Life is Short
January 2016 Life is short, as everyone knows.
2016 年 1 月 众所周知，生命短暂。
When I was a kid I used to wonder about this.
当我还是个孩子的时候，我常常想知道这个问题。
Is life actually short, or are we really complaining about its finiteness?
生命真的很短暂，还是我们真的在抱怨生命的有限？
Would we be just as likely to feel life was short if we lived 10 times as long?
如果我们的寿命延长十倍，我们是否也会同样感到生命短暂？
Since there didn't seem any way to answer this question, I stopped wondering about it.
由于似乎没有任何方法可以回答这个问题，我不再想这个问题了。
Then I had kids.
然后我有了孩子。
That gave me a way to answer the question, and the answer is that life actually is short.
这给了我一个回答这个问题的方法，答案是生命其实很短暂。
Having kids showed me how to convert a continuous quantity, time, into discrete quantities.
有了孩子，我学会了如何将连续量（时间）转换为离散量。
You only get 52 weekends with your 2 year old.
你只有 52 个周末和你 2 岁的孩子在一起。
If Christmas-as-magic lasts from say ages 3 to 10, you only get to watch your child experience it 8 times.
如果圣诞节的魔力从 3 岁持续到 10 岁，你只能看着你的孩子经历 8 次。
And while it's impossible to say what is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity like time, 8 is not a lot of something.
虽然不可能说像时间这样的连续量是多还是少，但 8 并不是很多。
If you had a handful of 8 peanuts, or a shelf of 8 books to choose from, the quantity would
如果你有一把 8 颗花生，或者一架有 8 本书可供选择，那么数量将是
definitely seem limited, no matter what your lifespan was.
无论你的寿命有多长，看起来肯定是有限的。
Ok, so life actually is short.
好吧，生命其实很短暂。
Does it make any difference to know that?
知道这一点有什么区别吗？
It has for me.
对我来说是这样。
It means arguments of the form "Life is too short for x" have great force.
这意味着“对于x来说，生命太短暂了”这种形式的论点具有强大的力量。
It's not just a figure of speech to say that life is too short for something.
生命对于某件事来说太短暂，这不仅仅是一个比喻。
It's not just a synonym for annoying.
它不仅仅是烦人的同义词。
If you find yourself thinking that life is too short for something, you should try to eliminate it if you can.
如果你发现自己认为生命对于某件事来说太短暂了，你应该尽可能地消除它。
When I ask myself what I've found life is too short for, the word that pops into my head is "bullshit." I realize that answer is somewhat tautological.
当我问自己生命如此短暂时，我脑海中浮现的词是“胡说八道”。我意识到这个答案有点同义反复。
It's almost the definition of bullshit that it's the stuff that life is too short for.
这几乎就是废话的定义，生命太短暂了。
And yet bullshit does have a distinctive character.
然而废话确实有其独特的特征。
There's something fake about it.
这里面有一些假的东西。
It's the junk food of experience.
这是经验的垃圾食品。
[ 1 ] If you ask yourself what you spend your time on that's bullshit,
[ 1 ] 如果你问自己你的时间都花在什么上了，那就是胡说八道，
you probably already know the answer.
你可能已经知道答案了。
Unnecessary meetings, pointless disputes, bureaucracy, posturing, dealing with other people's mistakes, traffic jams, addictive but unrewarding pastimes.
不必要的会议、无意义的争论、官僚作风、故作姿态、处理别人的错误、交通堵塞、令人上瘾但无回报的消遣。
There are two ways this kind of thing gets into your life: it's either forced on you, or it tricks you.
这种事情有两种方式进入你的生活：要么是强迫你的，要么是它欺骗你的。
To some extent you have to put up with the bullshit forced on you by circumstances.
在某种程度上，你必须忍受环境强加给你的废话。
You need to make money, and making money consists mostly of errands.
你需要赚钱，而赚钱主要靠跑腿。
Indeed,
确实，
the law of supply and demand ensures that: the more rewarding some kind of work is, the cheaper people will do it.
供求法则确保：某种工作报酬越高，人们就越愿意做它。
It may be that less bullshit is forced on you than you think, though.
不过，强加给你的废话可能比你想象的要少。
There has always been a stream of people who opt out of the default grind and go live somewhere where opportunities are fewer in the conventional sense, but life feels more authentic.
总有一批人选择摆脱默认的苦差事，去传统意义上机会较少但生活感觉更真实的地方生活。
This could become more common.
这可能会变得更加普遍。
You can do it on a smaller scale without moving.
您可以在不移动的情况下以较小的规模进行操作。
The amount of
金额
time you have to spend on bullshit varies between employers.
你花在废话上的时间因雇主而异。
Most large organizations (and many small ones) are steeped in it.
大多数大型组织（以及许多小型组织）都沉浸在其中。
But if you consciously prioritize bullshit avoidance over other factors like money and prestige, you can probably find employers that will waste less of your time.
但如果你有意识地把避免废话放在金钱和声望等其他因素之上，你可能会找到不会浪费你时间的雇主。
If you're a freelancer or a small company, you can do this at the level of individual customers.
如果您是自由职业者或小公司，您可以在个人客户层面上做到这一点。
If you fire or avoid toxic customers,
如果您解雇或避免有毒顾客，
you can decrease the amount of bullshit in your life by more than you decrease your income.
你减少生活中的废话的数量比你减少收入的数量还要多。
But while some amount of bullshit is inevitably forced on you, the bullshit that sneaks into your life by tricking you is no one's fault but your own.
但是，虽然不可避免地会有一些废话强加给你，但那些通过欺骗你而潜入你生活的废话不是别人的错，而是你自己的错。
And yet the bullshit you choose may be harder to eliminate than the bullshit that's forced on you.
然而，你选择的废话可能比强加给你的废话更难消除。
Things that lure you into wasting your time have to be really good at
引诱你浪费时间的事情必须非常擅长
tricking you.
欺骗你。
An example that will be familiar to a lot of people is arguing online.
一个很多人都熟悉的例子就是网上争论。
When someone contradicts you, they're in a sense attacking you.
当有人反驳你时，他们在某种意义上是在攻击你。
Sometimes pretty overtly.
有时相当公开。
Your instinct when attacked is to defend yourself.
当受到攻击时，你的本能是保护自己。
But like a lot of instincts, this one wasn't designed for the world we now live in.
但就像许多本能一样，这种本能并不是为我们现在生活的世界而设计的。
Counterintuitive as it feels, it's better most of the time not to defend yourself.
尽管感觉违反直觉，但大多数时候最好不要为自己辩护。
Otherwise these people are literally
否则这些人简直就是