How To Be Successful〉Sam Altman Co-founder of OpenAI

How To Be Successful〉Sam Altman Co-founder of OpenAI

Sam Altman,OpenAI 共同創辦人,當今矽谷最具影響力的創業導師之一。

他的經典文章〈How To Be Successful〉在全球創業圈廣為流傳,累積超過百萬次瀏覽,被無數創業者視為成功指南。這篇文章是他觀察數千位成功者提煉的 13 條達成非凡成功的核心原則,為追求卓越者提供了極具洞察力的指引。這篇文章不僅是商業成功的秘笈,更是人生哲學的體現。

首先,「讓自己產生複利效應」是關鍵。Altman 強調職涯應追求指數級成長,而非線性進展。這意味著要持續高效率學習,利用技術、品牌等槓桿,並具備長期思考的視野,因為市場會厚待那些能預見未來並為此布局的人
其次,「強大自信」與「獨立思考」是相輔相成的。他指出,最成功的人往往擁有近乎妄想的自信,這讓他們能堅定地採納非主流想法,並在逆境中維持士氣。但這種自信必須與自我認知平衡,勇於接受批評。同時,培養獨立思考能力,勇於提出新想法並快速驗證,從看似無解的問題中鍛鍊毅力,是抓住機會的基礎
再者,Altman 點出「致富之道在於擁有資產」。他明確區分了線性增長的高薪與指數級增值的資產所有權,如企業股份。真正的財富來自於擁有這些能迅速增值的東西,而非僅僅出賣時間。這鼓勵我們思考如何創造或持有能產生巨大價值的資產。
最後,他強調「受內在驅動」的重要性。過度追求外部認可容易導致墨守成規和規避風險。唯有源於內心,為了取悅自己和對世界產生影響的熱情,才能在達到一定成就後,持續推動個人走向更高的顛峰
Altman 承認個人幸運,但也堅信即便起步不利,透過堅定意志和不懈努力,非凡成功仍是可及的。這些原則構成了一份強大的思維框架,鼓勵我們跳脫框架,以宏大願景和持續行動,開創屬於自己的非凡之路,是一份值得深思的人生指南。
Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator, shares his thoughts on how you can succeed with a startup. Startup School is YC's free online program for founders. Sign up to access the full curriculum and over $100k in deals! https://www.startupschool.org/ Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) - 00:00:00 Introduction 00:00:11 A product so good people tell friends 00:00:53 Easy to understand 00:01:13 Exponential growth in market 00:02:00 Real trends vs Fake trends 00:03:30 Evangelical founder 00:04:04 Ambitious vision 00:04:22 Hard startup vs Easy Startup 00:05:34 Confident and definite view of future (but flexible!) 00:06:10 Huge if it works 00:06:30 Team (non-obvious insights) 00:07:20 - Optimists! 00:07:47 - Idea generators 00:08:16 - ‘We’ll figure it out’ 00:08:50 - ‘I’ve got it’ 00:09:08 - Action bias 00:09:34 - The blessing or inexperience 00:10:16 Momentum 00:11:04 Competitive advantage 00:11:46 Sensible business model 00:12:04 Distribution strategy 00:12:20 Traits of best founders - Frugality, focus, obsession, love 00:12:46 Why startups win 00:13:13 - One no vs One yes 00:14:06 - Fast-changing markets 00:14:43 - Platform shifts 00:15:46 End

以下為英文原文與翻譯:
Sam Altman

How To Be Successful

I’ve observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of money or to create something important. Usually, people start off wanting the former and end up wanting the latter.

我觀察了數千位創業者,也經常思考要如何賺大錢或創造有價值的東西。通常,人們一開始是想賺錢,最後則變成想要留下影響力。

1. Compound yourself
Compounding is magic. Look for it everywhere. Exponential curves are the key to wealth generation.

「複利效應」很神奇。你應該到處尋找它。這種呈現指數型成長的趨勢,是累積財富的關鍵。

A medium-sized business that grows 50% in value every year becomes huge in a very short amount of time. Few businesses in the world have true network effects and extreme scalability. But with technology, more and more will.

一間中型公司如果每年成長 50%,很快就會變成大公司。雖然目前全球很少企業真的具有這種「網絡效應」和超強擴展能力,但科技會讓這種現象越來越常見。

You also want to be an exponential curve yourself—you should aim for your life to follow an ever-increasing up-and-to-the-right trajectory.

你自己也應該像指數曲線一樣不斷成長,讓你的人生一路往上、持續提升。

It’s important to move towards a career that has a compounding effect—most careers progress fairly linearly.

你應該找一份能「越做越有價值」的工作,而不是那種做久了價值還是一樣的。

You don't want to be in a career where people who have been doing it for two years can be as effective as people who have been doing it for twenty—your rate of learning should always be high.

別選那種做兩年跟做二十年能力差不多的工作。你應該不斷學習、越來越有價值。

As your career progresses, each unit of work you do should generate more and more results. There are many ways to get this leverage, such as capital, technology, brand, network effects, and managing people.

隨著你的職涯發展,每一小段努力都應該帶來更大的成果。你可以透過資本、科技、品牌、網絡效應或管理能力來加乘你的影響力。

It’s useful to focus on adding another zero to whatever you define as your success metric—money, status, impact on the world, or whatever.

無論你的目標是賺錢、地位、還是改變世界,都可以設定一個方向:再多加一個零,讓成果提升十倍。

Most people get bogged down in linear opportunities. Be willing to let small opportunities go to focus on potential step changes.

大多數人都困在一點一滴的進步中。你要有勇氣放棄一些小機會,把注意力放在真正有突破性可能的事上。

I think the biggest competitive advantage in business—either for a company or for an individual’s career—is long-term thinking with a broad view of how different systems in the world are going to come together.

無論對公司還是個人來說,最大的優勢是「有長遠眼光」並了解這個世界如何互相連動。

One of the notable aspects of compound growth is that the furthest out years are the most important. In a world where almost no one takes a truly long-term view, the market richly rewards those who do.

複利最強大的地方,是它在未來幾年會變得非常可觀。在這個大家都只看短期的世界裡,能長期思考的人會獲得豐厚回報。

Trust the exponential, be patient, and be pleasantly surprised.

相信指數型成長,保持耐心,你會對成果感到驚喜。


2. Have almost too much self-belief
Self-belief is immensely powerful. The most successful people I know believe in themselves almost to the point of delusion.

自信心是非常強大的力量。我認識最成功的人,他們對自己有近乎「瘋狂」的自信。

Cultivate this early. As you get more data points that your judgment is good and you can consistently deliver results, trust yourself more.

越早培養這種信念越好。當你越來越能證明自己判斷正確、做事有成果時,就更應該相信自己。

If you don’t believe in yourself, it’s hard to let yourself have contrarian ideas about the future. But this is where most value gets created.

如果你不相信自己,就很難敢想一些與主流不同的未來構想。但真正有價值的創新,往往就藏在這些「不一樣」的想法裡。

I remember when Elon Musk took me on a tour of the SpaceX factory many years ago. He talked in detail about manufacturing every part of the rocket, but the thing that sticks in memory was the look of absolute certainty on his face when he talked about sending large rockets to Mars.

我記得很多年前,Elon Musk 帶我參觀 SpaceX 工廠。他仔細解說火箭的每個零件怎麼造,但我最記得的是他說要把大型火箭送上火星時,那種完全篤定的神情。

Managing your own morale—and your team’s morale—is one of the greatest challenges of most endeavors. It’s almost impossible without a lot of self-belief.

維持自己和團隊的士氣,是一件很難的事。如果沒有強烈的自信,這幾乎做不到。

And unfortunately, the more ambitious you are, the more the world will try to tear you down.

而且很不幸的是,你越有野心,世界就越會試圖打擊你。

Most highly successful people have been really right about the future at least once at a time when people thought they were wrong. If not, they would have faced much more competition.

大多數成功者,曾在大家都不相信的時候,正確預測未來一次。否則他們就會面對更多競爭者,難以脫穎而出。

Self-belief must be balanced with self-awareness. I used to hate criticism of any sort and actively avoided it. Now I try to always listen to it with the assumption that it’s true, and then decide if I want to act on it or not.

自信也要與自覺並存。我以前很討厭批評,會刻意迴避。現在我學會把批評當成是真的,先聽進去,再決定要不要改變。

Truth-seeking is hard and often painful, but it is what separates self-belief from self-delusion.

追求真相很困難,也常常令人不舒服,但它能幫你分清楚什麼是真正的自信、什麼只是自我欺騙。

This balance also helps you avoid coming across as entitled and out of touch.

這種平衡,還能避免讓人覺得你自大又脫離現實。


3. Learn to think independently
Entrepreneurship is very difficult to teach because original thinking is very difficult to teach.

創業很難教,是因為「原創性思考」很難教。

School is not set up to teach this—in fact, it generally rewards the opposite. So you have to cultivate it on your own.

學校教育不是為了教你這個,反而常常鼓勵大家循規蹈矩。所以你必須自己練習這種能力。

Thinking from first principles and trying to generate new ideas is fun, and finding people to exchange them with is a great way to get better at this.

用「第一性原則」思考、嘗試產出新點子是很有趣的事,找人一起討論會幫助你變得更厲害。

The next step is to find easy, fast ways to test these ideas in the real world.

下一步就是要找快速又簡單的方法,把想法在現實世界裡試驗看看。

“I will fail many times, and I will be really right once” is the entrepreneurs’ way. You have to give yourself a lot of chances to get lucky.

「我會失敗很多次,但總有一次會大成功」— 這就是創業者的思維。你要給自己很多機會,讓幸運降臨。

One of the most powerful lessons to learn is that you can figure out what to do in situations that seem to have no solution.

你要學會的一個重要能力是:即使面對看起來沒救的情況,也能想出辦法來。

The more times you do this, the more you will believe it. Grit comes from learning you can get back up after you get knocked down.

你經歷這樣的事越多次,你就越相信自己辦得到。「韌性」就是從你知道自己跌倒後還能站起來中長出來的。


4. Get good at “sales”
Self-belief alone is not sufficient—you also have to be able to convince other people of what you believe.

光是自己相信還不夠,你還要能說服別人相信你所相信的事情。

All great careers, to some degree, become sales jobs. You have to evangelize your plans to customers, prospective employees, the press, investors, etc.

幾乎所有成功的職涯,某種程度上最後都變成了「銷售」工作。你得向客戶、潛在員工、媒體、投資人等說明你的想法。

This requires an inspiring vision, strong communication skills, some degree of charisma, and evidence of execution ability.

這需要你有激勵人心的願景、溝通能力、一些個人魅力,還有你能做到事情的證明。

Getting good at communication—particularly written communication—is an investment worth making.

提升溝通能力,特別是「文字表達能力」,是一項值得投入的投資。

My best advice for communicating clearly is to first make sure your thinking is clear and then use plain, concise language.

我認為表達清楚最重要的是:先把想法釐清,再用簡單直接的語言表達。

The best way to be good at sales is to genuinely believe in what you’re selling. Selling what you truly believe in feels great, and trying to sell snake oil feels awful.

要成為好業務,最有效的方法就是「你自己真的相信你賣的東西」。你相信的東西推起來會讓人充滿能量;你不信的東西推起來會讓人很痛苦。

Getting good at sales is like improving at any other skill—anyone can get better at it with deliberate practice. But for some reason, perhaps because it feels distasteful, many people treat it as something unlearnable.

銷售技巧跟其他技能一樣,是可以靠練習變好的。但不知為何,可能是覺得銷售「有點俗」,很多人覺得這不是能學的東西。

My other big sales tip is to show up in person whenever it’s important. When I was first starting out, I was always willing to get on a plane.

另一個重要的銷售建議:重要的事情,親自出面。我剛起步時,常常直接搭飛機去見人。

It was frequently unnecessary, but three times it led to career-making turning points for me that otherwise would have gone the other way.

雖然大多時候不是必要的,但有三次的親自出面,讓我的人生轉了彎,否則可能就錯過了。


5. Make it easy to take risks
Most people overestimate risk and underestimate reward.

大多數人都高估風險、低估回報

Taking risks is important because it’s impossible to be right all the time—you have to try many things and adapt quickly as you learn more.

敢冒險很重要,因為你不可能永遠判斷正確。你得不斷嘗試新東西,並隨著學習快速調整。

It’s often easier to take risks early in your career; you don’t have much to lose, and you potentially have a lot to gain.

在職涯早期比較容易冒險,因為你沒什麼可失去的,但有很多可以贏得的。

Once you’ve gotten yourself to a point where you have your basic obligations covered you should try to make it easy to take risks.

當你生活無虞、有基本保障後,就應該創造讓自己可以輕鬆冒險的環境。

Look for small bets you can make where you lose 1x if you’re wrong but make 100x if it works. Then make a bigger bet in that direction.

找那些「錯了只損失一點,對了可以大賺百倍」的小機會來試試。成功了,再加大賭注往那個方向走。

Don’t save up for too long, though. At YC, we’ve often noticed a problem with founders that have spent a lot of time working at Google or Facebook.

但也不要等太久才行動。在 YC(創業育成計畫)我們常看到那些在 Google 或 Facebook 待太久的創辦人遇到問題。

When people get used to a comfortable life, a predictable job, and a reputation of succeeding at whatever they do, it gets very hard to leave that behind.

人一旦習慣舒適的生活、穩定的工作,以及「做什麼都成功」的名聲,就很難離開這一切。

Even if they do leave, the temptation to return is great.

即使他們離開了,回頭的誘惑還是很大。

It’s easy—and human nature—to prioritize short-term gain and convenience over long-term fulfillment.

這是人性:我們很容易追求眼前的安穩,而不是長遠的滿足。

But when you aren’t on the treadmill, you can follow your hunches and spend time on things that might turn out to be really interesting.

但當你不再困在一成不變的生活裡,你才有空間去追隨直覺,投入那些可能會變成「大事」的想法。

Keeping your life cheap and flexible for as long as you can is a powerful way to do this, but obviously comes with tradeoffs.

讓生活保持簡單、保持彈性,是實現這種自由的好方法,當然也會有一些代價。


6. Focus
Focus is a force multiplier on work.

「專注力」可以放大你的工作成果。

Almost everyone I’ve ever met would be well-served by spending more time thinking about what to focus on.

我遇過的幾乎每個人都會因為「多花點時間想清楚自己該專注什麼」而受益。

It is much more important to work on the right thing than it is to work many hours. Most people waste most of their time on stuff that doesn’t matter.

與其拼命加班,不如選對要做的事。大多數人都把時間浪費在不重要的事情上。

Once you have figured out what to do, be unstoppable about getting your small handful of priorities accomplished quickly.

一旦確定了目標,就要全力以赴、快速完成你最重要的幾件事。

I have yet to meet a slow-moving person who is very successful.

我從來沒看過慢吞吞的人會非常成功。


7. Work hard
You can get to about the 90th percentile in your field by working either smart or hard, which is still a great accomplishment.

只靠聰明或努力其中之一,你就可以達到你所在領域的前 10%,這已經很了不起。

But getting to the 99th percentile requires both—you will be competing with other very talented people who will have great ideas and be willing to work a lot.

但要進入前 1%,你就得又聰明又努力。因為你將會與其他有才華又肯拼的人競爭。

Extreme people get extreme results. Working a lot comes with huge life trade-offs, and it’s perfectly rational to decide not to do it. But it has a lot of advantages.

極端投入的人,會得到極端的成果。當然這樣會犧牲生活,但這是個人選擇。而且,認真工作有很多好處。

As in most cases, momentum compounds, and success begets success.

就像多數情況一樣,「動能」會累積,成功會吸引更多成功。

And it’s often really fun. One of the great joys in life is finding your purpose, excelling at it, and discovering that your impact matters to something larger than yourself.

而且努力其實常常是快樂的。人生最棒的事之一,就是找到自己的使命、發揮所長,然後發現你的努力能影響更大的世界。

A YC founder recently expressed great surprise about how much happier and more fulfilled he was after leaving his job at a big company and working towards his maximum possible impact.

最近有位 YC 創辦人很驚訝地發現:他離開大公司後,雖然更努力工作,卻變得更快樂、更有成就感,因為他知道自己在發揮最大的影響力。

Working hard at that should be celebrated.

在你熱愛的目標上努力,是值得被讚美的事。

It’s not entirely clear to me why working hard has become a Bad Thing in certain parts of the US, but this is certainly not the case in other parts of the world—the amount of energy and drive exhibited by entrepreneurs outside of the US is quickly becoming the new benchmark.

我不太明白為什麼在美國某些圈子裡,「努力工作」被視為負面。但在世界其他地方不是這樣——美國以外的創業者展現出來的活力和幹勁,正逐漸成為新標準。

You have to figure out how to work hard without burning out. People find their own strategies for this, but one that almost always works is to find work you like doing with people you enjoy spending a lot of time with.

你需要學會「努力不過勞」。每個人都有不同方法,但最有效的通常是:做自己喜歡的事,和你喜歡的人一起做

I think people who pretend you can be super successful professionally without working most of the time (for some period of your life) are doing a disservice.

我認為,那些說「你可以輕鬆成功、不用太努力」的人,其實是在誤導大家。

In fact, work stamina seems to be one of the biggest predictors of long-term success.

其實,「工作的持久力」幾乎是預測長期成功最重要的因素之一。

One more thought about working hard: do it at the beginning of your career. Hard work compounds like interest, and the earlier you do it, the more time you have for the benefits to pay off.

還有一點關於努力工作的建議:在你職涯初期就開始努力。努力的成果像利息一樣會複利累積,你越早開始,時間效益越大。

It’s also easier to work hard when you have fewer other responsibilities, which is frequently but not always the case when you’re young.

你年輕的時候通常責任比較少,這時候最容易投入大量時間去努力。


8. Be bold
I believe that it’s easier to do a hard startup than an easy startup. People want to be part of something exciting and feel that their work matters.

我認為,做一個難的創業題目,其實比做一個簡單的還容易成功。因為人們喜歡參與有挑戰、會改變世界的事情。

If you are making progress on an important problem, you will have a constant tailwind of people wanting to help you.

如果你在解決一個重要的問題,你會不斷得到各種人的支持與幫助。

Let yourself grow more ambitious, and don’t be afraid to work on what you really want to work on.

讓自己更有野心,不要害怕去做那些你真正想做的事。

If everyone else is starting meme companies, and you want to start a gene-editing company, then do that and don’t second guess it.

如果大家都在做迷因網站,而你想做基因編輯公司,那就去做,不要懷疑自己。

Follow your curiosity. Things that seem exciting to you will often seem exciting to other people too.

追隨你的好奇心。你覺得很酷的事情,很多時候別人也會覺得很酷。


9. Be willful
A big secret is that you can bend the world to your will a surprising percentage of the time—most people don’t even try, and just accept that things are the way that they are.

有個不太被說出來的秘密是:你其實有很大的機會可以「讓世界照你的方式運作」。大多數人甚至從來不嘗試,直接接受現狀。

People have an enormous capacity to make things happen. A combination of self-doubt, giving up too early, and not pushing hard enough prevents most people from ever reaching anywhere near their potential.

人其實有很強的能力去改變現實。但自我懷疑、太快放棄、不夠努力,讓多數人連靠近自己潛力的邊都碰不到。

Ask for what you want. You usually won’t get it, and often the rejection will be painful. But when this works, it works surprisingly well.

勇敢開口要求你想要的東西。你通常不會馬上得到,而且被拒絕會讓人難受。但有時候成功了,效果會好得超出預期。

Almost always, the people who say “I am going to keep going until this works, and no matter what the challenges are I’m going to figure them out”, and mean it, go on to succeed.

那些真心說出「我一定要把這件事做到成功,不管遇到什麼困難我都會想辦法解決」的人,幾乎最後都會成功。

They are persistent long enough to give themselves a chance for luck to go their way.

他們夠堅持,才能給自己機會讓幸運降臨。

Airbnb is my benchmark for this. There are so many stories they tell that I wouldn’t recommend trying to reproduce...

Airbnb 就是我心目中這種信念的代表。他們的創業故事中有很多例子,其實我不建議別人照做...

...keeping maxed-out credit cards in those nine-slot three-ring binder pages kids use for baseball cards, eating dollar store cereal for every meal, battle after battle with powerful entrenched interest, and on and on...

像是把刷爆的信用卡一張張插在像放球員卡那種九格資料夾裡,每天吃 1 美元的穀片果腹,跟各種強大利益集團一戰又一戰……

...but they managed to survive long enough for luck to go their way.

但他們撐過來了,活得夠久,終於讓幸運站在他們這邊。

To be willful, you have to be optimistic—hopefully this is a personality trait that can be improved with practice.

要有強烈意志,你也得樂觀。這種性格希望是可以透過練習培養的。

I have never met a very successful pessimistic person.

我從來沒遇過「悲觀卻非常成功」的人。


10. Be hard to compete with
Most people understand that companies are more valuable if they are difficult to compete with. This is important, and obviously true.

大家都知道,如果一家公司不容易被抄襲或取代,它就更有價值。這個觀念沒錯,真的很重要。

But this holds true for you as an individual as well. If what you do can be done by someone else, it eventually will be, and for less money.

但這對個人也一樣。如果你做的事情別人也能做,遲早會有人做,甚至可能收更少的錢來搶走你的位置。

The best way to become difficult to compete with is to build up leverage.

要讓自己難以被取代,最好的方法就是建立「槓桿」。

For example, you can do it with personal relationships, by building a strong personal brand, or by getting good at the intersection of multiple different fields.

你可以透過人脈、個人品牌,或擅長跨領域技能的組合來達成這一點。

There are many other strategies, but you have to figure out some way to do it.

方法有很多,但你一定要找出自己的那一套。

Most people do whatever most people they hang out with do. This mimetic behavior is usually a mistake—if you’re doing the same thing everyone else is doing, you will not be hard to compete with.

大多數人只會跟著身邊人做一樣的事。這種模仿行為通常是錯的。你做的事如果跟大家都一樣,你就不會難以被取代。


11. Build a network
Great work requires teams. Developing a network of talented people to work with—sometimes closely, sometimes loosely—is an essential part of a great career.

偉大的工作需要團隊。一個好的職涯,必須建立起一個由各種人才組成的網絡,有時密切合作,有時只是互相支持。

The size of the network of really talented people you know often becomes the limiter for what you can accomplish.

你認識多少厲害人才,往往就決定了你能成就多少事。

An effective way to build a network is to help people as much as you can.

建立人脈最有效的方法之一,就是「多幫助別人」。

Doing this, over a long period of time, is what lead to most of my best career opportunities and three of my four best investments.

我長期這樣做,結果帶來了我職涯中很多絕佳的機會,還有四筆最好的投資中有三筆,都是這樣來的。

One of the best ways to build a network is to develop a reputation for really taking care of the people who work with you.

建立人脈的另一個好方法,是讓人覺得你「非常照顧一起共事的人」。

Be overly generous with sharing the upside; it will come back to you 10x.

分享成果時要大方。這樣做,未來會十倍地回報你。

Also, learn how to evaluate what people are great at, and put them in those roles.

你還要學會看出每個人擅長什麼,然後讓他們發揮在正確的位置上。

You want to have a reputation for pushing people hard enough that they accomplish more than they thought they could, but not so hard they burn out.

讓大家知道你會激發同事潛力,讓他們做出超乎想像的成果,但又不會讓人過勞。


12. You get rich by owning things
The biggest economic misunderstanding of my childhood was that people got rich from high salaries.

我小時候對金錢最大的誤解,就是以為人們是靠高薪變有錢的。

Though there are some exceptions—entertainers for example —almost no one in the history of the Forbes list has gotten there with a salary.

雖然有些例外,比如一些演藝圈明星,但幾乎沒有任何《富比士》排行榜上的人,是靠月薪進榜的。

You get truly rich by owning things that increase rapidly in value.

你真正能致富,是因為你擁有會快速增值的東西

This can be a piece of a business, real estate, natural resource, intellectual property, or other similar things.

這些資產可能是公司的股份、房地產、天然資源、智慧財產權等等。

But somehow or other, you need to own equity in something, instead of just selling your time. Time only scales linearly.

不管是什麼形式,你都得「擁有」一些東西,而不是單靠「賣時間」來賺錢。因為時間只能線性地成長,不會複利。

The best way to make things that increase rapidly in value is by making things people want at scale.

讓你手上的東西快速增值的最佳方式,就是做出很多人需要的東西,並能大量供應。


13. Be internally driven
Most people are primarily externally driven; they do what they do because they want to impress other people.

大多數人是被「外在動機」推著走:他們做某件事,是為了讓別人覺得他們很厲害。

This is bad for many reasons, but here are two important ones.

這樣其實很糟糕,原因有很多,以下兩點最重要:

First, you will work on consensus ideas and on consensus career tracks. You will care a lot—much more than you realize—if other people think you’re doing the right thing.

第一,你會只去做那些「大家都說對的」點子或職涯選擇。你會非常在意別人怎麼看你,甚至比你自己意識到的還嚴重。

This will probably prevent you from doing truly interesting work, and even if you do, someone else would have done it anyway.

這會阻礙你做出真正有趣、有創意的事。即使你做了,也只是複製別人的成功。

Second, you will usually get risk calculations wrong. You’ll be very focused on keeping up with other people and not falling behind in competitive games, even in the short term.

第二,你會很難正確判斷風險。你會過度在意「輸給別人」,甚至短期內就焦慮自己落後。

Smart people seem to be especially at risk of such externally-driven behavior. Being aware of it helps, but only a little—you will likely have to work super-hard to not fall in the mimetic trap.

越聰明的人,越容易陷入這種模仿別人、迎合他人的模式。你就算知道這個問題,也不容易擺脫它,得非常努力才能走出這種陷阱。

The most successful people I know are primarily internally driven; they do what they do to impress themselves and because they feel compelled to make something happen in the world.

我認識最成功的人,幾乎都是被內在動力驅使的。他們做事不是為了炫耀,而是為了滿足自己,為了推動世界一點改變。

After you’ve made enough money to buy whatever you want and gotten enough social status that it stops being fun to get more, this is the only force I know of that will continue to drive you to higher levels of performance.

當你賺的錢已經夠多,地位也夠高,再多也不會讓你更快樂時,內在動力是唯一能讓你繼續突破自我、再往上爬的力量。

This is why the question of a person’s motivation is so important. It’s the first thing I try to understand about someone.

這也是為什麼「動機」這件事非常重要。我認識一個人時,總是會先去理解他是為了什麼在努力。

The right motivations are hard to define a set of rules for, but you know it when you see it.

正確的動機很難具體定義,但當你看到時,會有感覺:「對了,這就是。」

Jessica Livingston and Paul Graham are my benchmarks for this. YC was widely mocked for the first few years, and almost no one thought it would be a big success when they first started.

我心中的榜樣是 Jessica Livingston 和 Paul Graham。YC(創業育成計畫)剛開始時,被很多人嘲笑,幾乎沒有人相信他們會成功。

But they thought it would be great for the world if it worked, and they love helping people, and they were convinced their new model was better than the existing model.

但他們認為,如果 YC 成功了,會對世界很好。他們也真的喜歡幫助創業者,堅信自己提出的是更好的做法。

Eventually, you will define your success by performing excellent work in areas that are important to you.

最終,你會用「自己在重視的領域做出優秀成果」來定義自己的成功。

The sooner you can start off in that direction, the further you will be able to go.

你越早開始往這個方向努力,就能走得越遠。

It is hard to be wildly successful at anything you aren’t obsessed with.

如果你對一件事沒有痴迷般的熱情,你很難在那方面取得非凡成功。

[補充:註解內容]
One of the biggest reasons I'm excited about basic income is the amount of human potential it will unleash by freeing more people to take risks.

我之所以支持「基本收入制度」,其中一個原因就是它能釋放大量的人類潛能,讓更多人敢於冒險。

If you aren't born lucky, you have to claw your way up for awhile before you can take big swings... But I've witnessed enough people be born with the deck stacked badly against them and go on to incredible success to know it's possible.

如果你不是一開始就含著金湯匙出生,那你需要很努力才能創造出改變人生的機會……但我見過很多出生條件很差的人,最後也達成了驚人的成就,所以我知道這是做得到的。

沒有留言:

發佈留言