How to Do Great Work
July 2023 If you collected lists of techniques for doing great work in a lot of different fields, what would the intersection look like?
2023 年 7 月 如果您收集了在许多不同领域做出出色工作的技术列表，那么交集会是什么样子？
I decided to find out by making it.
我决定通过制作来找出答案。
Partly my goal was to create a guide that could be used by someone working in any field.
我的部分目标是创建一个可供任何领域工作的人使用的指南。
But I was also curious about the shape of the intersection.
但我也对十字路口的形状感到好奇。
And one thing this exercise shows is that it does have a definite shape; it's not just a point labelled "work hard."
这个练习表明的一件事是它确实有一个明确的形状；这不仅仅是一个标有“努力工作”的点。
The following recipe assumes you're very ambitious.
以下食谱假设您非常雄心勃勃。
The first step is to decide what to work on.
第一步是决定要做什么。
The work you choose needs to have three qualities: it has to be something you have a natural aptitude for, that you have a deep interest in, and that offers scope to do great work.
你选择的工作需要具备三个品质：它必须是你有天赋的东西，你对此有浓厚的兴趣，并且提供了完成伟大工作的空间。
In practice you don't have to worry much about the third criterion.
实际上，您不必太担心第三个标准。
Ambitious people are if anything already too conservative about it.
雄心勃勃的人对此已经过于保守了。
So all you need to do is find something you have an aptitude for and great interest in.
所以你需要做的就是找到你有天赋并且非常感兴趣的东西。
[ 1 ] That sounds straightforward, but it's often quite difficult.
[1] 这听起来很简单，但通常非常困难。
When you're young you don't know what you're good at or what different kinds of work are like.
当你年轻的时候，你不知道自己擅长什么，也不知道不同种类的工作是什么样的。
Some kinds of work you end up doing may not even exist yet.
你最终要做的某些工作可能还不存在。
So while some people know what they want to do at 14, most have to figure it out.
因此，虽然有些人知道自己 14 岁时想做什么，但大多数人都必须弄清楚。
The way to figure out what to work on is by working.
弄清楚要做什么的方法就是通过工作。
If you're not
如果你不是
sure what to work on, guess.
确定要做什么，猜猜。
But pick something and get going.
但选择一些东西然后开始吧。
You'll probably guess wrong some of the time, but that's fine.
有时你可能会猜错，但这没关系。
It's good to know about multiple things; some of the biggest discoveries come from noticing connections between different fields.
了解多种事物是件好事；一些最大的发现来自于注意到不同领域之间的联系。
Develop a habit of working on your own projects.
养成从事自己项目的习惯。
Don't let "work" mean something other people tell you to do.
不要让“工作”意味着别人告诉你要做的事情。
If you do manage to do great work one day, it will probably be on a project of your own.
如果有一天你确实能做出出色的工作，那很可能是在你自己的一个项目上。
It may be within some bigger project, but you'll be driving your part of it.
它可能在一些更大的项目中，但你将推动你的部分。
What should your projects be?
你的项目应该是什么？
Whatever seems to you excitingly ambitious.
任何在你看来令人兴奋的雄心勃勃的事情。
As you grow older and your taste in projects evolves, exciting and important will converge.
随着年龄的增长和对项目的品味的变化，令人兴奋和重要的事情将会融合在一起。
At 7 it may seem excitingly ambitious to build huge things out of Lego, then at 14 to teach yourself calculus, till at 21 you're starting to explore unanswered
7 岁的时候，用乐高搭建巨大的东西似乎是令人兴奋的雄心勃勃，然后 14 岁的时候自学微积分，直到 21 岁的时候你开始探索未解之谜
questions in physics.
物理学中的问题。
But always preserve excitingness.
但始终保持兴奋。
There's a kind of excited curiosity that's both the engine and the rudder of great work.
有一种兴奋的好奇心，它既是伟大工作的引擎，也是伟大工作的舵。
It will not only drive you, but if you let it have its way, will also show you what to work on.
它不仅会驱动你，而且如果你顺其自然，它也会告诉你应该做什么。
What are you excessively curious about — curious to a degree that would bore most other people?
你对什么过度好奇——好奇到让大多数人感到厌烦的程度？
That's what you're looking for.
这就是您要寻找的。
Once you've found something you're excessively interested in, the
一旦你发现了你非常感兴趣的东西
next step is to learn enough about it to get you to one of the frontiers of knowledge.
下一步是充分了解它，使您到达知识的前沿之一。
Knowledge expands fractally, and from a distance its edges look smooth, but once you learn enough to get close to one, they turn out to be full of gaps.
知识以分形方式扩展，从远处看，它的边缘看起来很光滑，但一旦你学到了足够多的知识，接近一个边缘，就会发现它们充满了间隙。
The next step is to notice them.
下一步是注意它们。
This takes some skill, because your brain wants to ignore such gaps in order to make a simpler model of the world.
这需要一些技巧，因为你的大脑想要忽略这些差距，以便建立一个更简单的世界模型。
Many discoveries have come from asking questions
许多发现都来自提出问题