#856: 吉姆·柯林斯 —— 如何诠释人生并最大化你的运气回报

这就是我最终为整本书定下框架的方式。

And that's how I ended up really framing the whole book.

然后，正如你所知，我们可能会谈到这一点，这种想法的萌芽其实可以追溯到一个破碎的孩子试图理解人生的时候。

And then, as you know, and we'll probably get into this, the seeds of that go all the way back to a shattered kid trying to figure out life.

这确实是真正的创作历程。

That is really kind of the creative journey.

当你读到这本书时，它看起来几乎像是线性发展的，但你这样写是因为你希望它在概念上连贯一致。

When you get the book, it feels like it's almost like clearly linear, but you write that way because you want it to hang together conceptually.

但通往这个结果的创作过程却是充满活力的。

But the creative journey of how you get there is wonderfully dynamic.

嗯，有几件事。

Well, a few things.

我们肯定会谈到童年，而且很可能很快就会谈到。

So we are gonna get to childhood for sure, probably sooner rather than later.

另外，当我读这本书时，尤其是考虑到我们第二次对话的结尾，我一直在为你加油，因为我正陷在一部850页的初稿中，这事我就不多说了。

And separately, as I was reading this book, particularly given the end of our second conversation, I was really cheering for you because I am in the middle of a fog with a draft that is 850 pages long, and I won't get into that.

但我当时就想，哦，原来隧道尽头真的会有光。

But I was like, oh, so there can be light at the end of the tunnel.

因为说实话，我看着这件事，感觉这块石头似乎越来越密集了。

Because honestly, I'm looking at this thing, and I'm like, this rock just seems to get denser and denser.

它变得越来越难撬动，所以恭喜你，这对我来说也是一种精神上的支持。

It gets harder and harder to chip away at it, so congratulations, and it was also very helpful as moral support to me.

所以你是对这本书本身感到迷茫，还是正处于一种普遍的、蒂姆式迷失在迷雾中的状态？

So so are just so are you in the fog on the book itself, or in a general Tim wandering in the fog time?

我认为，我现在所处的状态恰恰与我以往通常的情况相反。我的意思是，以前我会对特定项目有非常清晰的认识。

I am, I would say, in the inverse of where I have found myself typically before, and what I mean by that is before, I would say I have had a lot of clarity around specific projects.

这本书就摆在我面前。

Here is the book in front of me.

这个播客我也在打造。

Here is the podcast I am building.

还有那个填空式的商业项目，我通常都会非常清楚。

Here is the fill in the blank business project where I would have extreme clarity.

与此相反，我会说，在人生方向上，我感到自己缺乏更多的清晰感。

And in contrast to that, I would say broadly for life direction, would feel like I had less clarity.

现在，尽管暂时如此，我对此感到相当满足，因为我有一位很棒的伴侣。

Right now, and I I am quite content with this for the time being, I have the flip side, which is I'm with a wonderful partner.

我们对共同的未来方向非常明确，我觉得这就是撬动其他一切的阿基米德杠杆。

We are very clear on where we're headed together, and I feel like that is the Archimedes lever for everything else.

从职业角度来看，我不再觉得需要证明什么，但我确实也想达到你现在的状态——在67岁或37岁时，依然拥有更多的能量和内在的激情，我确实想要那样。

I don't feel like I have much to prove anymore from a professional perspective, but I do also want to end up where you are in the sense of feeling like you have or in fact having more energy, more fire within you at 67 37, I do want that.

但在项目层面，我对‘蒂姆3.0或4.0’会是什么样子缺乏清晰的认知，因为我真的很喜欢这个播客。

But on a project level, I have much less clarity in terms of what does Tim three point o four point o look like, because I do love the podcast.

我计划继续做下去，但它也已变成一个极其饱和、充满噪音的领域。

I plan to continue doing it, but it's also become one of the most saturated noise filled playing fields imaginable.

我认为，任何期待同样的旋律永远持续的人，可能都没有预料到不可避免的结局——很可能是一道悬崖。

And I think anyone who expects the same music to play forever probably does not anticipate the inevitable, which is probably a cliff of some type.

对吧？

Right?

所以目前我对几件事还感到迷茫，其中之一就是写作。

So I have a fog as it stands currently around a few things, one of which would be writing.

比如这本850页的巨著，我是该继续一点一点地写下去，但说实话，这让我觉得有点耗能，所以我实际上把它搁置了，还是该专注于一个我非常非常兴奋的新写作项目？

So for instance, this 850 page behemoth, do I chip away at that, which I find a little bit draining, to be honest, so I've actually put it on the back burner, or do I say focus on a newer writing project that I'm very, very excited about?

这究竟是我在顺应自己的内在倾向——这个术语我们或许该定义一下——还是仅仅被新事物的新鲜感所吸引？

And is that in fact leaning into my encodings, which is a term we should probably define, or is it just the allure of the novelty of the new?

猜猜怎么着？

And guess what?

惊喜的是，一旦我陷入泥潭，我还是得缴税。

Surprise, surprise, as soon as I get into the mud, I'm gonna still be paying the taxes.

是的。

Oh, yeah.

你需要做好缴税的准备。

You need you need to be prepared to to pay.

所以，我现在正处在一个十字路口。

So that is a bit of a crossroads at which I find myself right now.

我问你的问题是：首先，对于所有正在听的人，我们使用了‘迷雾’这个词，我先简单说明一下背景，然后再提出一个问题。

My question for you is so first of all, just for anyone who's listening to this, we're using the term fog, and I'm just gonna put a quick context on that and then ask a question.

我们刚才谈到了‘悬崖’的概念，整个研究结构都是围绕悬崖展开的。

And so we just talked about the notion of cliffs, and and the whole study structure was around cliffs and so forth.

所以我知道，悬崖在我看待事物的方式中会起到关键作用。

And so I I knew cliffs would play a critical role in how I look at things.

在我们研究的生活中，迷雾的普遍存在让我感到非常震惊。

I was really overwhelmed with the prevalence of fog in the lives that we studied.

这并不是我预期会发现的内容。

That was not something I expected to find.

迷雾指的是你生命中的某些阶段，或者在某个特定时刻，你感到迷失、困惑、茫然、迷失方向、不确定，而生命中也存在一些清晰明朗的阶段。

And fog are these periods of time where you're kind of either in some portion of your life or maybe overall in life at a given point where you're lost, confused, befuddled, disoriented, uncertain, and there's kind of these clarity phases of life.

比如，我现在就处于一个清晰的阶段。

Like, I'm in a clarity phase right now.

我在2013到2014年期间处于迷雾阶段，二十多岁的时候更是如此。

I was in a fog phase about 2013, 2014, certainly in a fog in my twenties.

有时候是迷雾阶段，有时候是清晰阶段。

There's kind of fog phases and these clarity phases.

我们研究中的每个人都有过这些迷雾时期，有时甚至持续很长时间，这最终让我感到很安慰，因为尽管我们研究的这些人一生成就非凡，但他们可能在迷雾中浪费了整整十年。

Every person in our study had these sometimes even extended episodes of fog, which I found very comforting in the end because the people we studied had remarkable lives when you summed up the entire thing, but they could lose a decade in the fog along the way.

尤其是在悬崖之后，几乎总会出现迷雾。

And then in the wake of cliffs in particular, there seems to almost always be fog.

迷雾可能因各种原因在任何时候出现，但根据我们研究中的情况，如果经历了一个足够大的悬崖，尤其是出乎意料的悬崖，迷雾很可能会随之而来，而且可能非常浓重、令人困惑。

So fog can come at any time for a variety of reasons, but the likelihood fog will follow a cliff based on what we looked at in the study is that if you have a big enough cliff, especially if it was unexpected, the fog is likely to roll in and can be very thick and very befuddling.

这就是我们为什么要谈论迷雾。

So that's why we're talking about fog.

所以我的问题是，当你在迷雾中徘徊时，我认为正如你所描述的，这是一个非常有趣的时刻——你开始思考，到目前为止你所做的一切，是否已经准备好放手了？

So my question for you is I'm curious as you are wandering around a little bit in the fog, and I think it's a very interesting time as you describe it of kind of, well, this question of the things that you'd done up to this point, are you ready to be done with them?

你是否准备好朝另一个方向拓展？

Are you ready to extend out in a different direction?

所有这些盘旋在脑海中的问题。

You know, all these sorts of questions that are swirling about.

我很好奇，当你读这本书时，有没有什么内容让你对如何穿越这种迷雾有了新的理解或启发？

I'm curious if anything in the book, as you read it, illuminated for you or got you thinking about navigating through this fog.

我希望如此。

I would hope so.

我做了很多笔记。

I took a lot of notes.

所以要么我是个很差的记笔记者，要么这本书里有很多值得我关注的内容。

So either I'm a very bad notetaker or there are things for me to focus on from the book.

所以我想到了好几件事，如果你有兴趣，我以后可以发照片给你看。

So I would say a number of things come to mind, and I could send you photographs of these if you're curious at some point.

但就如何穿越迷雾而言，我认为第一条规则是：别慌。

But in terms of navigating fog, I think the first is rule number one, don't freak out.

这更多是我的一种解读，而不是你原话，但本质上就是：嘿，如果你身处迷雾中，那又怎样？

And that was more of an interpretation than something you said literally, but in effect, like, hey, if you're in the fog, guess what?

每个人最终都会陷入迷雾。

Everybody ends up in the fog.

所以第一点，别慌。

So don't panic, number one.

然后还有不少其他内容，但确实有一些我觉得很有帮助，也让我获得了一些术语，这些术语能解释我过去经历或做过的一些事情。

And then there were more than a few things, but certainly a few things that I found helpful and also a few things that gave me terminology for some explanatory power of things that have happened to me in the past or things that I've done in the past.

我们一定会深入讨论这个。

We'll definitely talk about this.

但‘运气的回报’以及不同类型的运气这个概念，我觉得非常有说服力。

But the concept of return on luck and different types of luck, I found very compelling.

思考如何利用运气，或者扩大运气的范围。

And thinking of how you take advantage of or widen the aperture on luck.

因为我认为，总的来说，运气常被简单地视为一种你有或没有的东西，它降临在你身上并产生影响，但实际情况没那么简单。

Because I think broadly speaking, luck is thrown around as something you either have or you don't, and it lands on you and exerts its force, but it's not quite that simple.

我觉得你用一些话精准地表达了这一点，这对我很有帮助。

And I think you put words to that that I found very helpful.

至于如何穿越迷雾，我想你提到了‘单步前进’，我们可能会花些时间讨论，但我还有一些更上游的、连锁式的问题想先问你，主要是关于编码的。

And then in terms of navigating the fog, I would say you talked about simplex stepping, which we may spend some time on, but I have, I think, upstream kind of cascading questions that I wanna ask you about first, principally around encoding.

我认为，在迷雾中，我开始问自己一些至今尚未解答的问题，这正是我期待与你交谈的原因之一。

I would say that with the fog, there were questions that I began to ask myself that I have not yet answered, and This is part of the reason I was looking forward to chatting with you.

其中一个问题是：我该如何将能量视为生活的核心货币？

One of which is, how do I think about energy as a core currency of life?

我之所以这么说，虽然这不是直接摘自书中的原话，但我觉得这至关重要。

And the reason I say that, this is not taken verbatim from the book, but it seems to be fundamental.

除了意外等情况，人终有一死，而死亡就是能量的终结。

Outside of accidents and so on, like, there is a point when you die, and that is the cessation of energy.

即使你拥有世上最美好的意图和最周密的计划，如果没有足够的能量去实施和执行，我不想说一切皆空，但你确实陷入了困境。

And if you have all of the greatest intentions in the world, the best laid plans, if you do not have the energy to implement those things, to execute, I don't wanna say all is for naught, but you're caught in a problematic situation.

因此，当我阅读书中这些不同的案例研究和人物画像时，其中有许多极其出色的例子。

So when I'm reading about these different case studies, these profiles in the books, and there were so many fantastic ones.

我必须说，我特别喜欢凯瑟琳·格雷厄姆的

I really have to say I love the Catherine Graham

故事。

piece.

很难不喜欢凯瑟琳·格雷厄姆。

Hard not to love Catherine Graham.

很难不喜欢，因为你看到一些人被推入悬崖般的境地，却毫无准备；而也有反例，有些人已经为最终面临的危机准备了十年甚至二十年。

Hard not to love because you see people who are put into, say, cliff situations, and they are unprepared, and then there are counterexamples where people are effectively have prepped for ten or twenty years for the cliff they eventually face.

这两种情况在很多方面都非常不同。

And those are very, very different in a lot of ways.

而且，我也不想一直主导这个话题，还有些人会系统性地发现自己的内在编码，我想让你区分这和优势的不同。

And you also, not to keep bearing the lead on this, have people who sort of methodically find their encodings, and I want you to distinguish that from strengths.

有些人被逼入某种境地，幸运的是，他们恰好具备与所处环境相契合的内在特质，从而找到了自己的节奏，就像迈克尔·乔丹被送去篮球特训营，结果出人意料地发现，他天生就是为篮球而生的。

You have people who are forced into a situation, and thank god, they just happen to have an overlap with the circumstances forced upon them and these inner workings that allow them to find their stride as if, you know, Michael Jordan was sent to, like, basketball prison camp, and, like, lo and behold, what luck.

他恰好极其出色，且天生适合打篮球。

You know, he happens to be incredibly good and and built for basketball.

所以在深入探讨这些之前，我想问你一个问题：如果我问乔安妮，为什么吉姆现在的精力比37岁时更充沛？

So my question for you that I I want to hit on before we dive into some of this is, if I ask Joanne, why does Jim have more energy now than he did at 37?

她会怎么回答？

How would she answer it?

因为在我看来，这似乎涉及对编码的打磨，而编码正是能量的源泉，但你似乎一直很擅长这一点，至少在你经历了一些斯坦福的事情之后。

Because it seems to me like there might be a piece of honing in on encodings as a wellspring of energy, but you seem like you've always been pretty good at that, at least after some of your experiences at Stanford.

你觉得她会怎么回答呢？

What would her answer be, do you think?

多年前，有人要为我做一篇专访，但我并不太喜欢这类专访。

Years ago, there was a profile being done on me, and I I'm not big on a lot of profiles.

我更希望人们直接读我的书，从中汲取思想。

I'd rather just have people read my books and take away the ideas.

但无论如何，专访还是打算进行，于是我提出，如果要做，就要做好，于是我把记者邀请到了博尔德。他说，我真的很想花点时间与乔安妮聊聊，我当时就想，哦，好吧，来了。

But anyways, the profile was gonna happen, and so I said, if we're gonna do it, we'll do it right, and I invited the porter out to Boulder, and he said, I'd really like to spend some time with Joanne, and I'm like, oh, okay, here we go.

那么，这篇专访会是什么样的呢？

So What kind of profile is this gonna be?

我们正在吃早餐，他说：我有一个真正想问你的问题。

So we're at breakfast, and and he says, I have one one real question I really wanna ask you.

如果你只能用一个词来形容和吉姆一起生活的感觉，你会用哪个词？

So if you just pick one word to describe what it's like to live with Jim, what one word would you use?

好的。

Okay.

所以你有一张照片。

So you got a picture.

我坐在那里等着答案，心里想着，嗯，总是充满冒险、鼓舞人心、充满活力、富有创造力。

I'm sitting there waiting for the answer, and I'm wondering, know, always an adventure, inspired, energizing, creative.

对吧？

Right?

这些词一个接一个地在我脑海中浮现。

All these things are going through my mind as possible.

她想了一会儿，沉默良久，然后认真地盯着他，一字一句地回答：精疲力尽。

She gets one word, and after a long pause, she just kinda looks at him completely serious, completely just straight single answer, exhausting.

你知道吗，这太好笑了，因为我早就猜到他会说这个词。

You know, that's hilarious because I knew that word was coming.

这是我在投射自己的想法。

And that's me projecting.

我在想我的伴侣。

I'm thinking about my partner.

是的。

Yeah.

这太好笑了。

That's hilarious.

我脑子里 literally 感到精疲力尽。

I literally, in my head, had exhaustion.

精疲力尽。

Exhausting.

所以她会对这个问题产生共鸣。

And so so she would relate to the question.

我认为她会说，是的，我一直以来的能量水平都很高。

I think think what she would say is that, yes, I've always had a high energy set point.

顺便说一句，这一点我甚至没写进书里，但我对它的理解是我们每个人都有一个能量基准点，而我的可能只是相对较高的能量基准点。

And just as an aside, it's not something I think I even put in the book, but the way I came to think of it is that we all have kind of an energy set point, and maybe mine is just a reasonably high energy set point.

不过，我想明确一点，我希望人们从阅读中得到的启示是：无论你的能量设定点是多少，你都可以在这个设定点周围有所波动。

And just to be clear, though, I think that the thing I would want people to take away from what they read here is that whatever your energy set point, you can have variation around that set point.

问题在于，你如何以一种方式生活，让自己处于这种波动和设定点的积极面，并且这种状态能持续到你耗尽最后一口气？

And the question is, how do you lead your life in such a way that you're on the positive side of that variation and the set point, and it sustains until you run out of breath?

因为很多人的情况是，他们达到某个点后，由于种种原因，能量水平跌破了设定点，结果可能浪费了二三十年的生命时光。

Because so many, what happens is they they reach a certain point, and they go below the energy set point because of whatever sets of reasons and end up with maybe twenty or thirty years of their life essentially off the table.

这对世界来说是一种不幸的损失。

That's an unfortunate loss to the world.

所以我认为乔安妮会说，首先，我是那种在生活中真正致力于将精力投入到能从中获得巨大内在乐趣的事情上的人，就是做这件事本身带来的乐趣。

So I think Joanne would say, one, I'm one of those people who really set out in life somehow to end up expending my energy in things that I derive tremendous intrinsic pleasure from doing, the actual doing of it.

那种感觉就是，如果你在做这件事，你就无法不去做它。

That sense of if you're doing it, you can't not do it.

对吧？

Right?

我，和你一样，不需要证明我能把我做的事情做好。

I, like you, I don't have to demonstrate that I can do well at what I do.

我不必担心自己是否知道如何创造教学时刻，或者该问什么样的问题才能让一家大公司的负责人有所启发。

I don't have to worry about, do I know how to have a teaching moment or whatever, right, how to come up with the right questions to ask somebody running a big company.

但当我坐下来时，我依然会从准备时刻、参与其中，或仅仅是早晨的那种兴奋感中获得快乐，因为实际去做这件事是我如此热爱的，所以我把它写进了书里。是乔安帮助我逐渐看清了这一点——我一直以来都认为自己是个极其自律的人，别人都觉得我非常自律，但最终我得出结论：我其实并没有那么自律。

But if I sit down, I still get joy out of preparing for a moment or being at it or or just a sense of excitement that morning because the actual doing is something that I so love that I put in the book, and Joanne is the one that helped me sort of see this, I'd always thought of myself as an incredibly disciplined person, and everybody else saw me as really disciplined, and I finally came to the conclusion I'm really not very disciplined.

我的确有一点自律，但你看，如果你根本停不下来，因为你要做的是自己如此投入的事情，你根本无法阻止自己去准备、去尽全力做到最好。

I mean, I am somewhat, but look, if you just can't stop yourself from preparing, from getting ready to do the very best you can because you're doing something that just so pulls it, like, you can't stop yourself.

那不是自律。

Well, that's not discipline.

你只是被驱使着。

You're just compelled.

这几乎是一种强迫症，而不是自律。

It's almost a form of compulsion, which isn't discipline.

对吧？

Right?

如果纯粹是因为热爱做事本身，那这怎么算是自律呢？

And if it's sheer love of the actual doing itself, well, how's that discipline?

就是喜欢做这件事。

Just love doing it.

所以这是一点。

So that's one.

但我认为她也会说，像你一样，我喜欢做大型项目，这确实是个巨大的项目。

But I think she would also say that, like you, I love having a big project, and this has been a huge project.

对吧？

Right?

所以从我刚开始琢磨这个项目到最终完成写作，整整十二年，每天早上醒来，只要书还没完成，我就没有任何疑问。

So for twelve years from the time I first started noodling on this till when I finally finished the writing, When I wake up in the morning, I don't have any question until the book's done.

也许我现在会陷入迷茫。

Maybe I'll go into a fog now.

凌晨四点，我清楚知道自己面前该做什么。

I had no question what was in front of me at 4AM.

总有一个项目在那儿。

There's always the project.

每一天，项目都在那里，这让人充满活力，即使它庞大而艰巨。

Every single day, there's the project, and that's energizing even if it's huge and monstrous.

第三点是我在研究中所有受访者身上看到的那种延伸与回溯感，这非常有趣，我相信对你来说也会同样有趣——这种所谓的激进自我重塑的概念，其实并不是我们所看到的。

And then the third is this sense of extending out and circling back that I saw in all the people in the study of that this really interesting, and it'll be very interesting to see for you as well as happens with this, with this sense of that this notion of kind of radical reinvention isn't really what we saw.

并没有人真正‘激进地重塑’了自己。

There weren't people who, quote, radically reinvented themselves.

而是一种有机的过程：他们不断向外拓展，尝试新的模式、新的事物或新的活动，但随后总会找到方式回归到过去积累的基础上，仿佛这些积累成为进一步拓展的动力。

It was this organic process of kind of extending and pushing themselves out into new modes or new things or new activities, etcetera, of an extension outward, but then they would always find a way to circle back to things that they had built upon previously as almost a form of fuel to further extend out.

罗伯特·普兰特是我研究中最喜欢的人物之一，我很想知道，是什么让他在几十年后依然对音乐和歌唱保持如此炽热的热情？

Robert Plant is one of my favorite people in the study, and I love how over the you know, what keeps him so full of fire for music and for singing all these decades later?

如果你观察他，你会发现，当然，他不再属于齐柏林飞艇了。

And if you look at him, he's like, sure, he's no longer in Zeppelin.

他也不需要再属于。

He doesn't need to be.

他不断拓展到蓝草音乐，还去沙漠里与迷幻音乐人合作，学习如何将自己的嗓音与艾莉森·克劳斯融合。

He was extending out into bluegrass, and he was extending out into you're going off to the desert and playing with trance musicians and all these kinds of really and learning to blend his voice with Allison Krause.

我的意思是，这些都是极其精彩的拓展，但与艾莉森·克劳斯合作，或者在他的一些拓展尝试中，他会回归并重新演绎齐柏林飞艇的歌曲，然后他们又会推出《黑狗》的蓝草版本。

I mean, utterly marvelous extensions, but with Allison Krause or with some of his extensions, he'd come back and re bring to life a Led Zeppelin song, and then they would do a bluegrass version of Black Dog.

正是这种不断拓展又循环回归的感觉。

And just that sense of this extending and circling back.

嗯，对我来说，这项研究你可以看作是我在做一些全新的事情。

Well, this study for me, you could look at it as I'm doing something radically new.

是的。

Yes.

这是一个新的问题，新的研究课题，诸如此类，但我也在回归并继续做我一直热爱的事情，那就是围绕一个庞大、复杂、混乱的问题，构建一套方法论，然后花上数年时间去解决它。

It's a new question, new study set, all that, but I'm also circling back and to what I've always loved to do, is to take a big, giant, messy question, put a methodology around it, and spend years figuring it out.

这一点是始终如一的。

That's consistent.

这就是一种回归。

That's a circle back.

向外拓展则意味着这是一个不同的问题和不同的分析单元，所以两者兼而有之。

The extend out is it's a different question and different unit of analysis, so it's both.

最后一点是这个，我想我们之前讨论过一点点，但我现在想这样表达。

And then the last is this, and we talked about this, I think, a little bit in one of our previous ones, but I would really put it this way.

当我年轻的时候，我充满激情，但那是一种非常痛苦的激情。

When I was younger, I had a lot of fire, but it was really painful fire.

它像灼热的、红色的熔岩在我肚子里翻腾。

It was burning hot, red molten lava in my stomach.

几乎像是被引导的愤怒，被引导的凶猛。

Almost like channeled rage, channeled ferocity.

我的意思是，真的

I mean, really

我懂那种感觉。

I know the feeling.

是的。

Yeah.

你真的明白那种感觉，对吧？

Really you know that feeling, right?

我曾经担心，如果我失去了那种激情，就会失去我的动力。

And I used to worry that if I ever lost that, I'd lose my drive.

我认为发生的是，我知道发生的是，这种激情已经改变了。

And I think what's happened, I know what's happened, is the fire's changed.

以前的激情就像肚子里燃烧的熔岩般的炽热与狂暴，而现在它不再是红色的了。

The fire used to be like this molten, hot, burning ferocity in the belly, and now it's like this it's not red.

我觉得它更像是绿色和黄色的，是一种持久温暖的光芒。

It's I think of it as green and yellow, and it's like this sustained warming glow.

我不再有那种需要证明自己的不安全感在驱使我了，因此我的精力反而提升了。

I do not have those kind of insecurity prove myself kinds of things that are driving me, and as a result, my energy's gone up.

我认为，因为这种激情已经不同了，因为它是一种持续温暖的光芒，所以它始终在源源不断地产生能量，我认为这是非常关键的一点。

And I think that because the fire is different, because the fire is this sustained warming glow, it is just, like, constantly generative, and I think that's a really, really big part of it.

那种感觉就是，你写了一句话，然后看着它，心想：哇。

That sense of, like, you write a sentence and you look at it and you go, wow.

这几乎算得上一句好话了。

That's almost a good sentence.

先简单感谢一下我们的赞助商，马上回来继续节目。

Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors, and we'll be right back to the show.

很久以前，上世纪2000年代初，我刚开始做第一个真正意义上的生意时，有很多事情让我兴奋不已。

Way back when, back in the day, in the early two thousands, when I started my first real business, there were a lot of things I was excited about, man.

你得参加各种展会，你信不信。

You got the trade shows, believe it or not.

你得做杂志广告。

You got the magazine advertisements.

当时出现了一个新东西，叫谷歌广告关键词。

There was this new thing called Google AdWords.

发工资可不在其中。

Payroll was not one of them.

那真是让人头疼得要命。

It was a huge pain in the ass.

但你还是得把它做对。

But you still have to get it right.

这很重要。

It's important.

今天的赞助商Gusto，g-u-s-t-o，让这部分变得极其简单易用。

Today's sponsor, Gusto, g u s t o, makes that part dead simple, easy.

Gusto是一款简洁明了的在线薪酬与福利软件，让你能够随时随地为团队支付薪酬、招聘、入职和提供支持。

Gusto is the straightforward way, the easy online payroll and benefits software that lets you pay, hire, onboard, and support your team from anywhere.

我真希望当时能有这个工具。

I really could've used it.

我曾在社交媒体上向数百万人询问过Gusto，就像我之前对数十个潜在赞助商所做的那样，但从未见过如此积极的反馈。

And I asked millions of you on social about Gusto as I do with dozens and dozens of potential sponsors and have never seen such positive feedback.

从录用通知、直接存款，到健康福利、401(k)和薪酬税申报，你所需的一切都能在一个平台上找到，且提供适合几乎每种预算的选项。

From offer letters and direct deposits to health benefits, four zero one k, and payroll tax filing, you'll find just what you need, everything under one roof with options for nearly every budget.

切换到Gusto快速又无痛。

Switching to Gusto is quick and painless.

入职流程非常简单。

Onboarding is easy.

只需转移你的数据，在首次发薪前无需付费。

Just transfer your data and don't pay until your first payroll runs.

如果需要帮助，他们的认证人力资源专家随时待命。

If you need help, their certified HR experts are standing by.

Gusto 被 G2 评为 2025 年秋季最佳薪酬软件，已被超过 40 万家中小企业信赖。

Gusto was rated the number one payroll software by g two for fall twenty twenty five and is trusted by more than 400,000 small businesses.

立即访问 gusto.com/tim 试用，享受每月固定价格的无限次发薪服务。

Try Gusto today at gusto.com/tim and get unlimited payroll runs for one monthly price.

听众在首次发薪时可免费使用三个月。

Listeners get three months free when you run your first payroll.

再重复一遍。

One more time.

那就是 gusto.com/tim。

That's gusto, gusto,.com/tim.

所以让我问问你关于那个颜色变化的事。

So let me ask you about that color shift.

对吧？

Right?

从红色变成带点绿的黄色。

Going from the red to the greenish yellow.

这种变化是不是年龄带来的结果？因为你积累了一大堆作品，到了某个阶段，你根本没法心安理得地宣称自己还热血沸腾，因为你一看自己的履历就明白了。

Is that a byproduct of age in the sense that you've amassed a corpus of work that at some point you cannot, with a straight face to yourself, justify being red hot because you're like, look at this CV.

我再也无法真诚地说自己还有什么需要证明的了。

I cannot with any sincerity say that I have anything left to prove.

是这个原因导致了转变吗？

Is that what provoked the shift?

还有别的原因吗？

Is there something else?

到底发生了什么，才引发了这种动力上的转变？

What actually happened that led to that shift in fuel, so to speak?

首先，我猜很多人——也许包括你自己——都会认同那种炽热如熔岩般的激情。

First of all, I would imagine that a number of people, and maybe you yourself, relate to the raging burning lava coals.

哦，是的。

Oh, yeah.

天哪。

Oh, boy.

是的。

Yes.

而且你会紧紧抓住它们，因为你觉得自己需要它们。

And you kind of cling onto them because you feel you need them.

我想我只是一个例子，我不需要它们也能拥有更多能量，没有它们的生活其实非常美好，你最出色的作品正是源于此。

And, I guess I'm just a data point of one that I don't need them to have even more energy, and so there is life without them that's really wonderful and your best stuff, your best work coming from it.

很高兴我和乔安娜不必再担心是否要走上街头，是否没有保障，以及过去那种真实的、近乎恐惧的担忧——事情会不会顺利？

It's nice that Joanna and I don't need to worry about, like, are we gonna hit the pavement and would have a no safety net and all that kind of worry and fear that we used to live with of just genuine, almost terror of, are things gonna work?

所以不必再有这些担忧确实很好，但我觉得这并不是核心所在。

So it's nice to not have that, but I don't think that's the essence of it.

我认为这并不是突然发生的。

I think it didn't happen in like a flash.

我认为，真正发生的一切很大程度上源于对这本书中人物生活的研究。

I think what a lot of what really happened happened as a result of studying the lives in this book.

我是认真的。

I really mean it.

自从2013年我刚开始这个项目，到现在已经过去了十二年多，这段撰写这本书的旅程彻底改变了我。我想我或许早已为这种改变做好了准备，但真正让我蜕变的是，我与他们的人生相伴而行。

The last twelve plus years since I started the first nibblings of this project in 2013, and the journey of doing this book so transformed me, and I think that I was probably prepped for that, but it was by somehow living alongside them in their lives.

他们的生活一直在影响着我，我想其中一个影响方式就是，我真正地看见了他们。

It was, like, affecting me, and I think one of the ways it affected me is was I saw them.

比如，你看看罗伯特·普兰特与艾莉森·克劳斯歌声交融时那种纯粹而狂喜的喜悦，或者我偶然看到的关于格蕾丝·霍珀的精彩视频——这位伟大的计算机科学家，本质上是软件的发明者。

You know, you just look at the sheer rapturous joy of Robert Plant blending his voice with Alison Krausz, or you look at that this wonderful video I came across of Grace Hopper, the great computer scientist who invented software, essentially.

这是一个了不起的故事。

It's an amazing story.

硅谷的人们应该更了解她的故事。

Silicon Valley should know her story more.

这真是一个非凡的故事。

It's really an incredible story.

她上莱特曼节目时，我想大概是79岁，整个人充满光芒，热情四溢。

She's on Letterman at, I think, age 79, and she is like one of the most sparkle filled, fire filled.

她在莱特曼访谈中散发出的那种魅力，简直太棒了。

She just just radiates out of that Letterman interview, and it's just absolutely marvelous.

或者你可以看到，我一个个例子讲下去，比如芭芭拉·麦克林托克在破解遗传学难题时的样子——她并不害怕在车祸中丧生，因为她一生中无数次横跨美国开车，真正让她恐惧的是，在解开她手头那个谜题之前就死于车祸，因为她实在太想解开那个谜题了。

Or you you see, I could just go through case after case where what I saw was Barbara McClintock solving the geneticist, solving a genetics puzzle, and her sense of she didn't fear dying in a car crash because there were all these car crashes that she was driving across the country so much as she feared dying in a car crash before she'd solved the puzzle that she had, right, because she just so needed to solve the puzzle.

每一个生命都是这样，他们达到了这样一个境界：他们所投入和从事的事情，本身就具有强大的内在回报。我想，当我一路陪伴着他们走过生命的每一个阶段时，这种近距离的接触深深影响了我，让我变得柔软。这很难用语言形容，但如果你像我一样，花了多年时间与他们同行，走过他们生命的每一步，他们的精神就会潜移默化地影响你，最终他们都以某种方式抵达了那个境界。

And every life was one of these ones where it's like they got to this point where the thing that they were engaged in and doing was so reinforcing in itself, for itself, and I think somehow just being so close to their lives while I walked through them had this, like, effect on me, and it began to soften me, and it began to it was like this it's very hard to explain, but if you spent years alongside them at each step of the way through their lives, which is what I did, they, like, rubbed off on me, and they all somehow got to this point.

我想，这确实深深影响了我。

And I think that it just affected me.

我无法用别的方式解释，只能说它真的影响了我。

I can't really explain it other than that is it just affected me.

让我们来看看这个同一棱镜的另一个侧面，因为无论是你，还是书中所描写的遗传学家或其他真实人物，找到自己在编码方面的‘力量区’，并将其与优势区分开来，这在某种程度上，无论是金字塔的顶端还是基座，都至关重要。

Let's look at another facet of this same prism, because looking at, for instance, whether it's you, whether it's a geneticist, or a any real figure in the book that you've profiled, finding your power zone with respect to encodings, and I want you to differentiate that from strengths, seems at the very top of the pyramid in some respects, or the base depending on how you wanna look at it.

但如果我们试图排列多米诺骨牌，那么这枚骨牌显然是最值得首先推倒的。

But if we're trying to put dominoes in order, that seems like a very important domino to tip over first.

这似乎是许多其他事情的前提条件。

It seems to be a prerequisite for a lot of the other things.

我在想，如果有人专程飞过来和你待一天，对你说：吉姆，我知道你很擅长提问。

And I'm wondering if somebody flew out to spend time with you for a day, and they were like, Jim, I know you're good at asking questions.

这就是你的专长。

That's what you do.

我该怎么找到自己的编码呢？

How the hell do I find what my encodings are?

因为如果没有这个，想要在醒来时清楚知道自己该做什么，就会变得困难得多。

Because without that, it seems like having the conviction to know when you wake up exactly what you're gonna do becomes a lot harder.

我不是在替你说话，但在我看来，如果你总是陷入决策疲劳、选择悖论，那确实是消耗你所有精力、过早耗尽生命的绝佳方式。

And I'm not trying to speak for you, but it does seem to me that if you are always suffering from decision fatigue, paradox of choice, man, that's a great way to use up all your chi and end up dead before you should be.

我的意思是，无论是精神上、身体上，还是其他方面。

I mean, creatively or physically or otherwise.

什么是编码？

What are encodings?

如果它们与优势不同，那它们有什么不同？

If they're different from strengths, how are they different?

如果你没有幸运到像马友友那样，四岁就有人把大提琴塞到你手里，那你怎么找到它们呢？

And how do you find them if you're not lucky enough to be like a Yo Yo Ma who gets a cello handed to him when he's four?

或者像泰格·伍兹那样，他爸爸一开口就说：‘来吧，孩子，给你，不管你现在几岁。’

Or a Tiger Woods whose dad's like, here you go, buddy, at age, God knows whatever.

对吧？

Right?

我们得来回讨论一下，因为这里面其实有两条线索会交汇在一起，对我来说，通过研究这些人生，最终发现它们非常令人震撼且鼓舞人心：一方面是你的人生轮盘如何随机转动，决定了你发现哪些编码；另一方面则是这些编码本身是什么。

We should go back and forth on this a little bit because there's kind of two strands that will come together, and I think they're, for me, were really really really eye opening and very uplifting in the end by looking, you know, the study across these lives because there's the luck piece of kind of how the roulette wheel of your life spins as to which encodings you discover, and then there's what the encodings are.

对吧？

Right?

所以，它们实际上作为一种概念是紧密相连的。

So they're actually they're kind of joined, if you will, as an idea.

我的意思是，我们在书中举了多个例子，说明有些人几乎是偶然地发现了那套他们决定全身心投入的编码。

I mean, you know, there's we have multiple examples in the book of where people it was almost like by chance in some ways that they discovered the set of encodings that they decided to dedicate themselves to.

首先，我们来谈谈编码，我会描述一下什么是编码以及它们是如何运作的。

So first of all, let's just talk about encodings, and I'm gonna describe what encodings are and how they kinda work.

嗯。

Mhmm.

但如果你不介意的话，蒂姆，既然你还在迷雾中，我想问你一个关于你自身编码的问题。

But if you don't mind, Tim, given that you're in the fog, I wanna ask you a question about encodings for yourself.

喜欢提问。

Love questions.

编码是那些深藏于内的持久能力，它们等待着通过生活中的经历被发现。

So encodings are these kind of durable capacities that reside within, and they're awaiting discovery through the experiences of life.

关于编码，第一件重要的事是，我们大多数人的一生都将结束，而自身的大量编码却从未被发现。

And first huge thing about encodings is most of us, our lives will come to our end with probably vast swaths of our encodings never discovered.

我对它的理解方式，你也从书里知道，但我真的很希望让听众听到这一点：我把这想象成一组编码的星座。

And the way I think about it, and you know this from the book, but I I really like to help people who are listening hear this, is that I came to think of it as like a constellation of encodings.

你拥有一组编码的星座。

You have a constellation of encodings.

我有一组编码。

I have a constellation of encodings.

地球上每个人都有一个编码的星座，这就像一片浩瀚的编码星系。

Everybody on the planet has a constellation of encodings, and it's like a vast galaxy of encodings.

但在任何给定的时刻，你的生活就像透过一个窗框去看这些编码。

But in any given moment, your life is looking through like a window frame at those encodings.

嗯。

Mhmm.

在人生的某些时刻，这个窗框会捕捉到一大片明亮的编码从窗口透出来。

And that what happens is that there's points in life where the window frame captures a big bright set of those encodings coming through the window.

你正与它们同在框架之中。

You're kind of in frame with them.

而当窗框再次移动，不再捕捉到很多编码时，你可以说，你就处于框架之外了。

And then if the window frame shifts again and doesn't capture very many encodings, you're kind of, if you will, you're sort of out of frame.

你并没有捕捉到多少编码。

You're not really capturing many encodings.

编码依然存在。

Encodings are still there.

它们就在那里，但你的生活可能会发生变化，决定你是否捕捉到一组编码，或者根本没捕捉到。

They're just there, but the kind of your life can shift around whether you're capturing a set of encodings or whether you're really not.

所以我想到试飞员约翰·格伦，你读过他的故事，他在年轻时并没有捕捉到这些编码。

So I think about the test pilot, John Glenn, who you read about, and how he was not capturing encodings when he was a young man.

起初，我的意思是，他的父母觉得，也许他会继承家族生意，或者你应该去尝试当医生，但他当时学化学、物理这些东西时，编码根本不在他的视野里。后来，机缘巧合下，他得到了政府资助的飞行员培训资格，于是他报名参加，并说服父母允许他这么做。当他坐进飞机的那一刻，一切都豁然开朗了。

At first, I mean, his parents thought, well, maybe he'll come into the family business or, you know, maybe you should go try to be a doctor, but he just was the encodings were not really in frame when he was, like, taking chemistry and physics and things like this, and then through a happenstance event, he was able to get a pilot's license paid for by the government that was looking to train some pilots, and he goes and he signs up for this, convinces his parents to let him do it, and the moment he gets into an aircraft, it was like click.

我的意思是，飞机的操控感，最终让他能像戴手套一样自如地驾驭飞机，他那种编码能力并非后天习得，而是本来就存在——在极端危险和高速状态下，他的心率反而会下降。

I mean, the way the aircraft felt, eventually being able to wear the aircraft like a glove, right, and his encoded ability that he only discovered, he didn't add it, it was just there, that under extreme danger and immense speed, he could have a heart rate that is, you know, everything slows down.

如果有人在朝鲜战争期间，驾驶超音速战机在我身后试图击落我，我的心跳率大概不会降低，但约翰·格伦的心跳率却会降低。

If somebody's flying behind me in a supersonic jet trying to knock me out of the sky over Korea and the Korean War, my heart rate's probably not gonna go down, but John Glenn's would go down.

对吧？

Right?

然后，当然，他成为了宇航员，而戈登·库珀也是类似的情况。

And then, of course, he becomes an astronaut, and Gordon Cooper is matched pair very similar.

然后突然间，砰的一下。

And so it's all of a sudden, bang.

然后，在他的职业生涯结束后。

And then after his career, that came to an end.

一个非常有趣的小故事，讲的是他们最终认为约翰·肯尼迪把他从轮换名单中撤下，以免他能登月，因为肯尼迪觉得他作为国家英雄太宝贵了。

Very interesting little story of how he thought they finally concluded that John Kennedy had pulled him out of the rotation so that he wouldn't be able to go to the moon because Kennedy felt he was too valuable as a national hero.

所以他再也无法成为宇航员了，这对他来说就是人生的悬崖。

And so he couldn't be an astronaut anymore, really, and that was his cliff.

十年后，他去了皇家皇冠可乐公司。

And ten years, and he went off to Royal Crown Cola.

我最喜欢的一个细节是，在他的回忆录中，他在皇家皇冠可乐公司的时间占了他生命的近10%，却只占了回忆录的0.2%。

And, what I love is this little detail where he's got of his memoir, his time at Royal Crown Colo is, like, almost 10% of his life, and it's 0.2% of his memoir.

我的意思是，这真是个绝妙的——

I mean, it's a wonderful Not

这里没什么好报告的。

much to report here.

没错。

Exactly.

所以在这里，他仍然是约翰·格伦，但发生的变化是，他的角色定位发生了偏移，直到他重返参议院，这个定位才再次改变。

And so here, he's still John Glenn, but what happened is the window frame shifted, and it wasn't until he got back into the senate where it shifted again.

我相信他作为一个管理者是称职的，但那和他驾驶战斗机、环绕地球飞行时完全不一样。

He I'm sure he was an adequate executive, but it wasn't like when he was flying fighter jets and going up and orbiting the Earth.

对吧？

Right?

他现在有点脱离了原有的框架。

He was now kind of out of frame.

所以，核心在于，这些内在的编码是通过人生经历被发现的，当它们突然契合到位时，你几乎是在信任它们，即使你并不知道它们会带你去往何方。

So the essence of it is encodings are there to be discovered by the experiences of life, and when they click into frame, it's trusting them almost if you don't know where they're going to go.

在很多情况下，人们自己也不清楚未来会走向哪里。

In many cases, the people didn't know where they were going to go.

是的，通过训练和自律，以及诸如此类的方式，你可以将这些编码转化为更强的优势。

And, yes, you turn encodings into more strengths by training and discipline and, you know, all those sorts of things.

但约翰·格伦即使读了十个MBA，也永远不可能像他被塑造为参议员、战斗机飞行员和宇航员那样，被充分塑造为一名商业高管。

But John Glenn could have done 10 MBAs, and he would have never been as encoded for being a business executive the way he was encoded for being a senator and encoded for being a fighter pilot and an astronaut.

因此，关键在于发现其中一些编码，并让它们自然释放，这是一种基于经验观察的结论。

And so the key is that is discovering some set of them and letting them go, and that's an empirical set of observations.

所以现在我回到给你的问题。

So now I come back to the question for you.

你已经写过了。

You've written.

我的意思是，你显然具备了今天我们所做之事的内在编码。

I mean, you clearly have encodings for doing what we're doing today.

你还有其他类型的编码，比如纯粹的好奇心等等。

You have other kinds of encodings around just sheer curiosity and so forth.

所以，当你做笔记、思考你的编码与那些显而易见的特质有何不同时，如果你认真想过这个问题，

So if you thought about this, as you were making notes, as you were thinking about what are your encodings as distinct from sure.

你已经将你发现的编码转化为优势，但我很好奇，那些真正让编码浮现出来的事情是什么？尤其是当你思考未来会怎样时，你想到了什么？

You've turned your encodings that you've discovered into strengths, but the things that were really have a basis of of encoding coming into frame, I'm curious what occurred to you, and especially as you think about, like, what's gonna be next.

是的

Yeah.

好的

Alright.

我来回应一下，然后我会提出一大堆其他问题。

I'll return serve, so I'll then have a ton of other questions.

但我可能会用一种绕一点的方式来回答这个问题。

But I'll answer that in maybe a bit of a roundabout way.

我以前曾试图为自己弄清楚这一点，但成效不一。

I have tried to ferret this out before for myself, I think, with different degrees of success.

在大多数情况下，我认为我的自我认知充其量是极不完善的，而向身边亲近的人提问帮助了我。

I think I have, in most cases, I assume my self awareness is very imperfect at best, benefited from asking other people questions who are very close to me.

这些人包括教练、经纪人、朋友和合作者，几乎像是一种360度的全面分析。

And those have been coaches, agents, friends, collaborators, almost like a three sixty degree kind of analysis.

其中一些问题包括：你什么时候见过我表现得最好？什么时候见过我表现得最差？

And some of those questions have included, when have you seen me at my best, and when have you seen me at my worst?

你认为我比其他人更容易做到的是什么？

What do you think I find easier to do than other people?

这类问题。

These types of questions.

我想我目前的结论是，但让我先推迟一下重点。

And I suppose where I've landed, but let me postpone the punchline.

首先我要说，我觉得研究这一点非常有趣，这可能会让别人觉得有点出人意料，那就是苏联和中国在选拔运动员方面的做法。

First to say that I've really found it fascinating to look at this is gonna be seem like a hard left to people, but the sort of Soviet and also Chinese approaches to sourcing athletes.

他们究竟是怎么如此成功的？

How on earth are they so successful?

他们为什么能长期保持如此主导的地位？

How were they so dominant for so long?

是的，你可以用自上而下的专制决策和政策制定来解释其中一部分原因，但比如在中国，他们会通过一些非常简单的方法进行选拔。

And, yes, you can explain some of it with kind of top down autocratic decision making and policy making and so on, but in China, for instance, they will scout by doing some very, very simple things.

他们会去每一个你能想到的小学，让孩子们做立定跳远，并且让这个过程变得有趣。

They'll go to every elementary school you can imagine and have kids do a broad jump, and they'll make it fun.

这并不是什么惩罚性的体能训练，而是让他们做一些简单的动作，比如双手举着扫帚杆下蹲。

It's not some kind of back whipping exercise, but they'll have them do a handful of things, hold a broomstick overhead and get into a squat.

对吧？

Right?

他们就是通过这种方式开始发掘潜在的奥运举重金牌选手。

And that's how they start to source potential candidates for Olympic weightlifting gold.

但不幸的是，作为单独的个体，作为‘单一个体’，你没有无限的时间去尝试所有事情。

But unfortunately, as a single person, as an n of one, you don't have the luxury of infinite time to try everything.

对吧？

Right?

这一直是我心中一个未解的疑问，虽然我至今还没用过任何一种方法，但我一直在思考，比如……

This has been an ongoing open question for me, and, I haven't yet used any of them, but looking at things like, okay.

StrengthsFinder 测试对这个有帮助吗？

Well, is a StrengthsFinder test helpful for this?

你能做五六个这样的测试，然后寻找它们的共同点，从而获得一些方向，避免因为反复试错而浪费一个又一个十年吗？

Like, could you do five or six of these and look for the overlap to try to get some direction so that you're not penalized for trial and error by losing decade after decade?

我通过自己的实验得出的结论是，多问一些看似愚蠢的问题。

Where I've landed for myself is through my own experimentation, I think, asking a lot of dumb questions.

我很擅长提出看似愚蠢的问题，而这些问题往往并不愚蠢。

I'm very good at asking seemingly dumb questions, which often are not dumb.

有时候它们确实就是纯粹的傻问题，咱们得说实话。

Sometimes they are just straight up dumb, let's be honest.

但很多时候，这些问题其实也是很多人心里想问的，我认为我擅长戴上初学者的眼镜，像狗咬住骨头一样执着地追问，直到得到一个看似愚蠢问题的答案。

But oftentimes, they're questions that could be or already are on the minds of a lot of people, and I think I'm good at putting on beginner's glasses and being very persistent like a dog with a bone if I don't get an answer to a supposedly dumb question.

这些问题会引向一些有趣的方向，我认为我在这方面也很有天赋，这既是福气也是诅咒，会引出后面一些关于如何不陷入各种厄运循环的问题，以及我们之前讨论过的所谓‘50-30-20’法则，来自权威教职员工的观点。

And those lead interesting places I think I am also good, and this is a blessing and a curse, which will lead into some later questions about not getting trapped in various doom cycles and something we talked about before, which is sort of the fifty thirty twenty from respected faculty.

我是一个追求新奇的人。

I am a novelty seeker.

在很多方面，这都是我内在的一种驱动力。

That's an intrinsic drive that I have in a lot of ways.

这样做的好处是，我可以在不同行业进行天使投资。

And the upside of that is that I can do angel investing in in different industries.

我可以采访来自完全不同领域的人，借鉴并移植不同领域的实践和原则到另一个完全不相关的领域，有时这些方法真的非常有效。

I can interview people from yet a different set of worlds, and I can borrow practices and copy and paste different principles from one area into a disparate area, and sometimes those really, really work.

所以我认为我擅长将这些不同的领域结合起来。

So I think I'm good at combining those worlds.

另外，也许听众中有人对此感兴趣，可以给我一些反馈：我一位密友曾对我说，你应该做一些播客节目，专门记录你与创始人之间的对话，因为我十多年，甚至接近二十年来，已经投资了一百多家公司。

Separately, and maybe people listening can give me feedback if they're interested in this, A friend of mine, one of my closest friends said to me, you know, you should really do some podcast episodes where you are recording conversations that you have with founders, because I've invested in a 100 plus companies over more than a decade, probably close to two decades.

他对我说，你有一些非常擅长的事情，但你自己可能都没意识到。

And he said to me, he's like, there are things that you are really good at that I don't think you realize you're good at.

比如精准地把握术语、定位，以及我每周与初创企业创始人例行交流的其他各种事情。

In terms of really pinpointing terms positioning and various other things that I do routinely every week with startup founders anyway.

我本来就在进行这些对话。

I'm having those conversations anyway.

所以我开始尝试录制这些对话，甚至还会回听。

And so I've been experimenting with recording those, and I even go back and listen to it.

然后我会说，是的。

And I'm like, yeah.

我觉得这里没什么特别的。

I don't think there's anything special here.

他说，问题就在这里。

And he's like, that's the problem.

他说，你之所以觉得这没什么特别，是因为对你来说太简单了。

He's like, you don't think it's anything special because it's so easy for you.

他说，对大多数人来说，这其实并不容易。

He's like, it's actually not easy for most people.

所以这些是我脑海中零散冒出的一些想法，但对我自己，当然也对听众来说，我仍在思考，是否有人能帮助促进这个过程，是的。

So those are a few scattershot thoughts that come to mind, but for myself and certainly also for people listening, I am still wondering if there are ways that people can facilitate the process Yeah.

去发现这些编码。

To find those encodings.

我仔细听了你说的话，当你说话时，有几件事突然浮现在我脑海中：首先，如果我们倒回去看，我确实倒带了他们的人生，对吧？

So I was listening very carefully to what you're saying, a couple things really popped into my mind as as you were talking is that, first of all, I think if we rewind well, I did rewind the tape of their lives, right?

而且，是的，我不认为这种进入某种框架并形成一套编码的过程是一个系统性的过程。

And it was yeah, I wouldn't describe that the process of kinda coming into a frame with a set of encodings was a systematic process.

这相当自然，也相当混乱，可以说，真正突出的是，这并不是某种刻意的测试或类似的行为。

It was pretty organic and pretty messy, if you will, and I think the thing that really stood out is it wasn't that there was some kind of deliberate test taking or anything like that.

而是生活将他们推入了一种情境，让他们能够感受到这些编码仿佛被点亮了，如果可以这么说的话。我认为，随着我越来越深入地思考这个问题，关键不在于——我想稍微明确一下我的问题，它有两个方面。

It was that life kinda spun them into a situation where they could feel the encodings kinda light up, if you will, and I think what really stood out the more I think about this, a question is less about well, there are two ways in which I wanna kinda sharpen the question a little bit for you.

一方面，这甚至不完全是关于发现编码。

One is is that it's not it's not even entirely about discovering encodings.

我认为人们是通过生活经历和他人的反馈来获得关于自己编码的线索，这一点始终非常有趣。

I think people are getting clues to their encodings based on their experiences in life and input from others, which is a very interesting piece of this all the time.

是的。

Mhmm.

在我看来，我所研究的那些人最突出的一点是，无论他们是否得到他人的支持——比如约翰·格伦的父母并不希望他当飞行员。

What I think really stands out to me about the people that I studied is that regardless of whether they got support from others, like John Glenn's parents didn't want him to be a pilot.

他们希望他继承家业或当医生。

They wanted him to be in the family business or be a doctor.

罗伯特·普兰特的父母也不希望他当歌手。

Robert Plant's parents didn't want him to be a singer.

他们希望他当一名会计师。

They wanted him to be an accountant.

想想看。

Think about that.

我的意思是，所有这些，你都会经历这些不同的情况。

I mean, with all that, I mean, you go through these different ones.

真正让我印象深刻的是，当他们对这些编码有了感觉时，他们就信任了它们。

What really stood out is that when they got a sense for them, they trusted them.

真正让我印象深刻的是，当他们隐约感受到这些编码时，那份信任。

It was their trust of them when they got a glimpse of them that is what really stood out to me.

一旦他们感受到了，就不再质疑它们，也不让别人说服他们放弃，或听从别人认为他们该做什么。

Once they felt them, they didn't really start questioning them or letting other people talk them out of them or listen to what other people think they should do.

所以如果你说，吉姆，把100分分配到两个类别中，有多少是关于发现一套编码，有多少是关于信任你已发现的编码？

And so if you said, Jim, a 100 points allocate between two buckets, how much of it is about discovering a set of encodings, and how much of it is about trusting the encodings you've discovered?

我会把70分放在信任上，因为我觉得我们一直在获得各种线索。

I'm gonna put 70 points on trust because I think we're getting clues all the time.

第二点是你提到过，要问别人你觉得哪些方面比别人做得更好。

The second is that you said something about asking people what you think you do better than others.

这项研究改变了我对这一点的看法。

This study changed my view on that.

我认为这关乎于加倍投入你比其他方式更能做好的事情，这是一个完全不同的问题。

I think it's about doubling down on what you can do better than other ways you could expend yourself, which is a very different question.

对吧？

Right?

是的。

Yeah.

这完全不同。

It's very different.

这是一个完全不同的问题。

It's a very different question.

就好像我可以选择去问这些看似愚蠢的问题，或者选择以其他方式投入自己，这并不是与他人进行竞争性的比较。

It's like I could expend myself asking these supposedly dumb questions, or I could expend myself in some other way, and it's not competitive comparative to others.

这是在框架内，那是框架外，而我从自己的经历中学到了一些东西。

It's this is in frame and this is out of frame, and then I have learned something in my own experience.

这本书不是关于商业的。

This book is not about business.

也不是关于领导力的。

It's not about leadership.

更不是关于管理的。

It's not about management.

不过，当我回望自己过去的经典工作时，这本书确实以几种方式深深影响了我。

There's a few ways, though, that it's really affected me a lot when I think back to my prior, my classic work.

其中一个方面是，我们常说‘让合适的人上车’，从优秀到卓越。

And one way that it has really affected me is we talk about the right people on the bus from good to great.

这一点依然正确。

Still true.

但我真正认识到的是，关键在于座位——人们是否坐在了属于自己的位置上，是否坐在了与自身特质匹配的座位上，以及是否坐在了能点燃他们热情的座位上。

But what I've really come to see is it's about the seats and whether people are in seats where they're in frame in that seat, whether they are in a seat for which they are encoded for that seat, and in a seat that feeds their fire.

当我开始研究我工作中的那些人时，我发现他们都会自然而然地被某种生活方式或某种活动领域吸引，在那里他们真正触及到了自己编码中最明亮、最突出的部分。

And as I began to study the people in my work, what I found is that they gravitated towards some walk of life, some arena of activity, where they really hit a big bright set of their encodings.

这极大地激发了他们的热情，一旦他们找到了自己的位置，就会自然而然地全情投入。

It really fed their fire, and then they just kind of went once they kinda clicked into frame.

我过去常常花很多时间试图把人改造成他们不是的样子，并为他们的不足感到非常沮丧。

And I think that I used to spend a lot of time trying to turn people into what they're not and feeling very frustrated with what they're not.

但在进行这项研究的过程中，有一件事像水流一样慢慢浸润了我，一次又一次地软化了我，让我逐渐意识到，我真正需要学会的是去发现身边的人——尤其是我团队成员——他们的编码究竟是什么。

And as I did this study, one of the things that just really went over me like water and like just softening me and softening me and softening me is I began to realize that what I really had to learn how to do was to begin to find what the people around me, what their encodings are for people on my team.

作为一辆小巴士的领导者，我的责任之一就是敏锐地观察周围人所做的事情，从而识别他们的编码，然后逐步调整他们的职责，让他们所做的事越来越契合自己的位置，这样一来，我的情感体验就不再是为他们的不足而沮丧，而是真正地充满敬畏与感恩，感激他们本来的样子。

That part of my responsibility as a leader of a small bus is to really be attuned to me observing the encodings based upon what people do of the people around me, and then to begin to shift in steps their responsibilities so that in what they're doing here is increasingly clicking into frame so that then what happens is my emotional experience is not being frustrated with what they're not and truly being almost at a level of almost awe, grateful for what they are.

当这种情况发生时，他们的生活变好了，我的生活也变好了，而我通过实验的方式帮助他们发现了自身的编码——比如给他们安排一些新任务，观察效果如何，对吧？

And when that happened, their lives got better, my life got better, and I played a role in helping them, sort of helping them discover their encodings mainly by experiments, like testing them with something, see how something works, Right?

然后我就能看到他们的编码突然闪现，接着我会调整他们的职责，让他们真正进入适合自己的位置。

And then I could see the encoding flash, and then I'd move the responsibility, and I'd click them some into frame.

看到这一切发生，这真是一段美妙而愉悦的旅程。

And it's been a marvelous, joyful journey to see that happen.

我有一些人正处于适合他们的位置，看到他们我感到非常惊叹。

And I have people who are in frame, and they just it's astounding for me to see.

所以我认为，关于他人，我会反过来想：任何带领团队、组织或公司的人，如果你花情感精力去为别人不是什么而感到沮丧，那你就是把他们放在了错误的位置上。

And so I think that notion of other people, but I'd flip it around, which anybody who has teams, anyone who leads organizations or companies, if you spend emotional energy feeling frustrated with what people are not, you've got them in the wrong seat.

他们偏离了适合自己的位置。

They're out of frame.

如果他们确实存在团队问题，那就处理它。

And the question is, if they have a bus issue, you deal with it.

他们不该留在这个团队里。

They shouldn't be on the bus.

但真正的问题可能是，你把他们放在了一个与他们内在特质不匹配的岗位上，这个岗位无法激发他们的内在热情，如果你试图一生都去改变他们成为他们不是的样子，他们会痛苦，你也会痛苦。

But the real question could be, you have them in a seat that doesn't line up with their encodings, that doesn't feed their inner fire, and if you try to spend your life trying to turn them into what they're not, they'll be miserable, and you'll be miserable.

我认为其他人其实也能帮助你发现这些内在特质是什么。

And I think you other people can really play a role in helping you see what those encodings are.

是的。

Yeah.

我认识一些经营大公司的朋友，他们使用九型人格作为某种启发式工具——当然，这并不一定适合每个人。

I've found a number of friends who run large companies who and not to say this is the right tool for everyone, but who've used Enneagram, actually, as a sort of heuristic.

你对九型人格有什么看法？

What's your point on the Enneagram?

那我是哪种类型？或者我对它有什么看法？

So I which type am I or what's my perspective on it?

两者都是？

Both?

那你有没有为自己确定一个九型人格类型？

Well, so have you identified an enneagram point for yourself?

嗯，我是个自我保存型的六号，说实话，我就是

Well, so I'm I'm a self preservation six, which honestly I'm

嫁给了一个

married to a

你看，就是这样。

is there you go.

这让我很有共鸣。

It resonates for me.

我马上要提出一些保留意见，但它确实让我很有共鸣。

I have a bunch of caveats that I'm about to put out, but it resonates for me.

我发现它在对团队中未能胜任的人员和事件进行事后复盘时非常有帮助。

I have found it to greatly inform at doing a postmortem on things and people who have not worked in my organization.

‘组织’这个词对于一个非常非常小的团队来说有点过于高大上了。

Organization is a very highfalutin term for a very, very small team.

对于那些长期共事的人，我认为，明显存在着一些无法否认的模式。

And people who have worked over time, there are, I would say, to my mind, irrefutable patterns.

我非常清楚哪些类型的人适合，哪些不适合。

I get so clear the types that work and the types that don't.

没有对错之分。

And there's no right or wrong.

这仅仅是我作为一个意志坚定、 hopefully 是个不错的领导者，但同时又非常苛刻、有特定偏好的人所持有的观点。

It's just for me as a strong willed, hopefully decent leader, but at the same time, very demanding person with certain preferences and so on.

车上有些人在工作，有些人则没有，我发现九型人格对这一点非常有帮助。

There are certain people on the bus who work and certain people who don't, and Enneagram I found very helpful for that.

我认为Shopify和Dropbox都还在使用九型人格，作为两个例子，它在解决冲突方面也非常有效。

I think Shopify and Dropbox both, I think, still use Enneagram as two examples, but very good for conflict resolution as well.

问题是，有时我觉得至少在硅谷，九型人格被当作科技人士的占星术来接受。

The caveat is sometimes I think, at least say in Silicon Valley, that Enneagram is an acceptable horoscope for tech guys.

它在某些方面确实有相似之处，但当我阅读自己的类型时，最好有一个熟悉类型判断的人来协助。

It definitely rhymes in some ways, but when I read my particular and it's helpful to have a person who is experienced with typing do this.

我相信网上也有一些工具可以帮助。

I'm sure there are online tools that can also help.

顺便说一句，我发现这极其有帮助。

Side note, also found this incredibly helpful.

人们会讨厌这个。

People are gonna hate this.

有些人会讨厌这个。

Some people are gonna hate this.

但对于思考恋爱关系，以及最终找到一个与我极其匹配的女性，反之亦然。

But for thinking about dating and ultimately ending up with a woman who is an incredibly incredibly good match for me, and vice versa.

我是她的好匹配。

I'm a good match for her.

但九型人格确实非常准确。

But the Enneagram was not a it was dead on.

我当时想，这太荒谬了，我根本无法相信它能如此简单，虽然它并不简单，但却极其有用。

I was like, this is nonsense for the like, I just don't believe it can be that simple, and it's not that simple, but incredibly helpful.

所以我会说，有些人会深陷其中，以至于把一切都变成九型人格的练习。

So I would say there are some people who go down the rabbit hole to an extent that I think ends up turning everything into an Enneagram exercise.

我认为这可能是只见树木不见森林，但作为众多参考之一，我觉得它很有帮助。

I think that's probably losing the forest for trees, but as one input of many, found it helpful.

我想问你一个个人的问题，这在书中的人身上也可能体现，但对你来说。

And let me ask you a question for you personally, and this could also be reflected in people in the book, but for you.

我想说的是，这是我今天早上喝了几杯咖啡后标记的7000个高亮内容之一。

And I want to this is one of the 7,000 highlights I had from this morning over my several cups of coffee.

所以，这个内容我不记得是来自我们第一次还是第二次对话了，但让我先读一下。

So this is I I can't recall if this is from our first or second conversation, but let me just read for a second here.

这是总结。

Here's the the recap.

吉姆明确表示，他不希望自己的工作只有一半的质量。

Jim was clear that he didn't want a half life of quality in his work.

我会跳过一小段。

I'll skip forward a little bit.

当他在斯坦福默默无闻时，他能够进行深度工作和长达六年的长期反思。

When he was invisible at Stanford, he could do deep work and long cycles reflection for six years.

他担心，如果自己变得广为人知，多年后可能会意识到，自己后续的书籍质量只有以前的一半，因为他再也没有回到安静独处的灵感源泉。

He worried that if he became visible, he might wake up years later and realize his subsequent books were only half as good because he hadn't returned to the wellspring of quiet solitude.

顺便一提，人们应该听听这些对话，但你和你表格中的那两位共同点，我认为要么是极度独处，要么是高度社交，中间状态非常少。

Separate note, people should listen to these conversations, but one of the commonalities of your plus two days in your spreadsheets were either, I believe, intense solitude or highly socialized, but very little in between.

好了。

Alright.

回到我刚才读的内容，他希望质量能够不断提升。

Coming back to what I was reading, he wanted quality to get better.

这是我要强调的部分。

Here's the part that I underlined.

他询问了受人尊敬的教职员工，也就是斯坦福的教授们，他们是如何安排时间的，得到了一致的回答。

He asked respected faculty, so that's Stanford, how they spent their time and got a consistent answer.

五十、三十、二十。

Fifty, thirty, 20.

进一步解释一下，这其实很简单。

And to elaborate on that, it's pretty simple.

50% 用于全新的智力与创造性工作。

50% equals new intellectual creative work.

30% 用于教学。

30% equals teaching.

20% 用于其他事务，比如委员会工作等。

20% equals other stuff, committees, etcetera.

好的。

Okay.

你以非常系统的方式安排生活并统计事务，而且你至今仍这样做。

And you organize your life and tallying things in a very methodical way, and you still do that.

所以人们应该听听我们之前关于这个话题的对话。

So people should listen to our prior conversations on that.

但这个50%的新智力创造性工作、30%的教学、20%的其他事务、委员会等等，这可能与我即将说错的术语有关，比如所谓的‘能力陷阱’之类的循环。

But this 50% new intellectual creative work, 30% teaching, 20% other stuff, committees, etcetera, and this might feed into the I'm, going to screw up the exact terminology, but the sort of doom cycle of competence or or whatever it might be.

我发现，作为一个好奇心旺盛的人，一个代价是：有时我会被拉入一些我非常擅长的事情中，这些事可能是新的，也可能是旧的，但它们与我的核心价值并不高度契合。

What I found is one of the penalties of being a novelty seeker is that sometimes I will get pulled into things that I am quite good at, they could be new, they could be older, that do not align super strongly with my encodings.

因此，我的日子变得支离破碎。

And so the days end up being very choppy.

换句话说，我做了很多管理性的工作。

In other words, I'm doing a lot of management stuff.

也许我答应了某个演讲邀约，现在后悔了。

Maybe I've said yes to a speaking engagement, I regret.

也许我投资了太多初创公司，突然间我就得参加各种Zoom会议，而我却在心里咬牙切齿，因为我本该专心写书之类的项目，等等等等。

Maybe I've invested in a few too many startups, and all of a sudden I'm on Zoom calls when I'm quietly grinding my teeth because I feel like I should be working on a book project, etcetera, etcetera.

我的问题是，第一，你是否也曾被这种引力拉扯，最终更多地在管理而非创造？

And my question is, a, have you ever succumbed to this type of gravitational pull to other things where you end up kind of managing more than making perhaps?

其次，如果确实如此，你是如何调整方向的？

And then separately, if that's true, how have you corrected course?

我必须应对这种被拉扯的状况，大致有两个方面。

There's kind of two aspects of how I have to really struggle to get getting pulled.

首先，在我人生早期，我曾被一些与我本性不符的事情吸引。

First of all, just way earlier in my life, I was getting pulled into things that I was not gonna be encoded for.

幸运的是，通过一系列非常好的事件和选择，我最终完全回到了正轨。

And fortunately, by a series of really good events and choices, I ended up very much in frame.

但如果我当时在那些事情上停留太久，或者接受了某些看似耀眼的机会，我的人生可能会走上完全不同的道路，我想我会变得成功但偏离了本心。

But if I'd stayed too long doing some of those things or taken some opportunities that were very glittering opportunities, that my life might have taken a very different path, I think I would have ended up successful and out of frame.

我认为那将是一个不幸的结果。

And I think that that would have been an unfortunate outcome.

所以我必须应对的两个领域，最终终于成功地在这两方面都取得了进展。

So the two areas that I've had to work with, and eventually finally got my way to succeed at both of them.

第二个更难。

The second one was harder.

第一个是你对知名度问题的看法是对的。

First one was that you're right about the thing about visibility.

我始终为失败做好了准备。

I was always prepared for failure.

但我没有为成功做好准备。

I was not prepared for success.

当成功来临时，首先让我感到惊讶。

And when success came, it surprised me, number one.

我当时想：嘿，好吧。

I was like, yo, okay.

我早已准备好迎接另一边的灾难。

I was prepared for the catastrophe on the other side.

我没料到这一切会来，现在我得应对这些接踵而至的事情。

I didn't expect this to be coming, and now I gotta deal with all this stuff coming at me.

突然间，你拥有了所有这些美好的事物。

And all of a sudden, you have all these wonderful things.

其中一些可能没那么美好，但它们全都朝你涌来。

Some of them maybe not so wonderful, but they're all coming at you.

对吧？

Right?

你面对着各种声音、人物、机会和闪亮的东西，它们可能会把你从真正适合你的方向拉走，因为这些美好的机会和纷杂的干扰纷至沓来。

And you have all these voices and people and opportunities and glittering things that could pull you out of what you're really encoded for because of all this wonderful opportunity and noise coming at you.

我当时处于一种成功的迷雾阶段，拼命想理清该如何分配时间，整个人都措手不及，结果答应了太多后来我绝不会答应的事情——无论是过多的出差还是其他各种事情。但我渐渐意识到，天啊，我整个生命都可能被这些机会吞噬。

I was in sort of a fog of success phase, and I was really trying to sort through, like, how I would allocate my time, and I was kind of reeling on my back feet, and I would say yes to things that later than today, I would never in a million years say yes to, but I did, whether it be involving too much travel or whatever sorts of things, but I began to realize, man, my whole life could be sucked away accepting opportunities.

所以我必须奋力对抗，最终彻底收紧这一切，但要用一种系统而自律的方式。

And so I had to really fight that and to eventually just kind of clamp it all down, but to do it in a really systematic and disciplined way.

那就是我开始计算自己时间的时候，对吧？

And that's when I started counting my hours, right?

基本上，我必须确保在每一个365天的周期里，每年都有超过一千小时的创作时间，连续五十年从不中断。

Basically, just like, I gotta have above a thousand creative hours every three hundred and sixty five day cycle every single day looking back for fifty years without a miss.

对吧？

Right?

我就定下了这个目标。

I just set that.

我绝不会打破它。

I will not ever break it.

另一个目标是，开始使用非常严格的标准来决定哪些事情我答应。

And then the other was to begin using very, very disciplined mechanisms for what I would say yes to.

我们有一个打卡系统。

We have a punch card system.

这源于我对沃伦·巴菲特世界观的深深钦佩。

That's something that I, you know, was very impressed by Warren Buffet's view of the world.

你所投入的每一件事，都是一种投资。

Any use of you is an investment.

这是一次打卡，一旦用了就无法收回。

It's a punch, and you can't get it back.

因此，当我们为全年规划哪些事情我会答应时，我们每年都会实际这么做。

And so when we're laying out for the year what sorts of things I will say yes to, we literally have every year.

我们会讨论，打卡卡上还剩多少次？

We'll we'll be talking, well, what's the punch card look like?

还剩几次打卡？

How many punches are left?

当有人打电话问：‘你10月17日有空做演讲吗？’这根本不是问题。

And it's not a question if somebody calls up and says, are you free to give a speech on October 17?

我有没有空做10月17日的演讲，根本无关紧要。

It's irrelevant whether I'm free to give a speech on October 17.

真正关键的问题是：我还有没有剩余的打卡次数？

The relevant question is, do I have any punches left?

第一个问题就是：我还剩几次打卡？

That's the first question, or how many punches are left?

我们对它们进行限制。

And we limit them.

我们严格地限制它们。

We limit them tightly.

因此，这又成了另一种说法：那就是 punches。

And so that became another way of like, it's punches.

这是 punches，而且它们会用完。

It's punches, and they go away.

我学到的一件事是，现在我68岁了，我意识到生命就是终极的 punch card。

And one thing I've learned is I've come to see now at age 68, life is the ultimate punch card.

我的意思是，想想看，对吧？

I mean, think about it, right?

所以如果你48岁，任何一个规模适中的项目，比如说五年项目，那你还剩下不少五年期的 punches。

So you're 48, if any given good sized project is, call it, a five year project, you got a bunch of five year punches left.

我68岁了。

I'm 68.