Sam Altman  萨姆·阿尔特曼

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.
我观察了成千上万的创始人，并思考了取得巨大财富或创造重要事物所需的条件。通常，人们一开始想要前者，但最终却想要后者。

Here are 13 thoughts about how to achieve such outlier success. Everything here is easier to do once you’ve already reached a baseline degree of success (through privilege or effort) and want to put in the work to turn that into outlier success. [1] But much of it applies to anyone.
以下是关于如何取得这种非常成功的 13 条思考。一旦你已经达到了一定程度的成功（无论是通过特权还是努力），并且愿意为之努力将这种成功转化为非常成功，那么做起来会更容易。[1] 但其中很多内容适用于任何人。

1. Compound yourself  1. 复利效应

Compounding is magic. Look for it everywhere. Exponential curves are the key to wealth generation.
复利是神奇的。在各处寻找它。指数曲线是财富增长的关键。

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.  It’s worth a lot of effort to find them and create them.
一个每年价值增长 50%的中型企业，在很短的时间内就会变得非常庞大。世界上很少有企业拥有真正的网络效应和极端的可扩展性。但随着技术的发展，越来越多的企业将会具备这些特点。找到并创造这些企业是值得付出大量努力的。

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. It’s important to move towards a career that has a compounding effect—most careers progress fairly linearly.
你也要让自己成为一条指数曲线——你应该让你的生活轨迹呈现出持续上升的趋势。重要的是要朝着一个具有复利效应的职业发展——大多数职业的进展是相当线性的。

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. 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.
你不希望从事一份做了两年的人和做了二十年的人一样有效的职业——你的学习速度应该始终保持很高。随着你职业生涯的发展，你做的每一单位工作应该产生越来越多的成果。有很多方法可以获得这种杠杆，比如资本、技术、品牌、网络效应和管理人员。

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. I am willing to take as much time as needed between projects to find my next thing. But I always want it to be a project that, if successful, will make the rest of my career look like a footnote.
专注于在你的成功指标上——无论是金钱、地位、对世界的影响还是其他——再增加一个零是很有用的。我愿意在项目之间花尽可能多的时间来寻找我的下一个目标。但我总是希望它是一个如果成功，会让我的余生看起来像一个脚注的项目。

Most people get bogged down in linear opportunities. Be willing to let small opportunities go to focus on potential step changes.
大多数人会被线性机会所困。愿意放弃小机会，专注于潜在的阶跃变化。

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. 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.
我认为商业中最大的竞争优势——无论是对公司还是对个人的职业生涯——是长期思考，并广泛看待世界上不同系统如何结合。复利增长的一个显著特点是，最遥远的年份是最重要的。在一个几乎没有人真正采取长期观点的世界里，市场会丰厚地回报那些这样做的人。

Trust the exponential, be patient, and be pleasantly surprised.
相信指数增长，保持耐心，并感到惊喜。

2. Have almost too much self-belief
2. 拥有几乎过度的自信

Self-belief is immensely powerful. The most successful people I know believe in themselves almost to the point of delusion.
自我信念是非常强大的。我所认识的最成功的人几乎都相信自己，甚至达到了自欺欺人的程度。

Cultivate this early. As you get more data points that your judgment is good and you can consistently deliver results, trust yourself more.
尽早培养这种信念。当你收集到更多数据点，证明你的判断是正确的，并且可以持续取得成果时，就要更加相信自己。

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，就很难让自己拥有关于未来的逆向思维。但正是这个领域创造了大部分价值。

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. I left thinking “huh, so that’s the benchmark for what conviction looks like.”
我记得多年前埃隆·马斯克带我参观 SpaceX 工厂时，他详细讲述了火箭制造的每一个部分，但他谈到向火星发射大型火箭时的那种绝对确定的表情让我记忆犹新。我离开时心想，“嗯，这就是信念的标杆。”

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. And unfortunately, the more ambitious you are, the more the world will try to tear you down.  
管理个人士气——以及团队士气——是大多数事业中最大的挑战之一。若无坚定的自我信念，几乎难以实现。而遗憾的是，越是雄心壮志，世界就越会试图击垮你。

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.
大多数非常成功的人至少有一次在别人认为他们错了的时候，对未来做出了正确的判断。如果不是这样，他们就会面临更多的竞争。

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. Truth-seeking is hard and often painful, but it is what separates self-belief from self-delusion.
自信心必须与自我认知平衡。我过去讨厌任何形式的批评，并且主动避免它。现在我总是带着它可能是真实的前提去倾听，然后决定是否要采取行动。寻求真理是艰难且常常痛苦的，但正是这一点将自信心与自我欺骗区分开来。

This balance also helps you avoid coming across as entitled and out of touch.
这种平衡也有助于你避免显得自负和脱离现实。

3. Learn to think independently
3. 学会独立思考

Entrepreneurship is very difficult to teach because original thinking is very difficult to teach. School is not set up to teach this—in fact, it generally rewards the opposite. So you have to cultivate it on your own.
创业很难教，因为原创思维很难教。学校并不是为教授这个而设立的——事实上，它通常奖励相反的东西。所以你必须自己培养这种能力。

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. The next step is to find easy, fast ways to test these ideas in the real world.
从第一性原理思考并尝试产生新想法很有趣，找到可以与之交流的人是提高这方面能力的好方法。下一步是找到简单快捷的方式在现实世界中测试这些想法。

“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.
“我会失败很多次，但我会有一次非常正确”是创业者的信条。你必须给自己很多机会去获得幸运。

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. 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.
学到的最强大的教训之一是，你可以在看似没有解决方案的情况下找到解决问题的方法。你做得越多，你就会越相信这一点。坚韧来自于你学会在被击倒后重新站起来。

4. Get good at “sales”
擅长“销售”

Self-belief alone is not sufficient—you also have to be able to convince other people of what you believe.
仅仅有自信是不够的——你还必须能够说服别人相信你所相信的。

All great careers, to some degree, become sales jobs. You have to evangelize your plans to customers, prospective employees, the press, investors, etc. This requires an inspiring vision, strong communication skills, some degree of charisma, and evidence of execution ability.
所有伟大的职业生涯，在某种程度上，都会变成销售工作。你必须向客户、潜在员工、媒体、投资者等宣传你的计划。这需要一个鼓舞人心的愿景、强大的沟通技巧、一定的魅力以及执行能力的证据。

Getting good at communication—particularly written communication—is an investment worth making. My best advice for communicating clearly is to first make sure your thinking is clear and then use plain, concise language.
擅长沟通——尤其是书面沟通——是一项值得投资的技能。我最好的建议是，首先要确保你的思维清晰，然后使用简单、简洁的语言。

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.
成为销售高手的最佳方法是真正相信你所销售的东西。销售你真正相信的东西感觉很棒，而试图销售骗人的东西则感觉很糟糕。

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.
提高销售技巧就像提高其他技能一样——任何人都可以通过刻意练习来提升。但由于某些原因，也许是因为它让人感到不舒服，很多人把它视为不可学习的技能。

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. It was frequently unnecessary, but three times it led to career-making turning points for me that otherwise would have gone the other way.
我的另一个重要销售建议是，在重要时刻亲自出现。当我刚开始时，我总是愿意乘坐飞机。虽然很多时候没有必要，但这三次经历为我带来了职业生涯的转折点，否则可能会向另一个方向发展。

5. Make it easy to take risks
5. 使冒险变得容易

Most people overestimate risk and underestimate reward. 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.
大多数人高估了风险，低估了回报。冒险很重要，因为不可能每次都对——你需要尝试很多事情，并在学习更多时迅速适应。

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. 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. 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.
在你的职业生涯早期，冒险往往更容易；你没有什么可失去的，但却可能有巨大的收获。一旦你达到了能够负担基本义务的阶段，你应该尝试使冒险变得容易。寻找你可以下的小赌注，如果你错了，你会损失 1 倍，但如果成功了，你会获得 100 倍的回报。然后在这个方向上做一个更大的赌注。

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. 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 (and people have an incredible ability to always match their lifestyle to next year’s salary). Even if they do leave, the temptation to return is great. It’s easy—and human nature—to prioritize short-term gain and convenience over long-term fulfillment.  
不过，别攒得太久。在 YC，我们经常注意到一个问题，就是那些曾在谷歌或脸书工作过很长一段时间的创始人。当人们习惯了舒适的生活、稳定的工作以及无论做什么都能成功的好名声，就很难放下这一切（而且人们总有一种不可思议的能力，能让自己的生活方式与下一年的薪水相匹配）。即便他们真的离开了，想要重返的诱惑也很大。把短期收益和便利放在长期满足之上，这是一种自然的倾向——也是人性使然。

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. Keeping your life cheap and flexible for as long as you can is a powerful way to do this, but obviously comes with tradeoffs.
但当你不在跑步机上时，你可以追随直觉，花时间在那些可能变得非常有趣的事情上。尽可能长时间地保持生活的廉价和灵活性，是一种强有力的方式来实现这一点，但显然也会带来权衡。

6. Focus  6. 专注

Focus is a force multiplier on work.
专注是工作的力量倍增器。

Almost everyone I’ve ever met would be well-served by spending more time thinking about what to focus on. 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.
我认识的几乎每个人都应该花更多时间思考该专注于什么。专注于正确的事情比长时间工作更重要。大多数人把大部分时间浪费在不重要的事情上。

Once you have figured out what to do, be unstoppable about getting your small handful of priorities accomplished quickly. I have yet to meet a slow-moving person who is very successful.
一旦你确定了该做什么，就要不遗余力地快速完成你的几个优先事项。我还没有见过一个行动缓慢的人非常成功。

7. Work hard  7. 努力工作

You can get to about the 90th percentile in your field by working either smart or hard, which is still a great accomplishment. 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.
你可以在自己的领域里达到大约第 90 个百分位，这已经是一个了不起的成就，无论是通过聪明工作还是勤奋努力。然而，要想达到第 99 个百分位，则需要双管齐下——你将与其他极具才华的人竞争，他们会有出色的想法，并愿意付出大量努力。

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. As in most cases, momentum compounds, and success begets success.
极端的人得到极端的结果。工作量大伴随着巨大的生活权衡，决定不这么做是完全理性的。但这有许多优势。像在大多数情况下，势头会积累，成功会带来更多的成功。

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. 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. Working hard at that should be celebrated.  
这通常真的很有趣。生活中的一大乐趣就是找到你的使命，精通它，并发现你的影响力对你自己之外的更大的事物很重要。一位 YC 创始人最近表达了极大的惊讶，他在离开大公司并致力于实现他最大的可能影响力后，感到更加幸福和充实。为此努力工作是值得庆祝的。

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.
我不太清楚为什么在美国某些地方努力工作变成了一件坏事，但这在世界的其他地方肯定不是这样——美国以外的企业家的精力和动力正在迅速成为新的基准。

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.
你必须弄清楚如何努力工作而不筋疲力尽。人们找到了自己的策略，但几乎总是有效的一个方法就是找到你喜欢做的工作，并且和那些你喜欢与之共度时光的人一起工作。

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. In fact, work stamina seems to be one of the biggest predictors of long-term success.
我认为那些假装你可以在职业生涯中超级成功而不需要大部分时间工作（在生活中的某个阶段）的人是在误导人。事实上，工作耐力似乎是长期成功的最大预测因素之一。

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. 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.
关于努力工作的另一个想法：在你的职业生涯初期做这件事。努力工作就像复利，你越早开始，你就有更多的时间让好处显现出来。当你责任较少时，努力工作也更容易，这通常（但并非总是）在你年轻时如此。

8. Be bold  大胆一点

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.
我相信做一家困难的公司比做一家容易的公司更容易。人们希望成为令人兴奋的事情的一部分，并感受到他们的工作是有意义的。

If you are making progress on an important problem, you will have a constant tailwind of people wanting to help you. Let yourself grow more ambitious, and don’t be afraid to work on what you really want to work on.
如果你在解决一个重要的问题上取得进展，你会有一股持续的顺风，人们会想帮助你。让自己变得更加雄心勃勃，不要害怕去从事你真正想做的工作。

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.
如果其他人都在创办表情包公司，而你想创办一家基因编辑公司，那就去做吧，不要犹豫。

Follow your curiosity. Things that seem exciting to you will often seem exciting to other people too.
跟随你的好奇心。那些让你感到兴奋的事物，往往也会让其他人感到兴奋。

9. Be willful  9. 任性一点

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.
一个巨大的秘密是，你可以时常将世界弯曲成你想要的样子——大多数人甚至不尝试，只是接受事情就是这样。

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.
人们有巨大的能力去实现事情。自疑、过早放弃和不努力推动，阻止了大多数人接近他们的潜力。

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.
要求你想要的。你通常不会得到，而且很多时候拒绝会是痛苦的。但当它成功时，效果好得出奇。

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. They are persistent long enough to give themselves a chance for luck to go their way.
几乎总是，那些说“我会继续努力直到成功，无论遇到什么挑战我都会解决”，并且真心实意的人，最终会成功。他们的坚持足够久，给了自己好运降临的机会。

Airbnb is my benchmark for this. There are so many stories they tell that I wouldn’t recommend trying to reproduce (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) but they managed to survive long enough for luck to go their way.
Airbnb 就是我衡量这一点的标准。他们有很多故事我不建议尝试重现（把透支的信用卡留在用于收集棒球卡的九孔三环活页夹里，每顿饭都吃一元店的麦片，与强大的既得利益者进行一场又一场的斗争，等等），但他们设法生存得足够久，让好运降临在他们身上。

To be willful, you have to be optimistic—hopefully this is a personality trait that can be improved with practice. I have never met a very successful pessimistic person.
要变得固执，你必须保持乐观——希望这是一个可以通过练习改善的性格特质。我从未见过一个非常成功的悲观主义者。

10. Be hard to compete with
10. 让自己难以被超越

Most people understand that companies are more valuable if they are difficult to compete with. This is important, and obviously true.
大多数人理解，如果一家公司难以被竞争，它的价值会更高。这是重要的，显然也是正确的。

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.
但这对你个人也是如此。如果你所做的事情可以被别人做，那么最终也会被别人做，而且价格更低。

The best way to become difficult to compete with is to build up leverage. 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. There are many other strategies, but you have to figure out some way to do it.
变得难以被超越的最佳方式是建立杠杆。例如，你可以通过建立人际关系、打造强大的个人品牌，或在多个不同领域的交叉点上变得擅长来做到这一点。还有很多其他策略，但你必须找到一种方式来实现它。

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.
大多数人会做他们身边大多数人做的事情。这种模仿行为通常是一个错误——如果你在做和别人一样的事情，你将不难被超越。

11. Build a network  11. 建立网络

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. The size of the network of really talented people you know often becomes the limiter for what you can accomplish.
伟大的工作需要团队。发展一个由有才华的人组成的网络——有时紧密，有时松散——是伟大职业生涯的重要组成部分。你所认识的真正有才华的人的网络规模，通常会成为你能成就什么的限制因素。

An effective way to build a network is to help people as much as you can. 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. I’m continually surprised how often something good happens to me because of something I did to help a founder ten years ago.
建立网络的一个有效方法是尽可能多地帮助他人。在这方面投入很长时间，是导致我大多数最好的职业机会和我四次最佳投资中的三次的原因。我总是很惊讶，十年前我帮助过的一位创始人，竟然会让我时常遇到好事。

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. Be overly generous with sharing the upside; it will come back to you 10x. Also, learn how to evaluate what people are great at, and put them in those roles. (This is the most important thing I have learned about management, and I haven’t read much about it.) 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.
建立网络的最佳方法之一是培养对与你合作的人真正关心的声誉。在分享利益时要过度慷慨；它会以 10 倍的方式回报你。此外，学会评估人们在哪些方面非常出色，并将他们置于这些角色中。（这是我在管理方面学到的最重要的东西，而我并没有读到太多关于它的内容。）你希望有一个推动人们足够努力以至于他们完成比他们想象的更多的事情的声誉，但不要让他们精疲力尽。

Everyone is better at some things than others. Define yourself by your strengths, not your weaknesses. Acknowledge your weaknesses and figure out how to work around them, but don’t let them stop you from doing what you want to do. “I can’t do X because I’m not good at Y” is something I hear from entrepreneurs surprisingly often, and almost always reflects a lack of creativity. The best way to make up for your weaknesses is to hire complementary team members instead of just hiring people who are good at the same things you are.
每个人在某些方面都比其他人更擅长。用你的优势而不是劣势来定义自己。承认你的弱点并想办法绕过它们，但不要让它们阻止你做你想做的事情。“我不能做 X，因为我不擅长 Y”是我在创业者中经常听到的一句话，这几乎总是反映了缺乏创造力。弥补你弱点的最佳方法是为团队成员招聘互补技能，而不仅仅是招聘在你擅长的事情上做得好的人。

A particularly valuable part of building a network is to get good at discovering undiscovered talent. Quickly spotting intelligence, drive, and creativity gets much easier with practice. The easiest way to learn is just to meet a lot of people, and keep track of who goes on to impress you and who doesn’t. Remember that you are mostly looking for rate of improvement, and don’t overvalue experience or current accomplishment.
建立人际网络特别有价值的一部分在于善于发现未被发掘的人才。随着练习，快速识别智慧、动力和创造力会变得容易得多。学习最简单的方式就是广泛结识他人，并且记录下哪些人让你印象深刻，而哪些人没有。记住，你主要关注的是进步速度，而不要过分看重经验或当前的成就。

I try to always ask myself when I meet someone new “is this person a force of nature?” It’s a pretty good heuristic for finding people who are likely to accomplish great things.
每当我遇到新朋友时，我总是会问自己“这个人是自然的力量吗？”这是个相当不错的启发，能帮助我找到那些可能会成就大事的人。

A special case of developing a network is finding someone eminent to take a bet on you, ideally early in your career. The best way to do this, no surprise, is to go out of your way to be helpful. (And remember that you have to pay this forward at some point later!)
建立网络的一个特殊情况是找到一位知名人士愿意在你职业生涯早期对你下注。最好的方法就是不遗余力地提供帮助。（并且要记住，你以后也得这样回报他人！）

Finally, remember to spend your time with positive people who support your ambitions.
最后，记住要与那些支持你抱负的积极的人共度时光。

12. You get rich by owning things
12. 致富的关键在于拥有事物

The biggest economic misunderstanding of my childhood was that people got rich from high salaries. Though there are some exceptions—entertainers for example —almost no one in the history of the Forbes list has gotten there with a salary.
我童年时期最大的经济误解是认为人们通过高薪致富。尽管有些例外，比如娱乐界人士，但福布斯榜单上几乎没有人是通过薪水达到那个位置的。

You get truly rich by owning things that increase rapidly in value.
真正的富有在于拥有增值迅速的资产。

This can be a piece of a business, real estate, natural resource, intellectual property, or other similar things. But somehow or other, you need to own equity in something, instead of just selling your time. Time only scales linearly.
这可以是企业的一部分、房地产、自然资源、知识产权或其他类似的东西。但无论如何，你需要拥有一些东西的股权，而不是仅仅出售你的时间。时间只能线性扩展。

The best way to make things that increase rapidly in value is by making things people want at scale.
使事物迅速增值的最佳方式是批量生产人们想要的东西。

13. Be internally driven  13. 内在驱动

Most people are primarily externally driven; they do what they do because they want to impress other people. This is bad for many reasons, but here are two important ones.
大多数人主要是外在驱动的；他们做事是因为他们想给其他人留下深刻印象。这有很多坏处，但有两个重要的原因。

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. This will probably prevent you from doing truly interesting work, and even if you do, someone else would have done it anyway.
首先，你将致力于共识性想法和职业路径。你会非常在意——远比你意识到的更在意——别人是否认为你在做正确的事。这可能会阻碍你进行真正有趣的工作，即便你真的去做了，别人也本可以完成。

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.
其次，你通常会错误估计风险。你将非常专注于在竞争性游戏中跟上他人的步伐，避免短期内的落后。

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.
聪明人似乎特别容易陷入这种外在驱动的陷阱。意识到这一点有所帮助，但帮助不大——你可能必须非常努力才能不落入模仿的陷阱。

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. 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.
我认识的最成功的人主要是内在驱动的；他们做自己做的事情是为了让自己印象深刻，并且因为他们觉得有必要在世界上做些什么。当你赚够了钱去买任何你想要的东西，并且获得了足够的社交地位以至于再多的地位也不再有趣时，这是我知道的唯一能继续驱使你达到更高表现水平的动力。

This is why the question of a person’s motivation is so important. It’s the first thing I try to understand about someone. The right motivations are hard to define a set of rules for, but you know it when you see it.
这就是为什么一个人的动机如此重要。这是我首先要了解一个人的事情。正确的动机很难定义一套规则，但你一眼就能看出来。

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. 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.
杰西卡·利文斯顿和保罗·格雷厄姆是我的标杆。YC 在最初的几年里广受嘲笑，几乎没有人认为它会在一开始就取得巨大成功。但他们认为如果成功了，这对世界会很好，他们喜欢帮助别人，并且他们坚信他们的全新模式比现有模式更好。

Eventually, you will define your success by performing excellent work in areas that are important to you. The sooner you can start off in that direction, the further you will be able to go. It is hard to be wildly successful at anything you aren’t obsessed with.
最终，你会通过在你认为重要领域中出色地工作来定义你的成功。越早朝这个方向开始，你就能走得越远。要在你不痴迷的事情上取得巨大成功是很难的。