How to Work Hard

June 2021 It might not seem there's much to learn about how to work hard.

2021 年 6 月 关于如何努力工作，似乎没有太多值得学习的地方。

Anyone who's been to school knows what it entails, even if they chose not to do it.

任何上过学的人都知道这意味着什么，即使他们选择不上学。

There are 12 year olds who work amazingly hard.

有 12 岁的孩子，他们工作非常努力。

And yet when I ask if I know more about working hard now than when I was in school, the answer is definitely yes.

然而，当我问我现在是否比上学时更懂得努力工作时，答案肯定是肯定的。

One thing I know is that if you want to do great things, you'll have to work very hard.

我知道的一件事是，如果你想做伟大的事情，你就必须非常努力。

I wasn't sure of that as a kid.

我小时候对此并不确定。

Schoolwork

功课

varied in difficulty; one didn't always have to work super hard to do well.

难度各异；一个人并不总是需要非常努力才能做得很好。

And some of the things famous adults did, they seemed to do almost effortlessly.

名人所做的一些事情，他们似乎几乎毫不费力就能做到。

Was there, perhaps, some way to evade hard work through sheer brilliance?

也许有什么方法可以通过纯粹的才华来逃避艰苦的工作吗？

Now I know the answer to that question.

现在我知道这个问题的答案了。

There isn't.

没有。

The reason some subjects seemed easy was that my school had low standards.

有些科目看起来很简单的原因是我的学校标准较低。

And the reason famous adults seemed to do things

著名成年人似乎做事的原因

effortlessly was years of practice; they made it look easy.

毫不费力的是多年的练习；他们让它看起来很容易。

Of course, those famous adults usually had a lot of natural ability too.

当然，那些出名的大人，通常也有很多天赋。

There are three ingredients in great work: natural ability, practice, and effort.

伟大的工作包含三个要素：天赋、实践和努力。

You can do pretty well with just two, but to do the best work you need all three: you need great natural ability and to have practiced a lot and to be trying very hard.

只需两个就可以做得很好，但要做出最好的工作，您需要三个都具备：您需要强大的天生能力，并且进行大量练习并非常努力。

[ 1 ] Bill Gates, for example, was among the smartest people in business

[ 1 ] 例如，比尔盖茨是商界最聪明的人之一

in his era, but he was also among the hardest working.

在他那个时代，他也是最勤奋的人之一。

"I never took a day off in my twenties," he said.

“我二十多岁的时候从来没有休息过一天，”他说。

"Not one." It was similar with Lionel Messi.

“没有一个。”莱昂内尔·梅西也有类似的情况。

He had great natural ability, but when his youth coaches talk about him, what they remember is not his talent but his dedication and his desire to win.

他拥有出色的天赋，但当他的青年队教练谈论他时，他们记住的不是他的天赋，而是他的奉献精神和对胜利的渴望。

P.

P。

G.

G。

Wodehouse would probably get my vote for best English writer of the 20th century, if I had to choose.

如果我必须选择的话，沃德豪斯可能会赢得我对 20 世纪最佳英语作家的投票。

Certainly no one ever made it look easier.

当然，没有人让它看起来更容易。

But no one

但没有人

ever worked harder.

曾经更加努力地工作过。

At 74, he wrote with each new book of mine I have, as I say, the feeling that this time I have picked a lemon in the garden of literature.

74岁时，他在我的每一本新书中写道，正如我所说，我有一种感觉，这次我在文学花园里采摘了柠檬。

A good thing, really, I suppose.

我想，这确实是一件好事。

Keeps one up on one's toes and makes one rewrite every sentence ten times.

保持警惕，让每个句子重写十次。

Or in many cases twenty times.

或者在很多情况下二十次。

Sounds a bit extreme, you think.

您认为听起来有点极端。

And yet Bill Gates sounds even more extreme.

然而比尔·盖茨听起来更加极端。

Not one day off in ten years?

十年没有休息过一天？

These two had about

这两个人大约有

as much natural ability as anyone could have, and yet they also worked about as hard as anyone could work.

任何人都拥有尽可能多的天赋，但他们也像任何人一样努力工作。

You need both.

你两者都需要。

That seems so obvious, and yet in practice we find it slightly hard to grasp.

这看起来很明显，但在实践中我们发现它有点难以理解。

There's a faint xor between talent and hard work.

天赋和努力之间存在微弱的异或关系。

It comes partly from popular culture, where it seems to run very deep, and partly from the fact that the outliers are so rare.

它部分来自流行文化，它似乎根深蒂固，部分来自异常值如此罕见的事实。

If great talent and great drive are both rare, then people with both are rare

如果伟大的才华和伟大的干劲都很稀有，那么两者兼具的人也很稀有

squared.

平方。

Most people you meet who have a lot of one will have less of the other.

你遇到的大多数人都拥有很多其中一种，而另一种则较少。

But you'll need both if you want to be an outlier yourself.

但如果你想成为一个局外人，你就需要两者。

And since you can't really change how much natural talent you have, in practice doing great work, insofar as you can, reduces to working very hard.

由于你无法真正改变自己拥有多少天赋，因此在实践中，只要你能做到出色的工作，就会减少到非常努力的工作。

It's straightforward to work hard if you have clearly defined, externally imposed goals, as you do in school.

如果你有明确定义的、外部强加的目标，就像你在学校那样，那么努力工作就很简单。

There is some technique

有一些技巧

to it: you have to learn not to lie to yourself, not to procrastinate (which is a form of lying to yourself), not to get distracted, and not to give up when things go wrong.

对此：你必须学会不对自己撒谎，不拖延（这是对自己撒谎的一种形式），不分心，当事情出错时不放弃。

But this level of discipline seems to be within the reach of quite young children, if they want it.

但这种程度的纪律似乎对于年幼的孩子来说是可以接受的，如果他们愿意的话。

What I've learned since I was a kid is how to work toward goals that are neither clearly defined nor externally imposed.

我从小就学到的是如何努力实现既不明确定义也不是外部强加的目标。

You'll

你会

probably have to learn both if you want to do really great things.

如果你想做真正伟大的事情，可能必须学习两者。

The most basic level of which is simply to feel you should be working without anyone telling you to.

最基本的层次就是感觉自己应该在没有人告诉你的情况下工作。

Now, when I'm not working hard, alarm bells go off.

现在，当我不努力工作时，警钟就会响起。

I can't be sure I'm getting anywhere when I'm working hard, but I can be sure I'm getting nowhere when I'm not, and it feels awful.

当我努力工作时，我不能确定自己是否有所成就，但当我不努力工作时，我可以确定自己一事无成，这种感觉很糟糕。

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