If I were to pick you and a friend of yours and to you give access to the city planners of Paris, the Instagram handles of its most famous architects-so you can DM them...and I'll make sure they respond. I give you the most detailed maps of the city, the exact opposite of what Apple Maps would give you. I bring for you every encyclopedia entry about Paris ever, every book and every tour guide ever written about Paris. And to your friend? I just drop her in Paris with a task to explore every nook and cranny of it.
如果我挑选你和你的一位朋友，并让你可以接触巴黎的城市规划者，最著名建筑师的 Instagram 账号——这样你就可以给他们发送私信……我还会确保他们回复。我会给你最详细的城市地图，与 Apple 地图完全相反。我会为你带来所有关于巴黎的百科全书条目、所有关于巴黎的书籍和所有关于巴黎的旅游指南。至于你的朋友？我只是把她丢在巴黎，让她探索巴黎的每一个角落和缝隙。
After two months, which one of you will be a better Parisian? As in which one of you will know Paris better?
两个月后，你们谁会成为更好的巴黎人？也就是说，你们谁更了解巴黎？
I recently finished reading Turning Pro. There's this one idea in the book that had me pondering long after I had flipped the book close. I'd like to discuss that idea with you.
我最近刚读完《职业化》。书中有一个想法让我在合上书后思考了很久。我想和你讨论一下这个想法。
In Turning Pro, Steven Pressfield— the author— talks about something called incapacity. Incapacity starts with addiction. Addiction not just to substance, but to love, to distraction, to sex, to failure, money or trouble. To quote exact words from the book:
在《职业化》中，作者史蒂文·普雷斯菲尔德谈到了一个叫做无能的东西。无能始于成瘾。成瘾不仅仅是对物质的成瘾，还包括对爱、对消遣、对性、对失败、对金钱或对麻烦的成瘾。引用书中的原话：
All addictions share two primary qualities:
所有成瘾都具有两个主要特征：
- They embody repetition without progress.
它们体现了没有进步的重复。 - They produce incapacity as a payoff.
它们以无能作为回报。
Let's take trouble for example. The individual addicted to trouble will never get out of jail because he is safer behind the bars. When you're behind the bars you don't have to deal with the agonizing questions of existence, or embracing and materializing your dreams and visions. Being behind the bars produces for the prisoner incapacity.
我们以麻烦为例。沉迷于麻烦的人永远无法走出监狱，因为他在牢房里更安全。当你身处牢房时，你无需处理痛苦的存在问题，也无需实现和实现你的梦想和愿景。身处牢房会让囚犯丧失能力。
Many people, some of whom I know personally, obsessively chase for love. They know in their soul that what they are actually after, is meaning. They choose to extract that meaning from love, hopping from one failed relationship to the next. Because when you’re busy finding that one love which will bring meaning to your existence you don’t have to worry about spending arduous hours honing your craft or bettering your career or finding meaning in something that only you are in control of. Such a behavior exudes an addiction to love, which is not to say that love is a bad thing, but its addiction definitely is. Such an addiction produces, incapacity.
许多人，其中一些我个人认识，痴迷地追逐爱情。他们内心知道他们真正追求的是意义。他们选择从爱情中提取这种意义，从一段失败的关系跳到另一段失败的关系。因为当你忙于寻找那份能给你的存在带来意义的爱情时，你就不必担心花费艰苦的时间磨练你的技艺或改善你的职业生涯，或在只由你掌控的事物中寻找意义。这种行为表现出对爱情的沉迷，这并不是说爱情是一件坏事，但沉迷于爱情绝对是坏事。这种沉迷会产生无能。
When you take this kind of addiction and put it in the context of the endless flow of knowledge on the internet, you will begin to see a similar pattern. On the internet, or because of it, people get addicted to learning, following one tutorial after another, taking one course after another, one article after another, one "micro/centi/nano degree" after another that does nothing but produce incapacity and repetition without any real progress.
当你把这种沉迷放在互联网上无穷无尽的知识流中时，你就会开始看到类似的模式。在互联网上，或者因为互联网，人们沉迷于学习，一个接一个地学习教程，一个接一个地学习课程，一篇接一篇地阅读文章，一个接一个地获得“微型/微型/纳米学位”，除了产生无能和重复之外，没有任何真正的进步。
I remember having projects in hand, things to write, design and build. Instead of getting to work and finishing those, at several occasions I have chosen to take an online course or follow a tutorial or read through an article all of which were supposed to teach me how to build/design/write the said thing.
我记得手头有项目，有东西要写、设计和构建。在开始工作并完成这些项目时，我曾多次选择参加在线课程或学习教程或通读一篇文章，所有这些都应该教会我如何构建/设计/编写上述内容。
So why is that bad? You see, it's not, it becomes bad when you continue learning even when you know enough. Even when you're capable of jumping right into the project and figure things along the way, you keep delaying it. Beginning something new is uncomfortable, therefore instead you choose to read an article or take a course just so you can tell yourself that you're working, but in reality, you're just looping, you're not making any progress on the project.
那么为什么这不好呢？你看，这并不坏，当你学得足够多时，它就会变得很糟糕。即使你能够直接投入到项目中并在过程中弄清楚事情，你也会继续推迟它。开始新的事情会让人感到不舒服，因此你选择阅读一篇文章或参加一个课程，这样你就可以告诉自己你在工作，但实际上，你只是在循环，你并没有在项目上取得任何进展。
You can be in the back seat and travel to a place a hundred times. But until you take the driver's seat you'll never know the way. You’ve got to at one point stop taking directions and just go. Magic happens when you get your hands dirty.
你可以坐在后座上，去一个地方一百次。但直到你坐上驾驶座，你永远不会知道路。你必须在某个时候停止接受指示，然后出发。当你弄脏手时，就会发生神奇的事情。
Looking at this way, and I digress, you'll agree that by signing up for college you're essentially buying for yourself 4 years of incapacity. In college, you don't have to worry about forcing your way into your industry or making connections or finding a fulfilling job. You’re safe inside the campus because you’re working on a degree that will somehow magically give you the aforementioned things, which spoiler alert!....
从这个角度来看，我离题了，你会同意，通过报名上大学，你实际上是在为自己购买 4 年的无能。在大学里，你不用担心如何强行进入你的行业或建立人脉或找到一份有意义的工作。你在校园里很安全，因为你正在攻读一个学位，它会以某种神奇的方式给你上述的东西，剧透预警！....
It's a different thing when you don't know what you want to do with your life yet, in that case, college gives you enough breathing room to figure that out but if you do and you still choose to not skip college, you're just an incapacity hugging coward. Okay, that was a little too extreme, don't take my advice on college I am just salty because I couldn't complete mine. Now, getting back to the agenda.
当你还不清楚自己想用一生做什么时，情况就不同了，在这种情况下，大学给了你足够的喘息空间来弄清楚这一点，但如果你已经弄清楚了，你仍然选择不跳过大学，那你就是一个拥抱无能的懦夫。好吧，这有点太极端了，不要听我关于大学的建议，我只是因为自己没能完成学业而感到恼火。现在，回到正题。
What was your answer to the question I asked at the beginning? Who'll be a better Parisian? You reading books or your friend roaming around in Paris. It's common sense, to know Paris, you have to be in Paris, on the streets eating dust. Because if you don't, you will miss the synergy and the magic that happens when you’re in the arena. You have to get out there.
你对我在开头提出的问题有什么答案？谁会成为更好的巴黎人？你读书还是你的朋友在巴黎闲逛。这是常识，要了解巴黎，你必须身在巴黎，在街上吃灰。因为如果你不这样做，你就会错过竞技场中发生的协同作用和魔力。你必须走出去。
Often I have to interview people for engineering and design roles. More often than not all I find on their profiles are Udacity Nanodegrees, College degrees, Udemy course certificates and a myriad of other certifications with 0 real-world projects. That’s when I know that this person is soaked in incapacity to their bones. They won't take charge, they are not brave enough to face the discomfort of starting, creating something new and sending it out to the world.
我经常要面试工程和设计岗位的人员。通常情况下，我发现他们的个人资料上只有 Udacity 纳米学位、大学学位、Udemy 课程证书以及其他各种证书，而没有 0 个实际项目。那时我知道这个人骨子里就缺乏能力。他们不会负责，他们没有足够的勇气去面对开始的困难、创造新事物并将其发送到世界各地。
Are you addicted to learning? Ask yourself this. It's time to do magic, close the browser, leave the shore, jump off the cliff, cut the rope, pull the pin, pick up the pen, open your journal. Stop learning. Start doing.
你沉迷于学习吗？问问你自己。是时候施展魔法了，关闭浏览器，离开海岸，跳下悬崖，割断绳索，拔掉插销，拿起笔，打开日记。停止学习。开始行动。