One financial lesson they should teach in school is that most of the things we buy have to be paid for twice.
他们应该在学校教给一个财务课程是，我们购买的大部分东西都必须支付两次费用。

There’s the first price, usually paid in dollars, just to gain possession of the desired thing, whatever it is: a book, a budgeting app, a unicycle, a bundle of kale.
首先是价格，通常以美元支付，只是为了获得想要的东西，无论它是什么：一本书、一个预算应用程序、一辆独轮车、一捆羽衣甘蓝。

But then, in order to make use of the thing, you must also pay a second price. This is the effort and initiative required to gain its benefits, and it can be much higher than the first price.
但是，为了使用这个东西，您还必须支付第二个价格。这是获得其好处所需的努力和主动性，它可能比第一个价格高得多。

A new novel, for example, might require twenty dollars for its first price—and ten hours of dedicated reading time for its second. Only once the second price is being paid do you see any return on the first one. Paying only the first price is about the same as throwing money in the garbage.
例如，一本新小说的第一个价格可能需要 20 美元，第二个价格可能需要 10 个小时的专门阅读时间。只有在支付第二个价格后，您才会看到第一个价格的任何回报。只支付第一个价格与把钱扔进垃圾桶差不多。

Likewise, after buying the budgeting app, you have to set it all up, and learn to use it habitually before it actually improves your financial life. With the unicycle, you have to endure the presumably painful beginner phase before you can cruise down the street. The kale must be de-veined, chopped, steamed, and chewed before it gives you any nourishment.
同样，购买预算应用程序后，您必须对其进行所有设置，并学会习惯性地使用它，然后才能真正改善您的财务生活。有了独轮车，您必须先忍受可能很痛苦的初学者阶段，然后才能在街上巡游。羽衣甘蓝必须去脉、切碎、蒸熟和咀嚼，然后才能为您提供任何营养。

If you look around your home, you might notice many possessions for which you’ve paid the first price but not the second. Unused memberships, unread books, unplayed games, unknitted yarns.  
如果您环顾您的家，您可能会注意到许多财产您支付了第一个价格，但没有支付第二个价格。未使用的会员资格、未读的书、未玩的游戏、未编织的纱线。

I can’t know for sure, but I have the sense that in pre-consumer societies, there was less emphasis on paying first prices (i.e. getting things into your possession) and much more on paying second prices—doing the work necessary to use what you have, and becoming someone who always does. Imagine a plow, purchased for its features, but which never gets pulled through the earth.
我不能确定，但我有一种感觉，在前消费社会，人们不太强调支付第一价（即把东西交到你手中），而更多地强调支付第二价——做必要的工作来使用你所拥有的，并成为一个总是这样做的人。想象一下一把犁，它是因为它的功能而购买的，但它永远不会被拉过泥土。

The miracle of industrialization has reduced many first prices tremendously, but has also given us many more of them to consider paying. With all the wonderful toys on offer, almost nobody feels like they have quite enough money, enough acquisition power. When a person receives a windfall, they immediately think of more first prices they can now pay.
工业化的奇迹极大地降低了许多首发价格，但也给了我们更多的首发价格可以考虑支付。虽然有这么多很棒的玩具，但几乎没有人觉得他们有足够的钱，足够的收购能力。当一个人收到意外之财时，他们会立即想到他们现在可以支付的更多首发价格。

But no matter how many cool things you acquire, you don’t gain any more time or energy with which to pay their second prices—to use the gym membership, to read the unabridged classics, to make the ukulele sound good—and so their rewards remain unredeemed.
但是，无论你获得多少很酷的东西，你都不会获得更多的时间或精力来支付他们的第二个价格--使用健身房的会员资格，阅读未删节的经典作品，使尤克里里琴听起来不错--所以他们的奖励仍然没有赎回。

I believe this is one reason our modern lifestyles can feel a little self-defeating sometimes. In our search for fulfillment, we keep paying first prices, creating a correspondingly enormous debt of unpaid second prices. Yet the rewards of any purchase – the reason we buy it at all — stay locked up until both prices are paid.
我相信这就是我们的现代生活方式有时会让人感到有点弄巧成拙的原因之一。在我们寻求履行的过程中，我们不断支付第一价格，从而相应地产生了未支付第二价格的巨大债务。然而，任何购买的回报——我们购买它的原因——都会被锁定，直到两个价格都付清为止。

For example, you can pick up Moby-Dick for a dollar at a garage sale, but it’s a wasted dollar if you don’t subsequently pay a significant second price: sixteen hours of attending closely to long Victorian commentaries on whales and the men who hunt them. And you’ve got many more debts competing for those same sixteen hours — the more first prices you’ve paid alongside this garage sale dollar, the less you feel like you’ll ever have time to properly experience the legend of Captain Ahab, or do any other elective activities that require effort and initiative.
例如，您可以在车库拍卖会上以一美元的价格买到《白鲸》，但如果您随后不支付重要的第二个价格，那就浪费了一美元：16 个小时仔细聆听维多利亚时代关于鲸鱼和捕鲸者的长篇评论。而且你有更多的债务在争夺这 16 个小时——你在这车库销售美元旁边支付的第一个价格越多，你就越没有时间正确体验亚哈船长的传奇，或做任何其他需要努力和主动性的选修活动。

This scarcity feeling creates one of the major side-effects of our insurmountable second-price debt: we reflexively overindulge in entertainment and other low-second-price pleasures –- phone apps, streaming services, and processed food — even though their rewards are often only marginally better than doing nothing. This stuff is attractive because it takes little effort (and we’re tired from working to pay for so many first prices) but it can eat up a ton of time, depleting the second-price budget even further.
这种匮乏感造成了我们无法克服的二价债务的主要副作用之一：我们条件反射地过度沉迷于娱乐和其他低二价的乐趣——手机应用程序、流媒体服务和加工食品——尽管它们的回报通常只比什么都不做好一点。这些东西很有吸引力，因为它不需要付出多少努力（而且我们因为工作支付这么多第一价格而感到疲惫），但它会消耗大量时间，进一步耗尽第二价格的预算。

The only solution I can think of is to consciously throw the switch the other way: avoid paying any more needless first prices, and set your lifestyle around paying certain second prices, so you can finally enjoy the long-promised prizes waiting in your bookshelf, storage room, and hard drive. This was my original intuition behind the Depth Year concept—to designate a whole year in which you stop acquiring more ways to do cool things, and start doing the cool things in earnest.
我能想到的唯一解决方案是有意识地把开关扔到另一个方向：避免再支付任何不必要的第一个价格，并围绕支付一定的第二个价格来设置你的生活方式，这样你终于可以享受在你的书架、储藏室和硬盘中等待已久的奖品。这就是我 Depth Year 概念背后的原始直觉——指定一整年，你停止获取更多做很酷的事情的方法，并开始认真地做很酷的事情。

(If you think you might want to do a Depth Year in 2022, feel free to join the Facebook group.)
（如果您认为您可能想在 2022 年举办深度年，请随时加入 Facebook 群组。

Paying a second price, unpleasant as it sounds, is a process you can acquire a taste for, and when you do, it’s exhilarating. It’s like picking your way through unmapped wilderness – the going is slow and there’s lots to trip over, but it’s new territory the whole way, and after the initial discomfort you feel very alive. Then when you come out the other side, this new territory has become part of your usual range, and you’re tougher and more interesting.
付出第二次代价，听起来很不愉快，是一个你可以体验的过程，当你这样做时，它会令人振奋。这就像在未绘制地图的荒野中挑选出路——前进很慢，有很多事情要绊倒，但全程都是新的领域，在最初的不适之后，你会感到非常有活力。然后当你从另一边出来时，这个新的领域已经成为你通常范围的一部分，你变得更坚韧、更有趣。

Figuring out how to pay the second price isn’t hard. You just have to notice that moment you usually think about packing it in, and stay with it instead of doing something else.
弄清楚如何支付第二个价格并不难。你只需要注意到你通常会考虑打包的那一刻，并坚持下去而不是做其他事情。

In other words, when you hit the weeds, you go into them instead of away. The awkward B major chord on the guitar – get your fingers in place anyway, and see if you can relax into the position just a bit more. The part where Ishmael goes on at length about historical whale drawings – try to understand why it matters to him. It is in these unfamiliar moments that the rewards appear.

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Photo by Claudia Rancourt