sorts of things that that try to sort of lend some structure, but in a very, very flexible way. Mhmm. So I'm trying to think of something specific now. But, you know, I I I know it works for some people, but I've sort of largely moved away when it comes to just sort of planning a day of work from any kind of sort of strict time blocking approach.

显然随之而来的挑战是确保自己不会疲于应付琐事而忽略真正重要的工作。我对此采取阶段性策略：有时会确定当天必完成的三项任务；有时则简单规划投入三小时——我早年写过一篇通讯文章，当时提出个原则：若想推行某种方法规则，就必须...

The the challenge then obviously is to make sure that you don't just end up reacting to everything and doing none of the intentional stuff. So I go through different phases with that. Sometimes it's a question of, you know, three tasks that definitely will get done in the course of the day. Sometimes it's just something like, well, I'm gonna spend three hour I I I wrote this newsletter ages ago where I sort of gave this whole name and, you know, you gotta if you come up with a rule or a technique, you gotta you gotta have proper pro

先发梗图，后解释。这就是规矩。

Meme first, explain later. That's the rule.

要有品牌意识对吧。所以我称之为'三三三法则'：每天规划约三小时核心创作，处理三类维护性事务（包括锻炼、邮件等维持生活运转的事宜），再完成三项积压的琐碎任务。

Branding. Right. So so I I called this the three three three technique, and I just said, look, something I find useful is to think about each day. I'm gonna do, like, three hours or try to do about three hours on my main creative work. Three different kind of maintenance activities, including kind of, you know, working out, including email, things that just need to happen for me to keep the the thing myself running well.

具体方法不重要，真正让我受益的是这个理念——或许老生常谈——但'少量多次'确实是处理任务的好方式。关键在于培养这样的习惯：几乎每天都能完成少量写作，实际解决三项紧要任务而非空想完成十二项。

And then three sort of random smaller tasks that have probably been hanging around for ages and and really just need to be done. I I think that I don't care about the specific technique. I think what's really what I've really come to appreciate, I'm not sure how to express this, but is this is this idea that I guess it's just the truism that little and often is a good way to address your tasks in life, but it's just this it's just this notion that any practice that I can get into that fairly reliably means I'm going to do a very small amount of writing, but almost every day. Mhmm. Anything that means I'm gonna do am I gonna actually complete three of these urgent or important tasks instead of tell myself I'm gonna complete 12 of them?

任何能促成这种渐进积累的方式都优于其他。你看，所有关于效率的讨论最终都会回归这类真理：少量多次，持之以恒。

Anything that can lead to that sort of gradual compounding and accumulation is always better than than anything else. You see, think all productivity discussion just sort of ends up tending back towards these kind of truisms. Right? It's like, little little and often. Yep.

保持连贯性很重要，但这不等同于刻板一致。追求连贯性并不意味着要...

Consistency is important, but that's not the same as, like, uniformity. It's not a good approach to consistency to to to sort of

那种公式化的僵化。

The sort of formulaic rigidity.

愿意把整件事看作开放式的，这样，比如下周你会改变你的系统，那也没关系。就像，最近对我影响很大的另一件事是认真对待这个问题，比如我想做什么，我感觉想做什么。听起来非常放纵。我仍然对这种说话方式感到有些尴尬。但几年前我突然意识到，以那种你不能允许自己利用你想做的事情的能量和动力的想法来面对我这种工作的一天，是非常奇怪和反常的。

Being willing to see the whole thing as open ended so that, like, next week you'll change your systems and that's fine. Like, just and then another thing that's made a big difference to me fairly recently is taking seriously that the question of like what what I would like to do, what feel what I feel like doing. Sounds terribly indulgent. I still kind of cringe the idea that I'm speaking this way. But dawned on me a few years ago that it was really strange and perverse to approach a day of the kind of work that I do with with the idea that you couldn't you weren't gonna allow yourself to harness the energy and the fuel of, like, what you felt like doing.

就像，你你也许

Like, you you maybe

或者你是某种非常奇怪的生产力变态？还是你应该鞭打自己屈服，走在钉床上，然后你可以在那样的情况下工作？你不应该享受它。你

Or are you some sort of, like, like, very strange perp productivity pervert? Or are you supposed to whip yourself into submission, walk on a bed of nails, and then you you can do your work while you're doing that? You're not supposed to enjoy it. You

对。对。对。这太奇怪了。就像你应该明智地使用你的钱。

Right. Right. Right. It's so odd. And it's like you you you you're supposed to use your money sensibly.

你应该明智地使用你的注意力。就像，你不应该明智地利用你对所做事情的兴奋。这非常非常奇怪。我已经提到过很多次了，但我再简单说一下。我深受冥想老师Susan Piva多年前写的一篇博客文章的影响，主要是被文章的标题所震撼，标题是“通过不对自己刻薄来完成任务”，她指出，我认为非常精辟，人们认为某种方法是脚踏实地、不神秘、只是去做的，这体现在Chuck Close的那句名言中，灵感是给业余爱好者的。

You're supposed to use your focus sensibly. Like, you're not supposed to use your excitement for what you do sensibly. It's very it's very strange. And I've mentioned this so many times, but I'll just very quickly say it again. I was really impacted by a blog post that the meditation teacher Susan Piva wrote years and years ago, mainly really just by the title of the blog post, which was getting things done by not being mean to yourself, where she pointed out, I think brilliantly, how a certain kind of approach that people think of as, like, down to earth and non woo woo and just sort of, going for it, which is epitomized by that, you know, Chuck Close quote, inspiration is for amateurs.

我们其他人只是出现并开始工作。它非常非常容易，至少在我这样错误的人手中，变成这种，是的，这种强硬的方式，无论你感觉如何，你都会做你所说的要在那段时间里做的事情，即使这只是以一种极其低效的方式完成，因为你知道，那一刻你身体的任何部分都不想这么做。

The rest of us just show up and get to work. It very, very easily, at least in the the wrong hands like mine, turns into this kind of, yeah, this kind of hard driving thing where no matter how you feel, you're gonna do the thing you said you were gonna do with that particular portion of time, even if it's just an incredibly inefficient way of getting it done because, you know, it it it's just not what any part of you wants to be doing in that moment.

也许会有另一个时刻你想做那件事，而在你试图做那件事时，你可能正在做别的事情，这意味着...是的。我并不反对，而且我对‘直接出现并开始工作’这种做法非常、非常熟悉。最近我又在听很多奥兰多·伯顿的内容，试图感受情绪。他有一段精彩的论述，谈到人们为何让自己承受不必要的痛苦。他说你受苦并非因为需要受苦。

There could be another time when you wanted to do that thing, and at that time when you're trying to do that thing, you could be doing something else, which means yeah. I I don't disagree, and I the just show up and get to work thing, I'm intimately, intimately familiar with. Been listening to a lot of Orlando Botton recently, again, as I try to feel feelings. And, he has this beautiful section where he talks about why people cause themselves to suffer more than they need to. He says you're not suffering because you need to.

你受苦是因为你反常地习惯了痛苦。这就像某种设定值。嗯。这太真实了。我之前邀请了马修·赫西上节目，他是约会教练，可能是世界上最好的约会教练之一。

You're suffering because you've become uncharacteristically familiar with suffering. And it's like this sort of set point. Mhmm. And it's so true. And I had Matthew Hussey on the show, dating coach, like, probably one of the best dating coaches in the world.

他的新书真的非常棒。本质上是一本伪装成约会指南的个人成长书籍。

And, he has this it's his new book is is really, really great. It's basically a personal development book masquerading his dating book.

嗯。

Mhmm.

他关于自我同情有段话，我要读给你听：‘我难以相信自己配得上片刻的快乐与平静，除非先让自己经历残酷的时间表，精确到分钟监控自己的效率。也许有些人用这种‘挣得饼干’的心态取得了健康成就，但我不同。我的情况是变异版的——快乐和自我同情经常被内心暴君禁止，由他决定我一天被鞭打够不够。’

He's got this line about self compassion, which I'm gonna read to you. I struggle to believe I'm worthy of moments of joy and peace without first putting myself through a brutal schedule, monitoring my productivity levels down to the minute. Perhaps some people apply this earn your cookie mindset in ways that lead to healthy achievements. Not me. Mine is a mutation whereby joy and self compassion are regularly outlawed by an internal tyrant who decides when I've been flogged enough for one day.

就在我即将崩溃时，内心有个声音说：‘好吧，给他睡前半小时安宁，但要让他知道明天一早我们就会继续。’你提出的‘生产力暴政’概念本质上也是同样的东西。

Just when I'm about to collapse, a voice inside says, okay, give him half an hour of peace before bed, but make sure he knows we'll start again bright and early in the morning. And you've got this idea of productivity dead, which is basically the same thing.

是啊。不。完全同意。我觉得...这段写得真好。

Yeah. No. Absolutely. I think yeah. That's so well written.

我不想只是草率地跳过我的想法。但这是同样的理念，对吧？是的。所以我谈论的是这种感受，我认为人们普遍认为，早上醒来后，你基本上需要完成一定量的产出。

I don't just wanna skip onto my my thoughts. But it's the but it's the same idea. Right? Yeah. So that I'm talking about this sense that I think people have that you've gotta you wake up in the morning and you basically got to put in a certain amount of output.

否则，你就没有真正证明自己在地球上存在的价值。而你能做到的最好程度，就是勉强维持收支平衡，对吧？这就是你能期待的最好结果。当然，如果你足够幸运，从事的工作至少本应是愉快、有趣且令人兴奋的，那在某种程度上更糟，因为你会对自己说，不仅要完成工作，还要实现自己的潜力。

Otherwise, you haven't really justified your existence on the planet. And the best you can do is, like, get back up to a zero balance. Right? That's that's the the the best you can hope for. And of course, if you're fortunate enough to be doing things with your work that are, you know, at least meant to be enjoyable and interesting and exciting, then it's, in some ways, it's worse because then you get to, like, say to yourself, not only, like, I've got to put in the work, but I've got to do things like realize my potential.

这类标准完全模糊不清。你永远无法坐下来满意地说，太好了，我实现了自己的潜力。对吧？因为这根本是个无底洞。

Like like, these kind of criteria that are utterly opaque. And you're never gonna be able to sit back and say, great. I realize my potential. Right? Because that's just a completely open ended.

这没有上限。所以你会永远不停地逼迫自己。我觉得在这里值得提一下的是，关于感受情绪、自我关怀等话题，我多年前意识到的一点是：判断一条建议或世界观是否对你有用的好方法，就是看它是否让你极度抗拒——因为它听起来太新时代风格，或完全不符合你的习惯。这种‘拥抱不适感’的理念，比如我曾对‘自我关怀’的说法极度排斥（现在稍好），或许正说明它值得深思而非直接摒弃。

There's no ceiling to that. So you're gonna be able to keep driving yourself forever and ever. I think one thing that might be useful to to mention here is that on the the general topic of feeling your feelings and self compassion and all the rest of it is I think something else I realized a while ago now is that there is a really good way to navigate whether a piece of advice or a a way of looking at the world is something that you might need. And that is basically if it makes you just cringe overwhelmingly and you don't wanna have anything to do with it because it's all that kind of because it seems too new agey or it seems too, you know, it it it is not it's just not the kind of thing you're you're used to or you want to do. And that idea of, like, leaning into the cringe and saying, like, maybe the fact that I find, less so today, but maybe the fact that I have found talk of self compassion so sort of, that I'm so allergic to it.

这一点很重要，因为尤其是自助类书籍，它们通常不会针对那些因否认自身需求而根本不会购买的人进行营销。

Maybe maybe that says something interesting rather than that I should just sort of leave it aside. So I think that's important to say because otherwise you know definitely especially to self help books and things like that, they don't tend to be marketed at the people who won't buy them because they are in denial of their need for the thing.

是的。它们用潜在读者能接受的语言撰写，从他们的视角出发，提供他们愿意采纳的解决方案。实际上不会包含尖锐的真相或令人不适的洞见——因为如果真让人足够不适，就没人会买了。

Yes. They're written in the language and framed from the perspective and offer solutions in the way that the people who will buy that book will be prepared to take that book. It's not actually going to be harsh truths. It's not actually going to be uncomfortable insights. Because if it was sufficiently uncomfortable, no one would buy it.

至少目标读者不会买。

At least no one that it's aimed at.

对，对，没错。而且不妨直说，房间里的大象就是这其中存在巨大的性别差异部分，对吧？

Right. Right. Exactly. And just to sort of name the elephant in the room, there's a huge sort of male female part of this. Right?

有种情感导向的自助书籍完全针对女性读者，而另一种'埋头苦干、掌控人生'类型的书则完全瞄准男性读者群。可能这些人他们——

There's a certain kind of, emotion focused self help book that's just completely aimed at women and a certain kind of, like, you know, get to work and kick life in the ass kind of book that is completely aimed at the male readership. It's probably the people They

应该互相读对方的书。

should be reading each other's books.

读对方类型的书。

Reading the other book.

是啊。你觉得为什么我们如此难以自我宽容？是害怕一旦放松就会效率下降吗？还是因为我们内心住着个苛求完美的暴君？

Yeah. Right. Why do you think it's so hard to cut ourselves some slack? Like, that is it a fear that if we do it, we're not going to be we're not going to be as effective? Is it the fact that we've just got this internal tyrant inside of us, those that have high demands?

这是否源于对认可的渴求，或者说在自我宽容这件事上，还有更本质的原因在起作用？

Is it this required for validation, or is there is there something more fundamental happening when it comes to cutting ourselves some slack?

我觉得这些因素都有。就我个人观察，其中有个奇怪的现象是关于自我信任的——我总觉得自己能信任当下的判断，所以才要拼命努力，好让未来的我感激现在。我甚至有个理论雏形：我们不该对未来的自己太过仁慈。不过这个待会儿再说吧。

I mean, I think it's all of the above. I think one aspect of it that I notice in myself, and I think other people as well, is there's this very strange sort of issue with self trust. There's this very strange way in which I feel like I can trust myself in the moment, and that's why I have to do all this hard stuff to you know, so that future me will thank me. I have a whole sort of thesis brewing about how we should stop being so kind to our future selves. But comes to in a minute, maybe.

但是，就好像有一种担忧，如果我不专注于某件事，或者如果我现在让自己放松下来，一切可能会完全失控。六个月后，我可能会彻底忘记生活中所有的优先事项。这种想法助长了不给自己任何喘息机会的固执，也加剧了焦虑。对吧？

But but it's like there's some there's some kind of worry that if I didn't focus on something or if I let myself relax now, it might all completely unspool somehow. And, like, six months from now, I'd just have completely forgotten about all the all the my priorities in life. And it's and it's and that fuels the refusal to give yourself some slack. It also fuels just worry. Right?

如果你是个习惯性忧虑者，就像我曾经是、某种程度上现在依然是那样，在忧虑的机制中潜藏着一种想法：如果你不去担心，可能就永远记不起这件事了。没错，所以我甚至做过像在日历上设置两个月后的提醒这样荒谬又基本的事情，写着‘重新开始担心这个话题’之类的话。

If you're just a worrier, like I certainly have been and to some extent still am, in the mechanism of worrying about stuff is some notion that, like, if you didn't, you might never remember it again or something. Yep. So I have done literally things as absurd and basic as put a note in my calendar two months in the future to say, like, start worrying about this topic again.

哦，安排专门的忧虑时间现在可是新潮流。我有个朋友每周日固定留出三十分钟，那是他被允许忧虑的时间段。

Oh, scheduling worrying time is the new hot thing. One of my friend one of my friends schedule every Sunday for thirty minutes. That's when he's allowed to worry about

各种事情。嘿，我喜欢这主意，真的很喜欢。

stuff. Hey. I love it. I love it. So yeah.

是的，你设置这类缓冲机制后就可以说，好吧，我不需要担心自己会彻底忘记生活的这个方面——其实本来也不会，但那种严苛态度背后隐含的正是这种恐惧。这样我就能在那个话题上放松下来，继续做其他事情。我确实认为我们对自己有种奇怪的假设：如果我们给自己一寸空间，就会得寸进尺最终导致...

Yeah. You put these kind of buffers in and you say, well, okay. I don't need to worry that I'm gonna completely forget about this aspect of my life, which by the way, never was going to, but that is what is in implicit in that kind of hard, attitude. Then I can relax on that topic and, you know, get on with something else. It I do think there is this really odd notion we we often have about ourselves that if we if we gave ourselves an inch, we'd take a mile and it would all

一场

be a

灾难。仔细想想这很荒谬，因为此刻我信任自己能处理好事情，那么我难道不该假设几周后的自己基本同样可靠吗？

disaster, which is so strange when you think about it because right now, I trust myself to do stuff. So I can assume, can't I, that that me in a few weeks' time will be, basically as as capable.

是的。我从之前引用过的那个人那里偷来了一个非常精美的框架。他谈到人们如何为了变得富有而犯罪。他说，不要为了得到某样东西而牺牲你真正想要的东西。他指的是人们为了获得金钱而牺牲自由，以为有了足够的钱后就能拥有更多自由。

Yeah. I have this really beautiful frame I stole from the same guy I quoted earlier. He was talking about how people commit crimes in order to become wealthy. And he said, do not sacrifice the thing you want for the thing which is supposed to get it. And he was talking about how people sacrifice freedom in order to be able to achieve money so that they won't have when they have sufficient money, they can then have more freedom.

然后我意识到幸福和成功是个更好的例子。所以我偷了他的想法并加以改进。我说，我们追求成功的原因大概是希望当获得足够的成功后，最终能让自己快乐。但在追求成功的过程中，我们让自己变得痛苦。于是我们牺牲了真正想要的幸福，去换取本应带来幸福的东西——成功。

And I realized that happiness and success is a better example. So I took stole his idea and made it better, I think. And I said, we presume the reason that we chase success is that, hopefully, when we have sufficient success, we will finally allow ourselves to be happy. But in the process of becoming successful, we make ourselves miserable. So we sacrifice the thing we want, which is happiness, for the thing which is supposed to get the thing we want, which is success.

如果这是个联立方程——自从离开学校后这些知识就从我脑子里消失了——我确信你可以在等号两边同时消去。对吧？你可以直接去掉成功，最后剩下的可能就是幸福。我经常思考这个问题，真的经常在想。

And, if if this was some sort of simultaneous equation, which my has fallen out of my brain since I went to school, I'm I'm sure that you could cross off on both sides of the the equal sign. Right. You could just get rid of success, and you would probably be left with happiness somehow. And I I think about that all the time. I think about that all the time.

我们正在做什么？为了实现某个目标，我正在让自己承受哪些不必要的痛苦？而这些痛苦本可以避免。你说得对，这种恐惧在于：如果我松油门，会陷入什么样的禅意极乐状态？

What are we doing to what are the unnecessary miseries that I'm putting myself through in order to achieve a thing to create the state that I'm denying myself right now. And, you know, the you're right. This fear that, okay. Well, if I take my foot off the gas, then what sort of, you know, zen blissed out state will I be in?

确实。

And Right.

你知道，这有实际影响。人们仍然需要上班工作等等。但你真的觉得自己会因此不去工作吗？如果你的动力减弱但幸福感增加，你究竟失去了什么？

You know, there's practical implications. People need to still be able to turn up to work and do all the rest of this stuff. But, like, do you really think you're not gonna turn up to work? Like and if your drive diminishes but your happiness increases, what have you lost? Right.

归根结底，这关乎什么才是最重要的。你做这些是为了什么？是为了某种武断的进步和成功概念，还是为了内心的状态？这就是为什么节目里大家要生我的气——我以前不谈情绪，现在接受治疗后却满脑子都是情绪话题。

Like, what what is and it comes to a question of what what ultimately matters at the end of the day. Like, what are you doing this for? Are you doing this for some arbitrary sense of progress and and success, or are you doing this for the internal state? And this is why everyone's gonna get mad at me on the show because I didn't talk about emotions. Now I'm in therapy, and all I wanna do is talk about emotions.

但归根结底，是要找到一种让你感到快乐、内心平静的情绪状态。

But it it comes back to trying to find an emotional state that you're happy in, that you're peacefully.

对，对。是的。我总这么想：我们必须记住，如果一个人能完全快乐，比如靠极低的收入住在小木屋或店铺楼上的房间里——如果你在那样的处境中能完全快乐（虽然我做不到，不是说这不可能），但这可以作为一个基准线。

Right. Right. Yeah. I always the way I always think about it is, like, we have to keep in mind the fact that if one could be completely happy, you know, on an extremely low income living in a cabin or living in a room above a shop or something. If that if if you were completely happy in that situation, and I wouldn't be, so it's not I'm not saying it's, possible, but I'm saying just as a sort of a a baseline.

如果你能做到，那么这同样能解决当前的问题，对吧？就像，如果你无论身处何地都能快乐，那这本身就是应对整个困境的可行替代方案。带着这种认知，你就能找到方向——因为如果一个人没有达到某种精神觉悟的境界，大概就无法在那种境遇中获得快乐。

If you would be, then that would solve the same problem here. Right? Okay. Like, if if you could just be happy, no matter where you were, then that would be a completely viable alternative way of addressing this whole terrain. So with that in mind, you can then navigate because you because if one is not sort of completely spiritually enlightened person, then I guess you can't be happy in that circumstance.

你可以据此调整，比如：好吧，实际上这个选择在多大程度上能让我接近真正的快乐？瞧，我七岁的孩子正在背景音里证明我试图表达的——

You can navigate against that and be like, okay. Well, to what extent is this actually bringing me towards? What what will make me happy? Here, my seven year old in the background here proving a point I was trying

观点

to make

从

out of

必要性出发。

necessity so.

关于被打断和无法完成的情况

Of interruption and not being able to

我以为你喜欢那种——那是什么概念来着？是有用的打断还是愉快的打断之类的？那个术语怎么说？

I thought that enjoy your What's that what's that idea that you is it like a useful interruptions or enjoyable interruptions or something? What's that term?

我不清楚那个术语。我写过相关内容，目前正尝试更深入探讨。就是有个非常有趣的观点，我想，你知道的，成为...

I don't know about the term. I have written about this. I'm trying to write a bit more about it at the moment. Just this really interesting point that I I guess, you know, becoming a

高质量打断。就是这个，高质量打断。

High quality interruptions. That's it. High quality interruptions.

有意思。我不确定，可能不是我的说法。也许是吧。

Interesting. I don't know. I'm not sure that's mine. It is. Maybe it is.

就是你的。我要认领这个功劳

It is. I'll take credit

归我。

for it.

你从那里拿来的，与布鲁斯·蒂夫特有关。那是布鲁斯·蒂夫特的东西的下游。

You took it from, it was something to do with Bruce Tift. It was downstream from Bruce Tift's stuff.

不管怎样，拿着吧。

Anyway, take it.

拿着吧。这是一种习惯。

Take it. It's a it's a it's a habit.

我会拿着的。但布鲁斯·蒂夫特确实很出色，我可能从他那里学到了很多东西。希望我大多都归功于他了。我是说，当我采用那种非常控制导向的时间管理方法，试图精确安排每一天等等时，有一点让我印象深刻，虽然当时觉得这样做很好，似乎是专注于你想关注的事情的方式。但它做的一件事是，最终会把更多事情定义为干扰，而且当你被打断时，情况会比没有这种严格计划时更糟。

I'll take it. But I also Bruce Tift is brilliant, and I've probably taken many things from him. I hope I've attributed most of them. I mean, one thing that really struck me when I was going through my sort of very control oriented approach to time management and trying to sort of schedule the day exactly and all the rest of it, is that although this seems like a good thing to do at the time, it seems like it's the way to focus on what you want to focus on. One of the things it does is it ends up defining many more things as interruptions than otherwise might, and making it worse when you get interrupted than if you haven't had this very sort of rigid plan.

所以，你知道，我举的例子，有趣的是它随时可能发生，就是我不想——你知道，我有工作要做，有时这意味着我不能像没有工作时那样花时间陪儿子。但如果我有一个完成工作的系统，把它定义为一个重大问题。嗯。如果他放学回来进房间想告诉我他学校的一天，那我的计划系统就出问题了，对吧？如果——这不仅仅适用于父母。

So, you know, the the example I gave, and it's funny because it's like could happen any second now, is that I don't want to you know, I've got work I need to do and sometimes that means that I'm not spending time with my son as I might like to do if I didn't have the work, whatever. But if I have a system for getting through that work that defines it as a big problem Mhmm. If he comes into the room after he gets back from school and wants to tell me about his day at school, like, something's gone wrong with my with my planning system there. Right? If it's in and this doesn't only apply to parents.

这就像是，如果你的日程安排系统让干扰变得更痛苦，是的，那么它不一定是件好事。我还深受一本荷兰禅宗僧侣写的书《时间冲浪》的影响，他叫保罗·卢曼斯。我写过一些相关内容。他有一种非常直观的禅宗时间管理方法，基本上不制定和坚持计划。

This is like, if if your system for organizing your day makes it more likely that an interruption is painful Yes. Then then then it's not necessarily a good thing. Also really influenced by there's a great book by a Dutch Zen monk called Time Surfing, which I've he's called Paul Luhmans. And I've written a bit about this. Well, he's got a a lovely sort of zen approach to time management that basically is incredibly intuitive, very much based around not, sort of making and trying to stick to plans.

但他的一个建议是，他称之为‘随意来访’，而不是‘干扰’，涵盖了欢迎和接纳的范围。

But one of his piece of advice is to give what he calls them drop ins, not, interruptions, to sort of cover the gamut of welcoming and welcoming.

好吧，当分心发生时，你告诉自己什么样的故事呢？它会让你远离那些你认为应该做的事情。

Well, so much of this is what what is the story that you tell yourself when a distraction occurs that Right. You away from the thing that

对，

right,

你原本决定那是你应该做的事，同时你也在编造一个故事，解释这件并非你该做的事对你和你的日子意味着什么。这又是一个绝佳的例子——你可以用儿子来比喻。虽然我还没有儿子，但我住在公园附近。我的朋友们都知道我住哪儿。

you decided was the thing that you were supposed to do, and you're also deciding to tell yourself a story about what this thing that isn't the thing you were supposed to do means about you and about your day. And Right. Again, I'd like that's an awesome example to to you can use a son. I don't have a son yet, but I live near a park. My friends know where I live.

有时他们会敲门说：'嘿，我要带狗去公园散步。'如果我有个系统规定，当有狗的朋友提议进行十二分钟的散步时，我就该为此自责——

Sometimes they knock on my door and say, yo. I'm gonna take the dog for a walk on the park. If I have a system whereby one of my friends with a dog suggests a twelve minute walk and that is something I should castigate myself for

对。

Right.

那我的系统就有问题。问题不在我的朋友和他们的狗身上。

I have a problem with my system. The problem is not my friend and their dog.

这并不是说你一定要去遛狗。对吧？但如果这件事在情绪上造成的困扰超出了必要程度，那么这种困扰其实源自你自己。卢曼斯的观点是，一旦被打断——无论是否情愿，他认为这包括内心的干扰，比如突然冒出来让你分神的念头——你都应该在当时给予它们全部注意力。对吧？

Which is not the same as saying that you should definitely go on the dog walk. Right? But but but if you've caused that to be more disruptive on an emotional level than it than it needs to be, then then that sort of, yeah, comes from you. Lumens makes this argument that you should, once you have been interrupted, whether it's welcome or not, and I think he would probably include internal interruptions here, like, thoughts that occur to you that take you away from what you were focusing on, that you should give them your full attention at that point. Right?

他可能会喜欢，如果你——这一点千真万确。抱歉我又拿父母例子打比方。但当我全神贯注时被儿子打断，即便当时我理智上想说'不，我正在专注'而不想切换状态，最佳处理方式却是停下工作，注视他的眼睛进行交流。这样他会感到被重视，情绪得到疏导后自然就会离开。

He may like, if you and this is so true. I'm sorry. I won't keep coming back to the parent example. But, like, if if I'm really focused on something and I'm interrupted by my son, even if at that moment I really do want consciously to say, like, actually, no, I'm focusing on this now and not and not switch what I'm doing, the best way to do that is to stop, look him in the eyes, have a conversation, and then, you know, he feels seen that the moment has happened. It's been given its opportunity to sort of work itself through, and then he goes off.

如果采取相反态度粗暴拒绝，接下来反而会遭遇更多次的打扰

If you do the opposite and just like, no, leave me alone, then, like, you'll get interrupted 12 more

敷衍了事根本行不通。确实如此。

times. Dismissive thing is is not going to work. Yeah. Yeah.

我认为这套逻辑同样适用于情绪处理。当你对某事感到焦虑时，停下来理清思路，必要时采取行动，之后再回归工作，远比强行压抑情绪更有效。

And and I think that works also for, you know, a feeling. If you're feeling anxious about something, right, stopping and figuring that out and going through it in your mind and taking an action if necessary and then going back to your work is gonna be more effective than just trying to sort of keep it on the other side of the door.

我意识到马修所说的内在暴君——至少对我而言，可能很多听众也会有共鸣——源于对自身脆弱性的恐惧。我们总认为做事能力如履薄冰，必须依赖复杂的杠杆滑轮体系才能行动，这本质上是对原始能力的不自信。于是从'必须努力成就某事'扭曲成'必须承受苦难'，因为潜意识觉得成功必然伴随痛苦。最后甚至跳过努力环节直接进入自我折磨模式——就像我经营夜店时，

I realized that that internal tyrant that Matthew talks about, I think comes, at least for me, you might and lots of people listening, I think, might resonate with this. It's kind of like a a fear of fragility about ourselves that our ability to make things happen occurs on such a knife edge that we need this complex system of levers and pulleys and frameworks in order to get ourselves to do this thing because of what I think is a fundamental unconfidence in our ability to do things without that. And then that's how we get from I must work hard to achieve a thing to I must suffer because it's very you know, if you work super hard, you suffer. But then you bypass the working hard bit and just go to the suffering bit, is me running the nightclubs

正是如此。

Exactly.

明明活动爆满非常成功，却因没有受苦感而质疑成果。这种跳过中间环节的思维模式极其危险。说到底，这不过是某种情绪状态在作祟。

And being a super super successful event, and sold out, and everything was great. But I didn't feel like I suffered, so I I I I didn't think that it was success. And you you sort of bypass that middle section. And, it's a dangerous it's a dangerous, dangerous position to get into. And, again, how much of this is here is an emotional state that I feel.

我确实对未来有些恐惧。可能是我对当前参与的这个工作项目的结果感到不确定。好吧。如果你不那么担心自己完成这件事的能力，结果会怎样呢？是的。

It's I I have a little bit of fear about the future. Maybe I'm uncertain about what's gonna happen with this work project I'm on with. Well, okay. What would happen if you were less afraid about your capacity to complete this thing? Yeah.

因为恐惧确实是一种驱动力。你知道，像我这样在提交大学作业前通宵赶工的人都很清楚这一点。但考虑到我们现在有更长的周期来完成手头的事情，或许存在更轻松的达成方式。也许你可以顺流而下而非逆流而上。

Like, because fear is absolutely a motivator to do it. You know, everyone that, like me, handed in their university assessments, you know, on the morning having just pulled an all lie all nighter knows. Yeah. But, also, like, given that we now have much longer time horizons for the stuff that we're working on, like, maybe there's an easier way to get there. Maybe you can swim downstream as opposed to upstream.

不，我认为这个观点表述得非常到位。我们总以为需要这种驱动力才能成事，仿佛这是唯一的基础。这也让我联想到布鲁斯·蒂夫特提出的观点（虽然这其实是相当古老的精神分析理论）——很多人终其一生都认为某些情绪或经历一旦体验，就会以某种方式摧毁我们。

No. I think I think that's really well I think that's really well put. I think that idea that we that that we think we need all this driving, otherwise, that's the only, you know, that's the only base on which we could do it. It's related also to another idea that I do associate with Bruce Tift who we just mentioned that, although I guess it's quite a old psychoanalytic thought really. The idea that a lot of us go through life thinking that there are certain kinds of emotions or experiences that were we to experience them, it would sort of annihilate us in some way.

那感觉会比死亡更可怕。对某些人来说是屈辱，嗯。对另一些人则是失败或平庸，被抛弃，或者相反——被他人的情感需求淹没。你觉得那将是彻底的灾难，因此必须调动全部精力确保自己的工作和生活方式能避免这种情况。嗯。

It would be like a fate worse than death. So for some people, this is humiliation or Mhmm. Some people it's failure or just mediocrity, being abandoned, the opposite of being abandoned, being sort of emotionally overwhelmed by people. There's something that you feel like it will be a total catastrophe, and so you've got to direct all your energies to making sure that you work and live in a way that that doesn't happen. Mhmm.

当然，实际上它不会摧毁你。我们理智上都明白，没有哪种情绪感受能致命。英国精神分析学家唐纳德·温尼科特多年前就有个精彩洞见，他说：你恐惧的灾难早已发生。那些将生活构筑在'绝不能感受失败，否则会失去他人爱'这类信念上的人——

And of course, it wouldn't actually annihilate you. There aren't emotions you can feel that would kill you, we know that intellectually. And Donald Winnicott, the the English psychoanalyst from years ago, had this wonderful insight. This phrase said that that the catastrophe you fear will happen has already happened. And that, you know, people who structure their lives around the idea that they must not be allowed to feel failure because then people would withdraw love from them or something like that.

正是因为童年时就经历过这种创伤。

It's because that happened to them in their childhood.

确实如此。

Of course.

我是说，一方面，他们对此感到紧张是可以理解的，但另一方面，这也证明这并没有击垮他们。对吧？因为他们现在还在这里。所以我觉得这某种程度上既荒谬又有趣。

I mean, it's, so so on the one hand, understandable that they're on edge about it, but on the other hand, proves that it didn't kill them. Right? Because here they are. So I think there's a really sort of interesting this it it's so ridiculous in a way. Right?

如此脆弱或感觉如此脆弱，认为自己如此脆弱，而这种脆弱感往往与那些在公众场合并不显得脆弱的人相关联。看看他们——

To be so fragile or to feel so fragile, to think you're so fragile, and for that sense of fragility to be associated, I think, more often with people who, in their public bearings, are not, like, you know, vulnerable seeming Look at how

多么能干。他们把事情都办妥了，效率比十个普通人加起来还高。是的，我了解到——我一直对这个迷思相当着迷：生活的责任终有一天会了结，然后你才能开始做自己喜欢的事。

competent they are. They're getting things done. They're getting more done than 10 normal humans put together. Yeah. I I learned about I've been pretty obsessed with this myth that life's duties will one day be out of the way, and then you can kind of start doing the thing that you like.

我知道你也对此有些痴迷。你从玛丽-路易丝·冯·法兰兹那里得到了关于‘临时生活’这个概念。是的，有种奇怪的感觉，仿佛自己还未真正开始生活。目前在做这做那，但总幻想着真正的生活在未来某刻才会到来。

And I know you've been kind of obsessed with this too. You had this idea from, Marie Louise von Franz about the provisional life. Yeah. There is a strange feeling that one is not yet in real life. For the time being, one is doing this or that, but there is always the fantasy that sometime in the future, the real thing will come about.

我朋友格温达·博格尔有个不同版本的说法，叫‘延迟幸福综合征’。普遍感觉自己的生活尚未开始，当下只是通往某个理想未来的序曲。这个理想是海市蜃楼，接近时就会消散，揭示出你匆忙度过的序曲其实通向死亡。格温妮丝的说法既美妙又充满末日感。

One of my friends, Gwynda Bogle, has a different version for the same idea, which is deferred happiness syndrome. The common feeling that your life has not yet begun, that your present reality is a mere prelude to some idyllic future. This idyll is a mirage that'll fade as you approach, revealing that the prelude you rushed through was in fact the one to your death. Nice and nice and nice and apocalyptic from Gwyneth.

这说法既精彩又凄凉，我很喜欢。而且这又回到了之前的话题——这种心态受生命周期影响，不是吗？因为如果你18或22岁，觉得人生重大时刻还在未来，并非完全不理性。当然能活在当下最好，但年轻人展望未来并不荒谬。

That's brilliantly bleak. I love it. And that again as well is something that, just to return to an earlier topic, that's something that, is impacted by the life cycle, isn't it? Because it's not completely irrational if you're 18 or 22 to to feel that the big moments of your life might be in the future. Still great if you can understand that the present moment is where it's at, but it's not crazy for such a person to to look forward.

然后，等你到了像我这样的四十多岁，就很难再维持‘真正时刻即将到来’的想法了。这本质上就是中年危机的原始荣格定义——意识到那种生活重心（不是说成年初期以目标为导向、构建生活的方式是错的）但到了某个节点就不再适用，因为...

And then, you know, basically, you get into your forties like me, it it's a little bit hard to maintain this this thought that, like, it's gonna be the real moment is coming in the future. And that's what that basically is what the midlife crisis is, I think, in its original sort of Jungian form. It's this, like, understanding that that kind of focus not that it was wrong to spend the first part of adulthood in this sort of very goal oriented way and very sort of constructing a life kind of of way, if that's how you spent it. But but that it there's a point at which that stops being appropriate because

好吧，再次强调。对，让我们回归情感这个话题。你知道有什么成功途径能实现至少不会要了你命的生活吗？我曾有个关于残留模式偏见的想法。

Well, again Yeah. Yeah. Bring it let's bring it back to emotions. Like, what do you know is a successful route to achieving a life which has at least not killed you? I had this, idea of the vestigial pattern bias.

本质上，你刚开始从事现在所做之事时的行为方式，即便它们已不再有益，你仍会紧抓不放。举个典型例子：个体创业者起家时亲力亲为，发展到某个阶段就需要委派任务、放弃控制权。但他们在起步阶段正是靠这种方式取得成功——于是就越发顽固地坚持，尽管从零到五十的方法与从五十到六十、或九十到九十五的方法截然不同。

Basically, the things that you did when you started doing the thing you now do are the things you hold on to even after they've stopped serving you. So a good example would be the the classic, solopreneur starts a business, and after a while, solopreneur needs to delegate and and relinquish control. But they found success doing this thing in the start. I I I this is a thing. So they hold on to it tighter and tighter even though the tools that get you from naught to 50 are not the same ones that get you from 50 to 60 or from 90 to 95.

这种现象也被称为爱因斯坦效应或路径依赖。就像我们至今使用QWERTY键盘的缘由——（模仿语气）没错就是这样。

And, yeah, it's also called the Einstein effect. It's called path dependency. It's the same reason that we've got a QWERTY keyboard. You know? Like Yep.

我们在特定情境中形成的行事方式，当情境改变后却不愿调整策略。我认为这本质上是基于情感和恐惧的执念：改变令人害怕，而旧方法曾验证有效，所以死死抓住至少能避免毁灭。

We we do things in a situation. The situation changes, and we don't change our approach. And, largely, I think that is a, feelings based, fear based, emotional grip onto well, I this thing which is change is scary, and this thing has proven effectiveness previously. So I'm just gonna I I if I hold on to that, at least I won't be destroyed. And I think

完全正确。这总比死亡强。这个观点太真实了，让我想起...

that's Absolutely right. It's better than it's it's better than death. And, I think that's so true. It's reminding me it.

多棒的标语啊——'总比死了强'。

Such a good that would be such a good tagline. It's better than death.

这让我深刻联想到自己近年写作经历。从学校到大学，我们习惯了取悦他人、按时交作业、恪尽职守的模式。我把这套带入报社工作——那里永远有截稿期限，逼急了我也能硬撑。但随着连续出书，这种被迫硬撑越来越痛苦，直到最近写新书时彻底行不通了。

It's just reminding me of a really, I've been through some of this experience with my own writing over the last years. Right? Because I think when I you come up through school and university and you get very much into that kind of doing what you're pleasing people, submitting things, meeting deadlines, being dutiful, doing it diligently and on time. I carry that over into a job at at a newspaper at a newspaper where, again, there's deadlines all the time and I sort of really I could grind it out if I had to. And then as I've gone through writing successive books, I've gone through this experience where sort of grinding when you have to has become more and more unpleasant until somewhat in the last book, and certainly the thing I'm trying to write to the moment, it just literally stopped working.

对吧？就像，你知道的，虽然我不该这么说，因为可能会让我的编辑们不安，但确实有那么一刻你会觉得，哦，这样行不通了。是的，我得按自己想要的方式去写。

Right? It was just like, you know, and I shouldn't say this because I think it might unnerve my editors, but it but it is like there comes a point where it's just like, oh, that that just isn't gonna work anymore. Yeah. I'm gonna have to write this the way I want to write it and

以这种节奏。

At the pace.

出于热爱去做，全身心投入，事实上确实如此。如果因此与它所处的商业环境产生一些尴尬的问题，我也只能应对，因为这已不在我的掌控范围内。是的，某种程度上或许本应如此，但现实就是如此，只能依靠学生时代残留的那种处理方式。

Do it out of love, bring my whole self to it, and and actually, yes. Were that to cause some awkward problems with the process of, you know, the commercial situation which it's embedded, I would just sort of have to deal with them because it's not in my, gift anymore. Yes. Maybe it even should be on some level, but just factually, it isn't to draw on the remnants of this kind of student age approach.

这颗中子星，这颗垂死的中子星，它

This neutron this dying neutron star, which is

对，对。

Right. Right.

是的，向内坍缩了。

Yeah, collapsed in on itself.

某种程度上，我很感激它停止了运转而不是持续恶化，因为危机某种意义上是一份礼物。对吧？你会意识到，好吧，此刻我必须改变。否则，嗯。

In a way, I'm very grateful that it stopped working rather than just carried on getting worse and worse and worse because a crisis is a gift in a way. Right? You get to be like, okay. I have to change at this point. Otherwise Mhmm.

没有更多的书了。

There's no more books.

我在健身房遇到了完全对称的问题。我已经在健身房训练了十六、七年，花了大量时间在那里。我独自刻苦训练了十年多。最近两三年，我步入三十岁出头。

I have a exactly symmetrical problem with the gym. So I've trained in the gym for sixteen, seventeen years now. I've spent an awful lot of time in there. I have trained very hard on my own for a decade and a bit. And in the last three two or three years, I got towards sort of my early thirties.

我发现自己再也无法独自将状态推到理想水平。这很奇怪——以前从未有过这种问题，我总是充满动力起床去健身房。对我而言，外部责任机制特别有效，尤其是实体化的外部监督，而不仅仅是手机应用之类的。

I just couldn't really push myself to where I wanted to on my own anymore. And I was like, this is weird. I I've never had a problem with it before. I've always had motivation to go and get up and go to the gym. And, for me, one of the things that works very well is external accountability, physical external accountability, not just, you know, an app or something.

比如现场有个人。我那种害怕在社交场合出丑的强烈焦虑感，反而可以被转化为驱动力，促使我去完成那些想做但容易拖延的事。所以我请了教练，现在每周三次跟着私人教练训练，对健身的热情又重新燃起来了。

Like a person that's there. There's my, toe curling fear of looking silly socially can be weaponized against myself to get myself to do things that I kind of want to do, but I might put off if I don't. So I just got a coach. So I train Yeah. Three times a week with a PT, and my love for the gym has now reignited.

嗯，我在力量和所有其他目标方面都取得了惊人进步，而且完全不觉得费力。起床后，我和尼克在组间休息时聊天，他负责记录训练数据。

I'm Mhmm. Making fantastic gains in terms of strength and all of the other things I wanted to do, and it doesn't feel like a heavy lift at all to me. It feels like I I I get up. Me and Nick have a chat in between sets. He's logging stuff.

他会确保我按计划规范地完成训练。写作方面也是同理，我手头有个图书项目，解决方案是：我要找个写作伙伴。

He's making sure that I'm doing the things I said I was going to do appropriately. And that's the thing. And when it comes to, writing as well, I've got this book project that I'm working on too. And my solution for that is, alright. I'm gonna get a writing partner.

我打算付费请写作伙伴每天在Zoom上监督我写作，这样我就不能缺席。如果他们盯着文档看，我就没法偷懒——他们会问'你在干嘛？为什么不写？'这其实就是利用我性格里的某种特质，虽然这种特质可能某天也会消失。

I'm gonna pay a writing partner to sit on Zoom with me every day that I'm going to write, and I can't not turn up. And if they're looking at the document, I can't. They're like, what are doing? Why are you not writing in the document? It's just leveraging what you know, a particular pathology of mine, that again, that may that may evaporate.

对，是的。没错。没错。没错。所以好吧。

That Yeah. Right. Right. Right. So okay.

所以这是一种在当下这个特定时期非常特殊的燃料。以前我去健身房不需要它，但现在我需要。也许十年后这种燃料就用完了，我不能再使用它，那时我将需要另一种解决方案。

So this is a fuel which is very specific at this very particular part of time. I didn't need it previously to go to the gym, but I do need it now. And maybe that's going to be spent in ten years' time, and I can't use that fuel anymore, and I'll need another another solution.

没错。这一切都没关系，因为没有规则说你必须找出这种方法的工作原理，然后几十年如一日地坚持使用直到死去。对吧？我的意思是，你可以随时改变它，关键技能就像是驾驭你自己性格的变化并付诸行动。

Right. And all of this will be okay because there is no rule that says you've got to figure out the way that this works and then stick with that decade after decade until you die. Right? I mean, it's like you can you can change it whenever the the the meta skill is like surfing your own personality changes and and doing

那么，你试图在这里实现什么？我们试图实现的是结果，而不是过程。就像，专注的不是你如何做这件事，而是把这件事完成。

Well, what is it that you're trying what we're trying to achieve here? What we're trying to achieve is the outcome, not the process. Like, the the the the dedication is not to how you do the thing. It's to getting the thing done.

是的。而且我想说，还与做这件事的体验质量有关。是的。是的。这不是关于完成一个书籍项目后说，我是用这种方式完成的，或者我真的非常努力才写完这本书。

Yes. And also to something to do with the quality of experience of doing it, I'd want to say. Yes. Yes. It's not it's not it's not about getting to the end of a book project and saying, like, I did that in this way, or I really, really sweated blood to get this written.

对吧？作为一个作家，我仍然会遇到这个问题。对吧？我仍然会遇到这种情况，实际上你在某些糟糕的作家身上也能看到，他们非常不安地展示他们做了多少研究，试图让你放心，比如他们做了很多研究。我有时也会有点这样。

Right? And I I still run into this problem as a writer. Right? I still run into this thing where I and you see it in certain kinds of bad writer, actually, where they're really kind of insecurely displaying how much research they've done to try to reassure you that, like, they've done a lot of research. And I can still fall into this a little bit.

当我写上一本书《四千周》时，我早期有过这样一个时刻，当时我想，我觉得我没有足够好的长故事可讲，因为当代非虚构作品中有一种观念，你不能真正介绍一个想法，除非你讲了一个关于某人的一万字的故事。

When I was writing my last book, Four Thousand Weeks, I I went through this moment early on when I thought, like, I don't feel like I have enough good long stories to tell because there's an idea in contemporary nonfiction that you can't really introduce an idea unless you've told, a 10,000 word story about about somebody

温斯顿·丘吉尔对某某某的处理方式。

Winston Churchill's approach to blah blah blah.

没错。我当时只是...然后...是的。我被迫处于这种境地，因为我觉得自己并没有那些素材。我有很多小轶事，但没有这些大故事。我就想，你知道吗？

Right. And I was just and and yeah. And I was forced into this position because I didn't feel like I did have them. I had lots of little anecdotes, but I didn't have any of these big stories. I was just like, you know what?

我打算写下我认为真实的想法，看看会发生什么。当然，我认为，这本书之所以成功——如果它确实成功的话——正是因为这个原因，因为我实际上只是在写那些...

I'm just gonna say the things that I think are true in writing and see what happens. And, of course, that is that is, I think, it to the extent that the book did well, it did well for that reason, because I was actually just writing about the things that the people who

这本书取得了惊人的成功。对于那些没听过我们第一期节目的人，他们订阅《不完美主义者》后，还应该去读读《四千周》。

The book did fantastically well. And for the people that didn't listen to our first one, they should go and get after they've signed up to The Imperfectionist, they should also go and get four thousand weeks.

非常感谢。但我...我并不是想在这里硬塞广告。我是想说，关于事情该如何做的所有想法，对于目标读者来说完全无关紧要。是的。刚才说什么来着？

Thank you so much. But I thank you. But I I was really not trying to just to get a massive plug in here. I was trying to say that, you know, all these thoughts I had about how a thing should be done were completely irrelevant to, like, the people that it was for or Yes. What was that?

这完全是某种执念——如果我没花无数小时做某种实地采访的话。我觉得这是记者常陷入的误区。对吧？好像文章好坏的标准在于你是否看起来呕心沥血地完成它。纯粹胡扯。

It was all just kind of some notion that if I hadn't spent many, many, many hours doing a certain kind of shoe leather reporting. I think this is the thing journalists fall into. Right? It's like the mark of whether your piece is good is whether it looked like you really, really exhausted yourself putting it together. Absolute nonsense.

不。我是说，最棒的灵感往往来自淋浴时的灵光一现。我在英国的家里有支防水铅笔和便签纸，带吸盘可以贴在淋浴间，本来是写情书用的。

No. I mean, some of the best insights are shower thoughts. Right? You can buy I have in my house in The UK, a waterproof pencil and pad of paper that you can it's sort of got the suction cup, and you stick it on the on the shower thing. It's supposed to be for love notes.

这东西本意是让你和伴侣能在淋浴间互留可爱小纸条。可惜我在英国时和两个毛茸茸的混蛋同住，结果我们只互相写些恶毒话和刻薄评论。对吧。

It's supposed to be so that you and your partner can leave each other, like, cute cute notes in the shower. Sadly, when I was in The UK, was living with two other hairy butt assed folks. So we just write abuse abuse to each other and mean mean comments. Right.

不过嘛，这也算是一种独特的情感表达方式。

But, yeah own kind that's its own kind of affection.

确实。他们说得对。我们当时是恋爱关系，是三人行。现在回想那种无谓的折磨，真是耐人寻味。

That yeah. They're correct. We were in a relationship. It was a throuple. And, it was it's so interesting to think about that, like, unnecessary suffering again.

你看，我们总在自我鞭笞。就像我在烈日下抽打自己，边打边想：我为什么要做这种苦工？是为了侍奉上帝？还是为了所谓生产力或自虐？最近我反复研读你和奥兰多·巴顿的著作，这种对我们易错性的坦率承认——承认思想的混乱、事物的无常、今日信明日疑的认知局限——实在令人耳目一新。尤其难得的是，你们没有把这种不确定性美化成故作谦虚的炫耀。对吧。

You know, we just castigate ourselves. Here I am whipping myself in the hot sun as the you know, I'm why am I doing this work? It's in service of God, or it's in service of, like, the productivity or the suffering or something like that. And, again, to come back to, two people I've been reading an awful lot of recently, yourself and Orlando Baton, I think this a kind of frank acceptance of the fallibility of us, the messiness of our thoughts, the fact that things are fleeting, that we will believe one thing one day, that we're uncertain about stuff, it's it's so it is very refreshing, I think. It's very refreshing to hear someone not not pedestalize that uncertainty, as, like, a a humble brag, but Right.

只是如实描绘了人类体验的本质：混乱且充满未知。我们每个人都活在不确定中。或许世上真有笃定之人，但这类作品本就不是为他们准备的。对吧？

Just accurately depict the fact that this is the human experience, and the human experience is kind of messy, and we really, really don't know. All of us are kind of uncertain. And maybe there's not. Maybe there's some people out there that aren't uncertain, but this isn't for them. Right?

正是如此。

This is Right.

没错。作为写作者——或者说任何内容创作者——必须明白作品自有其受众，而非面向所有人。这不是教人甘于平庸或消极度日，更不是说'我们本该成就伟业，却只能当个神经质废物'。这个观点非常精辟，也至关重要。

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And that takes another thing as a writer, certainly, or is there any kind of, sort of content creator, I imagine, that you have to sort of be willing to say, like, this is for who it's for and, and not for other people. I think that, no, that's such a good point, and it's and it and it's really, important to say, I think, well, that none of that is a recipe for living a more mediocre life or just being passive or none of this is about saying, like, well, it would be nice if we could do great things, but instead we just have to be a bundle of of nerves.

以我有限的经验来看，这一整个过程——越来越直面现实真相的过程——正是通向做出那些表面上最令人印象深刻或生活中最有趣之事的路。或许并非人人如此，但对我而言，那种想要以有意义的方式高效行事的渴望，与直面缺陷和不完美的渴望之间，并不存在矛盾。

It's like all this process of in my limited experience anyway, all of this process of coming more and more to face the reality of how things are is the path to doing the most sort of outwardly impressive or, you know, interesting things that you can do in life. Maybe it's not true for everybody, but for me, there's no there's no contradiction between, like, that desire to be productive in some meaningful way and that desire to sort of face the flaws and imperfections.

是的。我想对我来说也是如此。你有句让我深有共鸣的话：'世上不乏对自己过度放纵、自怜和廉价宽恕的人。若不信，只需刷五分钟推特。但好消息是，如果你担心成为其中一员，那你基本注定不会。'

Yes. I think the same for me as well. You had this quote, which I fell in love with, that says, there are plenty of people who extend far too much indulgence, self pity, and cheap forgiveness to themselves. Just spend five minutes on Twitter if you don't agree. But the good news is that if you're worried about turning into one of them, it's pretty much guaranteed that you won't.

对。这就是你所说的。就像，看吧。是的。对于那些需要听这些话的人——他们可能本就不在我的受众中。

Right. And that's what you're talking about. It's like, look. Yeah. For the people who this is for, that there will be probably not in my audience.

他们是群过分理性、过度自省的人。但若有人偶然看到这个视频，他们会困惑：你们在说什么？什么意思？

They're like a, like, unreasonably reasonable, excessively introspective group of group of people. But if someone stumbles across this video, they're like, are talking about? Like, what do you mean?

没错。

Right.

比如对效率的痴迷。我不明白你的意思。我就是做事，事情自然发生——这样很好。但对于需要听的人，你无需担心成为没有这个问题的人，因为从定义上，你已自我筛选为会思考这个问题的人。

Like, obsession with productivity. I don't know what you mean. Like, I just do the thing the thing just happens, and more power to you. But for the people who it is for, yeah, you don't need to worry about being one of the people that doesn't have this problem because by definition, you have self selected to be the kind of person that thinks about it.

正是。顺便说，我认为这正体现了数字时代的美妙——我只有这份通讯和这些书，算是浅尝数字内容创作。但数量游戏很奇妙：要办成一份相当成功的通讯，真正拥有受众，我只需触及理论受众的极小部分。结果就是，全球喜欢这种思考方式的人自会找到我，找到你。

Yeah. Exactly. And just as an aside, I think this is something that's so wonderful about I mean, I've only I have this newsletter and obviously do these books. I don't I only sort of dip my toe in sort of digital content in a way, but but I it it it the the the numbers game is so wonderful, right, that I that I in order to have a fairly successful newsletter and to really feel like I've got an an audience, like, I need I can reach, like, in a miniscule percentage of the theoretical audience for something. And the result of that is that all the like, the people on the planet who are into this way of thinking find me, find you.

所以我总是收到人们发来的邮件说，这真的很奇怪，就像你住在我脑子里一样。你怎么能读懂我的想法？这让我很安心，好吧，我可以在这里写下我那些奇怪的困扰，因为世界上还有一些人有这些奇怪的困扰，互联网让我们找到了彼此，这就足够了。可能有数十亿人对我写的东西感到完全困惑，但，嗯，就是这样。

And so I'm always getting emails from people saying, like, it's really weird. It's like you live inside my head. Like, how do you read my mind? And I'm always reassured then, alright, I can just write about my weird hang ups here because there are, you know, there are some other people in the world with those weird hang ups and the internet means that we that we find each other, and then it's all you need. There may be presumably billions of people for whom, the things I'm writing are just completely bewildering, but like, Well, it's

你知道，我多年前有过这样的领悟。我以为我二十多岁时一直抑郁，但可能只是因为我睡眠紊乱和其他一些问题导致情绪低落。阿兰·德波顿在他的一个视频里说过，孤独是我们为某种复杂心智付出的代价。这让我想到人群的正态分布曲线，如果你更接近所谓‘正常人’分布的均值，就会有更多和你相似的人。

that's you know, I had, this insight. This is from years ago. I I thought I had depression throughout my twenties, and I think I just had a low mood because I was disrupted sleep pattern, a bunch of other stuff. And Alando Botton's got this line in a video of his where he says, loneliness is a kind of tax we have to pay to atone for a certain complexity of mind. And it made me think about the bell curve of people, and that if you're somewhere closer to the mean of whatever this normal distribution of normal people is, if you're somewhere in there, there will be more people like you.

当你开始向两端移动时，和你相似的人会越来越少。但这没关系，因为世界的规模和连接能力意味着，这仍然比你实际需要的多得多。是的。

And as you start to move out toward whatever the the tails are, there will be fewer people like you. Yeah. But that's okay. Like, that's that's that's still okay because the size of the world and the ability to access them means that that's still way more people than you're ever gonna need to be able to do. Yep.

而你的另一种选择是，与那些和你不同、兴趣不同、世界观不同的人勉强相处，或者真正与一个远超你所需的庞大群体建立联系。这就是为什么我经常被问到，对年轻播客主或刚开YouTube频道的人有什么建议。有种流传甚广的说法认为，你必须极度垂直细分领域，先统治一个小众市场再扩展。

And your alternative is to not fully connect with people who aren't you and who don't have the interests that you do and don't think about the world the way that you do Yeah. Or to truly connect with still way bigger of an audience than you need. And this is why I get a lot of questions about, what advice would you give to a young podcaster or someone that's starting a YouTube channel. And there's this, I'm sure you've seen it, kind of, lore, canon, folk wisdom that you need to niche down super hard and you dominate a niche. And then once

没错。

you've Right.

先在小众领域站稳脚跟，再向外扩展。我认为这完全是胡扯。首先，因为太多人相信这点，导致所谓的‘蓝海’现在反而是不细分。其次，每个人都是独特多样的。

Knitted the niche, you you broaden out from there. I I think it's fundamentally bullshit. First off, because so many people believe that, that the Blue Ocean is now not niching down. Right. And the second thing being that everybody is idiosyncratically varied.

每个人都同时喜欢匹克球、八十年代爵士乐、巴西柔术、肌肉车，还有二战纪录片，这些兴趣就像科学怪人一样拼接在一起。

Everyone is interested in pickleball and eighties jazz and Brazilian jujitsu and muscle cars and Right. Right. Got it's World War two documentaries, they've got this weird concatenation of just stuff. It's this Frankenstein's monster of interests.

对。

Right.

好吧。所以你不可能满足所有人的所有需求，但你可以为相当多的人提供相当多的价值。最重要的是，只要跟随你的直觉，事情总会变得有趣。你永远不会被束缚在任何框架里。这本来是个匹克球播客，现在你却

Okay. So you're not going to be everything for everyone, but you can be quite a good bit of stuff for quite a good bit of people. And the most important thing is if you just follow your instincts, it's always going to be interesting. You're never going to be held to any way. This is supposed to be a pickleball podcast, and now you're

聊起

talking

各种无关话题。最终，别人根本无法与你竞争，因为他们不了解你的直觉。对吧？他们能看到你在做什么，但不知道你为何这么做。所以，没错，所有这些方法都奏效了。

about whatever whatever. And and finally, it's going to be impossible for anyone to compete with because they don't know your instincts. Right? They can see what they're what you're doing, but they don't actually know why. And so, like, yeah, all of these things, it worked.

对我而言确实有效。

For me, it works.

是啊。不，不。我想换种说法就是，所谓的利基市场其实就是你自己。对吧？

Yeah. No. No. And I think maybe another way of saying that is that the, like, the niche is your yourself. Right?

你就是

You are

这个定位。对，我喜欢这个说法。你就是那个独特的定位。很酷。

the niche. Right. I like that. You are the niche. It's cool.

我怀疑这并非我原创的想法。但现在它已经是了

I suspect it's not original to what to my thing. It is now

拿那些梗图来说。奥利弗，拿那个

Take the memes. Oliver, take the

而且，当数字连接达到某种无摩擦的程度，让人们能轻易找到彼此时，你知道，你就可以做真实的自己，并确信会有那么一群人认同你。比如前几天我看到关于电子邮件通讯的建议，说内容不应超过特定字数，因为调查显示人们大概读完前100词就不看了，这让我特别恼火。当然，这完全是出于私心——毕竟我的文章都远超这个长度。但我想说，不。

And, yeah, at a certain point of frictionlessness in terms of digital connectivity allowing people to find each other, you know, yeah, you can just be yourself and and be confident that there's a bunch of other people. Like, I was reading some advice the other day about email newsletters that said that you shouldn't write beyond a certain word count because surveys show that people, like, stop reading after the first 100 words or something, and I just I got so angry about it. Obviously, totally self interested, at least. My things are longer than that. But it's like, no.

如果你想要150词、200词的邮件简报，而不是像我这种动辄千字左右的，那完全没问题。你该去订阅别的通讯。皆大欢喜。

If you want a 150 word, 200 word email newsletter instead of a sort of thousand ish word, which is what mine come out of, that's totally fine. You should be subscribing to a different email newsletter. Everyone's happy.

播客时长也是同理。我在开播前做了大量调研，得到的建议是不要超过45分钟，因为这是人们通勤的极限时长——他们希望出门时开始听，到公司前刚好听完。而我想说：不，绝不。

Same thing with podcast length. The advice I did a ton of research before I started the show. The advice is no longer than forty five minutes because forty five minutes is the bat max level of someone's commute, they and want to be able to start it as they're leaving the house, and they want to finish it before they get to work. I'm like, no. No.

我觉得40分钟根本不够。我做1小时10分钟的节目，这个时长感觉刚好适合收尾，因为这就是我的风格。这个数字本就很随意。而线下活动时长通常是两倍，大概两到两个半小时。

I just I forty it's not long enough. I do an hour and ten, and that feels like about the right time to bring it into land, because that's me. Like, that's just an arbitrary number. And in person, it's about double. It seems to be about two to two and a half hours.

那我就直入主题了。这就是我的风格，我的行事方式。没错。跟我聊聊你和BBC合作的这个项目吧。首先，你对我称赞你那本书的回应非常得体。

I bring that into land then. That's just me, and that's just my thing. Yep. Talk to me about this thing that you're doing with the BBC. First off, you're gracious in in pying off my compliment about your book.

但看起来，我猜，通过那本书你获得了超乎预期的定位影响力？因为山姆·哈里斯现在把你当作时间管理的禅宗导师引入他的应用，BBC也找你做这类内容。我觉得这像是反生产力运动的前沿——卡尔·纽波特算是其中一员，但他的新书《慢生产力》其实是在顺应这股潮流。

But it seems like, I'm gonna guess, you had an outsized impact in terms of positioning yourself from doing that book? Because Sam Harris has sort of brought you in now as as some Zen teacher of time management, to be used on his app. And BBC are now using you for for this sort of thing. And there's kind of this, I think, front end of the anti productivity productivity movement. Cal Newport's kind of been a part of that, but slow productivity, his new one, is very much sort of swimming in the wake of all of this.

所以，你和BBC的合作具体是什么？产生了怎样的连锁反应？《四千周》这本书的辐射范围有多广？

So, yeah, what what are you doing with the BBC thing? And what's the the fallout? What's the blast radius of four thousand weeks been like?

整个过程有种美妙的荒诞感，就像我们最初讨论的话题那样。这完全不是我能够控制的，也没有按任何计划发展。你只是——我想说——扩大了听到你声音的人群范围，然后发现这个圈子里有些特别有趣的人，或者拥有庞大受众的群体。是的，这确实非常奇妙。

It's been just so sort of weird in a brilliant way, but like it is so, you know, right back to the topics we began talking about. It is so nothing that I've been able to control or anything that has followed a plan. You are just sort of you just sort of increase the circumference of your of who's hearing your message, I guess. And then it sort of turns out that there are some really interesting and people on that circumference or people with big audiences and all the rest of it. So, yeah, it's been it's been quite strange, really.

为《觉醒》应用录制内容非常有趣，那种简短的音频谈话正是我钟爱的形式，对我来说再合适不过。恰好他们想拓展内容边界——我可不提供冥想指导，那完全不是我的专长——而是延伸到生活、时间管理、生产力和创造力等其他领域。

The stuff for the Waking Up app has been really fun to do because that sort of short audio talk is is just a form that I love. That's perfect, right, for for for me. And that just happened to coincide with their wanting to broaden out beyond I don't give meditation advice on the waking up app. I would not be the right person to do that at all. But to sort of broaden out to other kind of verticals about life and time and productivity and creativity and and all the rest of that stuff.

BBC的课程是为其Maestro平台制作的，你可以单独购买某门课或订阅全部内容，其中包括许多比我知名得多的人物。比如李·查德教授的惊悚小说写作课，我记得还有马可·皮埃尔·怀特的烹饪教程。说真的，平台上的名人阵容令人惊叹——然后还有我。

The BBC course is for a platform called BBC Maestro, which you can either buy individual courses on or or a subscription and then have access to to all of them, including some people vastly more high profile and famous than than me. There's a there's a course on thriller writing or fiction writing with Lee Child. There's I think there's a cookery thing involving Marco Pieroway, I think. I'm I don't wanna start telling you people who on this platform who aren't on it. But there's like a kind of extraordinary celebrity roster and then me as well.

那次经历同样充满乐趣，但形式完全不同，因为需要视频拍摄。我们在柴郡一栋极其豪华的宅邸里进行了几天多机位拍摄——这方面你肯定很熟悉

And that was that was again really fun. It was a different operation because obviously it's video as well. So we were in this extremely fancy property in Cheshire for a few days filming with multiple cameras. I know you know all about filming

制作水准很高。我喜欢。嘿，我觉得这很酷。如果你在——那个地方叫什么来着？就是那个超级富豪都去的地方？

High production value stuff. I like it. I'd hey, I I think it's cool. If you were what's that place? What's that super rich place that everyone go?

老利奇？是在那里吗？

Oldly Edge? Was it there that it was?

不。我在努力回忆具体位置，我觉得应该不是那里。不过我觉得那片区域本身未必特别奢华，但那个房产本身确实...嗯...就是事情发生的地方，看起来相当惊人。

No. Sort of I'm I'm trying to remember the location. I don't think it actually was. But I don't think the, I don't think the area it was in was necessarily, super fancy, but the just the property was Mhmm. Which is where it all happened was sort of, seemed quite amazing.

人们能学到什么？你们教的是什么课程？具体教学内容是什么？

What do people learn? What do you what is what is the what is the course? What are you teaching?

就是同样的内容。他们称之为时间管理，但实质是作为有限人类的时间管理。明白吗？核心是接纳自身局限，在时间框架内找到保持高效、创造力和理智的方法，而不是假装能完成所有事，最终把时间都浪费在疲于应付邮件上，反而没时间做真正重要的事。所以我试图...其实这也是我其他工作的核心理念。

It it it's this same material. They call it time management, but it's really time management as a finite human being. Right? It's really embracing your limitations and trying to sort of find a way to be productive and creative and sane in the context of time that doesn't involve pretending that it's possible to do absolutely everything, that doesn't therefore end up sort of, you know, eating up all your time trying to stay constantly on top of your email when you should be making real time for the things that that move the needle. So it's I'm trying to sort of I I mean, and this is what I do in other things as well.

对吧？我特别强调这种极度现实的认知：我们的时间有限，对时间及其流逝方式的掌控也有限。真正直面这点才是取得进展、战胜拖延、优先处理重要事项的途径，而非将其视为认输或不断追逐下一个目标。在课程设计上很有趣，我深刻意识到人们可能滥用这类课程来继续拖延——花时间设计完美的时间管理系统，而非真正行动。所以这几乎是门反其道而行的课程，旨在...

Right? I'm really trying to stress that this kind of hyper ultra sort of realistic approach to the fact that our time is limited and that our control over time and how it how it unfolds is limited as well. That really facing up to that is the path towards, you know, actually making progress on things, beating procrastination, making time first for the things that you actually wanna make progress on, rather than that it's some sort of admission of defeat and that you've got to keep chasing this next thing. So it's interesting in the context of a course, I'm really conscious of the fact that I think people can misuse these kinds of courses to kind of procrastinate some more, right, and design their perfect time management system when they should be doing stuff. So it's almost a course aimed at sort of getting people to

停止观看课程。

Stop watching the course.

没错。别再看课程了，去做点实事。你还太年轻，但我小时候有个电视节目叫《为什么不关掉电视机去做些不那么无聊的事呢》。基本上，这就是核心思想。对吧？

Yeah. Stop watching the course and go and do things. You're too young, but there was a TV show when I was a kid called Why Don't You Turn Off the Television Set and Go and Do Something Less Boring Instead. And it's basically, that's the that's the that's the idea. Right?

我们得把这些关于效率的内容拿来，然后某种程度上

We gotta take this productivity material and sort of

把它钉在十字架上烧掉

Crucify it and burn it on

利用它来引导人们，通过某种诱饵调包的手法促使他们真正行动起来。

the Use it to cause people to do a sort of bait and switch to get people to actually do things.

是的。我有几个做网络营销的朋友有个口号，他们说，卖给人们他们想要的，教给他们他们需要的。这样你就能吸引他们进来。从道德上讲完全没问题，先让人以为他们会学到时间管理，然后把他们赶出门说，好了。

Yeah. A couple of friends in Internet marketing have a tagline where they say, sell people what they want, teach them what they need. Right. So you can bring them in. It's perfectly ethical to bring somebody into the door thinking that they're going to learn to do time management, and then kick them out of the building saying, right.

现在就去生活吧。别再他妈的总担心你花了多少时间

Now just go go and live life. Stop stop worrying about how much fucking time you're

关键在于，从最高意义上来说，这才是好的时间管理

point is that will be good time management in the highest sense

同样如此。就在这儿。女士们先生们，这位是奥利弗·伯克曼。奥利弗，我十分欣赏你的作品，热爱你的文字。

as well. There it is. Oliver Berkman, ladies and gentlemen. Oliver, I adore your work. I adore your writing.

我喜欢你的能量。大家该去哪里关注你呢？想随时了解你所有的动态吗？

I love your energy. Where should people go? Do wanna keep up to date with all the things you're doing?

只需访问oliverberkman.com，那里有关于我的书籍信息和订阅新闻通讯的入口。那确实是主要渠道。

Just oliverberkman.com is where stuff about my books and where to sign up for the newsletter. That's that's the main place, really.

太棒了。我很感激你。谢谢你，伙计。

Hell, yeah. I appreciate you. Thank you, mate.

非常感谢。这是我的荣幸。

Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.

当我刚开始接触个人成长领域时，我真心想阅读最优秀的书籍——那些最具影响力、最引人入胜、最易读却又内容充实有趣的著作。但当时并没有现成的书单。于是我不断搜寻、搜寻、再搜寻，最终放弃并开始自行阅读。后来我整理出一份包含100本我所发现的最佳书籍清单，你现在就能免费获取。如果你想多花时间阅读那些不会让你记忆力和注意力崩溃的好书，请访问chriswillx.com/books免费领取这份'人生必读100本书'清单。

When I first started doing personal growth, I really wanted to read the best books, the most impactful ones, the most entertaining ones, the ones that were the easiest to read and the most dense and interesting. But there wasn't a list of them. So I scoured and scoured and scoured and then gave up and just started reading on my own. And then I made a list of 100 of the best books that I've ever found, and you can get that for free right now. So if you want to spend more time around great books that aren't going to completely kill your memory and your attention just trying to get through a single page, go to chriswillx.com/books to get my list completely free of 100 books you should read before you die.

网址是Chris Will x dot com斜杠books。

That's Chris Will x dot com slash books.