#894 - 丹·科 - 如何为巅峰创造力设计人生

大多数人的生活取决于他们选择如何治愈无聊。这是什么意思？

Most people's lives are determined by how they choose to cure their boredom. What's that mean?

哦，老兄。这个故事来自我的朋友，我的YouTube编辑。有天晚上我们出去吃晚饭，他说他想创办一家叫'无聊'的公司。就像，你知道的，只是个小副业。这是因为他生活中长期感到无聊，而他看到的唯一选择就是做那些无聊时通常会做的事。

Oh, man. The story of that came from my friend, my YouTube editor. We were out getting dinner one night, and he said he wanted to start a company called Bored. Like, you know, just a little passion project. And it was because he had been bored for so long in his life that he the only options that he saw were to do the typical things that you do when you're bored.

你刷手机。也许看Netflix。和朋友出去玩。这些并不是真正能有所建树的事情。对吧？

You scroll on your phone. Maybe you watch Netflix. You hang out with friends. There there isn't really something to build towards. Right?

所以我跟他一起构思了相当长一段时间，因为他特别想创办这个公司的原因是为了帮助人们创建一个可以投入的项目来治愈无聊。这也联系到我写的另一条推文：如果你感到无聊，就去建造。所以锻炼你的身体，创建你的事业，真的，建造任何东西。

And so I kind of ideated that with him for a decent amount of time because the reason he wanted to start that specifically was to give people help people create a project that they could work on that would help cure their boredom. And so that kind of ties into another tweet I wrote where if you're bored, build. So build your body. Build your business. Build anything, really.

只需将那种无聊感专注于某件事，而不是让熵有机可乘。

Just focus that boredom towards something that isn't it isn't giving the opportunity for entropy to take hold.

你知道帕金森定律，工作会膨胀到填满分配的时间。这几乎感觉像是科伊定律，即生命会膨胀到填满给予它的无聊。

You'll know Parkinson's law, work expands to fill the time given to it. This almost feels like it could be Coe's law, which would be life expands to fill the boredom given to it.

有趣的是，我确实有一条科伊定律，但它

What's funny is that I I have a Coe's law, but it

是第二个。

was The second one.

那是针对创意工作的。所以，老兄，那是什么来着？大致意思是同样的道理，创意工作就是这样——工作会膨胀，成果会扩展以填满分配给完成的时间。

It was for creative work. So, man, what was it? It was something along the lines of the same thing where it's creative work. The the work expands. The results expand to fit the time allotted for completion.

我对此的体会是，由于我失业时间不长（虽然做过一段时间的兼职，但很快就转为自由职业了），我开始意识到，当你通过自由职业取得进展，后来接触到社交媒体、数字产品、实体产品等当时我完全不了解的领域时，有趣的是我能在不增加工作量的情况下赚得更多。

Where my whole thing with that is since I didn't have a job for too long, I I'd worked part time jobs for quite a while, but I was freelance pretty quickly out of a job. And what I started to realize is that when you progress through freelance work, and then I got introduced to social media and digital products, physical products, other things that I just wasn't aware of at the time, it was very interesting how I could make so much more without increasing the amount of work that I did.

是啊，这很有意思。那么回到无聊这个话题，我感觉如果你没有事情占据时间，你的习惯和行为就会默认选择阻力最小的路径。这么说合理吗？

Yeah. That is interesting. So just to round out the boredom thing, I it it kind of feels to me like if you don't have something to take up your time, your habits and your behavior will sort of default to the path of least resistance. Is that fair to say?

完全正确。

Absolutely.

嗯，有意思。好吧，那关于努力工作呢？你觉得人们对努力工作是否存在某种错觉？

Yeah. Interesting. Okay. What about hard work? Do you think there's a delusion around hard work?

说到错觉，我指的是误解或脑海中构建不当的期望——如果你在某件事上努力了一段时间，并不一定意味着你理应获得别人通过做那件事所得到的东西。举个例子，如果你花一年时间写书，这确实很辛苦，但这并不代表你因此就该每年赚10万美元，对吧？我们大多数人或相当多的人，上学、找工作，这种经历以多种方式塑造了我们的思维。其中之一就是将每周特定的工作量或工作时间与工资单上的具体数字挂钩，而实际上未必需要如此。

By delusion, I would say misconception or poorly poorly fabricated expectations in your head, where if you work hard on one thing for a specific amount of time, you aren't necessarily you don't deserve something that someone else has gotten by doing that specific thing. So as an example, if you spend one year writing a book, that is a lot of hard work, but that doesn't mean that you deserve a $100,000 a year for doing that specific thing. Right? And so since we most of us or quite a few of us, we go to school, we get a job, and we that that frames our mind in quite a few different ways. One being that we tie a specific amount of work or a specific amount of hours of work each week to a specific number on a paycheck when that doesn't necessarily have to be the case.

这里容易让人犯错的是，你会把那种心态带到你的创造性工作或自己创业中。你非常努力地工作，但当你没有得到相同数量的成果，或者成果大幅减少时，你会感到沮丧，直到你拉动那些能让你大幅增加产出的杠杆。

And the thing that can trip you up there is you bring that mindset over into your creative work or building your own thing. And you work very hard, but then you get discouraged when you don't get the same amount of results or you get substantially less until you pull the levers that allow you to make substantially more.

是的。我，这是一个无情的认识：努力工作并不能解决你所有的问题，而且你从事的工作内容远比你的努力程度重要得多。我一直对这个想法很着迷：告诉那些已经很努力的人要更加努力，或者告诉那些已经很放松的人需要学会放松。但你需要针对你交谈对象的具体情况，开出特定的'疫苗'或采用特定的方式。是的，关于努力工作的说法，我理解为什么。

Yeah. I, it's a ruthless realization that hard work doesn't fix all of your problems and that what you work on is significantly more important than how hard you work. And I've been sort of fascinated by this idea of telling people to work harder that already work quite hard or telling people that that, already chill out, that they need to learn how to relax. But it you you know, you need to target the particular vaccine or the particular, modality for the person that you're speaking to. And, yeah, the hard work thing, you know, I understand why.

也许它曾经是对的。你知道，过去十年左右真的被关于咬牙坚持、避免受害者心态、纪律、动力等讨论所主导。对大多数人来说，平均而言，我认为这是对的。但它确实很多时候忽略了其他真正高效的杠杆点。你选择从事的是什么工作？

And maybe it was right. You know, the last sort of ten years have really been dominated by discussions around gritting your teeth, avoiding a victimhood mentality, discipline, motivation, stuff like that. And on average, for most people, I think that's right. But it does, a lot of the time, forget some other real high points of leverage. What are you choosing to work on?

你发现它有多容易？为了能在短期内取得这些成果，你在长期牺牲了什么？如果你说，短期来看，结果取决于你的强度。长期来看，结果取决于你的一致性。如果你用后者交换前者，你最终会很早就被淘汰出局。

How easy are you finding it? What are you sacrificing over the long term in order to be able to achieve these results in the short term? If you say, in the short term, results are determined by your intensity. In the long term, results are determined by your consistency. If you trade the latter for the former, you end up being kicked out of the game quite early.

另一个例子是什么？比如说，声称更努力工作会带来更好的生活结果，这意味着专注于努力工作和建立纪律是唯一重要的事情，而创造力是阶跃函数，可以把你试图实现的目标提高，你知道，巨大的量级。所以，是的，所有这些作为一个工作非常他妈努力的人来说，就像，我我我喜欢努力工作，但我需要提醒自己，它不是万灵药。它不是解决所有问题的万能方案。很少有问题是不能通过更努力工作而变得更好的，但很多时候，有比仅仅更努力工作好得多的解决方案。

What would be another one? For instance, saying that, working harder results in better outcomes in life, which means that focusing on working hard and building up discipline is the only thing that matters when creativity are step functions that can increase whatever it is that you're trying to achieve by, you know, sort of massive amounts. So, yeah, all this to say as a person who works really fucking hard, like, I I I love it, but I kind of need to remind myself that it's not a panacea. It's not a one size fits all solution to all problems. There are very few problems that won't get better by working harder, but there are significantly better solutions than just working harder a lot of the time.

并且能够同时在大脑中持有这两种想法是，艰难的。这很困难。

And being able to hold those two thoughts in your mind at the same time is, tough. It's difficult.

是的。我我认为这通常归结于背景和痛点，如果你没有经历过努力工作却得不到成果的痛点，那么也许你不需要不去更努力工作。对吧？这完全取决于个人的情况，很多因为如此努力却毫无进展而感到沮丧的人，他们没有意识到这本身就是一个需要解决的痛点。因此，他们就没有新的努力方向。

Yeah. I I think it comes down to context and pain points quite often where if you don't have the pain point of not getting results out of your hard work, then maybe you don't need to not work harder. Right? It is completely dependent on the person's situation where a lot of the people who are discouraged by working so hard and not getting anywhere with it, they're not real they're not realizing that that within itself is a pain point that has to be solved. And so then they don't have a new direction to work.

所以他们并没有将努力却缺乏成果视为一个问题，从而无法针对这个问题创造解决方案并着手处理。因此，当你重新投入努力或做其他事情时，你其实是从一个更高的视角出发，从而能做出更好的决策来推进那件事。

So they're they're not registering their hard work leading to a lack of results as a problem where you can create a solution and start working on that thing. So then when you come back to the hard work or whatever it is, you're moving from a higher vantage point so you can make better decisions toward that thing.

是的，是的。跟我聊聊如何在增长和保持简洁之间权衡取舍。因为我觉得这两者往往是以牺牲对方为代价的。

Yeah. Yeah. Talk to me about sort of handling the trade offs between growth and maintaining simplicity. Because those two things, I think, often end up coming at the cost of each other.

是的，这取决于你在构建什么以及你的目标。就我个人而言，我可以从经验出发，我注意到在我的生活中，大概有三四个不同的宏观生产力或创造力时期，通常会有一些让我感到迷茫的季节。而这些感到迷茫或不知道下一步该做什么的季节，通常是在我实现了某个长期追求的目标之后出现的。所以这些都是周期性的。

Yeah. It's dependent on what you're building and your goals. For me, I can just speak from experience where in my life, I've noticed maybe three or four different macro periods of productivity or creativity where there's typically seasons where I feel lost. And those those seasons of feeling lost or just not knowing what to work on next usually coming come after hitting some kind of goal that I've been pursuing for a long time. So all of these are cyclical.

它们并不精确，有点像书中的章节，每一章都会重置。每一章都有自己的目标，都有自己的高潮和低谷。我喜欢从更大的视角这样看待生活，但它始于感到迷茫。然后，如果你在那里不分心，或者不感到无聊，或者不用无聊后的默认活动来填满时间，那么你就会开始进入好奇阶段。

They're not exact, kinda like chapters in a book where each one resets. They each have their own goal. They each have their own highs and lows. That's how I like to view life from a bigger picture, but starts out as feeling lost. And then it if you don't get distracted there or you don't get bored or or you fill your time with the default activities that come after being bored, then you start to move into this phase of curiosity.

所以第一阶段是感到迷茫。第二阶段是好奇。你开始追求新的兴趣，或者深入一个新的领域，或者学习某种东西，无论是什么。你在尝试、在试验不同的事物，直到找到那个让你无法自拔的东西。然后在那时，你自然会被拉入高强度季节，那就是你取得大量进展的时候。

So first phase, feeling lost. Second phase, curiosity. You start to pursue new interests or go down a new rabbit hole or study something, whatever it may be. And you're trying to find you're trying to experiment with different things until you find that one thing that you can't pull yourself away from. And then at that point, you kind of get pulled naturally into the season of intensity, and that's where you make a lot of the progress.

对我来说，那些就是需要长时间工作十二小时的阶段。那时我会构建一个新项目、新产品、新软件，就像我现在正在做的一样，完全是全新的。对吧？新颖、新鲜，感觉非常好，挑战性很高。那时满足感也非常高。

For me, those are where the long twelve hour workdays come into play. And that's when I build a new project, new product, new software as I'm doing right now, completely new. Right? Novel, new, feels very good, challenge is high. That's when fulfillment is also very high.

然后一旦达到那个点，有两种可能。对吧？你可能会飞得太高，触到太阳，被灼伤一点，但从中学到很多。或者你在过程中保持清醒，意识到，好吧，我正达到这个顶峰。

And then once that reaches there's like two options. Right? You can fly too high and touch the sun and get burned a bit, and you learn a lot from that. Or you stay aware during it, and you realize, okay. I'm I'm reaching this peak.

我需要弄清楚如何从中维持一个更高的基准水平。对我来说，就是当我达到某种新的月度高点时。在健身房里，这可能是一个新的重量；在商业上，这可能是一个月内达到一定数量的粉丝或任何其他指标，比如月收入。

I need to figure out how to sustain a higher baseline from this. And for me, it's when I hit some kind of new monthly high. In the gym, that could be a new weight. In business, that could be a certain amount of followers in a month or whatever it may be. Money in a month.

谁知道呢？但这只是一个峰值。我知道这是不可持续的。所以在这个过程中，我必须思考如何在这件事上保持一致性。这差不多就是第四阶段——一致性阶段，我需要建立什么样的系统来维持我在这件事上取得的进步所达到的更高基准，同时不去试图维持那个我知道最终不可持续的峰值，如果我还想在生活中做其他不同的事情的话？

Who knows? But it's a spike. For me, I know that's not sustainable. So along the way, I have to be thinking how I'm going to be consistent at this thing. And that's kind of the fourth phase is the consistency phase where what system can I build to maintain a higher baseline of the progress that I've made with this thing while not trying to sustain this peak that I know is ultimately unsustainable if I want to do different things in my life?

跟我谈谈当你达到那个新的基准或新的最高峰，然后开始回落时的情绪。是的，听起来很棒，想着，好吧，每只股票都会涨到80美元，然后回落，我们会说，好吧，这就是新的基准利率了。

Talk to me about the emotion that comes up when you reach that new base or that new highest peak, and then you're coming back. Yes. It sounds great to think, well, okay. Every every stock hits 80 h's, and then we come back, and we go, okay. This is the new base rate.

但当你感觉到轨迹开始逆转时，尽管它刚刚还在向另一个方向发展，这感觉像是一个情感问题，而不仅仅是一个操作问题。

But as you feel the trajectory begin to reverse, despite the fact it's just gone in the other direction, that feels like an emotional problem, not just an operational problem.

是的。这某种程度上就是为什么它是周期性的，因为你开始感到某种迷失，你可以努力工作并试图突破它。也许在某些情况下，你可以维持一个非常高的基准，并且那是你唯一做的事情。但对我来说，我倾向于渴望回落到某种我可以维持的生活方式，同时不过度逼迫自己，但这就像增加肌肉质量一样，对吧？

Yeah. That's kind of why it's cyclical because you start to feel lost in a sense where you can work hard and try to push through it. And maybe there are some situations where you can sustain a very high baseline, and that's the singular thing that you do. But for me, I tend to, like, desire to drop back down to some kind of lifestyle that I can maintain while not pushing too hard, but also it's like adding muscle mass. Right?

强度阶段是为了增肌。一致性阶段是为了减脂并展现你底下所构建的东西。当你长时间这样做得足够多时，你会对自己最终达到的位置感到有些惊讶。但就情绪而言，你可以想想当你完成一次增肌（如果你做了某种不干净的增肌）后的感觉。我其实不那么做。

The intensity phase is for building muscle. The consistency phase is for cutting fat and revealing what you built underneath. And when you do that enough over time, you're kind of surprised with where you end up after doing those things. But in terms of the emotions, you can kind of think of how it is when you feel after a bulk if you do some kind of a dirty bulk. I don't really do that.

是的。如果你做了一次史诗级的不干净增肌，那你通常会觉得相当糟糕。你感觉迟钝、疲倦。你想训练，因为那真的很有趣，但你生活的其他方面都退居次席，或者现在正在退居次席。

Yeah. If you do an epic dirty bulk, then you usually feel pretty shitty. You feel sluggish. You feel tired. You wanna train because it's really enjoyable, but every other area of your life, it took a backseat or it is taking a backseat now.

于是你会感受到那种状态一段时间。你会感到行动迟缓，感到疲惫。你不再拥有高强度阶段初期的那种动力，它开始变得更加平缓。就像波浪一样趋于平稳。

And so you feel that for a bit. You just feel sluggish. You feel tired. You don't have the same motivation that you did at the very beginning of that intensity phase, and it starts to round out a lot more. It normalizes like a wave.

保持简单，我认为简化复杂性是很多人都在努力解决的问题。要知道，我们可以选择用时间去做的事情是无限的，有太多选择。即使在一个项目内部也是如此。比如一些小爱好，哦，也许我要开始练CrossFit。我一直想学巴西柔术，或者，也许我应该在晚上开始做即兴表演之类的。

Maintaining simplicity, I think reducing down complexity is something that a lot of people struggle with. You know, there's an unlimited number of things that we can choose to do with our time, a lot of options. Even within one project. You know, little hobbies and, oh, maybe I'm gonna take up CrossFit. I've always wanted to learn Brazilian jiu jitsu, or, you know, maybe I should maybe I should start doing improv on a nighttime or whatever it might be.

对于那些有能力且喜欢获取技能、喜欢感受到进步的人来说，你是如何确保优先考虑简洁性，以免在职业、个人、社交等各个方面分散注意力的？

For the people who are competent and like to sort of acquire skills, like to feel like they're making progress, how do you come to think about ensuring that simplicity is prioritized so that you don't sort of dilute down your attention across across too many things, both professionally, personally, socially, etcetera?

是的。对我来说，这是随着时间积累的经验。过去，我的意思是，我现在仍然如此。我会尝试新事物。如果我有非常强烈的愿望，我会允许自己至少尝试一次。同时我也很清楚，如果我不在那件事上投入精力，那我可能不会像只做一次那样享受它。

Yeah. For me, it comes with time, where in the past, I I mean, I still do. I try things. If I have a very strong desire, I allow myself to try them at least once. I'm also very aware that if I don't invest energy into that thing, then I'm probably not going to enjoy it as much as if I just did it one time.

所以像柔术这样的项目，虽然我从没真正尝试过那个具体项目，但我会去试试。我会上几节课。如果我不喜欢，或者觉得它不适合我的生活方式，我就会很快放弃。

So for something like jujitsu, I never really tried that one specific thing, but I would try it. I'd take a few classes. And then if I didn't like it or I I didn't see it fitting inside of my lifestyle, then I'd be quick to quit that thing.

不适合你的生活方式是什么意思？

What does not fitting inside of your lifestyle mean?

如果它影响或削弱了我更高优先级的目​​标。对我来说，在健身房进行力量训练一直是最优先的事项。比如当我开始跑步时，我坚持了相当长一段时间，也很享受。但我找不到跑步与训练、工作、社交时间之间的平衡。我可以在早上安排时间，但当你决定把新事物塞进日程时，需要协调的环节实在太多了。

If it impacts or takes away from my higher priority goals. So for me, training, lifting weights in the gym, that's always just been a top priority. Like, when I would get into running, that's something that I did for a decent amount of time, and I did enjoy it. But I couldn't find the balance of running with training, with work, with social time. I could fit it in the in the morning, but it just there's a lot of moving pieces when you decide to fit something new into your day.

营养、训练，以及所有你已经掌握的东西。如果你是个喜欢学习这些技能的好奇者，这样做非常有用，因为你可以从中提取某种原则、方法或教训，应用到生活的其他领域，填补那些最初让你想跑步或练柔术的缺失部分，从而将其从你的系统中清除。但当你问这个问题时，我提到这需要一些时间，因为你越尝试和实验这些事物，就越能意识到自己可以以更好的视角对待那些新欲望。对我来说，新奇事物综合症（shiny object syndrome）根本不是坏事。你只需要在这个过程中能够重新聚焦，或者需要能够在此期间保持你的优先级。

And nutrition, training, all of the things that you already have inside of there. If you are a curious person that likes to acquire these skills, it's very useful to do because you can pull some kind of principle or lever or lesson out of it to apply to other domains of your life to kind of fill it from the thing that it was missing that was making you want to run or do jujitsu in the first place and get that out of your system. But at the right when you asked that question, what I said was that it it takes some time because the more you try and experiment with these things, the more you realize the the more you can approach those new desires with a better perspective. And shiny object syndrome, to me, isn't something that is bad at all. You just have to be able to refocus during that, or you need to be able to paint maintain your priorities during that.

所以你之前提到的注意力，我可能忽略了相当长一段时间，我想。就像一把锤子看什么都像钉子。我只是假设——我假设我生活中所有的问题基本上都可以通过更努力的工作、更强的自律、更集中的注意力和更高的生产力来解决。你知道，就在这四者之间的某个地方，本质上就是抓得更紧、更专注、减少分心。但特别是今年，我意识到创造力部分能带来关于你自己生活的阶梯式洞察变化，在职业或个人或其他方面的进步，以不同的方式做一些新颖有效的事情，或者想出一种不同的想法。

So you mentioned before, attention that I kind of ignored for quite a while, I think. Maybe like a a hammer that sees everything as a nail. I just assumed I assumed that basically all problems in my life could be fixed by more hard work, more discipline, more focus, more productivity. You know, somewhere in between those four things, which is essentially sort of gripping more tightly, paying more attention, becoming distracted less. But especially this year, I've realized that the creativity part, results in changes sort of step changes of insight about your own life, progress professionally or personally or whatever it is, doing something that's new and effective in a different sort of a way or coming up with a a different kind of an idea.

然后你仍然可以在此基础上迭代，但我过去基本上优先分配零时间给创造力。我以前非常像是一个蛮力创伤型、努力工作型的人。而且，我认为创造力和生产力之间的这种张力，即使在世界级的里克·鲁宾（Rick Rubin）和丹·科（Dan Coe）这样的人身上，也仍然被很大程度上忽视了。所以我真的很希望你能够剖析这一点。

And then you can still iterate on that, but that I I basically prioritized zero time for creativity in the past. I was very much sort of a blunt blunt force trauma, hard work type person. And, this tension between creativity and productivity, I think, is still even with the Rick Rubens of the world and the Dan Coes of the world, I think it's still very much overlooked. So I really want you to sort of break that apart.

是的。我首先想说，当我刚开始的时候，我完全相反。我总是想——我很懒，或者无论你怎么定义懒惰，在某种意义上像是生产性拖延，我会在玩电子游戏的时候，试图穿插一些能带来更好结果的工作。对吧？优先级是电子游戏。

Yeah. I'll start off by saying that I was the complete opposite when I was first starting out. I always wanted to I was very lazy or or whatever definition of lazy you can give where it's like productive procrastination in a sense where I would be playing video games, and I would just try to fit in some work that would lead to something better. Right? The priority was the video games.

工作只是我在中间做的事情。这让我不得不做的是——虽然我第一次没有做对，因为这非常困难——但我至少必须思考哪些是一两件真正能推动事情发展的事情。当你做创造性工作时，创造性工作有更多的机会去发现和利用那些高优先级的事情。举个例子，比如社交媒体帖子。如果你是一位作家、音乐家，你不必是一个所谓的‘内容创作者’。如果你有任何想要传播的工作，社交媒体是一个不错的方式。

The work was just something I did in between. And what that made me have to do while I didn't get it right the first time around because that's very difficult to do, is that I would at least have to think about what are the one to two things that really move the lever here. And when you're doing something creative, creative work has a very it has a lot more opportunity to find and leverage those high priority things where let's let's take a social post for an example. If you're an author, you're a musician, you don't have to be a, quote, unquote, content creator. If you have any kind of work that you wanna spread, social media is a decent way to do that.

在社交媒体上，如果你发布了一个非常好的内容，那么这一个帖子可能比今天其他一千个人发布的帖子表现更好，你可以凭借这一个东西做得相当不错。所以第一件事是尝试采用一种心态，让你至少能够寻找那些更高杠杆效应的事情。因为当你在工作时，你就能识别出它们。因为如果你不一定在寻找它们，它们可能会从你身边溜走，你可能没有意识到这可能会在特定时间内带来指数级的事件和大量进展。当我开始去除很多我称之为坏习惯的东西时，这一点真正触动了我，那些坏习惯包括电子游戏、Netflix，还有不少其他事情。

And with social media, if you post one thing and it is very good, then that post can do better than a thousand other people's posts that went out today, and you can do quite well with that thing. So that's the first thing is try to adopt a mindset that allows you to at least search for those higher leverage things. Because while you're doing the work, then you'll be able to identify them. Because if you aren't necessarily looking for them, they may just pass you by, and you may not realize that this could lead to an exponential event of a lot of progress in that specific amount of time. When it really came to me is when I started to remove a lot of what I would call my bad habits, which were the video games, which were the Netflix, which were quite a few things.

垃圾食品。我还记得大学二年级住在宿舍的时候，那是一段非常糟糕的时期。放弃了健身，就是没有生产力。那是我生活中非常低谷的一段时期。特别是在COVID之后，我开始散步，因为所谓的‘COVID十五’（指疫情期间体重增加）或其他什么原因，我不能去健身房。

The junk food. I just remember sophomore year of college, living in the dorms, terrible time. Quit the gym, just was not productive. Very low period of my life. And after COVID specifically, I started going on walks because the COVID fifteen or whatever they call it, I couldn't go to the gym.

我当时体重增加了不少。感觉自己就像面团宝宝皮尔斯伯里，好在我个子高，所以还不算太糟。但看我的脸就能发现，全都肿起来了，我不喜欢那样。于是我开始散步，那时会听有声书，然后开始注意到，各种以前从未有过的想法开始涌入脑海。这真是一种奇怪的领悟，哇。

I was gaining a decent amount of weight. I just felt like the Pillsbury Doughboy, and I'm tall. So it wasn't that bad, but in my face, you could see, like, it's all puffy, then didn't like that. So started going on walks, and I would listen to audiobooks during that time and started to notice, like, all of these ideas were starting to pop into my head that never had before. It it was just a weird realization of, like, wow.

我实际上有能力产生听起来很独特的好点子。后来我意识到这些想法的力量在于，它们能为你创意工作的不同方面提供动力。总而言之，我认为生产力高度依赖于创造力，当你将它们分开时，两者都会在很大程度上失去影响力。举个例子，如果我在写书或进行任何类型的项目，不管是什么项目。我的思维会扩展以适应那个项目的背景。

I actually have the ability to generate good ideas that sound unique to me. And with those ideas, I've realized the power of them later, is that those can fuel different aspects of your creative work. So that's all to say and to wrap around that I believe productivity is highly dependent on creativity and that when you separate them, both both of them lose their impact to quite some degree. Where to give an example, if I'm writing a book or I'm creating any kind of a project, it doesn't matter what kind of a project is. That project, my mind expands to fill the context of that project.

所以当我在散步、为创造力腾出时间，或者当我大脑中的默认模式网络被激活时——也就是你处于休息状态，没有专注于工作，就像淋浴时想法突然出现在潜意识或意识中——那些在创意阶段产生的想法通常具有更高的杠杆作用，并直接适用于你在生产力阶段所构建的项目。

So when I'm on a walk or I'm making time for creativity or when the default mode network in my brain is activated, where it's you're at rest, you're not focused on work, that's like shower thoughts when ideas just pop into your subconscious or into your conscious. Those ideas that happen during the creative period are usually the things that are higher leverage and apply directly to the project that you were building during your productivity periods.

奇怪的是，尽管我们在解决问题，但我们某种程度上是被蒙蔽的。你就像在一条铁轨上，但可能不是完全正确的轨道，而且有一种奇怪的动量在推着你前进。你会想，嗯，我正在做事，这是今天待办清单上的内容，但你从未真正退后一步，完全跳出并俯瞰全局。

Isn't it strange we get even though when we're working on the problem, we're kind of blinded in this way. You're on a set of train tracks, but maybe they're not quite the right ones, and you've sort of got this weird momentum thing that's carrying you forward. And you think, well, I'm doing the thing. This is this is what was on the to do list for today, but you never actually step back and fully get up and above and look at the territory.

嗯。是的。

Mhmm. Yeah.

假设有听众认同我作为一个正在戒除生产力成瘾的人。你如何设计你的生活方式以实现巅峰创造力？

Let's say that there's somebody listening who identifies with me as a a recovering productivity addict. How do you design your lifestyle for peak creativity?

多散步，本。相当多的散步，我尝试将事物融入其中，并尽可能模糊创造力、生产力、健康以及我的任何目标之间的界限。它们确实会融合在一起。所以早上我醒来后会去散步，你知道的，就像大家都希望你得到的那样，清晨的阳光照进眼睛。之后，洗澡、整理个人卫生等等，然后直接开始某种构建工作。

Lots of walks, Ben. Quite a few walks where I try to bake things in and try to blur the lines as much as I can between creativity, productivity, health, whatever my goals are. They they do kind of all blend together. So in the morning, I wake up and go on a walk, you know, the fresh morning sunlight in your eyes like everyone wants you to get. After that, shower, hygiene, etcetera, get straight into some kind of building.

对吧？我尽可能地把我的日子分开，归为两类：释放熵或约束熵。早晨的时候，不碰手机，不做任何会让杂念突然冒出来、扰乱一整天思绪的事情。所以我早晨散步时，唯一专注的意图就是：今天我要写什么？等我回去时能否找到一个切入点？

Right? I like to I like to separate my days as much as I can and lump them into two categories where it's releasing or constraining entropy and releasing entropy. Where in the morning, don't touch your phone, don't do anything that would cause a rogue thought to pop into your head and just cloud your mind for the rest of the day. So the morning on my walk is just sole intention focused on, okay, what am I writing about today? Is can I find a starting point for when I get back?

然后我通常第一个做的项目是那种需要在早晨优先完成的新颖事物。比如写书或长期项目，这些需要额外精力去构建。之后，我就进入我的主要杠杆，也就是写作。所以就是写新闻通讯、社交媒体帖子，这些是主要事项，因为它们能带来流量。对吧？

And then the first project that I'm working on is usually something that is novel that needs to be done first thing in the morning. This is something like a book or a a longer term project that takes that extra effort to build. Then after that, I get into my main levers, which is writing for me. So that's newsletter, social posts, and those are the main things because those pull traffic. Right?

如果我没有在开发产品或项目，那么我的主要焦点就是为那些特定事物引流。之后，我会散步来划分时间段，像是：好了，现在我可以开始让更多人进入我的一天，开始进行更多对话。回来之后，我通常就会查看邮件、Slack、Telegram，让其他事情介入。做很多维护或行政工作，这些并不真正需要创意，也不需要高度专注。

If I'm not building a product or a project, then my main focus on is on getting traffic to those specific things. And then the after that, I take a walk to kind of create that segment where it's like, okay, now I can start letting more people into my day and start taking on more conversations. And when I get back, that's usually when I'll check email, when I'll check Slack, when I'll check Telegram, let other things come into play. Do a lot of the maintenance or admin work where it's it's not really creative. It doesn't require a lot of focused attention on that thing.

然后在那段时间块之后，我会去健身房。那就像一个硬性分隔，剩下的时间就是阅读、写作、随便搞搞。完全是自由流动的。对吧？如果我有优先事项需要处理，我会坐下来完成它们。

And then after that block, I'll go to the gym. And then that's kind of like a hard separation where the rest of the day, it's kind of like reading, writing, dabble. It's just free flow. Right? If I have priority things that I need to do, I'll sit down and do them.

如果没有，我可能会读点书，去电脑前工作，四处走走。这就像在生产力和创造力之间取得一种节奏平衡。

If I don't, I'll maybe read a bit, go to my computer, walk around. It's kind of like a a pacing balance of productivity and creativity.

有趣的是，为了能够获得创造力，即使在你只是让想法自然涌现、写作、发社交媒体帖子、做任何需要做的事情时，你仍然需要运用自律。因为如果你不运用自律，你早就查看了Slack，那会在早上分散你的注意力。然后那一封邮件和那个人，靠。我晚点还得和那个人通电话，我已经推迟两次了，诸如此类。

Interesting that in order to be able to get the creativity thing, even when you're in just letting the ideas come to me, I'm writing, I'm doing the social posts, I'm doing whatever I need, you still need to apply discipline. Because if you didn't apply the discipline, you'd have already checked Slack, and that would have distracted you in the morning. And that one email and that guy, fuck. I gotta have that call with that guy later on. I put it off twice already and so on and so forth.

所以，在发挥创造力的过程中，自律仍然非常重要。你需要通过自律来强化自己，但主要是学会拒绝，以便让创造力得以展现。

So there still is an importance of discipline within the act of being creative. You need to sort of you you need to, fortify yourself through discipline, but primarily saying no in order to then allow the creativity to come out.

是的。我认为创造力仍然存在约束，并且它在约束中蓬勃发展。而生产力更像是狭窄的障碍，你只是高度专注于一件事。创造力则不是让你的思维暴露在绝对的混乱中，并沉溺其中。

Yeah. I I think of it as a creativity still has constraints, and it still thrives within constraints. I feel like with productivity, it's it's more of of a narrow block. You're just hyper focused on one thing. With creativity, you're not letting your mind just be exposed to absolute chaos and, like, drowning in that.

这会导致无聊、焦虑、不堪重负，以及其他因脱离技能与挑战匹配而产生的问题。至少在我看来，创造力是当我的思维在特定约束（通常是一个项目）内运作时产生的。对吧？所以，无论是写一本书还是写一份通讯，这就是为什么我特别喜欢写每周通讯，因为从来没有一个想法是我不能利用的。对吧？我不知道你有没有这种经历，但当你有一个项目时，你可以在散步时听一本有声书或一个YouTube讲座，内容与你正在做的事情完全无关，但它仍然会为你的项目带来灵感。

That's what leads to the boredom, anxiety, overwhelm, other things that come from kind of leaving that skill challenge match where creativity, at least in my lens, is when my mind is operating within a specific set of constraints, usually a project. Right? So if it's a book or it's a newsletter, that's why I love writing a weekly newsletter specifically, is because there's never an idea that I can't utilize. Right? I can listen to I don't know if you've experienced this, but when you have a project, you can listen like you're on a walk, you listen to an audiobook or a YouTube lecture completely different from what the topic of that thing you're working on is, and it will still give you ideas for the project.

是的。它总是会拉回来。无论你的注意力被什么吸引，无论是昨天和你妈妈的争吵还是其他什么。这很奇怪。你说得对。

Yeah. It's always pulling back across. Whatever your, focus is captured by, whether it was an argument with your mom yesterday or whatever. It's weird. You are right.

这就像，我不知道，一个变形的骚灵或什么东西，它创造并移动成某种形态。它填满你正在做的任何事情的那个“瓶子”的大小。你有一条关于自律的推文说，你不自律是因为你不断把自己置于给你机会不自律的环境中。这是关于环境设计的吗？

It's like a, I don't know, a shape shifting poltergeist or something that create it moves into the form. It fills the size of the bottle of whatever it is that you're doing. You've got a a tweet about discipline saying you aren't disciplined because you keep putting yourself in environments that give you a chance to be undisciplined. Is this about environment design?

是的。在某种程度上是。这就是环境设计，仅仅是让不自律变得困难。所以，如果你早上玩手机有问题，那就把它放在另一个房间。我从来没有真正这样做过或需要这样做，但我知道这是一个常见的建议，而且它很可能正是因为这个原因才有效。

Yes. To an extent. Where it's environment design and just that, making it difficult to be undisciplined. So if you have trouble with your phone in the morning, then put it in another room. I've never really done that or had to do that, but I know it's a common piece of advice, and I'm it probably works for that exact reason.

对吧？至少你起床后意识到，嘿，我不该这样做。把不健康的食物放在食品柜里或者干脆购买它们也是一样的道理。你很可能…

Right? At least you get up and then you realize, hey. I don't do this. Same thing with putting unhealthy foods in your pantry or just buying them in general. You're probably

…不会吃家里没有的食物。

eat the foods that you don't have in the house.

是的。没错。是的。所以，主要就是那条推文的环境设计。

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So, yes, that's the main thing is environment design for that tweet.

你还有另一条推文，当我们开始讨论人生方向之类的话题时，感觉有点相似。你的潜力取决于你愿意拥抱多少不确定性。为什么这么说？

You had another one as well, which kind of feels a little similar as we start to talk about direction in life and stuff. Your potential is determined by how much uncertainty you're willing to embrace. Why?

哦，这有点与我们之前说的创造力在约束中蓬勃发展相矛盾。我指的是不确定性和责任的渐进式超负荷，如果你直接跳进大海中央，也许能学会游泳，但如果你本来就不会游泳，很可能就学不会。而且那不会是一段愉快的经历，你也绝对无法所谓的'发挥潜力'。但我意思是，如果你回顾过去生活中曾经不确定的事情，现在它们已不再不确定。所以我的意思是，你正在逐渐将已知领域扩展到未知领域。

Oh, that kind of contradicts what we said about creativity thriving within constraints. What I mean by that is the progressive overload of uncertainty and responsibility, where if you just throw yourself into the middle of the ocean, you can maybe learn to swim, but you probably won't if you don't know how to swim before. And it's not gonna be a very good time, and you're definitely not gonna quote, unquote reach your potential there. But what I mean by that is now if you were to look back on what was uncertain previously in your life, it no longer is. So what I mean by that is you're gradually expanding what is known to you into the unknown.

你正在一步步走向未知，让你的思维沉浸其中，在那略微的不确定性中酝酿，这种不确定性更多的是赋予力量而非相反。这正是你思维成长最快的时候。可以把它想象成你的'成长边缘'。对吧？生活在你的边缘，就像在健身房里推向未知，代表着重压接近或达到力竭。

You're taking those steps into the unknown, allowing your mind to sit and marinate in that thing, in that slight amount of uncertainty that is kind of more empowering than it is the opposite. And that's when your mind can grow the most. Think of that as we'll call it your edge. Right? Living at your edge, pushing into the unknown in the gym that's representative of pushing close to or near failure or to failure.

就像精益增肌时，只多吃200卡路里。保持在这个精确位置非常困难——既不能因为想炫耀而额外增重，也不能因为饥饿或失控而吃不够。对吧？这里才是进步最大、最充实的地方，但也是最难维持的状态。你可以通过无聊或焦虑来筛选这种状态，当你感到焦虑时，通常意味着你在某种程度上超出了自己的能力范围。

It's when you're lean bulking, it's eating 200 calories over. It's very difficult to stay at that specific place and not put on the extra weight because you wanna ego lift or not eat over because you're just hungry or can't control yourself. Right? That's where you're making the most progress, that what is the most fulfilling, but that's a difficult place to be. And the way you can kind of filter for that is boredom or anxiety or boredom and uncertainty, where if you feel yourself getting anxious, that usually means that you're punching above your weight in a sense.

任务对你来说太具挑战性，你缺乏足够的知识、技能或清晰度来理解达成目标的路径。所以当人们设定这些高难目标，却没有任何拼图碎片来帮助理解时，对他们来说就极其不确定。但一旦他们实现了目标，回到那句引语，他们就已经能够统领或理解那个图景，从而在脑海中容纳更多不确定性。最后一点是：你做得越多，经验就越丰富。假设你现在是50级，而不是1级。当你1级时，你不会去挑战10级。

The task is too challenging for you, and you don't have the knowledge, skill, or clarity to make sense of the path to get there. So when people set these high and hard goals, but they don't have any of the puzzle pieces to make sense of that with their mind, then it's extremely uncertain to them. But once they reach that goal, looping back to the quote, they've kind of been able to umbrella that or make sense of that picture so they can hold more uncertainty in their minds. Because one last thing with that is the more you do this, the less the more experience you have let's say you're at level 50 or let's say you're at level one. When you're at level one, you wouldn't face a level 10.

对吧？你很可能被一击秒杀。但如果你是50级，你大概能与60级抗衡。随着你不断进步，挑战的难度递减会变得越来越细微。

Right? You're probably gonna get one shotted. But if you are a level 50, you can probably hold your own against the level 60. Like, the the decrease in challenge as you're going more and more becomes ever so slight.

人们应该如何弄清楚自己想要从生活中得到什么？你知道，我们会有一些顿悟，比如，嗯，我可以忍受这种不确定性，但其实并不真正清楚。但每个人实际上都有无限的选择权来决定方向，而且这种选择只会越来越多。对于那些想要弄清楚自己人生方向的人，你有什么建议？

How should people figure out what they want out of life? You know, we have insights about, oh, you know, they I can live with this uncertainty, but I don't really know. But there is an literal unlimited amount of optionality for everybody to choose the direction, and that's only getting more. What's your advice for people who want to figure out where they wanna go?

是的。我喜欢把它看作解决人生中一连串无限的问题，其中总有一个是你当前最紧迫的问题。通过解决这个问题，你至少能开始站稳脚跟。如果我们把这个思路延伸出去，看看在足够长的时间尺度下会是什么景象。现在我感觉很慢，感觉很迟钝。

Yeah. I like to think of it in terms of solving an infinite string of problems in your life, where there is a most pressing problem in your life right now. And by solving that, you at least start to gain some kind of footing. If we were to extrapolate that out and see what that picture look like over a long enough time scale, Right now, I feel slow. I feel sluggish.

这正在影响我的人际关系，影响我在工作中的专注能力。我应该先解决这个问题，对吧？我应该专注于解决这个问题。

It's impacting my relationships. It's impacting my ability to focus at work. I should do something about that first. Right? I should focus on solving that problem.

问题的存在意味着有一个目标。你不一定需要刻意设定目标，但目标就在那里。至少你会开始朝着更好的方向前进。随着你不断推进，更深刻、更有挑战性、更有意义的问题会逐渐显现。就像你最初去健身房是为了虚荣，但后来在某种意义上是为了疗愈——你可能因为想变好看而去健身，或者因为高中时被人甩了想报复之类的。

A problem implies that there is a goal. You don't necessarily need to create a goal, but there is a goal there. And at least you start moving in a better direction. As you move forward with that, more meaningful, challenging, and deeper problems start to uncover. It's like when you start in the gym for vanity, but then you stay for the therapy in a sense, where you start going to the gym because you wanna look good and someone in high school broke up with you or something like that and you wanna get back at them.

但随着你坚持两三年，进步开始放缓，你需要解决一个新的问题：我在这个特定事物中的成就感从何而来？你必须开始培养某种关于健身本身的哲学意义上的掌控感。这大概就是一个进阶过程。为了回答那个总会浮现的问题：好吧，但我不知道。

But then as you get into it, two, three years, you the progress starts to slow down and you need to solve a newer problem of, like, okay, where did my fulfillment in that specific thing come from? And you have to start to develop some kind of philosophical sense of mastery around the gym in and of itself. That's kind of the progression. To answer the question that always comes up there with, okay. Well, I don't know.

首先，我不知道该解决什么问题。其次，我仍然没有动力去解决那个问题，因为我的心态还没到觉得那件事重要的阶段。去做那件事或养成新习惯并不是一个自动的决定。对此，我们需要为你的思维创建一个运作框架，有点像一种世界观，一个你可以开始拼凑地图的小世界。所以我喜欢做的是花十、二十、三十分钟，无论多久，来为你未来创建一个‘反愿景’。

First, I don't know what problem to solve. And two, I'm still not motivated to solve that problem because my mind isn't in the place where that is important to me yet. It's not an automatic decision to go and do that thing or create that new habit or whatever it may be. To that, we need to create a frame for your mind to operate within, kind of like a worldview, your own little world that you can start to piece together the map of. So what I like to do there, and this is a practice where you're gonna take ten, twenty, thirty minutes, however long it takes, to create an anti vision for your future.

这并非一成不变。它就像是当前最小可行的反愿景。你只是想先立个旗帜，然后回头再来补充和完善。要做到这一点，你只需要尝试思考和 contemplation 那些你永远不想再经历体验。你要反思那些你可能在 past 忽略了的、而且很可能确实忽略了的相当痛苦的经历。

And this isn't set in stone. This is like a minimum viable anti vision right now. It's something that you just want to you wanna plant a flag in the ground, and you wanna come back to it to add to and refine to it. In order to do this, you're just trying to contemplate and think of experiences that you never want to experience again. You're trying to reflect on the things that you may have passed over and you probably did pass over in your past that were rather painful.

但随着时间推移，那种痛苦会逐渐平衡，现在对你来说不再痛苦。所以首先，反思这些事情。你不想要什么？什么是你反理想的未来？把所有这些东西写下来。

But as you kind of just let time go on, that pain equalized, and now it's no longer painful to you. So first, reflect on those things. What do you not want? What is your anti ideal future? Write all of those things down.

任何东西都可以。全部写下来。没有特定的方法。需要时可以回来查看。之后，构建框架的对立面。

Just anything. Write it all down. There's no specific way to do that. Come back to it when you need to. After that, create the opposite side of the frame.

也就是愿景。你想要的是什么？你想要再次体验的是什么？同样，这第一次迭代可能只是某种妄想。一年后你可能会想，我当时在想什么？

So the vision. What are the things that you want? What are the things that you want to experience again? Again, this is the first iteration of this is probably just going to be some kind of delusion. In a year, you're gonna be like, what was I thinking?

但这就是迭代、精炼、进化的目的。现在，这个框架的唯一目的是重新调整你的思维，以感知新的机会和想法。如果你之前没有意识到，或者之前没有有意识地首要目标——比如以健身为例，获得六块腹肌和避免获得六块腹肌作为你的愿景，以及避免感觉迟钝、超重，只是不喜欢镜中的自己。这就像是两者之间的推拉。现在有了这个意识，你至少能在日常经历中辨别出更多东西。

But that's the purpose of iterating, refining, evolving. Right now, the only purpose of this frame is to reorient your mind to perceive new opportunities and ideas. Where if you weren't aware of it previously or if you didn't previously have a conscious top of mind goal of making let's use a fitness exam of of getting a six pack and avoiding getting a six pack for your vision and avoiding feeling sluggish, overweight, just not liking how you look in the mirror. That's kind of like a push pull between the two. Now with that on your mind, you're at least able to pick apart more things in your everyday experience.

当你在社交媒体上滚动时，现在你会看到一些有用的健身信息帖子，而这些你以前可能会滑过去。你会关注那个人。算法会开始迎合那个特定兴趣。你会被推荐一本书。你会购买那本书。

When you're scrolling on social media, now you're gonna see that post of some useful piece of fitness information that you would have scrolled past before. You're gonna follow that person. The algorithm is gonna start to cater toward that specific interest. You're gonna be recommended a book. You're gonna purchase that book.

你可能会读一章，但然后你会陷入YouTube上Mike Mike Ezrutel的其他兔子洞。而且

You'll probably read a chapter, but then you'll go down this other rabbit hole of Mike Mike Ezrutel on YouTube. And

别那么做。

Don't do that.

确实要精通。是的。但当你真正深入其中，就会开始对这件特定事物产生热爱。当你多年来在健康、财富、人际关系、幸福等不同生活领域重复这个过程时，才能真正开始理解这个更大的图景，并随时间完善这个框架。所以重点不在于提供具体路径，而更多是指明你不该前进的方向。

Really get god. Yeah. But then you get really good into it, and then you start to develop this love for this one specific thing. And when you start to repeat that for the different domains of your life over years of health, wealth, relationships, happiness, whatever it may be, then you can really start to make sense of this bigger picture and refine that frame over time. So it's less about here's a specific path to take and more about here's the direction you don't wanna move in.

这是你大致应该前进的方向。现在让我们开始沿途解决问题，看看试错会把我们带向何方——因为这样做很可能不会让你陷入糟糕的境地。即使到现在，我仍然不一定明确自己想要什么样的人生，对吧？我有一个深信不疑且将要追求的美好构想，但也对变化保持开放态度。

Here's the direction you kind of want to move in. Now let's just start solving problems along the way and see where trial and error takes us because you're you're probably not gonna end up in a bad spot if you are doing that. And even now, it's like, I don't I still don't necessarily know what I want out of life. Right? I have a very good idea that I hold high conviction in and I'm going to pursue, but I'm also open to that changing.

所以另一个关键点可能是：不要抱有过高期望。比如，你不必非要确切知道该做什么。

So that may be another piece of the puzzle is just don't have these high expectations. Like, you need to know what you need to do.

是的。我超喜欢'写下你不希望生活变成什么样'这个概念。乔治多年前做过一个思想实验：如何让痛苦的人变得快乐？你会说不太确定。但反过来问——

Yeah. I love the idea of writing out what you don't want your life to be like. George had this thought experiment years ago, which was, how do you make a miserable person happy? You're like, I'm not too sure. You go, okay.

如何让快乐的人变得痛苦？那就易如反掌。所以我认为逆向思考在这类问题上是非常强大的工具。大家都知道——我会列出清单：切断他们与朋友的联系，剥夺带给他们意义感的工作，

How do you make a happy person miserable? It's like, piece of piss. So I think, you know, inversion is just such a powerful tool with things like that. Everybody knows. Well, I I, you know, go through this little list of things and disconnect them from their friends and remove them from any work that gives them a sense of meaning.

扰乱他们的睡眠，糟蹋他们的饮食，不让他们见到阳光，禁止他们锻炼身体。明白吗？

I'd mess with their sleep. I'd mess with their food. I wouldn't let them see any sunlight. I wouldn't let them train to exercise. You know?

这些就是让快乐者痛苦的最低条件。关于抑郁症我有个洞察：如果你连这些基本要素都无法保障，又怎么可能不让快乐的人陷入痛苦呢？

Okay. Those are the things that make a happy person miserable. The very bare minimum. Like, the okay. There's there's the things that you need in order to so, you know, I had this insight about depression that basically, if you're not covering those building blocks, how would you make a happy person miserable?

你真的不应该纠结于大脑中的血清素平衡，或者这与接触微塑料等有多大关系。这就像是，嘿，老兄。你需要建立一些基础，否则你实际上可能是在将一个本更简单、更容易解决的问题，归咎于某个复杂得多的东西。不过，我确实从未想过从反向思考——你希望自己的人生最终走向何方，或者避免走向何方。我做过年度回顾，用的是我免费分享的那个模板。

You really shouldn't be looking at the serotonin balance that's inside of your brain, and how much is this to do with you being exposed to microplastics and so on and so forth. It's like, hey, fucking dude. Like, you need to form some foundation, or else basically what you're doing is maybe laying at the feet of something far more complex, a problem which is way more simple, and significantly easier to fix. But, yeah, I'd never thought about inverting it for where do you want your life to end up or not. I did this, annual review, the template that I gave, gave out for free.

其中一个问题是：我会做什么让85岁的自己痛苦不堪？

And, one of the questions is, what would I do to make 85 year old me miserable?

哦，哇。

Oh, wow.

这和你的说法其实很相似。

And that's not too dissimilar.

这个角度很好。

That was good.

是的。85岁的我会希望我多做些什么？少做些什么？这和你刚才说的很接近。就像那句老话：告诉我我会死在哪里，我就永远不去那个地方？

Yeah. What does 85 year old me wish that I did more of? What does 85 year old me wish that I did less of? And, that's not too dissimilar to what you're talking about here. If I know what's that thing about, tell me where I'm going to die so that I can never go there?

也就是说，告诉我我不想过的生活，这样我就能避免过上那种生活。

It's like, tell me tell me the life that I don't want to lead so I can avoid doing it.

嗯。我有个问题想问你。我知道很难对此做出某种笼统的陈述。但在你看来，是否存在每个人都应该具备的基础习惯，然后满足感和创造力来自于在这些习惯之间灵活调整并加入个人特色

Mhmm. I have a question for you there. Is do you see I I know it's hard to create some kind of blanket statement for this. But in your eyes, are there those foundational habits that every single person should do, and then the fulfillment and creativity comes from kind of dancing between those and doing their own

还是说存在灵活空间？这取决于你如何严格定义所做的事情。比如，你不会限制人们的运动方式——运动有无数种形式。对某些人来说是跳舞，

thing, or is there leeway there? It depends how rigidly you define what it is that you do. You know, like, you wouldn't let the person exercise. Well, there's, you know, a million different types of exercise. For some one person, it's dancing.

对某些人来说是练瑜伽，对另一些人则是举重。有人喜欢独自运动，有人喜欢团体活动，有人偏好夜间运动，

For one person, it's doing yoga. For another, it's lifting weights. Somebody wants to do it on their own. Somebody wants to do it in a group. Someone wants to do it at night.

有人选择白天运动，有人热衷户外运动，有人倾向室内锻炼。这种划分方式多种多样，最终就像大多数争论一样，会变成语义游戏。

Someone wants to do it during the day. Someone wants to do it outside. Someone wants do it inside. You know, there's a lot of different ways to sort of slice and dice this. And it ends up, as with most debates, just becoming a semantic game.

比如：你具体如何定义运动？什么才叫充足睡眠？谁又能界定'充足'的标准？但我认为归根结底，如果你睡眠不足、长期饮食不健康、缺乏让自己感觉良好的运动形式、不去户外接触阳光（即使住在冰岛等地）、没有从事能让你产生世界连接感和目标感的工作——至少是能为世界变得更好做出贡献的事。如果这些你全都独自完成，那祝你好运能熬过去。

Like, what what do you do actually specifically mean by exercise? And what do you actually mean by enough sleep? Who even says what enough is? But, yeah, I I think ultimately, if you're not sleeping enough, if you're eating poorly consistently, if you are not getting some form of exercise that makes you feel good, if you're not going outside and seeing at least a little bit of sunlight or daylight if you live in Iceland or whatever, and if you're not working on something that gives you a sense of connection to the world and sense of purpose, at at least you're contributing to making the world a little bit of a better place. And if you're doing all of it on your own, like, Godspeed being able to get through that.

所以我认为，越是缺少这些基础项，你就越需要成为非正常值尾端的极端异常值，才能宣称自己过着美好生活或具备足够的韧性。绝大多数人，尤其是正态分布中间的大部分群体，需要其中大部分或全部要素。除非你是极其特殊的个体才敢说：'老兄，我过得超棒——从不见朋友，整天吃百威啤酒和达美乐披萨，

So, yes, I would say maybe there's a basically, for the more of those things that you're not taking off the box of, you need to become an increasing outlier on the tail end of not normal in order to be able to say that you are living a good life or in order to be able to be sufficiently resilient. Most people, and especially the biggest chunk of most people in the middle of the bell curve, they need most or all of those. And you need to be a supremely unique individual to be able to say, yeah, man. You know, I just crush it. I mean, I never see my friends, and I I I eat Budweiser and Domino's.

有时睡十小时，有时只睡两小时，根本不运动，对工作也没什么热情，但生活就是很美好'。如果你以这种方式生活，那你确实是个特别独特的人。

And, you know, some days I sleep for ten hours, some days I sleep for two. And I don't really exercise at all, and, I'm not that connected to my work. But life's good. That you are a a particularly unique individual if that's the way that you, the way that you show up.

是的，我同意。而且我认为另一端也是如此，现在构建软件时，很多团队都有那些习惯，但方向相反——甚至不是我的设计或鼓励，我实际上鼓励相反的做法。但他们就像你在Twitter上看到的那种拼命创业工程师，工作到凌晨3点，因为他们热爱这样做。他们热爱编码，热爱一起工作，成为朋友。

Yeah. I agree. And I think it goes for the the other end too, where right now building software, a lot of the team has those habits, in the opposite direction where, like, not even by my design or encouragement of it, I actively encourage the opposite. But they're like the cracked startup engineers that you'll see on Twitter where they're just working till 3AM because that's what they love to do. They love to code, and they love to just work together and be friends.

我在生活中也注意到，当你专注于一件事并全力以赴时，那是一个高强度阶段。你生活的其他方面确实需要暂时退居次要。我认为其中的智慧在于不让这些方面完全消失，或者为它们找到一个可以维持的较低基准线。

And I've also noticed that in my life where when you are working on that one thing and you're going all in on it, it's that intensity phase. Other areas of your life do kind of have to peel back. I think the wisdom there is not letting them completely fall off or finding a lower baseline that you can maintain of those things.

嗯。奥利弗·伯格曼在《四千周》中提出了这个观点：提前决定你要在哪些方面表现不佳。这真的很棒，因为如果你把所有注意力集中在一件事上，你在这件事上取得的进展会比花三倍时间但只投入三分之一注意力要多。这不是线性的进展——更多时间加上更多专注不等于分散注意力更长时间的效果。事情不是这样运作的。

Mhmm. Oliver Bergman has got this prompt from four thousand weeks where he says, decide in advance what you're going to suck at. And, it's a really good one because if you focus all of your attention on one thing, you make more progress in that thing than if you spent three times the amount of time on that thing, but with only a third of the attention. You sort of accumulate more it's not it's not a linear progression of more time on the thing and more focus equals the same amount it's spread with less focus over more time. That's not the way it works.

如果你六个月完全专注于健康和健身，你的进步会比用50%的注意力坚持一年要大得多。商业、技能获取等等也是如此。存在这种奇特的复合效应。一种痴迷让你关注那些可能被忽略的细节。通常，你会让它成为你个性的一部分，所以动量更难减慢。

If you focus exclusively on health and the gym for six months, you make way more progress than 50% of that attention for a year. And the same thing goes for businesses and skill acquisition and so on and so forth. There's this sort of weird compounding. There's a kind of obsession that causes you to focus on the little minutiae that you might have missed. Typically, you're allowing it to sort of become part of your personality, so the the, momentum is harder to slow down.

过了一段时间，它会推动你继续前进。它推动着你。它成为了你的一部分。你觉得这非常个人化。是的，你最终会发现，通过专注，许多你长期想要实现的结果可以更快达成。

After a while, it sort of keeps you going. It keeps you going. It's a part of you. You feel like it it it's very personal to you. And, yeah, you you end up in this place where so so many of the results that you wanted to get over the long term can be achieved more quickly by focusing.

但问题是你感觉到其他方面的衰退。你感觉到落差，比如，你知道，我说今年要专注事业，或者要在工作上获得晋升，或者要组建家庭、交女朋友等等。但我的身体状态有点不对劲。就像，是啊，兄弟。你每天工作12小时，或者每周外出三个晚上社交找伴侣，或者不管你在做什么，根本没有完美的解决方案。

But the problem is that you feel that fall away. You feel the drop off of, well, you know, I said I was gonna work on my business this year and and and or I was gonna get a promotion at work or I was gonna build a family or get a girlfriend or do whatever it is. But my body's looking a little bit off. It's like, yeah, dude. You're doing twelve hour days at work, or you're going out three nights a week trying to socialize and find a partner, or you're do you know, whatever it is that you're doing, there are there are no solutions.

只有权衡取舍。我认为应该提前明确告诉自己：我愿意做出哪些权衡？比如，我想做这件事。我想在2025年，我想在工作上获得晋升。

There are only trade offs. And I think in advance, identifying to yourself, what are the trade offs I'm prepared to trade? Like, I wanna do this thing. I wanna 2025. I wanna get a promotion at work.

我想搬出去住。我想找个新地方。好吧。要做到这一点，你需要做哪些事情？你已经考虑过这个问题了。

I wanna move out of the house. I wanna get I wanna move into a new place. Okay. What are the things you need to do in order to be able to do that? You you already thought about that.

好的。那么你需要付出什么代价呢？也许我不能像以前那样经常出门了。所以我可能会感到更孤独一些。也许我的一些朋友会因为我没有足够精力维持联系而不再和我来往。

Okay. And what are the things that you're you're going to need to pay a cost of? Well, maybe I'm not gonna be able to go out as much. So maybe I'm gonna feel a little bit more lonely. Maybe some of my friends are gonna stop hanging around with me because I can't pay them enough attention to sort of keep them, feeling like we've got this connection going.

好吧。那么我准备好付出这个代价了吗？我认为大多数人放弃做事，是因为随之而来的痛苦副产品，而不是因为缺乏进展。是其他所有事情阻碍了前进——最明显的是其他事情被搁置的不适感，以及你现在需要投入更多精力去做的事情带来的不适感。你需要同时管理好这两个方面。

Okay. Well, am I prepared to pay that price? Because most people stop doing things, I think, because of the pain that's come along with the byproduct of them, not the lack of progress that they're making. It's all of the other things that stop the it's like the the most salient thing is the discomfort of other shit dropping off, as well as the discomfort of what you're trying to do now that requires a lot more attention. And you need to manage both of those worlds at the same time.

完全正确。当这种情况发生时其实很有趣，因为在很多方面你会证明自己原来的想法是错的。我在健身方面取得最大进步实际上是在两年前，而不是十年前刚开始的时候，仅仅因为我重新对这件事产生了痴迷，专注了六个月，仅仅因为我对这一件事如此细致入微，就取得了让自己都惊讶的进步。但其他所有事情都被搁置了。

Absolutely. Yeah. It's fun when when that happens because you I don't know. You you kind of prove yourself wrong in a lot of ways where the the most progress that I've made in the gym was actually, like, two years ago rather than ten when I first started, simply because I just refound an obsession with that one thing, focused on it for six months, and surprised myself with a lot of progress just because I was so meticulous about that one thing. But then everything else took a backseat.

更进一步说，如果你养成了这样的习惯，当工作这类事情被搁置后，要重新找回动力会困难得多。

And another even further thing with that is if you get into the habit of doing that, it's a lot harder to pick steam back up in something like work if that took a backseat.

是的。这很有趣。你还发过另一条我喜欢的推文：如果你从不自相矛盾，你可能太执着于一个限制性信念，这阻碍你达到下一个层次。人们不喜欢自相矛盾。

Yeah. That is interesting. You've got another, tweet that I liked. If you never contradict yourself, you're probably too attached to a limiting belief, and it's holding you back from reaching the next level. People don't like contradicting themselves.

互联网他妈的真讨厌虚伪。你知道，这就像猫薄荷一样吸引人。哦，你曾经说过这个，但现在又说了那个。而且我们也不喜欢自己被指出这一点。对吧？

The Internet fucking hates hypocrisy. You know, it's like catnip. Oh, well, you once said this, but now you've said that. And we also don't like it being called out in ourselves. Right?

这似乎离被称为骗子只有半步之遥。那我们为什么还要更加自相矛盾呢？

It seems like it's half a step away from being called a liar. So why should we be contradicting ourselves more?

如果我们将一个人的生命描绘成一本书，或者比方说一首歌，人们喜欢做的是专注于歌曲中某句特定的歌词或某个词，然后表现得好像那就是这个人的全部或形象本身。他们喜欢放大图像的某个像素，表现得好像那就构成了他们存在的全部。对吧？但歌曲的特点在于它是不断演变的。另一个例子是指数基金。

If we draw a person's life out as a book or this, let's say, a song, what people like to do is they like to focus on one specific lyric or word of the song and act like that's the entire person in and of themselves or an image. They like to zoom in on the pixel of an image and act like that makes up the entirety of their being. Right? But the thing about a song specifically is that it continuously evolves. It's another example of that would be an index fund.

对吧？一支股票可能下跌，但指数基金可能上涨。而人们喜欢专注于那支下跌的股票，那就是他们所能看到的全部，而不是退后一步说，哦，好吧。从大局来看，在这个事物的实际故事中，如果我尝试用故事而不是仅仅用这个人一生中某个时间点说过的话或短语来思考，那么就会合理得多，我能看到他们的成长和发展，并且实际上能从中学到东西，可能改变我自己的信念。但问题本身在于你不想这样做，而那些信念导致你将注意力狭窄地集中在那件微不足道的小事上，当你真正思考时，它根本无关紧要，十分钟后你就会忘记，而你的愤怒也毫无意义。

Right? One stock can be down, but the index fund can be up. And the the people love to focus on the stock being down, and that's all they can see rather than zooming out and saying, oh, okay. In the big picture, in the actual story of this thing, if I'm trying to think in stories instead of just words or phrases that this person has said at one point in their life, then it makes a lot more sense, and I can see their growth and development, and I can actually pull something from this and potentially change my own beliefs. But that's the problem in and of itself is that you don't want to, and those beliefs are causing you to narrow your attention on that one tiny little thing that when you actually think about it, it doesn't matter in the slightest, and you're gonna forget about in ten minutes, and your anger was for nothing.

是的。写作作为一种实践，对于你将所有这些领悟整合起来有多重要？显然，这是你的职业，但你认为这些见解对于那些没有需要发布的博客的人来说，重要性又如何呢？

Yeah. How important is writing as a practice for you for sort of getting all of these realizations together? Obviously, it's something that you do professionally, but how important do you think those insights are even for people who don't have a blog that they need to be publishing to?

这极其重要，因为我不认为——当人们听到写作这个词时，他们会想到，哦，他们不会明确地这么想，但脑海中会浮现出这些词：英语学位、学术写作、语法、标点、语法纳粹，所有这些不同的东西，但那并不是写作的本质。写作就是写作。想想给你朋友发短信。如果你有朋友的话，你可能每天都给他们发信息。你以某种方式在进行书写。

It is extremely important because I don't see I don't see when you think of writing, when people hear the word writing just now, they're going to think, oh, they're not explicitly gonna think this, but words are gonna come to their mind of, okay, English degrees, academic writing, grammar, punctuation, grammar, Nazis, all of these different things when that's not what writing is. Writing is writing. Just think of texting your friend. You text your friends every day, maybe if you have friends. You write in some way.

你写邮件，无论是什么。我希望你将其和写日记之类的事情视为练习思考的一种方式，特别是因为写作就是在纸上的思考。它是一种有组织的思考，你可以拆解它，可以重做，可以非常有意识地处理它。在你的脑海里，它并不像一个真正的画布。你更像是在其中游弋，很难找到一条连贯的思路或创造出一条长的连贯思路。

You write emails, whatever it may be. I want you to think of that and things like journaling as a way to practice thinking, specifically because writing is thinking on paper. It's organized thinking that you can break apart, you can redo, you can be very intentional with it. In your mind, it's kinda it's not an actual canvas. It's just something you're, like, swimming through, and it's very difficult to find one coherent line of thought or create one long coherent line of thought.

你绝对不可能在脑子里写出一本书。所以，通过将你的话语写在纸上，开始理解你的思维方式，然后可以说开始重新编程它，你就是在脑子里做这件事。你正在重新编程你的思维方式，并且希望是一种有利于理想结果的方式。所以这是第一个原因。第二个原因是，我个人认为写作是一种能放大你可能获得的任何其他技能的技能。

There's absolutely no way that you're gonna write a book in your head. So by putting your words on paper and starting to understand how you think and then starting to, you could say, reprogram that, you are doing just that in your head. You're reprogramming the way that you think and, hopefully, a way that is beneficial toward ideal outcomes. So that's reason number one. The second reason is that I see writing personally as a skill that amplifies any other skill that you could acquire.

因此，我认为写作是非常值得首先学习的技能，因为它要求你掌握人性、心理学、说服术等非常基础的技能，根据写作媒介的不同可能还包括营销，在许多情况下文案写作涉及销售，以及不同类型的写作。这就是沟通。无论你想从生活中获得什么，你很可能都需要与他人沟通、说服、提供价值、交换价值。而书面文字是让你做到这一切的基础媒介形式。所以通过练习并在其基础上叠加技能，它可以变得极其强大，同时也是一种重塑你整个思维的方式。

Therefore, I see it as a very good first thing to learn because it requires you to learn very fundamental skills of human nature, psychology, persuasion, potentially marketing, depending on the medium of the writing, sales in many cases for copywriting, different types of writing. It's communication. Anything that you want to get out of life, you're probably going to be communicating, persuading, offering value, exchanging value with another person. And the written word is the base form of media that allows you to do that thing. So by practicing it and stacking skills on top of it, it can be extremely powerful while also being a way to reshape your entire mind.

如果你使用的语言决定了你的思想能走多远，那么这不仅对你的决策能力，而且对你生活中的所有潜力都具有极其强大的影响力。

And if if your language that you use paves how far your thoughts can go, then that's extremely powerful in not only your decision making, but in whatever potential you have in life.

是的。你知道，我大概在四年半前开始做这个通讯 newsletter。从那以后我只漏过一周，所以现在大概是第250期之类的。即使作为一个经常与比我聪明得多的人交谈的人，写这个通讯的过程也随着时间的推移变得越来越好。这可靠地成为我每周最喜欢的部分。

Yeah. I, you know, started this newsletter thing that I do, four and a half years ago, I think. And, I think I've missed a week since then, so we're on, whatever, edition 250, some shit like that. And even as somebody that speaks a lot all the time, to people that are way smarter than me, the process of writing that newsletter has become better over time. Like, it's reliably my favorite part of the week.

我知道每个有Substack的人都会说：兄弟，你得用Substack。但对我来说，原因是我很难坚持深度日记练习，除非是很有结构性的东西，比如六分钟日记、五分钟日记之类的，Julia Cameron的艺术家之页或晨间日记什么的，我真的很挣扎。我需要很多社交压力来迫使自己做困难的事情，尤其是新的困难事情。比如CrossFit就是个很好的例子。我开始做CrossFit。

And I'm aware this is every guy with a fucking Substack ever going like, bro, you gotta get on Substack. But the reason I think for me was I struggled so much to ever keeping up sort of a deep journaling practice beyond something that was very structured, you know, like a six minute journal, five minute diary type thing, Artist Pages or Morning Pages by Julia Cameron or whatever was just I really struggled with that. And, I need a lot of social pressure to get myself to to do hard things, especially new hard things. So, CrossFit was a great example. Started doing CrossFit.

你不会在训练中途放弃，因为有其他15个人和你一起做，他们会看着你，你会觉得他们用奇怪的眼神看你。所以你利用社交压力。你将动力感外部化和外包给群体。你知道，如果你说这叫'三分钟周一'，但周二到了却没有邮件，那些期待周一收到邮件的人会怎么想？因此，这是我第一次真正拥有持续的写作练习，而且它对我影响深远。

You don't quit in the middle of the workout because there's 15 other people who are all doing it with you, and they're gonna look at you, and you're gonna they're gonna look at you weird. So you use the social pressure. You externalize and outsource your sense of, motivation to the group. And, you know, if you say it's called three minute Monday and Tuesday rolls around and there's been no email, well, what about all the all the people that are expecting email on a Monday? So given that, it was the first time that I actually had a consistent writing practice, and, you know, it's informed so much.

我觉得你说得也对。你也是每周一次对吧？每周一次？是的。

I think you're right as well. You do a you're going weekly too. Right? Once a week? Yep.

是的。对我来说，这个节奏真的很美妙，因为我总有东西可写。我从来不会没东西可写。有时候我想写的东西比实际写的还多，但从不觉得费力。每到周五或周六我就开始写。

Yep. And, for me, that cadence is is really beautiful because I always have something to write about. I never don't have something to write about. And sometimes I have more to write about than I want to write about, but it never feels arduous. I get to a Friday or a Saturday.

我靠，真受不了。我等不及了。我这周有什么来着？我有我的笔记。而且，你知道，我甚至可以拉开裤子给你看看里面藏着什么，就是一张巨大无比的单页笔记，上面全是随机链接和零碎的见解。

I'm like, fuck. Like, I can't wait. I can't what what have I got this week? I've got my note. And, again, you know, struck I can open the open my pants and show you what I've got lurking inside, which is just a huge, huge fuck off single note with random links and and bits of insight.

它本可以更有条理。我肯定能建立更好的系统。但这个很管用，轻便，而且我已经用它写了大概二十五万字了。所以别怪我。而且，老兄，我爱死它了。

It could be way more organized. I'm sure I could I could have a better system. But this one works, it's lightweight, and I've used it for, you know, quarter of a million words. So sue me. And, dude, I love it.

我爱它。它在个人层面帮了我，在职业层面也帮了我。它给我提供了晚餐时可以聊的想法和故事。它让我反思童年的一些事情。

I love it. I it's helped me personally. It's helped me professionally. It gives me ideas and stories to talk about over dinner. It's, you know, made me reflect on things from my childhood.

它给了我空间... 所以，是的，你知道，我大约五年前想出了一个规则：每个人都应该有一个播客，每周花半小时，把手机放在桌上，按下录音键，和一个朋友聊聊你关心的话题。因为很少有人能就一个话题进行专注的对话，我认为这有治疗作用。八年前我开始做客播客时，就发现了这种对话的治疗效果，就像口渴了却不知道自己需要喝水一样。而写作其实也是一样的。

It it gives me space to so, yeah, you know, I I had this I had this rule that I came up with about five years ago that everybody should have a a a podcast in that for half an hour a week, put your phone on the table, press the record button, and talk to a friend about a topic that you care about. Because very few people have a focused conversation on, one topic, and I think it's therapeutic. I found it kinda I found this kind of conversation when I started guesting on podcasts eight years ago. I found it really therapeutic in a way that was like being thirsty without knowing that I needed a drink. And, writing is actually the same.

所以我... 我还没说，但我慢慢倾向于认为每个人都应该开一个Substack，即使他们没打算分享。就因为... 它真的非常非常好。如果你发现自己的想法很混乱，如果你喜欢各种想法并不断琢磨它们，但它们总是停留在脑子里... 我看到你发过一条推文，大意是你在个人发展方面没有取得想要的进展，因为你所有关于个人发展的想法都锁在脑子里，而不是去做那件真正能推动你实现目标的事。这和这个情况有点类似。你有一大堆想法，它们就在这儿晃荡。

So I've I'm I haven't said it yet, but I'm slowly veering toward everybody should start the Substack even if they have no intention of sharing it. Just because it's it's really, really good. If you're finding that your thoughts are messy, if you like ideas and you keep playing with them, but they're always up here, you know, I think you've got you I saw a tweet from you that was something to do with, you're not making as much personal development progress as you want because all of your ideas for personal development are locked in your head as opposed to doing the one thing that could actually move you towards, achieving your goals. And it's kind of the same with this. You've got all of these ideas, and they're just sort of lurking around here.

除非你能在某个地方引用它，否则你能做什么？你只会不停地想它。你知道那是什么感觉吗？我的意思是，这就是失踪人口案件残酷的地方。对吧？

And until you've got it to be able to reference somewhere, what are you gonna do? You're just gonna keep thinking about it. You know what it's like? That's I mean, this is the ruthless thing about missing persons. Right?

家属会怎么说？我只想知道。我们只想知道他们在哪里。而你的大脑在说，我只想知道这个他妈的想法到底在哪儿。就像，我只想知道。

What do the family say? I just want to know. We just want to know where they are. And your brain is saying, I just want to know where this fucking idea is. Like, I just want to know.

然后你会说，它还在脑子里。你会说，是的，知道。所以我需要不断提醒你，以防你忘记。一旦写在纸上，你某种程度上就解放了，可以去思考新的不同的想法。嗯。

And you go, it's still in the brain. You go, yeah, know. So I need to keep reminding you of it in case you forget. Once it's down on a piece of paper, you're sort of liberated to think about new different ideas. Mhmm.

是的。我我我觉得很有趣的是大家都这么说。而我我认为写作很重要，因为它是我身份的一部分。对吧？我会经常谈论它，因为它确实是。

Yeah. I I I find it quite interesting how everyone says that. Where I I think writing is important because it is a part of my identity. Right? I'm gonna talk about it a lot because it is.

对你来说，是播客或者开始一个类似播客的小型版本。让我觉得有趣的是，几乎任何创作者，无论他们使用什么媒介，都会说同样的话。所以，虽然可能是写作，虽然可能是某种形式的演讲，我认为仅仅是创造一些东西，能够综合你脑中的想法，能够取出一些卡在你大脑里的想法，以某种你认为对世界有益的方式组织它们，并把它们给出去，这就在很大程度上解决了那些——不是基本需求——而是意义需求。而且在那里有这么多不同的相关想法和实现方式。就像你说的，有100种不同的锻炼方式。

For you, it's podcasting or starting, like, a smaller version of the podcast. What's interesting to me is that for almost any creator, they would say the same thing in whatever medium they have. So while it may be writing, while it may be speaking in some kind of fashion, I think just creating something, being able to synthesize the ideas in your head, being able to take out some of the ideas that are stuck in your brain, organize them in some way that you think is beneficial to the world, and giving it to them solves a a good amount of those, not basic needs, but meaning needs by a long shot. And there's so many different connected ideas there in in ways of doing that. Like you said, there's a 100 different ways to exercise.

你要在室内做，室外做，还是做CrossFit、跑步、走路、柔术，无论是什么。对于创造，你可以用你拥有的任何兴趣来做这件事，这就是它如此有趣和迷人的地方——它只是允许你自己去探索那些兴趣并用它们做点什么。这不仅仅是单纯为了阅读而阅读，你看不到任何好处。现在你有事情可以做了。

Are you gonna do it inside, outside, or you're gonna do CrossFit, running, walking, jujitsu, whatever it may be. With creating, you you do that with any interest that you have, and that's what's so fun and fascinating about it is it's just giving yourself permission to explore those interests and do something with them. It's less about reading just to read, and you don't see any benefit out of it. Now you have something to do with it.

老兄，我的意思是，你知道，现场演出中最常见的问题或见解之一，大致是关于‘我如何更好地记住我学习和阅读的东西？’ 然后，是的。你知道，问题是你他妈的没有理由去记住它们。这就是你的问题。你的问题是，除了试图在茶水间显得更有趣，或者为了某种模糊的‘你个人没有出口’的感觉之外，你为什么需要记住它们。

Dude, I mean, you know, one of the most common, questions or insights that came from the live shows was some thing along the line of how do I better remember the things that I learn and read? And Yeah. You know, the problem is you don't have a reason to fucking remember them. That's your issue. Your issue is why do you need to remember them other than trying to be more interesting at the water cooler or for some vague sense of You personal have no outlet.

没有理由。没有压力施加到这个系统上来约束它或者促使你去做。所以，如果你没有理由去做，那就是‘我为什么要去健身？’如果你不知道，或者，这里有个好例子——如果健身房训练对健康、幸福、你的感觉或者别人对你的吸引力没有任何影响，你觉得有多少人会去做？几乎没有人。

There's no reason. There's no pressure being applied to the system to constrain it or or cause you to do it. So if you don't have a reason to it's why should I get fit and go if you didn't know or if if here's a good one. If it wasn't the case that training in the gym had any bearing on health or well-being or the way that you felt or how attracted people were to you, how many people do you think would do it? Almost none.

对吧？因为它很难，很糟糕，而且基本上没有好处。所以，当它只是一个模糊的想法，比如‘我会成为一个更好、更专注、更有洞察力、更有智慧的人’时，对你的好处就远不那么明显了。不。我这个周末必须写一千字。

Right? Because it's hard, and it sucks, and there's basically no benefit. So the benefit to you is way less salient when it's this vague idea of I will become a better, more mindful, more insightful, wisdom y person. No. I've gotta write a thousand words this weekend.

这会给你施加一些压力。

That's that'll apply some pressure to you.

是的。Naval最近发了一条推文，大意是说，如果你不需要记住它，那你就不应该想要记住它。类似这样的思路，他说如果你需要记住，你自然就会记住。嗯。

Yeah. Naval put out a tweet recently, and, yeah, it said something along the lines of, if you don't if you didn't man, what was it? It was if you didn't if you don't if there wasn't a reason to remember it, then you shouldn't want to remember it. Something of that line of thought where he was saying, you don't need to if you needed to remember it, you would. Mhmm.

试图去记忆任何东西都有些违背初衷。

And trying to memorize anything is kind of against the point.

蒂姆·费里斯有一个叫做‘好东西自然留下’的理念，与此并无太大不同。基本上，这不是你的责任去觉得一本书有趣，而是书的责任要对你有吸引力。如果你读了某本书的200页后觉得没什么印象深刻，或者什么都记不住，那可能只是因为书中没有足够打动你、引起共鸣或值得记住的内容。这不是你的问题。

Tim Ferriss has got an idea called the good shit sticks, and, it's not too dissimilar, basically, that it's not it's not your job to find a book interesting. It's the book's job to be interesting to you. And if you read 200 pages of some book and you go, well, nothing stood out to me, or I can't remember anything. You go, well, maybe nothing was sufficiently impressive or interesting or or resonant with you to warrant you remembering anything. That's not a you problem.

那是书的问题。

That's a book problem.

是的。这改变了我看待和阅读书籍的方式，我不再会在几次阅读中通读整本书。我通常是在寻找那些我能利用、记下或会记住的观点，而不太关注其他内容。如果我能把它用在我的写作中，或者在这里的某个地方融入它，或者能理解这个我试图与自己世界观整合的抽象概念，那就完美了。但书中的其他东西，我试图学习、记忆并能复述出来，就像你说的，只是为了在别人面前显得聪明。

Yeah. That that's changed how I view and read books where I don't I don't really sit and read entire books over the course of a few sessions, of course. I I usually am hunting for ideas that I can utilize or write down or the ones that I will remember, and I don't pay attention to too much else. Where if I can use it as a portion of my writing or I can weave it in somewhere here or I can make sense of this abstract worldview that I was trying to integrate with my own, then perfect. But the other things in the book, me trying to study and memorize and be able to recite those things again so or like you said, so I can sound smart to someone else.

这确实有些违背初衷。

It is kind of against the point.

太棒了。女士们先生们，这位是丹·科。丹，老兄，我真的很感谢你。我认为这种将生产力、创造力、纪律与某种自由和简洁相结合的方式非常好，是一种非常必要的平衡。

Heck yeah. Dan Coe, ladies and gentlemen. Dan, dude, I I really appreciate you. I think this blending of of productivity, creativity, discipline with sort of freedom and simplicity is a it's good. It's a much needed redress.

大家应该去哪里？他们想看看你写的东西和你做的工作。你该指引他们去哪儿？

Where should people go? They wanna check out the things you've written and the work you do. Where should you send them?

是的，直接去danco.com。所有内容都在那里。

Yeah. Just the danco.com. Everything's there.

老兄，太给力了。

Dude, heck yeah.

这次对话太棒了。非常感谢给我这个机会。

This was awesome. I really appreciate the opportunity.

不，是我的荣幸，老兄。下次再见。经常有人问我推荐书籍。大家想开始读小说、非虚构类作品或真实故事，这就是为什么我整理了一份清单，包含我读过的最有趣、最有影响力的100本书。

No. My pleasure, dude. Until next time. I get asked all the time for book suggestions. People want to get into reading fiction or nonfiction or real life stories, and that's why I made a list of 100 of the most interesting and impactful books that I've ever read.

这些是我发现的最能改变人生的读物，里面有我喜欢它们的原因描述以及购买链接。而且完全免费，你现在就可以通过访问chriswillx.com/books获取。网址是chriswillx.com/books。

These are the most life changing reads that I've ever found, and there's descriptions about why I like them and links to go and buy them. And it's completely free, and you can get it right now by going to chriswillx.com/books. That's chriswillx.com/books.