日子很长但十年很短

The days are long but the decades are short

日子很长，但几十年很短

I turned 30 last week and a friend asked me if I’d figured out any life advice in the past decade worth passing on. I’m somewhat hesitant to publish this because I think these lists usually seem hollow, but here is a cleaned up version of my answer: 上周我刚满30岁，一位朋友问我，在过去的十年里，我是否想出了什么值得传授的人生建议。 我有点犹豫是否要发表这篇文章，因为我认为这些清单通常看起来很空洞，但以下是我的回答的一个整理版本：

保持亲密关系

Never put your family, friends, or significant other low on your priority list. Prefer a handful of truly close friends to a hundred acquaintances. Don’t lose touch with old friends. Occasionally stay up until the sun rises talking to people. Have parties. 永远不要把你的家人、朋友或其他重要的人放在你优先考虑的事情的后面。 比起一百个熟人，你更喜欢几个真正亲密的朋友。 不要和老朋友失去联系。 偶尔熬夜和人聊天直到太阳升起。 开派对。

拒绝浪费人生

Life is not a dress rehearsal—this is probably it. Make it count. Time is extremely limited and goes by fast. Do what makes you happy and fulfilled—few people get remembered hundreds of years after they die anyway. Don’t do stuff that doesn’t make you happy (this happens most often when other people want you to do something). Don’t spend time trying to maintain relationships with people you don’t like, and cut negative people out of your life. Negativity is really bad. Don’t let yourself make excuses for not doing the things you want to do. 生活不是一场彩排，这可能就是了。 让它发挥作用。 时间是极其有限的，过得很快。 做那些让你快乐和满足的事情—-很少有人在死后几百年还能被人记住。 不要做那些让你不开心的事情（当别人想让你做某事时，这种情况经常发生）。 不要花时间试图和你不喜欢的人维持关系，把消极的人从你的生活中剔除。 消极情绪真的很糟糕。 不要让自己找借口不去做自己想做的事情。

How to succeed

• pick the right thing to do (this is critical and usually ignored),
• focus,
• believe in yourself (especially when others tell you it’s not going to work),
• develop personal connections with people that will help you,
• learn to identify talented people, and work hard.
• It’s hard to identify what to work on because original thought is hard. 如何成功： 选择正确的事情去做（这很关键，但通常被忽视）， 集中精力， 相信自己（尤其是当别人告诉你这不会起作用的时候）， 与能帮助你的人建立个人关系， 学会识别有才华的人，努力工作。很难确定要做什么，因为原创思维很难。

关于工作

On work: it’s difficult to do a great job on work you don’t care about.
And it’s hard to be totally happy/fulfilled in life if you don’t like what you do for your work. Work very hard—a surprising number of people will be offended that you choose to work hard—but not so hard that the rest of your life passes you by. Aim to be the best in the world at whatever you do professionally. Even if you miss, you’ll probably end up in a pretty good place. Figure out your own productivity system—don’t waste time being unorganized, working at suboptimal times, etc. Don’t be afraid to take some career risks, especially early on. Most people pick their career fairly randomly—really think hard about what you like, what fields are going to be successful, and try to talk to people in those fields. 工作上：在你不关心的工作上很难做得很好。 如果你不喜欢你的工作，你很难在生活中完全快乐/满足。 非常努力地工作,无论你从事什么职业，目标都是世界上最好的。 即使你错过了，你可能会结束在一个相当不错的地方。 找出你自己的生产力系统-不要浪费时间在无组织，在次优时间工作，等等。 不要害怕承担一些职业风险，特别是在早期。 大多数人选择他们的职业相当随机-真正认真思考你喜欢什么，哪些领域会成功，并尝试与这些领域的人交谈。

关于金钱

On money: Whether or not money can buy happiness, it can buy freedom, and that’s a big deal. Also, lack of money is very stressful. In almost all ways, having enough money so that you don’t stress about paying rent does more to change your wellbeing than having enough money to buy your own jet. Making money is often more fun than spending it, though I personally have never regretted money I’ve spent on friends, new experiences, saving time, travel, and causes I believe in. 关于金钱：无论金钱是否能买到幸福，它都能买到自由，这是一件大事。 而且，缺钱也是很有压力的。 几乎在所有方面，有足够的钱，使你不必为支付租金而感到压力，比有足够的钱购买自己的飞机更能改变你的幸福感。 钱往往比花钱更有趣，尽管我个人从未后悔把钱花在朋友、新体验、节省时间、旅行和我相信的事业上。

珍惜时间多社交

Talk to people more.
Read more long content and less tweets.
Watch less TV.
Spend less time on the Internet. 多和人说话。 多读长内容，少读微博。 少看电视。 减少上网时间。

Don’t waste time.
Most people waste most of their time, especially in business. 别浪费时间了 大多数人浪费他们的大部分时间，尤其是在生意上。

Don’t let yourself get pushed around. As Paul Graham once said to me, “People can become formidable, but it’s hard to predict who”.
(There is a big difference between confident and arrogant. Aim for the former, obviously.) 不要让自己任人摆布。 正如保罗·格雷厄姆（PaulGraham）曾经对我说的，“人们可以变得令人生畏，但很难预测是谁”。 （自信和傲慢之间有很大的区别。 很明显，目标是前者。）

计划

Have clear goals for yourself every day, every year, and every decade. 每天、每年、每十年都要为自己设定明确的目标。

However, as valuable as planning is, if a great opportunity comes along you should take it. Don’t be afraid to do something slightly reckless. One of the benefits of working hard is that good opportunities will come along, but it’s still up to you to jump on them when they do. 然而，尽管计划很有价值，但如果一个好机会沿着你应该抓住它。 不要害怕做一些有点鲁莽的事情。 努力工作的好处之一是好机会会沿着，但当机会出现时，你还是要抓住它们。

Go out of your way to be around smart, interesting, ambitious people. Work for them and hire them (in fact, one of the most satisfying parts of work is forging deep relationships with really good people). Try to spend time with people who are either among the best in the world at what they do or extremely promising but totally unknown. It really is true that you become an average of the people you spend the most time with. 走出你的生活方式，与聪明、有趣、有抱负的人在一起。 为他们工作并雇佣他们（事实上，工作中最令人满意的部分之一就是与真正优秀的人建立深厚的关系）。 试着花时间和那些在他们所做的事情上是世界上最好的人在一起，或者是那些非常有前途但完全不为人知的人在一起。 这是真的，你就是你的朋友们的平均值。

Minimize your own cognitive load from distracting things that don’t really matter. It’s hard to overstate how important this is, and how bad most people are at it. Get rid of distractions in your life. Develop very strong ways to avoid letting crap you don’t like doing pile up and take your mental cycles, especially in your work life. 尽量减少你自己的认知负荷，不要让那些无关紧要的事情分心。 很难夸大这一点的重要性，以及大多数人在这方面的糟糕程度。 摆脱生活中的干扰。 制定非常有力的方法来避免让你不喜欢做的事情堆积起来，占用你的思维周期，特别是在你的工作生活中。

Keep your personal burn rate low. This alone will give you a lot of opportunities in life. 保持你的个人燃烧率低。 仅此一点就能给予你生命中的很多机会。

Summers are the best. 夏天是最好的。

Don’t worry so much. Things in life are rarely as risky as they seem. Most people are too risk-averse, and so most advice is biased too much towards conservative paths. 别太担心了。 生活中的事情很少像看上去那么危险。 大多数人都过于厌恶风险，因此大多数建议都过于偏向保守的道路。

Ask for what you want. 你想要什么尽管开口。

If you think you’re going to regret not doing something, you should probably do it. Regret is the worst, and most people regret far more things they didn’t do than things they did do. When in doubt, kiss the boy/girl. 如果你认为你会后悔没有做某事，你也许应该去做。 后悔是最糟糕的，大多数人后悔他们没有做的事情比他们做了的事情要多得多。 如果有疑问，亲吻男孩/女孩。

Exercise. Eat well. Sleep. Get out into nature with some regularity. 锻炼身体。 好好吃。 睡吧 有规律地融入大自然。

Go out of your way to help people. Few things in life are as satisfying. Be nice to strangers. Be nice even when it doesn’t matter. 尽你所能去帮助别人。 生活中很少有事情能如此令人满足。 对陌生人要友善。 即使无关紧要也要友善。

Youth is a really great thing. Don’t waste it. In fact, in your 20s, I think it’s ok to take a “Give me financial discipline, but not just yet” attitude. All the money in the world will never get back time that passed you by. 年轻是件很棒的事。 别浪费了，其实在你20多岁的时候，我觉得抱一个“给予我财务纪律，但不是现在”的态度是可以的。 世界上所有的金钱都无法挽回你失去的时光。

Tell your parents you love them more often. Go home and visit as often as you can. 多告诉你的父母你爱他们。 尽可能多回家看看。

This too shall pass. 一切都会过去的。

Learn voraciously. 如饥似渴地学习。

保持好奇心

Do new things often. This seems to be really important. Not only does doing new things seem to slow down the perception of time, increase happiness, and keep life interesting, but it seems to prevent people from calcifying in the ways that they think. Aim to do something big, new, and risky every year in your personal and professional life. 经常做新的事情。 这似乎真的很重要。 做新的事情似乎不仅可以减缓对时间的感知，增加幸福感，让生活变得有趣，而且似乎可以防止人们的思维方式僵化。 在你的个人生活和职业生涯中，每年都要做一些大的、新的、有风险的事情。

Remember how intensely you loved your boyfriend/girlfriend when you were a teenager? Love him/her that intensely now. Remember how excited and happy you got about stuff as a kid? Get that excited and happy now. 还记得你十几岁的时候有多爱你的男朋友/女朋友吗？ 爱他/她的强烈现在。 还记得你小时候对事物有多兴奋和快乐吗？ 现在就兴奋高兴吧。

Don’t screw people and don’t burn bridges. Pick your battles carefully. 不要欺骗别人，不要过河拆桥。仔细选择你的战斗。

Forgive people. 原谅别人。

Don’t chase status

Status without substance doesn’t work for long and is unfulfilling. 不要追逐地位。 没有实质内容的地位不会长久，也不会有成就感。

Most things are ok in moderation. Almost nothing is ok in extreme amounts. 大多数事情都可以适度。 几乎没有什么是可以在极端的数额。

Existential angst is part of life

It is particularly noticeable around major life events or just after major career milestones. It seems to particularly affect smart, ambitious people. I think one of the reasons some people work so hard is so they don’t have to spend too much time thinking about this. Nothing is wrong with you for feeling this way; you are not alone. 存在焦虑是生活的一部分。 在重大生活事件前后或在重大职业里程碑之后，它尤其明显。 它似乎特别影响聪明、有抱负的人。 我认为有些人如此努力工作的原因之一是这样他们就不必花太多时间去思考这个问题。 你这样想并没有错你并不孤单。

Be grateful and keep problems in perspective. Don’t complain too much. Don’t hate other people’s success (but remember that some people will hate your success, and you have to learn to ignore it). 要心存感激，正确看待问题 不要抱怨太多。 不要讨厌别人的成功（但要记住，有些人会讨厌你的成功，你必须学会忽视它）。

Be a doer, not a talker. 做一个实干家，而不是空谈家。

Given enough time, it is possible to adjust to almost anything, good or bad. Humans are remarkable at this. 只要有足够的时间，你几乎可以适应任何事情，无论是好是坏。 人类在这方面是非凡的。

Think for a few seconds before you act. Think for a few minutes if you’re angry. 行动前想几秒钟。 如果你生气的话，想几分钟。

Don’t judge other people too quickly. You never know their whole story and why they did or didn’t do something. Be empathetic. 不要太快判断别人。 你永远不知道他们的全部故事，也不知道他们为什么做或不做某事。 要有同情心。

The days are long but the decades are short. 日子很长，但几十年很短。