#885 - 亚当·格兰特 - 如何克服对失败的恐惧并释放你的潜能

看似天赋的差异，往往实则是机遇与动力的差别。这句话是什么意思？

What look like differences in natural ability are often differences in opportunity and motivation. What does that mean?

嗯，这句话确实出自我手笔，我也深信不疑。当我们回顾那些伟大天才的历史时，往往只看到他们巅峰时刻的表现，就误以为他们天生如此。对吧？斯蒂芬·库里仿佛生来就能投进三分球，莫扎特似乎天生就是音乐神童。

Well, I I did write that, and I think I believe it. So if you look at if you look at the the history of, you know, of great talent, we tend to see people at their peak, and we assume that they were just naturals. Right? Steph Curry could always drain three pointers. Mozart was, you know, a natural musician.

某些案例中，若追溯其成长轨迹，这些人确实是少年天才。莫扎特就是个典型例子。但每出现一个莫扎特，就有多个像巴赫、贝多芬这样大器晚成的例子——他们需要漫长岁月才能崭露头角。真正让我醍醐灌顶的是本杰明·布鲁姆的研究，他调查了世界级运动员、音乐家、科学家和艺术家，追溯他们的童年经历，试图验证这些人是否从出生就具备超凡天赋。

And in some cases, if you trace back, these people were child prodigies. And Mozart, I think, a great example. But for every Mozart, it turns out that there are multiple Bachs and Beethovens who actually bloomed late and took a long time to improve. And I guess the the study that really open opened my eyes to this was Benjamin Bloom looked at world class athletes, musicians, scientists, artists. And he went back to their their childhoods and wanted to know, were they were they innately just brilliant at these skills from day one?

而研究结果惊人地一致：并非如此。这些人的启蒙老师、教练甚至父母，最初都未能预见他们未来的成就。他们脱颖而出的原因并非天赋异禀，而是异乎寻常的热情——对学习发自内心的热爱。

And the consistent answer was no. That very often, their early teachers and coaches, even their own parents, had no idea how great they were gonna become. And when they did stand out, it wasn't for natural ability. It was because they were unusually passionate. They loved to learn.

更重要的是，他们早期就获得了大量练习机会。这让我意识到：我们常常高估原始天赋的重要性，却低估了创造机遇的价值——既要为人们打开机会之门，也要让他们有机会展现自己的热忱。

And they had early opportunities to get lots of practice in. And I think what that suggests to me is that sometimes we overestimate the importance of raw talent, and we underestimate the the importance of of creating opportunities that open doors for people, and then giving them a chance to to actually showcase their enthusiasm.

那么动力从何而来？在这个语境下，它的源泉是什么？

What about motivation? Where does that where does that come from in in this context?

根据布鲁姆的研究，绝大多数世界级表演者早期都遇到过让学习充满乐趣的导师。这对多数人来说实属难得——想想音乐生练音阶、运动员做基础训练，通常枯燥乏味。但当这些本该消磨兴趣的枯燥练习变得引人入胜时...

I think in a lot of the cases, if you look at the Bloom study at least, the the world class performers tended to have an early teacher or coach who made learning fun. And I think that's that's not common for a lot of us. Right? Like, learning to do scales if you're a musician, doing drills if you're an athlete, it can be a slog. And the idea that this this boring task that that might just lose your interest or might exhaust you, could actually be exciting, it draws you in.

就会激发持续学习的渴望。这种正向循环会自我强化——毕竟，没人会喜欢自己总做不好的事。随着技能精进，动力自然水涨船高。

And it makes you wanna keep learning. And and over time, that becomes self reinforcing because after all, it's hard to like something that you that you just suck at. Right? As you as you gain skill and build up mastery, that's when your motivation begins to really soar.

确实。当任何活动被简化为待办清单上的任务时，就离苦差事不远了，听起来毫无乐趣可言。

Yeah. When you turn any task into or any, I guess, activity into a task that needs to be ticked off, it sort of takes one step toward drudgery, which just doesn't sound fun.

说得好。

Well put.

我在想，人们是否会不习惯将动机视为几乎是由环境赋予的东西，因为在这个高度自主、精英主义的世界里，人们总认为‘我能自己闯出一片天’。但另一方面，机会与动机的差异确实存在，而合适的机遇往往也能激发动机。这很大程度上也超出了我们的掌控。

I think I wonder whether people will be uncomfortable to think about motivation as something that's almost bestowed on them by the environment because, you know, highly agentic, meritocratic world. I can make my own way. I can do yes. But as the other part of it, differences in opportunity and motivation, and it seems like motivation can quite often be brought about by the right opportunity too. It's very much out of our hands also.

我认为这既是坏消息也是好消息。你说得对——坏消息是这会让你觉得动机有点不受自己控制，而好消息是动机具有可塑性。如果第一天你内心找不到它，外部因素其实可以点燃或激发它。

I think that's bad news and good news. I think you're right. The bad news is it makes it feel like your motivation is a little bit out of your control. The good news is that motivation is malleable. And if you don't find it on day one from within, it can actually be sparked or stimulated from the outside.

我认为优秀教练或老师的价值在于帮你发现自己的动机。我有切身体会：小时候热爱运动，可惜在我热衷的项目上毫无天赋。我喜欢投篮，

And I think what a great coach or teacher does is they help you find your own motivation. So I've I've lived this personally. I loved sports when I was a kid. And unfortunately, I wasn't any good at all the ones that I I became passionate about. I love shooting hoops.

却在六年级、七年级和八年级连续被初中篮球队淘汰。我也痴迷足球（你们可能叫它soccer），但九年级校队选拔又失败了。最后尝试的项目是跳板跳水——那个夏天，妈妈硬拉我去社区泳池，遇到一位曾获州冠军的救生员，

I got cut from middle school basketball team in sixth grade, seventh grade, and eighth grade. I was I was a big fan of of playing soccer or what you probably call football. Did not make my ninth grade team. And the basically, the last sport that I I thought to try was springboard diving. That summer, my mom dragged me to a local pool, and there was a a lifeguard who was an all state diver.

他休息时做着空翻转体的动作，我看得入迷，想学。但跳水对我并不容易——首任教练给我起外号‘科学怪人’，因为我僵硬到不弯膝盖就摸不到脚趾，

And he was doing flips and twists on his break. And I watched him, and I was mesmerized. I wanted to learn how to do it. But diving did not come naturally to me. I I actually was nicknamed by my first coach Frankenstein, because I was so so stiff that I couldn't even I couldn't touch my toes without bending my knees.

走路姿势也像怪物。我弹跳力差、动作笨拙、爆发力弱——这些本都是跳水忌讳的。初次选拔时教练问：‘想先听好消息还是坏消息？’我选了坏消息，

And I I actually walked like Frankenstein. And I didn't jump very high, and I was not graceful at all, and I didn't have much explosive power. All the things that you want in diving. I go to my first tryout, and the coach says, do you want the the good news or the bad news? And I say, definitely the bad news.

他说他祖父母都能跳得比我高，我缺乏跳水选手应有的柔韧性、爆发力和优雅。我问好消息呢？他说：‘跳水是书呆子的运动，’

And he tells me that his grandmother and his grandfather can both out jump me. That, you know, I don't have the flexibility or explosive power or grace that you look for in a typical diver. I'm like, is there good news? And he says, yes. You know, diving is a nerd sport.

专收打篮球太矮、跑田径太慢、踢足球太弱的人。‘如果全心投入，高中毕业时你会成为州冠军级选手。’这句话点燃了我——这位培养过奥运选手的教练，竟比我更相信自己的潜力。

It attracted all the people who are too short for basketball, and too slow for track, and too weak for football. If you wanna be good at this, if you pour yourself into this, then I think by the time you graduate from high school, you're going to be an all state diver. And that just lit a fire in me. Right? The idea that this coach who had actually trained an Olympian by that point, saw more potential in me than I saw in myself.

这驱使我不断进步。每次落水后埃里克会评价：‘亚当，刚才很糟。’‘多糟？’‘三分，三分半。’我们就讨论如何达到四分、四分半。

It made me wanna get better. And every time I hit the water, and Eric gave me, he'd be like, Adam, that was bad. How bad? And he'd say, I'd give that a three, three and a half. We talk about, how can I get a four, and how can I get a four and a half?

这让我越学越兴奋。最终我在高三（而非毕业年）闯入州决赛，毕业时竟成为两届青少年奥运全国选拔赛选手，入选全美榜单，获得NCAA一级联赛招募——这本不是我该有的成就。但若没有埃里克当初那句‘亚当，你现在不行，但我相信你明天会更好’，这一切都不会发生。

And that just made me more and more excited to learn. And I ended up making the state finals, not my senior year, but my junior year. And and by that point, when I graduated from high school, I I couldn't believe it. I was a a two stun a two time Junior Olympic National Qualifier. And I made the all American list, and I was being recruited to dive at the NCAA division one level, which I had no business doing, but none of it would have would have ever happened if Eric Bess didn't look at me and say, Adam, you're not any good today, but I I believe you can be much better tomorrow.

这很迷人。有人相信你的潜力比你自认的更大，这个想法本身就很美。无论是朋友、伴侣还是教练，拥有这样的信念都极其美好。我在思考'潜力'这个有趣的概念——当我们说某人'发挥潜力'时，到底指什么？这其实是个相当主观的判断。

It's fascinating. The the idea of somebody who believes that your potential is greater than you do. You know, it's such a beautiful idea to have for for a friend, for a partner, for a coach. Just I'm thinking about potential as an interesting concept because what do we mean when we talk about somebody fulfilling their potential? You know, it's this it's kind of arbitrary.

对吧？你根本不知道自己的潜力上限。如果我们假设人们只能达到现有水平，无法更进一步——毕竟我们无法对人生进行A/B测试，重来一次更努力或换个教练——那么所谓'发挥潜力'，其实每个人最终都已然发挥了自己的全部潜力。

Right? You don't know what your potential is. And if you assume that people get as good as they're going to get and they don't get any better than they're going to get, given that we don't get to split test the world and run it back and try harder or do more or start with a different coach or do whatever. The idea of fulfilling potential. Everybody ultimately does fulfill their potential.

问题在于：是否存在尚未被发掘的潜在潜力？

It's is there more potential potential that could have been fulfilled?

潜在潜力。克里斯，我太爱这个概念了。很多人会因此感到压力或懊悔，想着'我没有发挥全部潜力'，却忘了潜力本就不是固定值。

Potential potential. I love this idea, Chris. I think, a lot of people, I think, experience they feel pressure around this, or regret, or both. Like, I'm not living up to my potential. And what they forget is that potential is not fixed.

对吧？你的能力下限由现有技能决定，而上限并非铁板一块。它会随着技能提升、动机转变和机遇出现而不断变化。

Right? Yeah. You you have a floor that's determined by your current level of skill. And you have a ceiling, but that ceiling is not set in stone. It's dependent on changes in your skill, and shifts in your motivation, and the opportunities that are put in front of you.

我作为跳水运动员的感悟适用于所有人：我们都拥有隐性潜力——这种成长能力可能连你自己和周围人都尚未察觉。现实中，我们总是遇到两种人：攻击你最差一面的批评者，或只为你最好一面喝彩的啦啦队。

And I think what what's striking to me is that what I lived as a diver is true for all of us. We all have hidden potential, which is a capacity for growth that might be invisible to you. And it might also be invisible to some of the people around you. And you just haven't recognized it yet. And I think that, you know, so many of us, we confront people who are critics, who basically attack the worst version of ourselves, or cheerleaders who applaud the best version of ourselves.

而我们真正需要的，是那些能发现隐性潜力并助我们蜕变的教练。所以关键不在于'我是否发挥了潜力'，而在于'我的隐性潜力是什么，如何实现它'？

And what we want are those coaches who see our hidden potential and help us become a better version of ourselves. And so I think the question is less, am I living up to my potential? And more, what is my hidden potential, and how do I realize it?

赞美与批评的对比很有意思。我自认是'批评过敏者'——比起众多喜爱我作品的人，我更重视批评者的意见。长期如此会导致你更在意那些并非真心为你好的人，冷静想想这实在糟糕，简直是糟糕的策略。

Yeah. The compliments versus criticisms thing is super interesting to me. I think I would identify myself as a criticism hyper responder that I weight the value of somebody who doesn't like my work significantly higher than a lot of people who do like my work. And over time, that can cause you to, take more heed from people who don't have your best interests at heart as opposed to the ones that do, which, you know, in the cold, harsh light of day, unemotionally, is awful. Like, it's it's it's a poor strategy.

对吧？坦白说这绝非最优解。但反过来说，若有人只听得进赞美，就永远无法准确评估自己的真实水平。

Right? Like, let's face it. That's that's not optimal. But there is there is something about that. And then I guess on the other side, somebody who somebody who is takes too much heed from the compliments is never going to have an accurate assessment of where their competence level is at.

他们不会去改进真正需要加强的基础，不愿回归初心反思失败原因。'我很棒啊从不出错，为什么倒霉的总是我？这不公平'——这种受害者心态往往由此而生。

They're not going to work on the things that they need to, perhaps the basics, perhaps going back to the start, perhaps realizing why it is that they're failing. I'm great. I've never encountered any problems. Why why does this keep on happening to me? This is unfair, and maybe that's where a victim mindset comes from.

我不确定。

I'm not sure.

是的。我认为这是对的。我觉得你在谈论成为批评瘾者的危害时对自己有点太苛刻了，我想这很符合你的风格对吧？我甚至要批评自己太过——

Yeah. I think that's right. I think you're being a little too hard on yourself when you talk about the the perils of being a criticism junkie, which I guess it's it's on brand. Right? I I'm even gonna criticize myself for the fact that I'm too

沉迷于批评。对，没错。

obsessed criticism. Yep. Correct.

所以你是医生。渗透得很深。渗透得很深。嗯，我理解，但我想稍微辩护一下。我想到了艾莱特·菲施巴赫的一些研究，她发现新手更容易被赞美吸引和激励，因为他们需要相信自己有能力进步。

So you're a medic. Permeates deeps. Permeates deep. Well, I get it, but I I wanna defend it a little bit. I'm thinking about some research that Eilette Fischbach did, where she finds that novices are more drawn to and motivated by praise Because they need to believe that they're capable of getting better.

否则，对某事不擅长只会让人太沮丧。但专家更感兴趣的是批评。比如，好吧，我不需要别人来说服我我能做好。我只想知道如何能做得更好。所以我认为，这标志着一个人真正渴望掌握一门技艺。

Otherwise, it's just too discouraging to be bad at something. But that experts are more interested in criticism. Like, okay, I don't need somebody to convince me that I can be good. I just wanna know how I can get better. And so I think that, you know, that that is a mark of of being somebody who's truly driven to master a craft.

我觉得你可能陷入麻烦的地方，根据我所听到的，是你没有过滤掉。让我退一步说，不是所有的批评者都在真正地批判性思考。也不是所有的批评者都在建设性地发言。所以需要有一个精细的过滤器，就像你说的，这个人是否真心为我好？赞同。

I think where maybe you get yourself in trouble from what I'm hearing is you're not filtering out. Well, let me back up a step and say, not all critics are actually thinking critically. And not all critics are speaking constructively. So there needs to be a finely tuned filter around, you said, does this person have my best interest at heart? Endorse.

我完全同意这一点。我还想问，这个人对你想要提升的领域有可信的知识吗？他们对你本人有可信的了解吗？因为一个不了解你的世界或潜力的人，不是判断你需要改进什么的合适人选。

I agree wholeheartedly with that. I also wanna ask, does this person have credible knowledge about the domain you're trying to improve in? And do they have credible knowledge about you? Because somebody who doesn't know your world or doesn't know your potential is not a good judge of of what you need to work on.

是的。是的。你认为大多数人没有意识到意义的来源是什么？因为我们在这里谈论的似乎是这种更宏大的目标感，某种推动我们向前的东西。它在我们的信念和周围的人中是结构性的，但也有点超越性。

Yeah. Yeah. What do what do you think most people don't realize about where meaning comes from? Because it seems here like we're talking about this sort of grander sense of purpose, something that pulls us forward. It's kind of structural in the beliefs that we have and the people that are around us, but it's also a little bit more transcendent.

它有点超然。所以从科学的角度来看，当涉及到表现和潜力时，人们对意义的理解遗漏了什么？

It's kind of out there. So from a scientific perspective, when it comes to performance and potential, what do people miss about meaning?

我认为意义最终是关于重要性。是关于知道你被他人重视，并且你有价值可以给予他人。我想在很多情况下，这相当抽象，人们并不真正知道，好吧，我的贡献是什么？为什么人们欣赏我？所以我早期职业生涯研究过这个。

I think that meaning is is ultimately about mattering. It's about knowing that you're valued by others, and you have value to add to others. And I think in a lot of cases, it's pretty abstract, and people don't really know, okay, what is my contribution? Why do people appreciate me? So I studied this early in my career.

我当时在密歇根大学研究筹款呼叫员。他们基本上就是给校友打电话，试图说服他们捐款。这是一份艰难且压力巨大的工作。你在打扰别人的晚餐，他们会冲你吼叫，说‘我已经给这所学校捐过款了，那叫学费’。

I was studying fundraising callers at the University of Michigan. And they were basically calling alumni and trying to convince them to make donations. And it was a hard stressful job. You're interrupting somebody's dinner, they yell at you, they're like, I already donated to this school. It's called my tuition.

为什么还要问我要更多？我去那里试图激励这些呼叫员，当我看到墙上某位呼叫员贴的标语时，真是哭笑不得。上面写着：在这里做好工作就像穿着深色西装尿裤子——你会感到一阵暖意，但没人注意到。这简直是对意义感的彻底质疑。

Why are you asking me for more? And I went in to try to motivate these callers, and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I saw this sign on the wall that one of the callers had posted. It said, doing a good job here is like wetting your pants in a dark suit. You get a warm feeling, but no one else notices. I mean, talk about a crisis of meaning.

于是我设计了一个简单实验，只需五分钟。随机安排部分呼叫员进行五分钟的互动。一个月后，普通呼叫员每周通话时长增加了142%，每周筹款金额提升了171%。

Yeah. So I designed a simple experiment. It takes five minutes. Some of the callers are randomly assigned to a five minute interaction. A month later, the average caller is spending a 142% more time on the phone per week, and bringing in a 171% more weekly revenue.

具体来说，经过五分钟互动后一个月，普通呼叫员的每周通话时间翻倍有余，每周筹款金额几乎增长三倍。这五分钟发生了什么？我只是请来一位奖学金学生说：因为你们筹集的资金，我才能负担学业。他讲述了这如何改变他的人生，以及他如何努力回馈社会。突然间，这份工作的意义就改变了。

So to to make that more concrete, a month later after a five minute interaction, the average caller has more than doubled in weekly phone time and nearly tripled in weekly revenue. What happened in that five minute interaction? All I did was bring in one scholarship student who said, because of the money you raise, I am able to afford school. And here's how it's changed my life, and here's how I'm trying to pay it forward. And all of a sudden, the meaning of the work changes.

这份工作不再是骚扰别人、破坏他们夜晚的苦差，而是帮助学生获得教育机会的事业。我认为这是我们都可以更多实践的。对吧？在工作中很容易忽视自己的影响力。

This job is not a job where I'm harassing people and ruining their night. It's a job where I'm enabling students to go to school. And I think that this is something we could probably all do more of. Right? I think it's easy in a job to lose sight of what your impact is.

值得自问：如果我的工作不存在，如果我不做这件事，谁会过得更好？而那些浮现在你脑海中的人，正是让你工作有意义的存在。他们是你在工作中获得意义的源泉。这适用于任何角色。

It's worth asking, you know, if my work didn't exist, if I weren't doing this job, who would be worse off? And the people who come to mind, they are the ones who make your work matter. They're the reason that you have meaning in your job. And you could apply this to any role. Right?

作为父母可以这样问，作为社区成员、家人或朋友也可以这样问：如果我不扮演这个角色，谁会因此受损？意义正源于此。

You could ask that question as a parent. You could ask that question as a community member or a family or a friend. Right? Who would be worse off if I weren't playing this role? That's where meaning comes from.

我在想，在这个充斥着数据看板、分析和量化KPI的世界里，这种源自意义感的激励因素是否被大量忽视了。

I wonder if in the world of dashboards and analytics and quantified KPIs, I wonder if much of this particular motivating factor coming from meaning is being missed.

确实如此。后续实验发现，请来九位奖学金学生反而无效——很快他们不再是故事，而成了统计数字。你说中了要害：当我们越是试图量化‘这些是你需要达成的指标’，就越容易迷失‘我为何要做这份工作’的初心。

I think it is. And one of the things that I I found in some follow-up experiments was it didn't help to bring in nine scholarship students. And pretty soon, they were no longer stories. They were statistics. And I think you're onto something there that the more that we try to quantify, here are all the metrics we need you to hit, the more you lose sight of, well, is why I'm doing this work.

要知道，即便没有改变他人人生，至少也在以某种方式影响着他们的生活。

And you know, here's here's the way that it might be, if not changing other people's lives, at least affecting their lives.

我们在网站上设了一个接收公开邮件的联系表单。我对此有种直觉——虽然数据指标之类的东西很重要，但我更想真正与收听节目并发送暖心邮件的听众建立联系。所以我让同事打印了过去几个月里的大约30封邮件（他挑选了一部分），我在床上细细品读了这些来信。

We we have, like, an an inbound open email contact form on the website. And, I kind of had an intuition about this that, you know, numbers and stuff are all great, but I really wanted to try and connect with people that listen to the show and sent nice things in. So I got one of the guys to put a print off, like, 30 emails or something from the last few months. Just he chose some of them. And, he printed them off, and I got to read them in bed.

这么做感觉太奇妙了，比起冷冰冰地看着'数据曲线往右上角爬升'，这些信件明显更能触动心弦、激发动力、赋予意义。

And, that was that was wild to do that, you know, significantly more impactful and and heartfelt and motivating and meaning generating than going, oh, line go up into the right.

我认为这应该是我们共同培养的习惯。问题在于频率——关于随机善举和感恩清单的研究表明，每日实践的效果反而不如每周进行。

I I think that's a practice that we should all adopt. And one of the questions is how often should you do it? There's there's some research on on doing random acts of kindness and also gratitude lists, which suggests that daily is less effective than weekly.

哇，为什么会这样呢？

Wow. Why would that be the case?

我觉得原因是：如果变成日常任务，就会逐渐流于形式。而且很难每天都能找到让你心头一震的案例。比如写感恩清单时你可能会敷衍：'感谢我的麦克风...嗯...感谢我的耳机'。

So I think what's going on is that if you start to do it daily, it it becomes a little bit mundane and routine. And also it's hard to find those examples that stop you in your tracks. So you're doing your gratitude list and you're like, I'm grateful for my microphone. Mhmm. Mhmm.

但每周记录时，你已经积累了...

I'm grateful for my earbuds. Right? Whereas you do it weekly and you've accumulated

攒了些真材实料。

You've got some shit.

没错。这时你才有真正值得纪念的内容。随机善举也是同理——每天帮一个人感觉杯水车薪，但如果把周四定为'慷慨日'并决定帮助五个人...

Yeah. You've got something worthwhile to, you know, to really mark the moment. And I I think with random acts of kindness, it's similar. You help one person a day, and it feels like just a drop in the bucket. You make Thursday your generosity day, and you say, I'm gonna help five people that day.

那天你就会真切感受到自己的价值。

You really feel like you counted that day.

明白了。说到自我提升的另一个关键要素，就是处理不确定性的能力——要能接受'结果未知'这个事实。这种开放状态会持续困扰你，甚至可能让你迟迟不敢迈出第一步。关于提升应对不确定性的能力，你有什么心得？

Okay. So one of the other elements here when we're talking about becoming better in in really any form is the ability to deal with uncertainty. The ability to grapple with the fact that you don't know how the outcome is going to go, and that open loop is going to plague you while it's still like that, and it may cause you to not even begin to take a step toward closing the loop. What have you learned about becoming better at dealing with uncertainty?

这很难。祝你好运。真的很难。就研究这个吧。我不知道。

It's hard. Good luck. It's really hard. Just study this. I don't know.

不。当我思考如何处理进步过程中的不确定性时，我认为你能做的最好的事情就是与过去的自己建立联系。让我举个亲身例子。记得我准备发布第二本书时——那已经是将近十年前的事了。

No. I think when I think about dealing with uncertainty around progress, I think I think the best thing you can do is you can get in touch with your past self. So I'll give you a personal example on this one. I remember I was getting ready to launch my second book. So we're going back almost a decade now.

有位朋友打电话问我打算怎么庆祝。我说不庆祝。她问为什么，我说：'因为我是作家啊，这就是我们的日常'。

And a friend called and asked me, you know, what I was doing to celebrate. And I said, nothing. And she said, why? I said, well, like, I'm an author. Like, that's what we do.

写书是我的工作常态。她反驳说：'但你不是每天都能出书，出版一本书是里程碑事件'。

We write books. It's it's part of my routine. And she said, yeah. But, you know, it's not like you write a book every day. Publishing a book is a milestone.

她问我打算如何品味这个成就。这让我意识到，我把每隔几年写本书当成了理所当然，却完全无法判断第二本书是否比第一本更好，也无法衡量自己在成长领域的进步。于是我决定进行'心理时间旅行'，回溯年轻时的自己。

What are you doing to to savor that? And I thought about it, and I realized I had completely taken for granted the idea that, like, I was just gonna write a book every few years. And I had no sense of whether my second book was better than my first book. I had no way to gauge whether I had improved in the areas I was trying to grow. And I realized that I had to do some mental time travel and think back to, you know, a younger, earlier version of myself.

我回溯五年前的自己，发现那时的我若知道未来能出版一本——更别说两本书——会觉得这是职业巅峰。那个年轻的我还会为某些自认为毫无进步的领域实际取得的进展感到惊艳。这或许就是应对不确定性的方法：

So I went back five years earlier, and I said, okay. If that version of me knew that I was gonna publish one book, let alone two, like, that would have been that would have been nirvana. That would have been a career milestone. And also that version of me would have been really impressed with the, you know, the progress I'd made in a couple areas that that I thought I hadn't improved at all in the short term. And I think that that that's one way of managing uncertainty, right, is is to say, okay.

如果年轻时的我会为现在的成就骄傲，就说明我确实成长了。如果过去的我对现有进步不满意，或许就该调整方向了。

Like, if a younger version of me is proud of where I am right now, that is a sign that I've grown. And if if that earlier version of me isn't proud of the progress that I've made, it might be time to change courses.

真有意思。我在想，有多少人小时候会渴望以现在的自己为榜样，却对此浑然不觉。

Yeah. It's fascinating. I wonder I wonder how many people would have loved to have had themselves now as a role model when they were a kid, and they're just totally blind to it. I

这个视角很美。如果你能成为年轻时自己的榜样，不仅说明你取得了值得的成就，更意味着你培养了可贵的价值观，展现了值得欣赏的品格。身处当下时，我们很难判断方向是否正确。面对不确定性时，很多人会因'没有路线图'而沮丧——

I think that's a beautiful way to frame it. And I think that if if you are at a point where you're a great role model for your younger self, that's I think that that is a sign that, you know, you've not only achieved something worth doing, but you've probably, you know, developed a set of values and, you know, demonstrated a level of character that, you know, that is worth appreciating. And, I think that in the moment, it's really hard to know whether you're moving in the right direction. And I think a lot of us get frustrated when you talk about uncertainty. It's frustrating to feel like, well, I don't have a map.

因为我们挑战的是模糊的目标，或设定的抱负太大，导致看不清从现状到理想的具体步骤。在动态不确定的世界里，追求完整路线图不现实。更可行的是拥有指南针——不断追问：'下一步是对的吗？'

Because the challenge I'm trying to take on is amorphous, or the goals that I'm setting, you know, they're they're ambitious enough that, like, I don't know exactly what the steps are to get from where I am today to where I wanna be in the future. And I think it's not realistic to have a map in a dynamic and uncertain world. Which what's much more plausible is to have a compass. Right? Which is to ask, is this the right next step?

这个方向感觉对吗？它是在让我更接近我的价值观和目标，还是让我远离它们？它让我变得更像我所钦佩的人，还是更不像？我认为，坦率地说，这个指南针就是我们所需要的全部。

Does it feel directionally correct? Is it taking me closer to my values and my goals? Or is it moving me away from those? Is it making me more like the people that I admire or less like them? And I think that that compass is is frankly all we need.

而且它比完美的地图要现实得多。

And it's much more realistic than than the perfect map.

这种对不确定性的舒适感与对失败、冒险、更大胆一点的想法的舒适感之间，是否存在一条界限？

Is there a line between this comfort with uncertainty and comfort with the idea of failing, of taking risk, of being a little bit more daring?

我认为是的。我认为对失败的恐惧阻止了很多人的成长。对吧？问题是，你不想让自己难堪，也不想打击自尊心。所以你开始只做那些你已经擅长的事情。

I think so. I think that the fear of failure stops a lot of people from from growing. Right? What happens is you don't wanna you don't wanna embarrass yourself, and you don't wanna take a blow to your self esteem. So you basically start to keep doing the things you're already good at.

随着时间的推移，你会越来越担心犯错。你变得越来越完美主义。你的舒适区越来越小，你无法从试错中受益。所以我最近尝试应对这个问题的方法之一是，我实际上有一个目标，每年要有三件事失败。

And over time, you you become more and more concerned about making a mistake. You become increasingly perfectionistic. Your comfort zone gets smaller, and you don't benefit from trial and error. So one of the ways that I've I've tried to navigate this recently is I actually have a goal of having three things fail every year.

好吧。今年你进展如何？

Okay. How have you gotten this year?

到目前为止只有两件，所以我需要加把劲。是的，我并不是故意要失败。说清楚点，对吧？

I've I've only had two so far, so I I need to need to step on the gas. Yeah. I I don't set out trying to fail at anything. Let's be clear. Right?

我不是说，好吧，让我接手一个注定会失败的项目。相反，我试图设定一个预期，如果我没有三个项目失败，那就意味着我的目标不够高，我没有足够地挑战自己。这样做的优点是，当某件事真的失败时，我可以说，好吧，这算作2024年或2025年的一个失败。我认为，如果我们都在推动自己，我们都会在某些事情上失败。

I'm I'm not like, alright. Let me let me take on a project that is deliberately gonna bomb. Rather, what I'm trying to do is set the expectation that if I don't have three projects fail, it means that I'm not aiming high enough, and I'm not stretching my myself far enough. And the upside of that then is that when something does crash and burn, I can say, okay, that checks off one of the failures for 2024 or 2025. And I think that look, we're all gonna we're all gonna fail in a few things if we are pushing ourselves.

我认为预期到这一点会让失败更容易接受。

And I think expecting that makes it a lot easier to stomach.

如果不经常失败，或者至少不间歇性地失败，这是否表明你可能可以承担更多的风险？

Is not failing regularly or at least not fail not failing intermittently, is that an indication that you could be taking a little bit more risk?

我也这么认为。我觉得如果一开始没有成功，那其实是个信号，表明你的目标定得足够高。如果你总是能达成目标，甚至超出预期，那可能意味着你还可以再逼自己一把，或者至少尝试一些不那么熟悉、不那么轻松的事情。

I think so. I think if if at first you don't succeed, it's a it's a sign that you're you're actually aiming high enough. And if you are, you know, consistently either hitting your goals or, you know, exceeding your expectations, it probably means you could be, you know, pushing yourself a little bit farther, or you could be at least trying something that's a little bit less familiar and and easy for you.

实际遭遇失败时的打击程度，与我们预先恐惧失败时的感受相比如何？不知道是否有相关研究——关于对失败的恐惧与实际经历失败时的感受之间的差异。

How debilitating is failure if we encounter it versus how we feel about it when fearing it in advance? I don't know if there's been any studies done on this. The the fear of failure versus the sensation of failure or the experience of failure.

没错。我想你已经猜到我最推崇的研究方向了。这是丹·吉尔伯特和他的心理学家同事们的研究，吉尔伯特和威尔逊堪称顶尖学者。他们研究的是情感预测——人们会预测坏事发生时自己的感受，

Yeah. I I think you've already anticipated where my favorite research on this goes. So this is Dan Gilbert and his colleagues, a group of psychologists. Gilbert and Wilson, I think, are are are two of the best. What they show is they study what's called affective forecasting, which is you make a prediction about how you're gonna feel if something bad happens.

然后追踪那些真正遭遇不幸的人，询问他们的实际感受。结果发现大多数人严重高估了失败带来的痛苦程度及其持续时间。丹的研究团队曾以即将面临终身教职评审的教授为对象——这在学术界堪称终极考验，

And then you wait for some of those bad things to happen, and then you follow people and ask them, how do you actually feel? And most of us dramatically overestimate how much failure is gonna sting, and also how long that sting is gonna last. So one of the places where where Dan and his colleagues studied this was was with professors who are about to go up for tenure. And this is like this is the ultimate gauntlet as an academic. Like,

如果

if

成功了就能保住工作并获得终身职位保障，失败了就可能要搬家，声誉扫地，感觉自己在专业领域不够格，甚至可能需要彻底转行，永远失去那种职业安全感。

you succeed, you get to keep your job, you also have lifetime job security. If you fail, you probably have to move. Your your reputation is in tatters. And you feel like you just couldn't cut it in your field, and maybe you should choose an entirely different career. And now, you don't know if you'll ever have that that permanent job security.

因此人们普遍预计平均需要五年才能走出阴影，但事实上大多数人六个月就恢复了。乔治·博南诺的研究也表明，人类面对逆境的本能反应不是创伤后应激障碍，也不是长期抑郁，

So not surprisingly, people think on average, it's gonna take five years for them to recover from that blow. But within six months, most people have bounced back. And I think this is a general finding in research on resilience more broadly. George Bonanno and his colleagues have shown that the default response to adversity is not PTSD. It's not chronic stress.

而是心理韧性。多数人都能从容应对挫折，因为我们拥有所谓的心理免疫系统——就像生理免疫系统那样，我们的心智会产生抗体来帮助理解、寻找意义并继续前进。这并不意味着挫折不痛苦，但说明我们远比想象中更坚强。

It's actually resilience. That most people take most setbacks in stride because we have what's called a psychological immune system. Just like a physical immune system, right? Our minds generate antibodies to help us make sense, find meaning, and move forward. And that doesn't mean these things don't hurt, but it also means that we're less broken by by our own mistakes and setbacks than we think we are.

亚当·马斯崔亚尼说过，悲剧加时间等于喜剧，这大概是人类大脑最接近数学公式的认知。那个心理免疫系统，以及人们总在事前过度忧虑，但实际痛苦持续时间远短于预期——事后甚至过个半年几年还能当笑谈。

Adam Mastriani says that tragedy plus time equals comedy is as close to an equation that the human brain has got. That psychological immune system, the fact as well that in advance of a thing, you can cause yourself to ruminate so much that you're terrified of it happening, But the actual pain of the thing occurring lasts for way shorter than the story that you told yourself before and the rumination that you have afterwards. You know? So you very much are, like, optimizing for this microcosm peak that isn't as high as you think and doesn't last for as long as you think and isn't as bad as you think. And then even after that, maybe, you know, six months, couple of years down the line, you can laugh about it.

你有个精彩的观点：应对高压最有效的态度不是正念，而是希望。艰难时期若只活在当下会令人窒息，而对光明未来的期待才能带来力量。

But, yeah, you've got this great quote. The attitude that helps most with intense stress is not mindfulness. It's hope. In hard times, it's overwhelming to live only in the present. What brings strength is anticipating a brighter future.

韧性在于记住今天的重担明天可能会变轻。

Resilience lies in remembering that today's burdens may be lighter tomorrow.

是啊。我是说，听着。亚当应该最清楚。丹·吉尔伯特是他的导师。我超爱他的博客《实验历史》。

Yeah. I mean, look. Adam would know. Dan Gilbert was his mentor. I love his blog, Experimental History.

他太了不起了兄弟。我超喜欢那家伙。

He's phenomenal, dude. I love that guy.

没错。他的见解令人着迷，文笔又极具吸引力且有趣。而且我觉得这是个根本真理——我们真的不擅长心理时间旅行。我们聊过回溯过去与曾经的自己对话，另一种方式是快进到未来，设想未来的自己。

Yeah. His insights are fascinating, and the writing is just so engaging and entertaining. And I, you know, I think this this is a fundamental truth, right, which is we are really bad at mental time travel. So we talked about, you know, going backward to get in touch with your past self. The other thing you can do is you can fast forward and think about your future self.

当人们思考'二十年后的我究竟会在意明天要做的汇报或昨天收到的差评吗'时，多数人会获得新视角。这种时间距离让你明白：知道吗？我可能根本不会在乎。你可以在过去与现在之间来回切换这种思考方式。

And what most people realize when they think about, okay, how much will twenty, like, twenty years in the future me really care about, like, the presentation that I'm giving tomorrow or the bad performance review that I got yesterday, it gives you a little bit of perspective. Right? That distance allows you to say, you know what? I don't I'm probably not gonna care that much. And you can do it moving sort of back and forth between the past and the present.

想想一年前或三年前让你痛苦不已的失败。现在你还会经常想起吗？它会每天折磨你吗？大多数情况下答案是否定的。不过老实说，凯德，我高三州际比赛那次失误跳水至今仍让我耿耿于怀。

Think about the failure that you just agonized over a year ago or three years ago. How often do you think about it now? Does it eat away at you every day? For the most part, the answer is no. Although, just in the spirit of candor, the dive I missed my senior year state meet still bothers me, Kade.

还在纠缠你？是啊。真该死。

Still haunts you? Yeah. Goddamn it.

对。那本是我最拿手的动作，没想到会失误前翻两周半。但这也深刻提醒我们：不愉快的情绪都是教学时刻，那份痛苦是为了给我上一课。

Yeah. It was my best dive. I can't believe I missed my front two and a half. But it's also a really good reminder that unpleasant emotions are teachable moments. That that pain is there to teach me a lesson.

这是关于更好准备的教程，是关于压力管理的研讨会。我在人生最重要赛事中失误的教训，帮助我在更高风险时避免了更严重的错误。

It's a tutorial in better preparation. It's a seminar in sort of managing pressure. And the lessons that I learned, missing my best dive and the biggest meat of my life, have helped me avoid making much bigger mistakes when the stakes are much higher.

多奇妙啊，有时那些当时觉得糟糕透顶的事，回头看却是跳板——或是火花，点燃了改变，成为你整个人生的转折点之一。

So bizarre that sometimes things that were the worst thing to ever happen to you in retrospect were the springboard or diving board that or the kindling, you know, the the spark that sort of lights something that causes you to make a change that, in retrospect, was the inflection point or one of the big inflection points in your entire life.

如果不是这样，我认为你可能没有充分把握从错误中成长的机会。要知道，我十分推崇从成功中学习，而不仅仅是从失败中。但实证表明，平均而言，失败是比成功更好的老师。Madsen和Desai对轨道发射行业的研究——他们研究了半个世纪以来所有发射过火箭的机构——很好地印证了这一点。他们想探究的是：什么时候你的成功率会实现飞跃？

If it's not, right, I think you probably haven't done justice to the opportunity to grow from from what went wrong. You know, I think that I'm a big fan of learning from success, not just from failure. But empirically, failure is a better teacher on average than success. There's a Madsen and Desai study of the orbital launch industry that I I think puts a point on this, they they they basically study every organization that has ever launched a rocket into space over half a century. And what they wanna know is, when when do you make a leap forward in your success rate?

答案是：在经历重大失败之后。因为小的失败可以轻易解释或快速翻篇，而重大失败会迫使你停下脚步进行复盘，质问自己：到底哪里出了问题？

And the answer is, it's after a really big fail. Because, you know and like a small failure, you can explain it away. You can move on really quickly. A big failure forces you. It stops you in your tracks to do the postmortem and to ask yourself, okay, what went wrong there?

以及我们未来如何预防这种情况？显然我们搞砸时都需要这么做。但我也开始推崇Gary Klein研究过的'事前剖析'——即在团队即将做重大决策或个人面临重大选择时，假设几年后回顾时发现这是个彻头彻尾的灾难。

And how are we gonna prevent that moving forward? And I think obviously we all need to do these when we flop. But I've become a big fan also of doing pre mortems, which Gary Klein has studied. So the idea of a pre mortem is you say, okay, we're about to make a big decision as a group, or I've got a big choice in front of me. And let's assume in the next few years, with the benefit of hindsight, we conclude this was an unmitigated disaster.

导致失败最可能的原因是什么？提前进行这样的讨论或反思，能提升你预见风险和预判问题的能力，从而在源头阻止其发生。这有点像心理学家所称'创伤后成长'的反向版本——遭遇不幸后虽不感激事件本身，但决心从中成长。

What are the most likely causes of that failure? When you have that conversation upfront, or when you do that reflection upfront, you get better at seeing around corners, and anticipating what might go wrong. And then you can actually prevent it from happening in the first place. And I think there's a version of that, that's a little bit like the opposite of what psychologists call post traumatic growth. Where something awful happens to you, and you're not grateful that it happened, but you damn well commit that you're gonna grow from it.

其实我们不必总是经历创伤才能成长。你可以进行'创伤前成长'——预想可能发生的灾难性事件，并提前准备从这些潜在事件中汲取教训。

Well, I don't think we always have to go through trauma to get the growth. Right? You could have pre traumatic growth, where you anticipate the things that could go horribly, and then try to prepare yourself for the lessons that those events might teach you.

我认为那些害怕失败的人面临的危险在于：他们可能陷入只有'事前剖析'却无实际教训的困境。只是反复纠结可能出错的事情，却未将其转化为——毕竟这些事尚未发生。而意识到潜在风险并拆解它们的事实，反而应该降低其发生概率——这值得庆贺而非忧虑。

I suppose the danger, the fear that people get stuck in who have that fear of failure is the premortem but without the lessons. It's just ruminating on all of the things that could go wrong without using them as a well, they haven't gone wrong yet. And the fact that I've become aware of the fact that they might go wrong and potentially identified them and broken them down, hopefully makes them less likely that they're going to this is a cause for celebration, not one for concern.

这正是计划所在。心理学中我最喜欢的焦虑定义是'尝试解决问题'。关键在于'尝试'——我们常忘记焦虑未必能解决问题，但能让你更清晰地看待问题。关键是要区分反思与反刍思维。

That's the plan. So in psychology, my favorite definition of worrying is attempted problem solving. And I think the attempted is the part that sometimes we forget, right? You don't always solve your problem by worrying, but you are able to see it more clearly as you worry about it. And then the goal is to make a distinction between reflection and rumination.

对很多人来说这是个滑坡：开始事前剖析后，你想象所有可能出错的事，很快就会彻夜难眠、冷汗涔涔地恐惧所有担忧成真。反思与反刍的区别在于：反思会产生新想法而非重复旧念头。我的经验法则是：如果思考未来可能出错的事时，五到十分钟内没想出预防或应对的新方案，就该停止或找人讨论。心理学家研究过'焦虑时间窗'的方法——

I think for a lot of people, this is a slippery slope. You do the pre mortem, you start to imagine all the things that could go wrong, and then pretty soon, you're staying up all night, just in a panic, in a cold sweat, that all of your fears are gonna come true. And I think the difference between that and reflection is, in reflection, you're actually having new thoughts, as opposed to recycling the same old ones. And so one of my heuristics on rumination is, if you're thinking about a future event that might go wrong, and you haven't had a new idea for how to prevent it or address it in the last five to ten minutes, it is time to either move on, or talk to somebody else about it. And like, one of the things that psychologists have studied is the idea of just creating worry time windows.

在日程表上安排30分钟专属时段（不建议睡前）。比如午饭后昏沉时，划出半小时作为焦虑时间窗。其他时间产生的忧虑都记下来，允许自己在专属时段处理。这能清空心理甲板，集中精力处理要事。

Where you put a thirty minute block on your calendar. I do not like these right before bedtime. But maybe mid afternoon, when you feel like you're in that post lunch food coma, you block out a thirty minute worry time window. And any worries that come to you either before that or after that, you write them down and you give yourself permission to revisit them during a worry time window. And that basically clears your mental deck to focus your attention and your energy on the things that matter.

然后思考如何高效利用这段时间：是否有擅长解决问题的伙伴？或能帮助管理情绪的人？这听起来像儿童疗法，但对成年人往往同样有效——或许是更多人应该尝试的干预措施。

And then you figure out, okay, how I gonna use that worry time productively? Is there somebody who's a good problem solver with me? Is there somebody who's good at helping me manage my emotions? And I think that that might be the intervention that more people ought to try. That sounds like it's just for kids, but actually works for adults in a lot of cases.

似乎脆弱性在这里扮演着某种角色，这种对自身缺点的清醒认知。你谈到要在足够自信于自身优势的情况下展现弱点。为什么？脆弱性在这里起到什么作用？

It feels like vulnerability sort of has a role to play here, this stark awareness of our own shortcomings. I think you you talk about being secure enough in your strengths to show your weaknesses. Why what what's the role there of vulnerability?

我认为我们需要他人指出改进方向。这就像把批评者和支持者都转化为教练。我和康斯坦丁诺斯·库蒂弗罗斯的研究发现，即使你主动寻求反馈或建议，很多人也不会说实话——他们怕伤害感情、担心破坏关系，或觉得尴尬。

Well, I think we we need people to tell us how we can improve. Right? This goes back to, like, let's let's turn our critics and our cheerleaders into coaches. And one of the things I've found in research with Constantinos Cutiferous is a lot of people, even if you ask them for feedback or for advice, they do not tell you the truth. They're afraid of hurting your feelings, they don't wanna damage the relationship, it's uncomfortable.

于是他们要么缄口不言，要么粉饰太平。这反而对你有害，剥夺了你学习的机会。我们发现，让人敞开心扉坦诚相待的方法之一，是主动大声自我批评。比如明确说出'这些是我认为需要改进的地方'。

And so they end up either biting their tongues or sugarcoating. And they're doing you a disservice. They're depriving you of a chance to learn. So what we found is that one of the ways you can get people to open up and and be candid with you is actually to criticize yourself out loud. And say, okay, here's here are the things that I think I need to get better at.

这会让人有点脆弱。有位领导听完我分享实验成果——关于上司公开说'这些是我正在改进的缺点'多有帮助后表示：'我不想这么做，因为不想让周围人知道我的短板。'我告诉他：'有个事实你需要知道——他们早就知道了。'

And it feels a little vulnerable. I had a had a leader tell tell me after I was I was describing some of the results of our experiments and and how helpful it was, you know, for for a boss just to say, like, here's the stuff I've been told I'm bad at that I'm working on. This leader said, well, like, I I don't wanna do that because I don't want the people around me to find out what I'm bad at. And I'm like, I have some news for you. They already know.

你周围的人早清楚你的弱点，你无法隐藏。不如因自知之明获得认可，用谦逊和诚实公开承认。我们数据中有个有趣发现：当你谈论自身不足和改进空间时，不仅宣称能接受真相，更证明了你确实可以。这让别人心理上更敢告诉你那些逆耳忠言。

Like, the people in your orbit, they already know what you're bad at. You can't hide it from them. You might as well get credit for having the self awareness to see it, and the humility and integrity to admit it out loud. And that's that's one of the interesting findings in our data is that when you talk about your own shortcomings and your opportunities for improvement, you're not just claiming that you can handle the truth, you're actually proving you can take it. And so that gives other people the psychological safety to tell the things that you may not want to hear, but you actually need to hear.

这么做不会减损形象。他们不会觉得你能力不足，反而可能视为自信的表现——'哇，你对自己优势和发展能力如此确信，才敢坦然讨论缺点'。

And you don't lose anything by doing that. They don't see you as less competent. They actually, in some cases, see it as a sign of confidence. Like, Wow, you must be really secure in, you know, what you're already good at and in your ability to grow, that you're willing to talk about what you're bad at.

就像你前几天推文说的：人们以为缩写词能省时，实则传递出'你不值得我多花时间完整表达'的潜台词。这本质相同——表面是承认不足，实则彰显出你对自身优势的笃定，笃定到可以坦然讨论已知短板。

Yeah. It's you had a a tweet the other day where you were talking about how people think that you save time by shortening down words, but the subtext of what it actually tells people is that you just didn't care about them enough to write something out more verbatim. And, this is kind of the same that on the surface, maybe it feels like an admission of your shortcomings, but what it actually comes across as is comfort and acceptance in your strengths so much so that you can talk about the things that you know that you're bad at or that you think that you need to work on.

非常重要。我们做得太少所以觉得可怕。当有人坦诚相告时确实难受——如果只在季度考核时，或难得争吵中才得知让伴侣失望之处，你永远无法真正培养承受力。不想总提跳水经历，但训练中最有价值的是：每次练习40-50跳，每跳都有评分。

So important. And, you know, it's I think it's something that we don't do often enough. And so it feels scary, and it it really hurts when, you know, when somebody does level with us. You know, if you only have a quarterly performance review or, you know, if if you only find out how you're letting your your partner or your spouse down, like, when you're in the middle of a rare nasty fight, this is the kind of thing that you never really build thick enough skin to handle. And I don't wanna over index on my diving experience, but one of the most valuable things that happened in diving is, you do 40 or 50 dives in a practice.

当连续40多次得分都在4-5分徘徊（跳水满分10分），单次低分根本不会困扰你。这成为我的习惯：作为害羞内向者，公开演讲本非所长。早期每次下台就立即问观众'按0-10分打几分'？无论得6分还是3.5分，我只问'怎样更接近10分'？

And every single one of them, you can get a score on. And when you when you get 40 or 52 and a half, four, five, nowhere near you you're barely cracking the upper half of the scale on that zero to 10 in diving. No individual score really bothers you. And so this is actually a habit that I've I've adopted. I do a lot of public speaking, and as a shy introvert, this is not something that came naturally to me at all.

几乎没人给满分，但会提一两点建议，我就能据此改进。每当与人讨论这个方法，他们总说'可我不想被评分'。

And so early on, I would get off stage, and I would immediately ask anybody I encountered, what's your zero to 10? And no matter what score they gave, whether they gave me a six, or a three and a half, I would just ask them, how can I get closer to 10? And I found that very rarely did anyone say 10. And then, you know, they would give me a tip or two, and then I could use that and work on it to improve my score. And anytime I talk to people about this, they're like, ah, but I don't wanna be scored.

这确实很打击人。但如果你一年只经历一次，确实如此。可如果你每周都要面对几十次评分，那就会变得习以为常。实际上你正在培养应对低分的韧性，并积累更多知识来避免低分。人们无时无刻不在评价你。

Like, that that's devastating. I'm like, yeah, if you only do it once a year. But if you're getting dozens of scores a week, then it just becomes second nature. And you're actually building your resilience to handle the tough scores and gaining more knowledge to avoid the tough scores. Why people are are are evaluating you all the time.

难道你不想知道他们的想法吗？难道你不希望他们帮助你成长吗？

Don't you wanna know what they're thinking, and don't you want them to help you grow?

你时刻都在自我评价，同时也在揣测别人对你的评价。比如我会想：我打赌他觉得我那件事做得好还是糟。其实直接打分就好了。去问他们，他们会告诉你答案。

You're evaluating yourself all the time, and you're also evaluating what you think other people are evaluating you on all the time. You know, I wonder if I bet that he thinks that I did well or badly in that thing. It's like, put a put a score on it. Ask them, and they can tell you. Yeah.

另一个获取演讲反馈的绝佳方式：通常人们出于不想伤害你感情的心理，你可以问'如果必须删减这场演讲20%的内容，你会砍掉哪些部分？优先级最高的该删什么？'因为精彩内容通常没问题，真正需要优先剔除的是那些薄弱环节。

Another great, prompt for giving a presentation or or a talk or whatever, and asking people for feedback. Because, again, the desirability for people to not hurt your feelings sort of hold strong typically, is if you had to cut 20% from this talk, just tell me what would you get rid of? What would be top of the list? What would be the because for the most part, your good stuff's probably gonna be good, but the it's the really weak stuff that needs to go first. That's what should be triaged to be thrown out.

克里斯，你提到这点太棒了。这让我想起莱迪·克洛茨和加布里埃尔·亚当斯的研究：当询问'如何改进'时，多数人只会做加法——给出更多要做的事。

Oh, I love that you pointed this out, Chris. It it reminds me of Leddy Klotz and Gabrielle Adams' research where they show that when you ask people how to how to change, like, how can I improve? How can our team improve? What most people do is they they add. They give you more things to do.

他们忘了我们的待办清单早已超载。其实最高效的改进方式是做减法——剔除无效部分。这种总想添加的倾向往往弊大于利。所以我特别欣赏你提出的'删减20%'的提问方式，这能为真正精华的内容腾出打磨空间。

And they forget that our plates are already pretty full, and one of the best ways to improve something is to cut away what's not working, to subtract. And this sort of addition bias or addiction to always adding things, it doesn't help us as often as it seems like it would. And so I love your I love your prompt to say, okay. If you were gonna cut 20%, like, what is the fat that could be trimmed in this presentation? And that creates room then for, you know, the the gems to actually be polished.

我在思考情绪在这其中的作用。我们讨论的多是补偿策略或理性视角——仿佛超然物外地审视局面。但日常的真实感受其实是沉浸在荷尔蒙与神经化学的海洋里。

I'm thinking about the role of emotions in all of this. You know, so much of what we've been talking about have been strategies to compensate or ways that we see ourselves, and it's this sort of degree of rationality. I'm stepping out a little bit. I'm sort of above looking down on the situation. But the felt sense day to day is you're just swimming in your own hormones and neurochemistry.

你曾提到悲观主义并非保护情绪的有效策略——这是种补偿机制：人们变得愤世嫉俗，通过拒绝尝试来规避失败痛苦。你认为该如何既尊重情绪，又保持必要的客观态度？

So what well, actually, mean, you you you talk about pessimism not being an effective strategy for protecting emotions. That's obviously one compensatory mechanism. People become cynical. They try to believe that the they they, insulate themselves from having to feel the pain of failure by never just trying in the first place. What do you think about the role of emotions and how people can treat them with the respect but objectivity that they probably need to?

让我们具体化这个问题：你经常难以调控哪种情绪？或在什么情境下难以管理情绪？

Well, let let's try to bring this to life. What what's a what's an emotion that you often struggle to manage? Or what's a situation where you where you struggle to manage your emotions?

比如忧虑。比如对项目尚未开始就担心会搞砸的恐惧。

Let's say worry. Let's say fear. In advance of a project happening, the concern that it's not going to go well.

好的。告诉我一个你现在担心的即将进行的项目。

Okay. Give me an upcoming project that you're worried about right now.

一周半后，在伦敦有场演出，观众将达到三千五百人。

Three and a half thousand people on stage in London in a week and a half's time.

完美。那么，你具体在害怕什么？

Perfect. Okay. So what what are you afraid of specifically?

害怕出丑、表现不佳、因事情不顺而自我否定、损害信誉、让批评者得逞、无法证明自己是对的。

Looking silly, not performing well, thinking less of myself because things don't go well, damaging my credibility, proving critics right, not proving myself right.

这确实是一份相当全面的恐惧清单。也许你不该去做这个演讲。

That's a that's a pretty solid list of fears. Maybe you shouldn't do the talk.

票已经卖出去了，我不能不去。

I sold the tickets. I can't not do that.

当初你为什么要答应做这件事？

Why did you agree to do it in the first place?

因为它令人兴奋又刺激，而且回想起来，我会为自己做了这件事感到骄傲。

Because it's exciting and thrilling and something that, in retrospect, I'll be proud that I did.

好的。我再问你几个问题，以便更了解你的想法。你担心的这些事，有多少次真的发生了？

Okay. And let me ask you a couple other questions just to understand your perspective a little bit more. How often how often have have the fears that you have come true?

极少发生。

Very rarely.

当这些情况发生时，那些事件有何不同之处？

When they have, what's different about those those events?

可能是我准备不够充分，或是出现了某些始料未及的因素。比如睡眠不足、情绪低落、被某些事困扰。通常来说，原本应该平静如镜的表演水域突然变得波涛汹涌。

I probably haven't prepared fully, or there was some unseen factor that kind of came out of nowhere. I was underslept. I was in a bad mood. I was stressed about something. Typically, the the lovely flat clear water that I was supposed to be performing in got disrupted.

明白了。好的，我认为这里有大量可挖掘的素材。首先你可以承认：确实有些事情可能出错，但同样也有事情可能顺利。

There we go. Alright. So I think I think there's a ton of material to work with here. I think the the first thing you could do is you could say, okay. You know, there there are things that could go wrong, but there are also things that could go right.

别忘了这点。我觉得应该问问自己：当初为何要承诺做这件事？你其实有明确的答案对吧？因为它令人兴奋。

Let's not forget that. And I think asking why did I commit to this? Like, you you had a clear answer to that. Right? It's exciting.

它让人血脉偾张。与现有观众建立联系、接触新受众、创造更多传播思想的机会——这些都可能为你带来收益。这种正向价值需要与焦虑平衡。情绪调节的第一个方案就是：当你感到焦虑时，这标志着你在意某个超出掌控的事物。那我们不妨聊聊你能掌控的部分。

It's thrilling. There's some upside for you presumably in in connecting with your audience and also connecting with a new audience and and creating more opportunities for you to get your ideas out there. I think that that's gotta be balanced. So that's one option for emotion regulation is like, okay, when you're feeling anxiety, it's a sign that you care about something that is beyond your control. And let's talk about then what the things are that you can control.

于是你转向了充分准备。你可能是防御性悲观者，这类人会担忧最坏情况，并将焦虑转化为准备动力。正因如此，我认为必须记住：在登台前这十天半月里，你其实不需要保持极佳情绪。因为过早平息焦虑可能导致懈怠，致使准备不足，最终更可能让自己或他人失望。

And so you then went to preparation. And so you are potentially a defensive pessimist, somebody who worries about the worst case scenario and then harnesses that anxiety as motivation to prepare. Which is which is why I think we have to we have to remember, like we don't want you to be in a great mood for the next week and a half before before you get on stage. Because that might actually quell your anxiety prematurely, and then you get complacent and you don't do the preparation necessary. And then you're more likely to disappoint yourself or others.

最后我想说的是：让我们保持心理距离，问问自己——既然经历过类似情境，失败的基础概率是多少？其实相当低。这说明你相当擅长此事，且大多准备充分。这正是你应有信心的理由：你有能力掌控足够多的因素来确保高成功率。以上这些就是我建议尝试的情绪调节策略范围。

And then I think the last thing here is like, let's, you know, let's get some psychological distance and ask yourself, okay, you've been in this situation before, what is the base rate of failure? It's actually pretty low. That means you're fairly good at this, and you're also mostly prepared. And so that's a reason to be confident that you're capable of, you know, of controlling enough to to have a high probability of success. So I guess those are the range of emotion regulation strategies I would try here.

哪些策略让你产生共鸣？哪些对你来说更难实施？

Which ones resonate with you? Which ones are more of a struggle for you?

我不认为自己是因害怕失败才去准备的。或许初期确实如此——这呼应你之前说的：人在起步阶段需要鼓励，但越到后期批评越重要。很多人是被证明自己、反驳恐惧的需求驱动着前进。但至少对我来说，当深度沉浸于习惯、日常和世界观之后——这就是我的存在方式，这就是我每日的节奏，这就是我的准备流程等等——那种驱动力其实已经逐渐消退了。

I don't actually think that I'm that driven by the fear of failure to to go and do the preparation. It's maybe that was it in the beginning, and this sort of goes back to what you were talking about before that people may need compliments at the start of their journey, but criticisms are more salient the the further down that they get. I think that a lot of people are driven, they're activated by this need to prove themselves, to prove their fears wrong. But after a while, at least for me, you're just so balls deep in these habits and routines and the way that you see the world, and this is how I show up, and this is what my day looks like, and this is how I prepare, and so on and so forth. So I actually think that that as a fuel is something that largely has sort of been let go of for me.

即便某些恐惧依然存在，但消除这些恐惧的动机，我认为已经有所改变。

Even if some of the fears still persist, the motivation to fix the things that will stop the fears, I think, has has changed a little.

这很有道理。所以我认为驱动你的是想要达到自己的标准，并确保自己不辜负他人对你的期望。

That makes sense. And so then I think what what drives you is wanting to live up to your own standards and wanting to make sure that you don't fall short of other people's expectations of you.

是的。我想这么说可能八九不离十。

Yeah. I think that would be that would probably be not far off.

我觉得这是个合理的看待方式。

I think that's a that's that's a reasonable way to look at it.

我想另一件事我

I think the other thing I

不过要说的是，比如，回到你关于削减20%内容的设想——你会削减什么？我认为在舞台上最让我沮丧的是，很容易就只表演那些最受欢迎的节目，然后停滞不前。所以每次演讲，我都尝试加入20%的新内容。这就是可接受失败的区间，对吧？

would say though is, like, let's go back to your idea of what if you were gonna cut 20%, what would you cut? I think one of my biggest frustrations on stage is, like, it's really easy to just do your greatest hits and then stagnate. And so in every talk, I try to do 20% new material. And that's the zone of acceptable failure. Right?

我预期其中一些新内容可能不会成功。我...我觉得这是有界限的。对吧？我不会加入50%的新内容，因为我要确保80%的内容是经过观众检验的，能给他们带来价值。但那20%，就像是我的游乐场。

I'm expecting that that's that some of that content is not gonna land. And I I I'm like, there's a there's a line drawn on that. Right? For not doing 50% new material, because I wanna make sure that 80% of of what I'm covering has been audience tested and is gonna deliver something of value for them. But the other 20%, like that's my playground.

那是我进行实验、学习的地方，常常是最激动人心的即兴发挥发生的地方，我们会在那里随机漫步，做出意想不到的跳跃。所以我在想，也许另一种应对失败恐惧的策略是说，表演中会有一部分更具风险性。嗯。因此你要接受并非一切都会顺利。

That's where I'm experimenting, where I'm learning, where often the most exciting improvisation happens, and where we take those random walks and unexpected leaps. And so I wonder if part of the way of Well, if another strategy for managing the fear of failure is to say, there's gonna be an element you know, of your performance that is more is riskier. Mhmm. And so, like, you're gonna assume not everything is gonna go right.

是的。这又回到了对控制的渴望。如果你在做一件已经重复了五万次的事情却出错了，那本不该出错。所以系统中没有预设可接受的失误空间，对不可预测性几乎没有容忍度。

Yeah. Again, it comes back to that desire for control. That if you're trying to do something that you've run 50,000 times before and it goes wrong, it shouldn't have gone wrong. So there's no acceptable play baked into the system. There's no tolerance for things to be a little bit more unpredictable.

但如果你这么做并说，看，这部分本来就是重点所在。整个重点就是要找到多一点玩味。我很喜欢你提到的那个数据——当负面预期被证实时，我们比正面预期带来失望时感觉更糟。幸福的秘诀就是做最坏的打算，同时继续抱最好的希望。

But if you do it and you say, well, look, part of this that was the entire point of it. The entire point of it was to find a little bit more playfulness. I love that, data that you talked about. You said we feel worse when our negative expectations are confirmed than when our positive expectations bring disappointment. A recipe for happiness is planning for the worst while continuing to hope for the best.

我觉得这是个美妙的并置。

I think that's a lovely juxtaposition.

我认为这是我们常常忘记的一点。所以我再分享一个我最喜欢的博主提出的方程式。这是蒂姆·厄本写的，他说幸福等于现实减去期望。没错，我觉得这可能是《Wait, But Why?》史上最精辟的一句话。

I I think it's it's something that we forget. So I'll give you another favorite equation from my favorite blogger. This is Tim Urban, who writes that happiness is reality minus expectations. Yep. I think that might be the single greatest line in the history of Wait, But Why?

幸福等于现实减去期望。这个公式让我们所有人都深刻认识到——心理学大量研究也支持这点——如果你感到失望，就意味着你期望过高。但等等，你又不愿降低期望。于是这里就出现了一个悖论：一方面，要取得成功，你必须志存高远；

Happiness is reality minus expectations. And what that drives home for all of us, and it's supported by a lot of research in psychology, is that you you if if you are disappointed, it means that you are expecting too much. But wait, you don't wanna lower your expectations. So you have a paradox here. On the one hand, to be successful, you have to aim really high.

另一方面，要获得满足感，你又必须克制期望。那么解决办法是什么？据我所知，唯一的解决方案就是设立双重目标：一个是极高的理想目标，代表你渴望并为之奋斗的最佳情境；

On the other hand, to be satisfied, you have to temper your expectations. Well, guess what? The only solution I know of to that paradox is to have two targets instead of one. You have an aspiration which is extremely high. It's the best case scenario that you're hoping for and shooting for.

另一个是最低可接受结果，即只要达到这个标准，我就会觉得足够好。这样就为你创造了一个区间——只要结果介于最低标准和理想目标之间，我都能感到快乐。但大多数人不会这么做，对吧？要么设定可接受目标，这样虽满足却难以成长突破；要么设定远大目标，却没有设定可接受底线，结果成功却痛苦不堪。

You also have an ex a minimum acceptable outcome, which is the, if I clear this standard, I will feel like it is good enough. And that creates for you this range in which, like if I'm between my minimum acceptable and my aspirational, I can be happy. And most of us don't do that, right? We either set the acceptable target, and then, I'm satisfied, but I'm not growing that much, and I'm not excelling. Or we set the ambitious goal, we don't have the acceptable result, and then we're successful and miserable.

没错。演讲里有句话说得很好：恭喜你，你可能成功了，但也非常痛苦。这讲的就是...

Yeah. Yeah. One of the lines in the talk is, congratulations. You might be successful, but you're also very miserable. And it's talking about

这简直是在对懂行的人说教嘛。

It's talking preaching to the choir here then.

正是如此。看来我们读的是同样的东西。

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's talking we we read the same stuff, it seems. Yeah.

有种观点认为快乐在某种程度上是不成熟的——虽然我尽量避开网络上的这类言论。或者可能消极反而显得更深刻，因为你看清了世界真相。这其实是将情绪转化为保护策略，避免显得天真。人们最讨厌显得天真。

There's this sense that being happy is kind of unsophisticated in some ways. Areas of the Internet that I try and stay away from, but that no. Or maybe that negativity is more refined in some way because you see the true way of the world. It's sort of turning your affect into a protective strategy against appearing naive. People hate to appear naive.

确实。你看，历史上有大量证据表明，人们认为你可以既聪明又刻薄。当批评者实际上让你比那些不加批判的人更聪明，因为...

They do. And I think that look. There's a there's a long history of evidence that, people think that you can be brilliant but cruel. And that being a critic actually makes you smarter than people who are uncritical because

这是「愤世嫉俗的天才错觉」。

Cynical genius illusion.

没错，我想你最近一直在读贾米尔·扎基亚的书。最让我着迷的是，这些完全是独立的特质。明白吗？你可以对某事物为何有效进行非常犀利、深思熟虑的分析。

Yeah, exactly. You've been reading Jameel Zakia, I imagine recently. And what's fascinating to me about this is, are completely independent qualities. Right? You could do a very incisive, thoughtful analysis of why something works.

你也可以对某事物为何无效做出懒惰、无知的批评。因此我认为，我们需要将分析质量与评价深度同其情感倾向区分开——即评价是正面还是负面？或许达到这种平衡的最佳方式...我现在是边想边说。

And you could also do a lazy, uninformed critique of why something doesn't work. And so I think we need to separate the quality of analysis and the depth of evaluation that somebody does from the valence, right? Is assessment positive or negative? I think one of the Maybe one of the best ways to land in this place. And I'm thinking out loud here.

但我确实认为应该建立这样的准则：如果你想批评某事物，就必须先尝试创造它。因为作为跳水运动员和跳水裁判、作家和书评人、教师和演讲者、学生和听众这些双重身份的经历，让我深刻体会到：批评很容易，创造却很难。两小时就能把我写的书批得体无完肤。

But I actually think that it should be a discipline to, if you're gonna criticize something, also have to try to create it. Because having been in both roles, a diver and a diving judge, an author and a book reviewer, a teacher and speaker, and a student and an audience member. One of the overwhelming lessons from juxtaposing those two hats, is that criticizing is easy, and creating is hard. Right? You can trash a book I wrote in two hours.

而你并没有花两年时间创作它。我认为检验一个人是否真正聪明的标准，不在于能否推翻别人的想法，而在于能否构建自己的观点。

You didn't spend two years creating it. And I think that the real test of whether somebody is intelligent, is not whether they can tear down somebody else's ideas. It's whether they can build an idea of their own.

是啊。总有人坐在看台上扔石头。作为一个经常被砸中脑袋的人，我觉得这不公平。你懂那种想大喊'竞技场上的战士'之类的话的感觉吧。

Yeah. There is this sense that people sit in the stands and throw stones. And I don't know. It feels unfair as as a person who regularly gets hit in the head by stones. You know, you kind of want to scream out about man in the arena and blah blah blah.

但我觉得重要的是记住：那些批评你、对你有负面看法、或是你害怕被其评判的人，他们是否真心为你好？这是筛选所有垃圾信息的最佳标准——这个人是否真心为我着想？如果是，那他们的意见就是礼物，要感谢他们的直言。

But I do think that it's important to remember it, and that's you know, do the people criticizing you or that have negative opinions or that you fear the judgment of, do these people have your best interests at heart? And I think that's the best way to sort of side through all of the bullshit that you receive. It's like, does this person have my best interests at heart? And if they do, then that's a gift from them. Thank you for telling me this thing.

如果不是，他们说什么都无关紧要。

And if they don't, it doesn't matter what they say.

没错。人们总用'反馈是礼物'来提醒我们听取意见。有时候我真想反问：退货部门在哪？这根本不是我想要的礼物，你完全不了解我的品味和偏好。

Yeah. So so often people, they they try to remind us to listen to feedback by saying, feedback is a gift. And sometimes I just wanna ask, well, where's the where's the returns department? I didn't this this is not the gift that I wanted. You you don't know my taste and my preferences at all.

这东西对我毫无用处，简直就是垃圾。但预先设定标准很有帮助——提前想清楚哪些人对你工作和想法的评价真正重要，然后主动寻求他们的意见。

I have no use for this. Like, it's garbage. But I I think that pre committing is also really helpful here. So think in advance about who are the people whose whose opinions of your work and your ideas are really important to you. And then seek their input.

如果这些人表示支持，那意义重大，能缓冲其他批评带来的冲击。如果他们不支持，说明你还有改进空间，而且你知道这些意见是出于帮助你的初衷。

And if they're supportive, that means a lot, and it kind of buffers you against whatever criticism comes in. And if they're not supportive, you've got some work to do, and you know it's coming from a place of wanting to help you.

是啊。有句'我爱你'说痛苦令人精疲力竭。它滋生出匮乏感。慷慨看起来像一种牺牲。而快乐则让人充满活力。

Yeah. There's a I loved you said misery is exhausting. Fosters a sense of scarcity. Generosity seems like a sacrifice. Joy is invigorating.

它倡导的是一种富足的心态。给予会让人感到满足。活力比忧郁更仁慈。但人们呢？痛苦喜欢有人陪伴，你会习惯自己的感受方式，尝试其他任何事都显得可怕。

It promotes an attitude of abundance. Giving feels gratifying. Vitality is kinder than melancholy. But people what is it? Misery loves its company, that you just get used to the way that you feel, and it's scary to do anything else.

我都忘了写过这句。说得真准。不过确实，这些态度在某种程度上是自我实现的预言。我在研究慷慨行为时经常发现，那些对他人抱有最坏预期的人，不仅通过确认偏见看到他人最坏的一面，实际上还会引发他人最坏的表现。这可以说是'愤世嫉俗天才错觉'的延伸。

I forgot I wrote that one. Bang it. But, yeah, these these attitudes are self fulfilling prophecies in a sense. And I think, like, I see this all the time in my research on generosity, that people who expect the worst in others, not only see the worst in others through confirmation bias, they actually elicit the worst in others. And it goes I guess it's an extension of the cynical genius illusion.

如果你总是怀疑别人的动机，不信任他们，你就会激发出他们戒备心强的那一面——不愿与你自由分享知识，不愿向你开放人际网络。而当你假定多数人并不想坑害你时，突然之间，你会看到他人更友善、更乐于助人、更愿意合作的一面。

If you're cynical about other people's motives all the time, you distrust them. And you bring out a version of them that has their guard up, and that is not willing to share their knowledge freely with you. That's not willing to open up their network to you. You start from the assumption that, you know, that that most people do not wanna screw you. And suddenly, like, you see a kinder, more helpful, more collaborative version of other people.

在我看来，变得更聪明最重要的技能就是努力别那么蠢。

It feels to me like the most important skill in becoming smarter is just trying to be less dumb.

努力尝试。

Trying to.

确实如此。你知道，从你的研究和其他心理学家的观点来看——也许不是全部情况，但至少首要原则就像第一顿饭应该是避免自我毁灭，而非急于追求成功。

It does. You know, so much of the stuff from your work, from other psychologists that I speak to, maybe it's not the entirety of the case, but at least the first order the first meal that you're supposed to eat is avoid destruction as opposed to expedite success.

我认为这个说法很准确。而最大的障碍可能就是Emily Cronin提出的'偏见盲点'，我喜欢称之为'我不偏见的偏见'——你总认为别人推理有缺陷，判断有漏洞，而自己却是中立客观的。

I I think that's accurate. And I think probably what gets in the way more than anything else is what Emily Cronin has called the bias blind spot, which I like to think of as the I'm not biased, bias, Where you walk around thinking other people have flaws in their reasoning. Like other people have holes in their judgment. But me, I'm neutral. I'm objective.

觉得自己看问题准确理性。这种信念会让你对自身认知局限视而不见。最可怕的是研究发现：智商越高的人，越容易陷入'我不偏见'的偏见。因为你一生都在因天才表现、快速处理信息和总能给出正确答案而获得正向强化。

I see things accurately. I'm rational. And if you walk around believing that, then that blinds you to seeing all the limitations in your own cognitive processing. And the scariest thing is, if if you read the research on this, turns out that the higher you score in intelligence, the smarter you are, the more likely you are to fall victim to the I'm not biased bias. Because you have a lifetime of positive reinforcement of people rewarding you for being a genius and for being fast at processing information And for, you know, always knowing the answer.

这可能导致你过度自信到傲慢的地步，对自己无知状态的无知。我认为这正是许多聪明人沦为邓宁-克鲁格效应受害者的原因之一。按理说你们应该更明白才对，对吧？

And that can make you overconfident to the point of arrogant. That you are now ignorant of your own ignorance. And I think it's one of the reasons why so many intelligent people fall victim to the Dunning Kruger effect. Like, you should know better. Right?

要知道，当你不擅长某件事时，你往往会高估自己在该领域的知识和技能平均水平。但如果多年来甚至几十年里你一直被灌输比别人优秀的观念，就很难意识到自己实际上更逊色。

You should know that when you're not an expert at something, you're gonna overestimate on average your knowledge and skill in that area. But if you've been told for years or decades that you are better than other people, it is hard to recognize when you're actually worse.

是啊。我意识到你写的关于专业素养标志的文章比我出色得多——重点不在于你知道多少，而在于你如何整合知识。我有个观点认为，大约在2010年代末的某天，人类曾拥有过最佳信息量。

Yeah. I I realized that you wrote something much more beautiful than I'd done, but on the same topic about how the hallmark of expertise is not how much you know. It's how well you synthesize. And I I've had this idea for a while that at one day in sort of late twenty ten, there was the optimal amount of information on available to humans.

但只持续了一天？

It lasted a day, though?

没错。在整个人类历史长河中，我们始终处于信息匮乏状态，从远古时代起，所知就远少于所求。

Yes. Correct. We had we had a scarcity. We had scarcity, scarcity, scarcity, scarcity for all of human history. All the way back, we knew far less than we wanted.

我们无从预知明日天气或是否会有地震。直到2010年2月某天达到平衡点后，转瞬间就被突破，沦落至如今境地。我很推崇'信息觅食'理论——不知你是否接触过？

We had no idea what the weather was gonna be like tomorrow and whether or not there was gonna be a a earthquake. And and then we get to this one day, February, 2010 or something like that, and then immediately fucking blew through it. And then we just ended up in a world that we're in now. And, you know, I love this idea of information foraging. I'm not sure if you've come across that.

这类比太精妙了。科学家能定量分析松鼠囤积松果的行为：计算树木间距、剩余松果量。松鼠脑中有套神奇评估系统，会判断当前树木采集效率递减时，根据距离和预估存量决定是否转移。

Yeah. It's so cool. This analogy, they can do some sort of sort of quantitative analysis of squirrels collecting nuts in trees, and then the distance from this tree to the next tree and how many nuts are left. And the squirrels have this weird sort of inventory in their mind where they say, well, I've reached a point where each unit of time in this tree is diminishing in terms of its nuts return. But and that tree, based on its distance and my estimated number of nuts in that tree, is this amount, and then eventually it breaches the threshold, and it moves from one tree to the next tree.

典型的松鼠认知模式。

Typical squirrel cognition, by the way.

正是。经典松鼠思维。人类何尝不是如此？作为信息觅食者，永远在搜寻——

Right. Okay. Classic squirrel cognition. And I think that humans are the same. Information foragers, you know, always on the lookout.

'这个可能很有趣？那个或许更吸引人？'尤其对好奇心旺盛者而言。如今我们就像置身永不打烊的自助餐厅，美食向四面八方无限延伸，而我们将永远困在其中。

I need to find more things. Wouldn't this be interesting? Wouldn't this be interesting? Especially if you're sort of curiously driven. And then we enter into this world where we're at a permanent twenty four hour buffet, that is extends into eternity in all directions, and we can essentially never leave.

没错，我们曾长期扮演信息拾荒者角色，现在更需要甄别能力：'我需要从中获取什么？如何融入我的知识网络？'若不加选择地囫囵吞枣，终将陷入无止境的分心循环。

And, yes, for a long time, we were information scavengers and scourers, and now it's much more about being discerning. It's about what what do I need to take from this, and how does it tie into my bigger web of things. Because if you just take whatever you can get and permanently do that, you're just gonna be distracted, distracted, distracted.

这太深刻了。简直像是现代智慧的化身。靠。我我觉得你说到点子上了。而且，克里斯，我认为你是对的。

That's profound. Like, that that is modern wisdom personified. Fuck. I I think you've nailed it. And and, Chris, I think the I I think you're right.

曾经只有极短暂的时间窗口能获取最优信息。如今这个时代显然已过去，我认为我们设定信息消费边界的能力——提升注意力过滤器以屏蔽冗余、过载或低质信息——才是关键技能。某种程度上，过滤信息比吸收信息更重要，对吧？

There was a really limited period of time where optimal information was available. And now that now now that that is clearly behind us, I think our our ability to set boundaries on what we consume, right? I think to raise our attentional filters and block out information that is actually redundant or overwhelming or poor quality, that is a vital skill. I think that filtering out is actually in some ways more important than taking in. Right?

我同事丹·莱文塔尔常写关于吸收能力的文章，即个人或组织接收新信息的能力。如今我们都淹没在信息洪流中，我想知道你的过滤机制有多精准——能否辨别该忽略什么、回避什么。现在甚至有关于'批判性忽略'的研究，就是你说的那种能立即判断哪些不值得关注的洞察力。随着信息轰炸加剧，我们必须越来越快地做出这种判断。此外，关于综合能力，丹·平克曾写道...

So my colleague Dan Leventhal writes a lot about absorptive capacity, which is a person or an organization's capability to take in new information. And I think we're all now drowning in information, and I wanna know how finely tuned is your filter, to know what to ignore and what to avoid. There's actually now a body of research on what's called critical ignoring, which is do you have the discernment like you're talking about to know what to immediately not pay attention to or discount or dismiss. And we have to do that faster and faster now as we're bombarded with more information. And then I think the other skill here, just to build on the synthesis point, Dan Pink wrote about this.

我觉得他最具预见性的书是二十年前的《全新思维》，书中预言在左脑主导的世界里，右脑思考者将主宰未来。他提出一种叫'交响力'的右脑能力——就像把杂乱音符编排成和谐旋律的能力（虽然我不懂音乐不该用这个比喻）。这种整合能力如今被极大推崇：你能否穿透噪音，聚焦重点，并将信息点以他人能理解的方式串联起来？

I think his most prescient book was A Whole New Mind, which is now two decades ago, where he argued that like in a left brain world, right brainers were actually gonna dominate the future. And he he named a particular right brain scale that I I think now there's a premium on, which he called Symphony. And it's, you know, it's the ability to take a bunch of different musical notes and arrange them into, you know, a harmony or a melody, and a pleasing I shouldn't even do this metaphor because I'm completely clueless about music. But that idea of symphony is something now that gets rewarded in a big way, right? Can you not only cut through all the noise, but then zoom in on what's really important and connect those dots in a way that other people can understand.

这或许是你'拾荒者-觅食者'比喻的变体：过去收集信息点的人受推崇，知道得越多越显专业；如今则是串联信息点的人将主宰世界，因为他们能发现他人看不见的模式并预判趋势。要解决复杂世界的问题，必须先通过串联与综合看见问题。

And I think that, maybe this is just a variation on your scavenger, forager analogy, but I think that it used to be the dot collectors who were rewarded. Like the more stuff you knew, the more impressive you were, and and people saw that as a mark of expertise. And now it's the dot connectors who are gonna rule the world because they can spot the patterns that are invisible to others and then anticipate those. And, you know, I think that means you have to see the problems in order to solve them. And in order to see the problems in a complex world, you have to connect dots and synthesize.

是啊。短短时间内，我们本该依赖的核心优势就完全逆转了。人们注意力涣散、时常分心、因无法专注而沮丧毫不奇怪——人类历史上首次，我们浸泡在信息、食物、懒惰的过剩中，除了安宁，要什么有什么。

Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's a very odd scenario to be in, you know, in such a short space of time for the primary driving advantage that we were supposed to rely on to have been flipped from one thing to another thing. And, you know, it doesn't surprise me that people are struggling with their attention, that they're distracted a lot of the time, that they feel frustrated at the fact that they can't hold on to and you go, for the first time in human history, we are swimming in an abundance of of information. We're swimming in an abundance of food, of sloth, of you want to have an abundance of, you can have it apart from, like, peace.

这确实不奇怪。进化没为我们准备这种环境，文化原型中也缺乏应对工具。

And, it doesn't surprise me. It doesn't surprise me. Adaptively, we're not built for it. And culturally, in terms of archetypes, we don't have any tools to be able to use.

这很有趣，某种程度上让我们回到对话起点——很多人焦虑地认为注意力问题是能力缺陷，总听到'我无法专注''孩子注意力不如从前'这类话。但今年有个元分析研究...

Well, this is fascinating. And in some ways, it takes us full circle to the beginning of our conversation because a lot of people are, you know, are, I would say fretting, that our struggles with attention are a problem of ability. Like, people I hear people say all the time, I can't focus. Kids do not have the capacity to pay attention anymore like they used to. Well, guess what?

该研究汇总几十年来的注意力测试数据，发现孩子注意力水平与10年、20年、30年前相当，成年人反而更好了。我们并未丧失专注能力，稀缺的是专注动机——如你所说，当存在百万种干扰时，自然难以长期聚焦单一事物。

There was a meta analysis that came out this year, looking at every study that's been done over several decades, where both kids and adults are tested on attention. And it turns out that kids are no worse than they were 10, and 20, and thirty years ago, and adults are actually better. So we have not lost the ability to pay attention. What I think is in short supply is the motivation to pay attention. To your point, when there are a million distractions, you're not gonna focus on any one thing for a long period of time.

当网络有海量有趣文章时，谁还会读整本书？但当你发现真正吸引的事物时，保持专注的能力并未减弱。

Like, why would you read a whole book when there are lots of interesting articles on the Internet? But when you find something that grabs your attention or piques your interest, your capacity to hold it has not been diminished.

我还想探讨另一个要素——人们从出色完成的工作中获得满足感。我曾读到一句话：‘我始终有种感觉，成功必须通过自我折磨来换取，若你不感到痛苦，就说明努力不够，要是当初更煎熬些结果会更好。’我认为这是谎言，并想验证其真伪。要知道，我一直在做这些现场演出。

One other element I really wanted to touch on was people taking satisfaction from a job well done. I found a quote that said, I still find myself with this sense that success has to be earned, and the only way to earn it is to inflict pain on yourself. And if you're not in pain, you didn't try hard enough, and it would have been better if you'd suffered more. And I think that's a lie, and I want to find out if it's true. I think that, you know, I I've been doing these live shows.

最近在澳大利亚时，我们在结尾设有问答环节。最常见的问题诸如：如何确定自己正在做正确的事？我所选择的道路是否正确？周围人对我的兴趣点无动于衷，这让我感到孤独破碎，难以保持动力。我不知能否找到志同道合的群体，甚至想回归过去的生活。

I was in Australia recently, and we have a q and a portion at the end. And a lot of the questions you know, the most common questions, how do I know that the thing that I'm doing is the right thing? The path that I'm on is the right one. I struggle to feel motivated because the people around me aren't into the things that I'm into, and it makes me feel lonely, and and broken. And I don't know if I'm going to end up finding a tribe that's into the new stuff, and I'm tempted to go back to the old life.

第三个问题是：无论多么努力，我始终难以真正认可自己的成就。

And then the third one, no matter how hard I work, I really struggle to ever give myself enough credit for a job well done.

确实，这是永恒的困境。在知识型工作中尤为明显——人们总觉得工作永无止境。究竟做到什么程度才算足够？我想...

Yeah. I mean, this is this is a perpetual struggle. It's it seems to be especially pronounced in knowledge work where people feel like my work is never done. Like, when when have I done enough? And I think yeah.

对此我有两点看法。首先，亚当那篇关于‘如何找到自身定位’的文章是我最推崇的实验性历史文献，堪称必读经典。其次，‘怎样才算功成名就’这个问题...

I guess I'd say a couple things on this. First one is my all time favorite experimental history piece is is the article Adam wrote on how there's a place for everyone on how to find your niche. I think it's a must read. Secondly, when have I done enough? Like, how do I know I've made it?

这就像个无底洞...让我用个比喻来说明（虽然不确定是否贴切）：我的学生考入沃顿商学院后，将终身带着常春藤名校光环。每当有人得知他们的母校，就会默认他们聪慧勤奋。这本该足够，但他们很快开始纠结要获得最体面的工作。

I think there is there's there's sort of an endless let me let let me let me try to characterize this with a with a little bit of an analogy, which is, I think, and I don't know if this is gonna land or not, but you can be the judge. I think that I see this a ton with my students. I see them like, they get into Wharton, and, like, they now are gonna have an Ivy League degree to carry with them their whole lives. And what that means is, every time they meet somebody who finds out where they went to college, that person is gonna assume they're smart, or they're motivated, or both. And that could be enough, but pretty soon, they start to worry about having the most prestigious job.

他们认为必须进入麦肯锡或高盛，否则就是失败。等真的入职后，又开始纠结：我当上合伙人了吗？升任董事总经理了吗？

And they think they have to work for McKinsey or Goldman Sachs. And if they don't get one of those jobs, they have failed. And so then they take one of those jobs. And then the question is, but did I make partner? Have I been promoted to managing director?

我常反问他们：究竟要获得多少荣誉勋章，你们才会觉得旁人能认可你？还要被多少‘必须吃苦才能攀登下一座高峰’的诱惑所蛊惑？终有一天你要么知足，要么放弃。问题是：如何尽早抵达这个临界点？

And the question that I ask them is, how many of those will you have to achieve? Like how many of those badges of honor, those merit badges, will you need on your resume before you conclude that other people are going to be impressed by you? Like how many times are you gonna be seduced by the status of the next opportunity to say, Well, I've gotta suffer in order to reach that next peak. And at some point, you're gonna decide either I've done enough, or it's no longer worth it. And what I wanna know is how do you get to that point sooner?

我曾与《点球成金》《弱点》《大空头》的作者迈克尔·刘易斯有过精彩对话。我问他：‘你毕生研究那些取得非凡成就的人，其中哪些人能保持清醒？’他坦言：‘在我所处的圈子里，谦逊之人实在罕见...’

So I I had a really interesting conversation once with the author Michael Lewis of Moneyball, and The Blind Side, and The Big Short. And I asked him, you you know, I said, Michael, you've you've spent your whole career studying people who achieve extraordinary success. Like, which ones are grounded? Which ones know how to how to appreciate the distance they've traveled? And he said, well, I don't see a lot of humility in the I occupy.

他接着说：‘但那些保持清醒的人有个共同点——他们都保留着十岁时的朋友。’我不确定这是否存在因果关系。或许天性踏实的人本就更珍视旧谊。

World He said, But the people who stay grounded, they have one thing in common. They all have friends from when they're 10 years old. And I don't know whether that's causal. Right? Maybe just the kinds of people who are inclined to be grounded are the ones who keep their friends.

但我必须相信，克里斯，这其中有一部分能让你保持人性，也让你意识到自己是否过于拼命，不必以这些方式受苦——那些十岁就认识的朋友，他们不会用成就来衡量你。他们不会用成功定义你的价值。你们的友谊早于所有这些虚浮的东西。所以我认为这些人最能让你保持真实。而且未必非得是十岁时的朋友。

But I've gotta believe, Chris, that there is a component of this that sort of, you know, keeps you human and also makes you realize, like, you are pushing yourself too hard and you don't need to suffer in these ways, which is your friends from 10 years old, they don't value you by your achievements. They don't define your worth by your success. Like, your relationship predates all of that nonsense. And so I think those are the best people to keep you honest. And I don't think it has to be your friends from your when you were 10.

可以是八岁时的朋友，也可以是十四岁时的。可能是那些完全不了解你职业、成就或目标抱负的人。我认为我们都需要这样一群人——他们珍视我们的品格而非成功。

I think it could be your friends from when you were eight. It could be your friends from when you were 14. It might be people you've met who actually don't know anything about your career or your accomplishments or your goals and aspirations. And I think we all need those people in our lives who value us for our character, not for our success.

是啊。我觉得你妈妈通常也是个很好的参照。比如她对你的人生期许是什么？无非是希望你知足快乐，无论你是第一名还是平庸之辈，她都爱你。所以或许...

Yeah. I think your mom is probably, usually a good place to look as well. Like, what does your mom want for you in life? Wants you to be content and happy, and she loved you whether you were number one or it didn't matter too. So I think Maybe.

我是说

I mean

如果你有个专制虎妈逼你出人头地...确实。好观点。不，不是这样。

you have this tyrannical tiger mom that wants you to be yes. True. Good point. Good No.

我正想说这种情况比我想象的普遍。有项「让关爱常态化」的研究，当问父母最希望孩子拥有什么时，多数回答「快乐善良」；但问孩子「父母最看重什么」时，孩子们却认为成就是第一位的。

I was gonna say that that is more common than I I would have believed. There was a there's a making caring common study where you ask parents what they want most for their kids. And most parents say, I want my kid to be happy and kind. Then you ask their children, what do your parents want for you? And their kids think that achievement is number one.

孩子们觉得在父母心中，成功比快乐或善良更重要。不过我认为，未必是孩子或父母哪方错了。真相是父母什么都想要——既希望孩子成功，又希望他们快乐善良。我们误以为成功会带来幸福（显然并非总是如此），

That their success matters more to their parents than their happiness or their kindness. And I think don't believe, by the way, that the kids are right per se, or the parents are right. I think that what happens is parents want all these things. We want our kids to be successful and happy and kind. And we think that if they're successful, they're gonna be happier, which is obviously not always true.

还认为成功能让孩子更有能力助人（也未必）。但现实是父母最终只谈论成就，或者...没错，主要都在谈论这些。想想多少餐桌对话是「考试得了几分？」

We think that success is gonna allow them to do more for others, maybe, maybe not. What happens though, is that parents only end up talking about achievement, or they Exactly, primarily talk exactly. About Yep. Like how many dinner table conversations are? What grade did you get on the test?

「比赛进了几个球？」这种对话无形中传递了「孩子的表现高于一切」的信息。我和妻子艾莉森尝试改变这种模式——每周问孩子两个问题：「你这周帮助了谁？谁帮助了你？」我们想明确传达：我们不仅要你成功，

How many goals did you score in the game? And when you do that, you send an implicit message that what matters above all else is what your kids accomplish. And so one of the ways that my wife Allison and I have tried to tried to change that equation is we ask our kids every week, who did you help this week, and who helped you? And we're trying to to make it really clear to them. We we don't just want you to be successful.

更希望你关心他人，成为给予者而非索取者。希望你关注班上哪些同学不只有人气或酷劲，而是善良有爱心。当留意谁帮助过你时，你就会明白哪些人真正为他人着想。

We want you to care about others. We want you to be givers, not takers. And we want you to pay attention to which kids in your class. You know, not just who are the popular kids or the cool kids, but who are the kind and caring kids. And when you notice who helped you, you realize who are the people who have others' best interests at heart.

我认为我们需要与人们进行更多这类对话，不仅是和孩子，可能也包括成年人，因为我们通过关注的事物传递我们的价值观。

And I think we need to have more of those kinds of conversations with people, not just with kids, probably with adults too, because we convey what we value through what we pay attention to.

太棒了。女士们先生们，这位是亚当·格兰特。亚当，大家该去哪里关注你的最新动态？想在网上持续跟进你的工作吗？

I love it. Adam Grant, ladies and gentlemen. Adam, where should people go? Do wanna keep up to date with all of your work online?

呃，我想想...adamgrant.net吧。我有Substack电子报，还有一系列测评工具可以测试你的慷慨度、思维灵活性和潜在能力。另外《重新思考》这本书，我还主持一档探索新思想的播客节目。

Oh, I I guess, I don't know. Adamgrant.net. I have a a Substack newsletter and a bunch of assessments you can take, to gauge your generosity, your mental flexibility, your hidden potential. And I guess also rethinking. I host a podcast where I try to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking.

老兄我太欣赏你了。你如此深入钻研文献和研究，这点让我特别佩服。

Dude, I appreciate you. I love the fact that you're really knee deep in all of the literature and all of the research.

这是本职工作嘛。毕竟我就擅长这个。不过你纯粹出于兴趣阅读这么多研究，还能把它们变得这么实用，实在令人钦佩。

It's in the job description. It's literally it's what I know. Yeah. Yeah. But I I love I love how much research you read for fun, clearly, and also how practical you make it.

我在努力啊兄弟，努力弥合这个鸿沟。说真的，这次对话太棒了。我期待邀请你来节目很久了，下次出新书时务必再来做客。

Trying to, man. Trying to bridge that gap. Dude, I really love this. I've been looking forward to bringing you on for a long time, and whenever the next book's out, I'd love to bring you back on as well.

很荣幸参加节目。请给我打个0到10分吧？作为嘉宾我有哪些可以改进的？你可是专业主持人。

Well, I'm honored to be here. I would love to know. Give me give me your zero to 10 and what I can do better as a guest, because you're a pro at this.

开场前先把耳机调试好。对，这是最关键的。如果要优化20%，你觉得应该精简哪部分？

Get the headphones to work before we start. Yes. That that was that was the biggest one. What would be better if it was 20% of anything?

没错。你会砍掉哪些内容？

Yeah. What would you kill?

说实话兄弟，你快速引用研究却不陷入枯燥的文献细节，解释完事件就给出恰到好处的参考，这点做得非常棒。个人轶事也讲得特别精彩。

Honestly, dude, you know, the the it's citing the studies, very quickly moving through them, not lingering in the boring reference y parts, explaining this happened, and just giving people enough of a reference is really, really great. The personal anecdotes, also fantastic.

我要结婚了。

I'll get married.

可能在战术层面还需要再细化一点点，但你已经做得非常好了。你他妈简直太棒了。所以我会...我会反思一下，之后我会发邮件给你。但是兄弟，我真的很享受这次对话。我想邀请你上节目已经想了好几年了。

Maybe just a tiny maybe just a tiny little bit more in terms of the tactical side, but you even got a lot of that. You did fucking awesome. So I'll, I'll have to reflect, I'll I'll I'll I'll email you I'll email you afterward. But, bro, I I've loved this. I've been wanting to bring you on literally for years.

而且说真的，你太出色了。你的作品很棒，就连你的Instagram和Twitter都是高质量的内容平台。所以很高兴我们终于找到了合适的时间。

And, yeah, you're fantastic. Your work's brilliant. Your even your Instagram and your Twitter are, like, high signal places to be. So I'm very glad that we managed to finally find a time.

非常感谢你这么说，现在压力更大了。我觉得...我觉得有几个问题本可以回答得更犀利些，尤其是开场问题。我认为对话中最精彩的部分是当你分享某个观点或经历后，我们一起即兴发挥的那些时刻。所以我给自己的建议是：我需要适当跳出常规话题，让'信息觅食'这类想法自然涌现...

Well, I really appreciate that, and it's a lot of pressure to live up to live up to now. I think I think I feel like I could have been a little punchier on a couple of the questions, particularly the opening question. And I I think some of the most interesting parts of the conversation were, like kind of you you sharing a perspective or an experience and then us riffing on that. And so I think one of my notes for me is, I need to I need to be off kind of my usual topics enough that the information foraging idea comes up. That the, okay.

比如当'你担心会失败吗'这种问题出现时。因为我觉得那些共同探讨想法、解决问题的时刻，或是讨论'这种情况下具体该采取什么行动'的瞬间，才是真正迸发火花的时刻。我们确实有不少这样的精彩时刻，但现在回想起来，本可以有更多这样的互动。

Well, what are you are you worried about failing at comes up? Because I I think those moments of, like, let let's play with an idea together or let's think about, you know, a problem to solve, or, what what would the the concrete action set be in this situation? I feel like those those are the moments that crackle. And I think we had a number of great ones. I'm like, oh, now in retrospect, we could have had more of that.

该死的。我已经开始期待下次对话了。

Damn it. I'm looking forward to the next conversation.

我也是，兄弟。真的。我们别隔这么久才聊。好吧...我就先这样，回头联系。

Me too, man. Me too. Let's let's not leave it quite so long. Look. I'll I'll love you and leave you.

老兄，今天真的太感谢你了。

Thank you so much for a day, dude.