热爱的踪迹：在钱多和喜欢之间，选哪个？| paul graham

当你无法决定走哪条路时，几乎总是源于无知。 事实上，你通常同时困于三种无知： 你不知道什么让你快乐，不知道各种工作的真相，也不知道你在这些工作上能做到什么程度。

Title: When to Do What You Love

Written by: Paul Graham

Translated by: GPT-4o & @howie.serious（排名有先后，这是AI 翻译测试）

激情的踪迹

There's some debate about whether it's a good idea to "follow your passion." In fact, the question is impossible to answer with a simple yes or no. Sometimes you should, and sometimes you shouldn't, but the boundary between should and shouldn't is very complicated. The only way to give a general answer is to trace it.

关于“追随你的激情”是否是个好主意，始终存在争议。其实，这个问题并不能用简单的“是”或“否”来回答。有时候你应该追随激情，有时候不应该，但这 两者之间的界限极为模糊而复杂 。唯一能够给出普遍答案的方法，就是 不断追寻激情的踪迹 。

When people talk about this question, there's always an implicit "instead of." All other things being equal, why wouldn't you work on what interests you the most?

当人们讨论这个问题时，总有一个潜在的“而不是”隐含其中。如果其他条件都相同，怎么会有人不去做自己最感兴趣的事情呢？

兴趣与赚钱的权衡

So even raising the question implies that all other things aren't equal, and that you have to choose between working on what interests you the most and something else, like what pays the best.

所以，仅仅提出这个问题就意味着：其他条件并不相同，你必须在做最感兴趣的事情和其他事情之间作出抉择，比如选择一份报酬最高的工作。

And indeed, if your main goal is to make money, you usually can't afford to work on what interests you the most. People pay you for doing what they want, not what you want. But there's an obvious exception: when you both want the same thing. For example, if you love football, and you're good enough at it, you can get paid a lot to play it.

事实上，如果你的主要目标是赚钱，你通常不能奢望做自己最感兴趣的事情。人们付钱给你，是为了让你做他们想要的事情，而不是你自己想做的事情。但有一个显而易见的例外：当你们的目标一致时。比如，如果你热爱足球，而且足够出色，你就能通过踢球赚到很多钱。

Of course, the odds are against you in a case like football, because so many other people like playing it too. This is not to say you shouldn't try though. It depends on how much ability you have and how hard you're willing to work.

当然，在像足球这样的领域，机会对你并不利，因为有太多其他人也喜欢踢球。但这并不是说你不应该尝试。 这取决于你的天赋有多强，以及你愿意付出多少努力。

The odds are better when you have strange tastes: when you like something that pays well and that few other people like.

当你拥有一些奇特的兴趣时，成功的几率会更高：比如你喜欢的事情既有高报酬，又很少有人愿意做。

For example, it's clear that Bill Gates truly loved running a software company. He didn't just love programming, which a lot of people do. He loved writing software for customers. That is a very strange taste indeed, but if you have it, you can make a lot by indulging it.

例如，很明显比尔·盖茨真正热爱经营软件公司。他不仅仅喜欢编程——这一点很多人也喜欢——他更喜欢为客户编写软件。这的确是一种非常特别的兴趣，但如果你有这样的兴趣，你可以通过这种热情获得丰厚的回报。

There are even some people who have a genuine intellectual interest in making money. This is distinct from mere greed. They just can't help noticing when something is mispriced, and can't help doing something about it. It's like a puzzle for them.

甚至有些人对赚钱有真正的智力兴趣。这与单纯的贪婪不同。他们无法忽视当某样东西被错误定价时所带来的机会，也无法忍住不采取行动。这对他们来说就像是一个谜题。

（These examples show why it's a mistake to assume that economic inequality must be evidence of some kind of brokenness or unfairness. It's obvious that different people have different interests, and that some interests yield far more money than others, so how can it not be obvious that some people will end up much richer than others? In a world where some people like to write enterprise software and others like to make studio pottery, economic inequality is the natural outcome.）

（这些例子表明，认为经济不平等必然是某种制度缺陷或社会不公正的证据，是不正确的。显然，不同的人有不同的兴趣，而有些兴趣比其他兴趣更能带来丰厚的财富，那么有些人最终比其他人富有也是显而易见的。在一个有人喜欢编写企业软件，有人喜欢制作陶器的世界里，经济不平等是自然的结果。）

极端情况：创业

In fact, there's an edge case here so spectacular that it turns all the preceding advice on its head. If you want to make a really huge amount of money — hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars — it turns out to be very useful to work on what interests you the most. The reason is not the extra motivation you get from doing this, but that the way to make a really large amount of money is to start a startup, and working on what interests you is an excellent way to discover startup ideas .

事实上，有一个极端的例子，它如此惊人，以至于颠覆了之前所有的建议。如果你想赚取巨额财富——数亿甚至数十亿美元——那么从事你最感兴趣的事情将非常有用。原因并不在于你会从中获得额外的动力，而在于赚取巨额财富的途径是创办一家初创公司，而发现初创公司创意的绝佳方式恰恰是做你你真正感兴趣的事情。

Many, if not most, of the biggest startups began as projects the founders were doing for fun. Apple, Google, and Facebook all began that way.

许多最成功的初创公司，甚至大多数，都是创始人为了好玩而开始的项目。苹果、谷歌和脸书都是这样起步的。

Why is this pattern so common? Because the best ideas tend to be such outliers that you'd overlook them if you were consciously looking for ways to make money. Whereas if you're young and good at technology, your unconscious instincts about what would be interesting to work on are very well aligned with what needs to be built.

为什么这种模式如此普遍？因为最好的想法往往是如此的特立独行，以至于如果你有意识地去寻找赚钱的方法，你很可能会忽略它们。而如果你年轻并且擅长技术，你对“做什么事情才真正有趣”的无意识本能，往往与真正需要被构建的东西高度一致。

赚钱与兴趣的“钟形曲线”

So there's something like a "midwit peak" for making money. If you don't need to make much, you can work on whatever you're most interested in; if you want to become moderately rich, you usually can't afford to; but if you want to become super-rich, and you're young and good at technology, working on what you're most interested in becomes a good idea again.

所以，对于赚钱这件事，存在一个“钟形曲线”规律：如果你不需要赚很多钱，你可以去做你最感兴趣的事情；如果你想变得中等富有，通常你负担不起这种选择；但如果你想变得超级富有，并且你年轻且擅长技术，那么做你最感兴趣的事情又变成了一个好主意。