January 2016
2016年1月
Life is short, as everyone knows. When I was a kid I used to wonder about this. Is life actually short, or are we really complaining about its finiteness? Would we be just as likely to feel life was short if we lived 10 times as long?
人人都知道，人生如此短暂。当我还是个孩子的时候我常常想知道这个，是人生真的短暂还是我们只是在抱怨它的时限性？如果我们的生命是现在的十倍，我们还会不会抱怨短暂。
Since there didn't seem any way to answer this question, I stopped wondering about it. Then I had kids. That gave me a way to answer the question, and the answer is that life actually is short.
自从发现这个看起来没有任何可以回答这个问题的答案后，我停止去想。后来我有了孩子。这给了我一个回答问题的方法，答案是生命其实是短暂的。
Having kids showed me how to convert a continuous quantity, time, into discrete quantities. You only get 52 weekends with your 2 year old. If Christmas-as-magic lasts from say ages 3 to 10, you only get to watch your child experience it 8 times. And while it's impossible to say what is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity like time, 8 is not a lot of something. If you had a handful of 8 peanuts, or a shelf of 8 books to choose from, the quantity would definitely seem limited, no matter what your lifespan was.
有孩子教我如何把一个连续的量，时间，转换成离散的量。你只有52个周末和你2岁的孩子在一起。如果圣诞像魔法一样从3岁持续到10岁，你只能看着你的孩子经历8次。虽然很难说什么是像时间这样的大量或少量连续的数量，但8并不是很多东西。如果你有一把8粒花生，或者有一书架8本书可供选择，那么无论你的寿命是多少，数量肯定是有限的。
Ok, so life actually is short. Does it make any difference to know that?
好吧，所以生命其实很短暂。知道这些有什么区别吗？
It has for me. It means arguments of the form "Life is too short for x" have great force. It's not just a figure of speech to say that life is too short for something. It's not just a synonym for annoying. If you find yourself thinking that life is too short for something, you should try to eliminate it if you can.
对我来说是的。这意味着“生命对x来说太短”的论点有很大的影响力。说生命对某些东西来说太短不仅仅是一种修辞手法。它不仅仅是烦人的同义词。如果你发现自己认为生命对某些东西来说太短暂了，你应该尽可能地消除它。
When I ask myself what I've found life is too short for, the word that pops into my head is "bullshit." I realize that answer is somewhat tautological. It's almost the definition of bullshit that it's the stuff that life is too short for. And yet bullshit does have a distinctive character. There's something fake about it. It's the junk food of experience. [1]
当我问自己我发现生命对什么来说太短的时候，我脑海中闪现的一个词是“胡说八道”，我意识到这个答案有些重复。这几乎是狗屁的定义，它是生命太短的东西。然而，胡说八道确实有其独特的特点。这是假的。这是经验的垃圾食品。[一]
If you ask yourself what you spend your time on that's bullshit, you probably already know the answer. Unnecessary meetings, pointless disputes, bureaucracy, posturing, dealing with other people's mistakes, traffic jams, addictive but unrewarding pastimes.
如果你问自己你花了多少时间在这上面是胡说八道，你可能已经知道答案了。不必要的会议、毫无意义的争论、官僚主义、装腔作势、处理别人的错误、交通堵塞、令人上瘾但却毫无回报的消遣。
There are two ways this kind of thing gets into your life: it's either forced on you, or it tricks you. To some extent you have to put up with the bullshit forced on you by circumstances. You need to make money, and making money consists mostly of errands. Indeed, the law of supply and demand insures that: the more rewarding some kind of work is, the cheaper people will do it. It may be that less bullshit is forced on you than you think, though. There has always been a stream of people who opt out of the default grind and go live somewhere where opportunities are fewer in the conventional sense, but life feels more authentic. This could become more common.
这类事情有两种方式进入你的生活：要么强迫你，要么欺骗你。在某种程度上，你不得不忍受环境逼着你的胡说八道。你需要赚钱，赚钱主要是跑腿。事实上，供求定律保证：某种工作越有回报，人们就越愿意做。不过，可能你的胡说八道比你想象的要少。一直有很多人选择放弃默认的工作，去一个传统意义上机会更少的地方生活，但生活感觉更真实。这可能会变得更加普遍。
You can do it on a smaller scale without moving. The amount of time you have to spend on bullshit varies between employers. Most large organizations (and many small ones) are steeped in it. But if you consciously prioritize bullshit avoidance over other factors like money and prestige, you can probably find employers that will waste less of your time.
你可以在较小的范围内不移动。你花在胡扯上的时间因雇主而异。大多数大型组织（和许多小型组织）都深陷其中。但是，如果你有意识地把避免胡说八道放在金钱和声望等其他因素的首位，你可能会发现雇主会减少你的时间浪费。
If you're a freelancer or a small company, you can do this at the level of individual customers. If you fire or avoid toxic customers, you can decrease the amount of bullshit in your life by more than you decrease your income.
如果你是一个自由职业者或一家小公司，你可以在个人客户的层面上做到这一点。如果你解雇或避免有毒顾客，你可以减少你生活中的废话，而不是减少你的收入。
But while some amount of bullshit is inevitably forced on you, the bullshit that sneaks into your life by tricking you is no one's fault but your own. And yet the bullshit you choose may be harder to eliminate than the bullshit that's forced on you. Things that lure you into wasting your time have to be really good at tricking you. An example that will be familiar to a lot of people is arguing online. When someone contradicts you, they're in a sense attacking you. Sometimes pretty overtly. Your instinct when attacked is to defend yourself. But like a lot of instincts, this one wasn't designed for the world we now live in. Counterintuitive as it feels, it's better most of the time not to defend yourself. Otherwise these people are literally taking your life. [2]
但是，当你不可避免地被一些胡说八道强加在你身上时，那些通过欺骗你潜入你生活的胡说八道不是别人的错，而是你自己的错。然而，你选择的废话可能比强迫你的废话更难消除。诱使你浪费时间的事情必须非常善于欺骗你。一个很多人都熟悉的例子是在网上争论。当有人反驳你时，他们在某种意义上是在攻击你。有时很明显。你受到攻击时的本能是自卫。但就像很多本能一样，这个不是为我们现在生活的世界而设计的。虽然感觉有悖直觉，但大多数时候最好不要为自己辩护。否则这些人会夺走你的生命。[二]
Arguing online is only incidentally addictive. There are more dangerous things than that. As I've written before, one byproduct of technical progress is that things we like tend to become more addictive. Which means we will increasingly have to make a conscious effort to avoid addictions — to stand outside ourselves and ask "is this how I want to be spending my time?"
在网上争论只是偶然的上瘾。还有比这更危险的事情。正如我之前写的，技术进步的一个副产品是，我们喜欢的东西往往变得更容易上瘾。这意味着我们将越来越需要有意识地努力避免上瘾——站在自己的外面，问“这是我想要的消磨时间的方式吗？”
As well as avoiding bullshit, one should actively seek out things that matter. But different things matter to different people, and most have to learn what matters to them. A few are lucky and realize early on that they love math or taking care of animals or writing, and then figure out a way to spend a lot of time doing it. But most people start out with a life that's a mix of things that matter and things that don't, and only gradually learn to distinguish between them.
除了避免胡说八道外，人们还应该积极寻找重要的东西。但不同的事情对不同的人来说很重要，而且大多数人必须学会什么对他们来说很重要。一些人很幸运，他们很早就意识到自己喜欢数学、照顾动物或写作，然后想办法花很多时间去做。但大多数人一开始的生活是把重要的事情和不重要的事情混合在一起，只有逐渐学会区分它们。
For the young especially, much of this confusion is induced by the artificial situations they find themselves in. In middle school and high school, what the other kids think of you seems the most important thing in the world. But when you ask adults what they got wrong at that age, nearly all say they cared too much what other kids thought of them.
尤其是对年轻人来说，这种困惑很大程度上是由他们所处的人为环境引起的。在中学和高中，其他孩子对你的看法似乎是世界上最重要的事情。但当你问成年人他们在那个年龄出了什么问题时，几乎所有人都说他们太在意其他孩子对他们的看法。
One heuristic for distinguishing stuff that matters is to ask yourself whether you'll care about it in the future. Fake stuff that matters usually has a sharp peak of seeming to matter. That's how it tricks you. The area under the curve is small, but its shape jabs into your consciousness like a pin.
区分重要事物的一个启发是问问自己，将来是否会在意它。重要的假东西通常有一个看起来很重要的尖峰。这就是它欺骗你的方式。曲线下的区域很小，但它的形状像一根针刺入你的意识。
The things that matter aren't necessarily the ones people would call "important." Having coffee with a friend matters. You won't feel later like that was a waste of time.
重要的事情不一定是人们所说的“重要的”。和朋友喝咖啡很重要。你以后不会觉得那是浪费时间。
One great thing about having small children is that they make you spend time on things that matter: them. They grab your sleeve as you're staring at your phone and say "will you play with me?" And odds are that is in fact the bullshit-minimizing option.
有小孩的一个好处是他们让你花时间在重要的事情上：他们。他们抓住你的袖子当你盯着你的手机说“你愿意和我一起玩吗？”而事实上，这很可能是一个废话最小化的选择。
If life is short, we should expect its shortness to take us by surprise. And that is just what tends to happen. You take things for granted, and then they're gone. You think you can always write that book, or climb that mountain, or whatever, and then you realize the window has closed. The saddest windows close when other people die. Their lives are short too. After my mother died, I wished I'd spent more time with her. I lived as if she'd always be there. And in her typical quiet way she encouraged that illusion. But an illusion it was. I think a lot of people make the same mistake I did.
如果生命是短暂的，我们应该期待它的短暂带给我们惊喜。而这正是未来的趋势。你想当然，然后就不见了。你以为你可以一直写那本书，或者爬那座山，或者别的什么，然后你意识到窗户已经关上了。当其他人死去时，最悲伤的窗户就会关上。他们的生命也很短暂。我母亲死后，我真希望能多陪陪她。我的生活就好像她一直在那里一样。她以她特有的安静方式鼓励了这种幻想。但那只是一种幻觉。我想很多人都犯了和我一样的错误。
The usual way to avoid being taken by surprise by something is to be consciously aware of it. Back when life was more precarious, people used to be aware of death to a degree that would now seem a bit morbid. I'm not sure why, but it doesn't seem the right answer to be constantly reminding oneself of the grim reaper hovering at everyone's shoulder. Perhaps a better solution is to look at the problem from the other end. Cultivate a habit of impatience about the things you most want to do. Don't wait before climbing that mountain or writing that book or visiting your mother. You don't need to be constantly reminding yourself why you shouldn't wait. Just don't wait.
避免被某件事吓到的通常方法是有意识地意识到它。当生活变得更加不稳定的时候，人们过去对死亡的认识到了某种程度，现在似乎有点病态。我不知道为什么，但不断提醒自己，死神在每个人的肩膀上盘旋，似乎不是正确的答案。也许更好的解决办法是从另一个角度看问题。养成对你最想做的事不耐烦的习惯。不要等到爬上那座山，写完那本书，或者去看望你的母亲。你不需要一直提醒自己为什么不应该等。别等了。
I can think of two more things one does when one doesn't have much of something: try to get more of it, and savor what one has. Both make sense here.
当一个人没有很多东西的时候，我还能想到另外两件事：试着多吃一点，品尝一个人拥有的东西。两者都有道理。
How you live affects how long you live. Most people could do better. Me among them.
你的生活方式影响你的寿命。大多数人可以做得更好。我在他们中间。
But you can probably get even more effect by paying closer attention to the time you have. It's easy to let the days rush by. The "flow" that imaginative people love so much has a darker cousin that prevents you from pausing to savor life amid the daily slurry of errands and alarms. One of the most striking things I've read was not in a book, but the title of one: James Salter's Burning the Days.
但如果你能更密切地关注你所拥有的时间，你可能会得到更大的效果。很容易让日子匆匆过去。想象力丰富的人如此喜爱的“流动”有一个更黑暗的表亲，阻止你在日常琐事和警报的泥泞中停下来品味生活。我读过的最引人注目的东西不是一本书，而是一本书的标题：詹姆斯索尔特的《燃烧的日子》。
It is possible to slow time somewhat. I've gotten better at it. Kids help. When you have small children, there are a lot of moments so perfect that you can't help noticing.
有可能使时间稍微慢一点。我做得更好了。孩子们帮忙。当你有小孩的时候，有很多时刻是如此完美以至于你不得不注意。
It does help too to feel that you've squeezed everything out of some experience. The reason I'm sad about my mother is not just that I miss her but that I think of all the things we could have done that we didn't. My oldest son will be 7 soon. And while I miss the 3 year old version of him, I at least don't have any regrets over what might have been. We had the best time a daddy and a 3 year old ever had.
感觉到你把一切都从经验中榨干了，这也确实有帮助。我为我母亲伤心的原因不仅仅是因为我想念她，还因为我想到了所有我们本可以做但没有做的事情。我的大儿子很快就7岁了。虽然我想念他3岁的版本，但至少我对可能发生的一切没有任何遗憾。我们有过一个父亲和一个3岁孩子最美好的时光。
Relentlessly prune bullshit, don't wait to do things that matter, and savor the time you have. That's what you do when life is short.
毫不留情地剪掉胡说八道，不要等待去做那些重要的事情，尽情享受你拥有的时间。当生命短暂的时候，你就是这样做的。
