How to Lose Time and Money

July 2010 When we sold our startup in 1998 I suddenly got a lot of money.

2010 年 7 月 当我们在 1998 年出售我们的初创公司时，我突然得到了很多钱。

I now had to think about something I hadn't had to think about before: how not to lose it.

我现在必须考虑一些我以前不必考虑的事情：如何不失去它。

I knew it was possible to go from rich to poor, just as it was possible to go from poor to rich.

我知道从富到穷是可能的，就像从穷到富是可能的一样。

But while I'd spent a lot of the past several years studying the paths from poor to rich , I knew practically nothing about the paths from rich

但是，虽然过去几年我花了很多时间研究从穷人到富人的道路，但我对从富人的道路几乎一无所知。

to poor.

至穷。

Now, in order to avoid them, I had to learn where they were.

现在，为了避开它们，我必须了解它们在哪里。

So I started to pay attention to how fortunes are lost.

于是我开始关注财富是如何流失的。

If you'd asked me as a kid how rich people became poor, I'd have said by spending all their money.

如果你小时候问我富人是如何变穷的，我会说是花光了所有的钱。

That's how it happens in books and movies, because that's the colorful way to do it.

这就是书籍和电影中发生的情况，因为这是一种丰富多彩的方式。

But in fact the way most fortunes are lost is not through excessive expenditure, but through

但事实上，大多数财富的损失并不是因为过度支出，而是因为

bad investments.

糟糕的投资。

It's hard to spend a fortune without noticing.

很难不留心地花掉一大笔钱。

Someone with ordinary tastes would find it hard to blow through more than a few tens of thousands of dollars without thinking "wow, I'm spending a lot of money." Whereas if you start trading derivatives, you can lose a million dollars (as much as you want, really) in the blink of an eye.

凡是品味一般的人，在花上几万块钱的时候，很难不觉得“哇，我花了很多钱”。然而，如果您开始交易衍生品，您可能会在眨眼之间损失一百万美元（实际上，您想损失多少就损失多少）。

In most people's minds, spending money on luxuries sets off alarms

在大多数人看来，花钱买奢侈品会引起警报

that making investments doesn't.

投资则不然。

Luxuries seem self-indulgent.

奢侈品似乎是一种自我放纵。

And unless you got the money by inheriting it or winning a lottery, you've already been thoroughly trained that self-indulgence leads to trouble.

除非你是通过继承或中彩票获得的钱，否则你已经被彻底训练到自我放纵会带来麻烦。

Investing bypasses those alarms.

投资可以绕过这些警报。

You're not spending the money; you're just moving it from one asset to another.

你不是在花钱；而是在花钱。您只需将其从一项资产转移到另一项资产即可。

Which is why people trying to sell you expensive things say "it's an investment."

这就是为什么试图向您出售昂贵物品的人会说“这是一项投资”。

The solution is to develop new alarms.

解决方案是开发新的警报。

This can be a tricky business, because while the alarms that prevent you from overspending are so basic that they may even be in our DNA, the ones that prevent you from making bad investments have to be learned, and are sometimes fairly counterintuitive.

这可能是一件棘手的事情，因为虽然防止你超支的警报是如此基本，甚至可能已经存在于我们的 DNA 中，但防止你做出不良投资的警报却必须学习，而且有时相当违反直觉。

A few days ago I realized something surprising: the situation with time is much the same as with money.

几天前，我意识到了一些令人惊讶的事情：时间的情况与金钱的情况大致相同。

The most dangerous way to

最危险的方法是

lose time is not to spend it having fun, but to spend it doing fake work.

浪费时间不是用来享乐，而是用来做虚假的工作。

When you spend time having fun, you know you're being self-indulgent.

当你花时间享受乐趣时，你知道你是在自我放纵。

Alarms start to go off fairly quickly.

警报很快就会响起。

If I woke up one morning and sat down on the sofa and watched TV all day, I'd feel like something was terribly wrong.

如果有一天早上我醒来，坐在沙发上看电视一整天，我会觉得有什么事情非常不对劲。

Just thinking about it makes me wince.

光是想想就让我皱起眉头。

I'd start to feel uncomfortable after sitting on a sofa watching TV for 2 hours, let alone a whole day.

坐在沙发上看电视两个小时就开始感觉不舒服了，更不用说一整天了。

And yet I've definitely had days when I might as well have sat in front of a TV all day — days at the end of which, if I asked myself what I got done that day, the answer would have been: basically, nothing.

然而，我确实也有过这样的日子，我可能还不如整天坐在电视机前——在这些日子结束后，如果我问自己那天做了什么，答案会是：基本上什么也没做。

I feel bad after these days too, but nothing like as bad as I'd feel if I spent the whole day on the sofa watching TV.

这些天过后我也感觉很糟糕，但没有什么比我整天坐在沙发上看电视更糟糕的了。

If I spent a whole day watching TV I'd feel like I was descending into perdition.

如果我整天看电视，我会感觉自己正在走向灭亡。

But the same alarms don't go off on the days when I get

但在我得到的日子里，同样的警报不会响起

nothing done, because I'm doing stuff that seems, superficially, like real work.

什么也没做，因为我正在做的事情表面上看起来就像真正的工作。

Dealing with email, for example.

例如，处理电子邮件。

You do it sitting at a desk.

你坐在办公桌前做这件事。

It's not fun.

这并不好玩。

So it must be work.

所以这一定是工作。

With time, as with money, avoiding pleasure is no longer enough to protect you.

随着时间的推移，就像金钱一样，避免快乐已经不足以保护你。

It probably was enough to protect hunter-gatherers, and perhaps all pre-industrial societies.

这可能足以保护狩猎采集者，或许还有所有前工业社会。

So nature and nurture combine to make us avoid self-indulgence.

因此，先天和后天的结合使我们避免自我放纵。

But the world has gotten

但世界已经

more complicated: the most dangerous traps now are new behaviors that bypass our alarms about self-indulgence by mimicking more virtuous types.

更复杂的是：现在最危险的陷阱是通过模仿更道德的类型来绕过我们对自我放纵的警报的新行为。

And the worst thing is, they're not even fun.

最糟糕的是，它们甚至一点也不有趣。

Thanks to Sam Altman, Trevor Blackwell, Patrick Collison, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.

感谢 Sam Altman、Trevor Blackwell、Patrick Collison、Jessica Livingston 和 Robert Morris 阅读本文的草稿。