本文為納瓦爾此前接受Youtube知名博主Chris Williamson訪談的最新視頻“44 Harsh Truths About The Game Of Life”（人生的44個殘酷真相）的雙語文字實錄，前序文章請拉到文末，我放了跳轉(zhuǎn)鏈接。
Chris: It feels like efficiency. You have the inspiration that is going to be the most frictionless time to ever do that particular task. So, oh, I've had the inspiration to do that. I'll put that off till the time when I no longer really want to do it quite so much. And while I do want to do that thing, I'll do something else that I needed to do because it's on the schedule.?
Chris: 效率的陷阱就是如此。你在靈感閃現(xiàn)時本該是做一件事最絲滑、阻力最小的時候，但我們往往做得卻是：“靈感來了？先放放，等這股勁兒過了再說?！蹦呐挛覀兲貏e想要做有靈感的那件事，卻還是逼著自己按日程表的規(guī)劃來做事。
Naval: It doesn't work. Procrastination is because you don't want to do that thing right now. You want to do something else. Go do that something else. I reject this frame, that efficiency and productivity and success are counter to happiness and freedom. They actually go together.?
Naval: 這樣是行不通的。拖延的本質(zhì)就是你當下不想做這件事，你想做點兒別的，那就去你想做的。我特別討厭那種把效率、生產(chǎn)力和成功說成是幸福和自由的死對頭的首發(fā)。他們其實是可以共舞的。
Chris: How so??
Chris: 怎么說？
Naval: The happier you are, the more you can sustain doing something, the more likely you're going to do something that will in turn make you even happier, and you'll continue to do it and you'll outwork everybody else. The more free you are, the better you can allocate your time and the less you're caught up in a web of obligations and commitments, and the more you can focus on the task at hand.?
Naval: 你越快樂，就越能持久地投入；你投入地越持久，就越容易做出讓你更快樂的事，那你就會繼續(xù)投入，付出比其他人都多的努力。而你越自由，就越善于分配時間；你越少被所謂義務(wù)與責任捆綁，就越能專注于手頭的事情。
Chris: This is related to another inside of yours. The less you want something, the less you're thinking about it, the less you're obsessing over it, the more you're going to do it in a natural way. The more you're going to do it for yourself, you're going to do it in a way that you're good at, and you're going to stick with it. The people around you will see the quality of your work is higher. But this seems like a difficult tension to navigate because an obsessive attention to detail is a competitive advantage of your work as well. So you have these two things sort of conflicting with each other.?
Chris: 這讓我想到你說過的另一個見解：人對某件事的執(zhí)念越少、想得越少、越不糾結(jié)，反而能更自然地處理這件事。越是純粹為自己而做，就越能用自己擅長的方式去做，就越能堅持，周圍的人自會看到你產(chǎn)出的更優(yōu)質(zhì)的成果。但這個局面感覺很難應對，因為對細節(jié)的專注投入也是你在工作中的一種競爭優(yōu)勢。這兩者要如何平衡呢？
Naval: No one is going to beat you at being you. One of the things I like to say is like, find what feels like play to you, but looks like work to others. So it looks like work to them, but to you it feels like play. It's not work. So you're going to outcompete them because you're doing it effortlessly. You're doing it for fun, they're doing it for work, they're doing it for some byproducts. To you. It's art, it's beauty, it's joy, it's flow, it's fulfilling. You must enjoy podcasting. If you didn't, you wouldn't be good at it.
Naval: 沒人能夠在做你自己這件事上打敗你。我的建議是，找到那些對你來說像玩，但對別人來說是工作的事情。對別人來說那是工作，對你來說只是在玩，不是在工作。你會在這些事上勝過他們，因為你做得非常輕松自如。別人是為了工作，是為了得到做完后的回報，而你是為了好玩、為了藝術(shù)、為了美、為了樂趣、為了心流、為了自我滿足。你肯定也很享受做播客吧，不然你不會做得這么好。
Chris: You wouldn't have done 900 episodes either.?
Chris: 不然我也做不了900期節(jié)目。
Naval: Right. If you decided that the right way to get ahead in life was to go write books, nobody would have heard of you. Chris Williamson's book would be a complete flop. That's not who you are. You're a podcaster. You enjoy talking to people, you enjoy interviewing them. The more you do things that are natural to you, the less competition you have. You escape competition through authenticity by being your own self.
Naval: 沒錯。如果當初你認定寫書才是你的成功之道的話，今天誰還認識克里斯·威廉姆森呢？你寫的書八成也會石沉大海。這不是你的本真所在。你就是個天生的播客人——你享受與人交談、享受訪談的過程。你越是順著自己的本性做事，競爭就越少。通過做真實的自己，你就能跳出競爭的泥潭。
If I had to summarize how to be successful in life in two words, I would just say productize yourself. That's it. Just figure out what it is that you naturally do, that the world might want, that you can scale up and turn into a product. It'll eventually be effortless for you. Yes, there's always work required, but it won't even feel like work to you. It'll feel like play to you. And modern society gives us that opportunity. If you were 2000 years ago, you're born in a farm, your choices are very limited, right? You're going to do stuff on that farm. Now you can literally wake up and you can move to a different city. You can switch careers, you can switch jobs, you can change the people that you're with. You can change so many things about who you are and who you're with and what you're doing. There is infinite opportunity out there for you, literally infinite.
如果一定要總結(jié)人生的成功方法，我會說是“產(chǎn)品化自我”，就這么簡單。找到你天生就擅長、世界可能需要、并且你能將它規(guī)模化做成產(chǎn)品的事情。最終，做這件事對你來說毫不費力。當然，你還是要投入經(jīng)歷，但這件事對你而言絕非一件苦差事，而是一場游戲。現(xiàn)代社會確實給了我們這樣的機會。如果是在兩千年前，你生下來就是農(nóng)民，根本沒有其他選項，終生都要與土地打交道。而現(xiàn)在，你可以一覺醒來就已經(jīng)身處另一座城市，你可以轉(zhuǎn)行，可以跳槽，可以更新自己的社交圈，你可以改變很多事情。在你是誰、與誰同行、做什么事上——你擁有近乎無限的選擇權(quán)。
So it's much better to treat this like a search function to find the people who need you the most, to find the work that need you the most, to find the place you're best suited to be at. And it's worthwhile to spend time in that exploration before diving into exploitation. The biggest mistake in a world with so many choices is premature commitment. If you prematurely commit to being a lawyer or a doctor, and now you've got like, ?five years invested into that you might have just completely missed. You might just end up in the wrong profession, the wrong place, the wrong people for 30 years of your life grinding away. And yes, the best time to figure that out was before, but the second best time is now. So just change it.
因此，更好的方法是將它看作是一場探索：找到最需要你的人、最需要你的事、最適合你的位置。在“深耕”某一件事之前，投入時間去“試錯”絕對是值得的。當今世界給了我們無數(shù)個選擇，過早投身某項事業(yè)才是最大的錯誤。如果你在倉促間決定了要做一名律師或醫(yī)生，努力了五年后才發(fā)現(xiàn)自己入錯了行，你可能就此被困三十年甚至更多，與錯的人、在錯的地方、熬錯的人生。最佳的覺醒時刻是過去，但第二佳就是此刻，大膽去改變吧。
Chris: And also presumably kill things that aren't working very quickly.
Chris: 想必還需要快速砍掉行不通的事吧。
Naval: By default, you should kill everything. If you can't decide, the answer is no. And most things you should just be saying no to. The part of my keeping my calendar free is just by default saying no to everything. Do I want to create a calendar just to add your event? Or to add your need or your desire? One of the other things about, early on in life, you're looking for opportunities. So you're saying yes to everything. That is a phase that you go through. That is the exploration phase. Later, when you found the thing you want to work on, you're in the exploitation phase. You have to say no to everything by default. And if you don't say no to everything by default, if you have to even explicitly go out of your way to say no to something, that will take up time.?
Naval: 其實應該默認拒絕一切。當你猶豫不決時，答案就是“不”。多數(shù)事情你都應該直接否決。我保持自己日程自由的秘訣就是：默認對所有的邀約說“不”。難道我是為了滿足他人的需求建的日程表嗎？年輕的時候，你為了尋求機會，要對一切說“是”。那是一個必經(jīng)的階段，是探索期。但當你找到想要深耕的事業(yè)，就進入了深耕期，此時必須默認對所有的事請說“不”。如果不這樣做的話，就得費力去解釋才能明確拒絕，這樣是很浪費時間的。
For example, there're a lot of people out there who are into hustle culture. A big piece of hustle culture is like, well, you're not going to get something is you don't ask for it. So they'll hustle people. They'll always be sending you requests, messages. Yeah, this is a famous person problem, but I have it. And people are always asking me for things. I kind of squirm when I get these messages. I'm sure you get these, too. Text messages, emails, saying, hey Chris, my friend so and so should really be on your podcast, or, you should come to my event. You should write a forward for my book. You kind of squirm when you get this, right? You have to figure out how to say no.?
比如，很多人現(xiàn)在都推崇“奮斗文化”，鼓吹“不開口就得不到”。于是，總有人給你發(fā)申請、塞消息。當然，這可能確實是個“名人病”，但我本人真的深受其擾。大家總是不停地向我索求，我每次收到這種消息總會覺得有點不安，我相信你也有同感。每天都是無數(shù)的短信、郵件，寫著“克里斯，我推薦我朋友某某某上你的播客”“來參加我的活動吧”“能不能給我的書作序”...收到這種消息總會有點坐立難安，我們必須要學會拒絕。
One of the things I learned along the way is that, if you wouldn't ask somebody else to do it, then you get that request yourself, you can just dismiss it. You don't have to respond. You don't even let it enter your brain. You have to be able to delete emails and text and messages without flinching if you want to scale. And scaling is very important. Scaling your time is really important. Every interruption will take you out of flow. So the only way you can remain in flow is if you get either very good at ignoring these things by default or closing yourself off like a hermit, like our mutual friend Tim Ferris does, or you just become emotionally capable of not registering these as something that causes turbulence inside of you.?
我悟出了一個解決方案：如果這件事你不會開口求別人做，那當你收到同類請求時，就直接無視。你無需回復，甚至無需讓這些請求進入你的大腦。如果你想實現(xiàn)規(guī)?；?，就得眼都不眨地把那些郵件、短信、私信都刪掉。守護你的時間規(guī)模至關(guān)重要。每一次干擾都會把你從心流狀態(tài)中拉出，要保持深度專注，要么你能練成“自動屏蔽”神功，要么可以學我的好朋友蒂姆·費里斯*那樣做個隱士，或者也可以修煉波瀾不驚的功力——讓情緒的擾動從你的身體中穿過去。
*蒂姆·費里斯：暢銷書《每周工作四小時》作者
Chris: That not registering it emotionally thing, ?is that a...??
Chris: “情緒波瀾不驚”是說...？
Naval: It's fundamental. That's so fundamental to so many things in life.?
Naval:?人生萬千事，這一點是根本。
Chris: Okay, can we dig into that a little bit? Because, again, I've only seen you as you, right? I didn't know you 20 years ago, I didn't know you as a child. So I've only seen you with this holistic selfishness, the integrated self prioritization, I don't know what we called it.?
Chris: 這一點能展開說說嗎？畢竟我認識的是現(xiàn)在的你，20年前的你我并沒見過。我就只看過你這套渾然天成的自私體系，一種高度統(tǒng)一的自我優(yōu)先法則。
Naval: Selfish is fine. I'll take selfish. I'm selfish. I'm very selfish person. Don't contact me.?
Naval: 說我自私挺好的，我完全能接受，我就是個非常自私的人，都不要聯(lián)系我。
Chris: Yeah, that emotional reaction, I also get the sense, too, that maybe people have lived obligation life for so long. They actually kind of struggled to tap into what it is that they want. They've hidden their wants and their desires and their needs, and they've deprioritized themselves so much for so long. They go, what do I want, actually? What is it? Do I want to go to this thing or not? Because all I've done is be fucking puppeted, right? I've been marionettes by other people's desires for so, so, so long, I can't even tap into that anymore. And saying no feels like a war crime.?
Chris: 說到情緒反應，我也有這種感覺。我覺得很多人被困在“負責任的人生”里太久了，久到已經(jīng)挖掘不到自己真正想要什么了。他們把自己的渴望、需求、念頭藏得太深、壓抑得太久。他們會想：“我到底想要什么？這件事我到底想不想做？”這些年我活得就像個提線木偶，被別人的欲望操控了太久，久到已經(jīng)找不到自己的本心。而每次拒絕別人的時候，我都愧疚得就像自己犯了滔天大罪一般。
Naval: So I think it's really good to be able to view your own mind and your own thoughts objectively. And that is the big benefit of meditation. It creates a small gap between your conscious observation self and your mind. And that lets you then look at your thoughts and evaluate them a little bit like you would a third party's statements. And if you just take your mind to be you and they're integrated in one and the same at all times, and you're reacting from the mind, then you're not even to question things that come into your mind. Anything that comes in that creates a reaction will immediately create a reaction.?
Naval: 如果能夠客觀地審視自己的念頭會很有幫助，這就是冥想帶來的好處之一。它能在你的“觀察性自我”和“念頭”之間撕開一道小縫，這樣你就可以以第三方的視角對自己的思維進行觀察。如果你總是把自己的念頭等同于自己本身，時刻被念頭牽著鼻子走，那你根本就不會質(zhì)疑涌入你腦中的任何東西，稍有刺激就會自動做出反應。
But if you can observe your thoughts a little bit, and not in some woo-woo way, but you can even just do it through therapy, you can do it through journaling. You can do it any way you would like. You can just take long walks. You don't have to meditate and do lotus position. All that is unnecessary. But if you can observe your own thoughts and view them a objectively, then you can start being a little more choosy, a little more critical, and you can realize that there are no problems in the real world other than maybe things that inflict pain on your body.?
你可以用很多方法來幫助自己站開一步去觀察自己的念頭，比如心理治療、寫日記、長距離散步，或者任何你喜歡的方式都可以，不是非要擺出蓮花坐的姿勢來冥想才行。一旦你可以用客觀的視角觀察自己的思想，你就可以對其進行更加精挑的細選，如果再帶上一點批判的眼光，你就會發(fā)現(xiàn)，現(xiàn)實世界里本無問題。
Everything else has to become a problem in your mind first. You have to view it and interpret it and create a narrative that it is a problem before it becomes a problem. And then you realize that a lot of your emotional energy is spent on reacting to things that your mind is automatically saying are problems. And you don't need all those problems. Do you really need that many problems in your life? Again, I would say try to focus on just one overarching problem and then go solve that problem.?
一切麻煩都得先在你心里被認證成問題才算數(shù)，你先觀察它、解讀它、為它編制一個問題化的敘事，才使之成為一個問題。然后你就會發(fā)現(xiàn)，你在應對被大腦自動標記為問題的事情上花費了巨量的心力。而你的人生真的需要背負這么多問題嗎？我會建議你試著專注于一個核心問題，然后解決它。
Like if you want to be successful, define successful very concretely, focus on that and everything else, when it enters your mind, it becomes a problem, whether it's the judgment about the girl walking down the street or the car that just cut in front of you, or whether it's like, this, your accountant did this stupid thing. Yes, it's going to trigger you. But observe for a moment that like, it's triggering me. I've created a problem. Do I really want to have this problem right now? Do I want to spend the energy on this problem? Or do I want that going somewhere else? And it doesn't have to be that over. You don't have to the mind mud wrestling with itself is also a problem. But I'd love to do that.
比如說，你想成功，那就去具體地定義成功，然后專注于這一點。至于其他事情——無論是路人的評價、被超車，還是會計犯蠢——當它們闖入你的腦子變成“問題”時，你就要暫停下來問問自己：“它觸發(fā)了我，我又制造了一個問題”“我現(xiàn)在真的想要認領(lǐng)這個問題嗎？”“我要把精力花在解決這個問題上，還是放在別處？”而且，也并不是一定要按照這個模板來思考，讓自己的思維陷入自我糾結(jié)中也是一個問題，只不過我個人很喜歡這樣問自己。
Chris: I have my problems got problems, and I have a real problem about fixing my problems.?
Chris: 我的問題會產(chǎn)生問題，而解決它們才是我真正的問題。
Naval: Yeah, exactly. You're going to be much happier and much more focused. Again, I think happiness and focus and success can kind of complement each other. You're going to have much more energy. Just think about as mental energy, you're going to have much more mental energy to focus on the actual problems you want to solve. If you don't start unconsciously, subconsciously, reactively picking up problems everywhere. So before anything can be a problem that takes up your emotional energy, you have to accept it as a problem. You can be choosy about your problems, and I'm not saying I'm perfect in that regard, but I think I'm better than I used to be.?
Naval: 是的，斬斷雜念，你會更快樂、更專注。再說一次，我認為快樂、專注、成功是可以共生的，你可以擁有更多的心力。想想看，從精神層面來說，如果你不再無意識、下意識、應激性地到處撿問題，你就會有充沛的心力專注解決真想搞定的難題。記住：任何事在成為消耗你的“問題”之前，都是你自己得先把它當做一個問題才產(chǎn)生。你是可以挑剔地選擇問題的，在這方面我也不敢說做得非常好，但比過去強多了。
（寫在后邊：好久不見，你的斷更博主又復更啦！這篇寫到這里5000多字了，準備后邊就以這個長度來更新，每篇更短一些，更新頻率勤一點~歡迎大家監(jiān)督）
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