What to Do丨该做什么

来源： https://paulgraham.com/do.html

March 2025	2025年3月
What should one do? That may seem a strange question, but it's not meaningless or unanswerable. It's the sort of question kids ask before they learn not to ask big questions. I only came across it myself in the process of investigating something else. But once I did, I thought I should at least try to answer it.	一个人应该做什么？这似乎是一个奇怪的问题，但它并非毫无意义或无法回答。这是孩子们在学会不问大问题之前会问的那种问题。我自己在调查其他事情的过程中才偶然遇到这个问题。但一旦遇到，我就觉得至少应该尝试回答它。
So what should one do? One should help people, and take care of the world. Those two are obvious. But is there anything else? When I ask that, the answer that pops up is Make good new things.	那么，一个人_应该_做什么？一个人应该帮助他人，并照顾世界。这两点是显而易见的。但还有其他事情吗？当我问这个问题时，脑海中浮现的答案是_创造美好的新事物_。
I can't prove that one should do this, any more than I can prove that one should help people or take care of the world. We're talking about first principles here. But I can explain why this principle makes sense. The most impressive thing humans can do is to think. It may be the most impressive thing that can be done. And the best kind of thinking, or more precisely the best proof that one has thought well, is to make good new things.	我无法证明一个人应该这样做，就像我无法证明一个人应该帮助他人或照顾世界一样。我们在这里讨论的是第一性原理。但我可以解释为什么这个原则有意义。人类最令人印象深刻的事情是思考。这可能是最令人印象深刻的事情。而最好的思考方式，或者更准确地说，是证明一个人思考得最好的方式，就是创造美好的新事物。
I mean new things in a very general sense. Newton's physics was a good new thing. Indeed, the first version of this principle was to have good new ideas. But that didn't seem general enough: it didn't include making art or music, for example, except insofar as they embody new ideas. And while they may embody new ideas, that's not all they embody, unless you stretch the word "idea" so uselessly thin that it includes everything that goes through your nervous system.	我所说的新事物是指非常广泛的意义。牛顿的物理学就是一个美好的新事物。事实上，这个原则的最初版本是拥有美好的新想法。但这似乎不够概括：例如，它不包括创作艺术或音乐，除非它们体现了新的想法。虽然它们可能体现了新的想法，但这并不是它们所包含的全部，除非你把“想法”这个词延伸得毫无用处，以至于它包括了所有通过你神经系统的东西。
Even for ideas that one has consciously, though, I prefer the phrasing "make good new things." There are other ways to describe the best kind of thinking. To make discoveries, for example, or to understand something more deeply than others have. But how well do you understand something if you can't make a model of it, or write about it? Indeed, trying to express what you understand is not just a way to prove that you understand it, but a way to understand it better.	即使对于人们有意识产生的想法，我还是更喜欢“创造美好的新事物”这种说法。还有其他方法可以描述最好的思考方式。例如，做出发现，或者比其他人更深入地理解某些事物。但是，如果你不能建立一个模型，或者写下它，你对某件事的理解有多好呢？事实上，试图表达你所理解的东西不仅仅是证明你理解它的一种方式，而且是一种更好地理解它的方式。
Another reason I like this phrasing is that it biases us toward creation. It causes us to prefer the kind of ideas that are naturally seen as making things rather than, say, making critical observations about things other people have made. Those are ideas too, and sometimes valuable ones, but it's easy to trick oneself into believing they're more valuable than they are. Criticism seems sophisticated, and making new things often seems awkward, especially at first; and yet it's precisely those first steps that are most rare and valuable.	我喜欢这种说法的另一个原因是，它使我们倾向于创造。它使我们更喜欢那些自然而然地被视为创造事物的那种想法，而不是，比如说，对其他人所创造的事物进行批判性观察。那些也是想法，有时也是有价值的想法，但人们很容易欺骗自己，认为它们比实际更有价值。批评似乎很复杂，而创造新事物往往显得笨拙，尤其是在一开始；然而，正是这些最初的步骤是最稀有和最有价值的。
Is newness essential? I think so. Obviously it's essential in science. If you copied a paper of someone else's and published it as your own, it would seem not merely unimpressive but dishonest. And it's similar in the arts. A copy of a good painting can be a pleasing thing, but it's not impressive in the way the original was. Which in turn implies it's not impressive to make the same thing over and over, however well; you're just copying yourself.	新颖性是必不可少的吗？我认为是这样。显然，它在科学中是必不可少的。如果你抄袭了别人的论文并以自己的名义发表，这不仅显得毫无价值，而且是不诚实的。艺术也是如此。一幅好画的复制品可能是一件令人愉快的事情，但它不像原作那样令人印象深刻。这反过来意味着，一遍又一遍地制作相同的东西，无论多么出色，都不会令人印象深刻；你只是在复制自己。
Note though that we're talking about a different kind of should with this principle. Taking care of people and the world are shoulds in the sense that they're one's duty, but making good new things is a should in the sense that this is how to live to one's full potential. Historically most rules about how to live have been a mix of both kinds of should, though usually with more of the former than the latter.	请注意，我们在这个原则中讨论的是一种不同的“应该”。照顾他人和世界是一种“应该”，因为这是一个人的责任，而创造美好的新事物是一种“应该”，因为这是充分发挥个人潜力的方式。从历史上看，大多数关于如何生活的规则都是这两种“应该”的混合体，尽管通常前者多于后者。
[1]For most of history the question "What should one do?" got much the same answer everywhere, whether you asked Cicero or Confucius. You should be wise, brave, honest, temperate, and just, uphold tradition, and serve the public interest. There was a long stretch where in some parts of the world the answer became "Serve God," but in practice it was still considered good to be wise, brave, honest, temperate, and just, uphold tradition, and serve the public interest. And indeed this recipe would have seemed right to most Victorians. But there's nothing in it about taking care of the world or making new things, and that's a bit worrying, because it seems like this question should be a timeless one. The answer shouldn't change much.	[1]在历史上的大部分时间里，“一个人应该做什么？”这个问题在任何地方都得到了大致相同的答案，无论你问西塞罗还是孔子。你应该明智、勇敢、诚实、节制和公正，维护传统，并服务于公共利益。在很长一段时间里，在世界某些地方，答案变成了“为上帝服务”，但在实践中，人们仍然认为明智、勇敢、诚实、节制和公正，维护传统，并服务于公共利益是好的。事实上，这个配方对大多数维多利亚时代的人来说似乎是正确的。但是，其中没有任何关于照顾世界或创造新事物的内容，这有点令人担忧，因为这个问题似乎应该是永恒的。答案不应该改变太多。
I'm not too worried that the traditional answers don't mention taking care of the world. Obviously people only started to care about that once it became clear we could ruin it. But how can making good new things be important if the traditional answers don't mention it?	我不太担心传统答案没有提到照顾世界。显然，只有当我们清楚地意识到我们可能会毁掉它时，人们才开始关心这个问题。但是，如果传统答案没有提到创造美好的新事物，那么它怎么会重要呢？
The traditional answers were answers to a slightly different question. They were answers to the question of how to be, rather than what to do. The audience didn't have a lot of choice about what to do. The audience up till recent centuries was the landowning class, which was also the political class. They weren't choosing between doing physics and writing novels. Their work was foreordained: manage their estates, participate in politics, fight when necessary. It was ok to do certain other kinds of work in one's spare time, but ideally one didn't have any. Cicero's De Officiis is one of the great classical answers to the question of how to live, and in it he explicitly says that he wouldn't even be writing it if he hadn't been excluded from public life by recent political upheavals.	传统答案是对一个略有不同的问题的回答。它们是对如何为人，而不是做什么的回答。听众对做什么没有太多选择。直到最近几个世纪，听众都是土地所有者阶级，他们也是政治阶级。他们不是在做物理和写小说之间做出选择。他们的工作是注定的：管理他们的庄园，参与政治，必要时战斗。在业余时间做某些其他类型的工作是可以的，但理想情况下，他们没有任何业余时间。西塞罗的《论义务》是对如何生活这一问题的伟大古典回答之一，他在书中明确表示，如果他没有因为最近的政治动荡而被排除在公共生活之外，他甚至不会写这本书。
[2]There were of course people doing what we would now call "original work," and they were often admired for it, but they weren't seen as models. Archimedes knew that he was the first to prove that a sphere has 2/3 the volume of the smallest enclosing cylinder and was very pleased about it. But you don't find ancient writers urging their readers to emulate him. They regarded him more as a prodigy than a model.	[2]当然，有些人做了我们现在所说的“原创工作”，他们经常因此受到钦佩，但他们没有被视为榜样。阿基米德知道他是第一个证明球体的体积是最小的包围圆柱体的 2/3，并且对此感到非常高兴。但你没有发现古代作家敦促他们的读者效仿他。他们更多地将他视为一个天才，而不是一个榜样。
Now many more of us can follow Archimedes's example and devote most of our attention to one kind of work. He turned out to be a model after all, along with a collection of other people that his contemporaries would have found it strange to treat as a distinct group, because the vein of people making new things ran at right angles to the social hierarchy.	现在我们中的更多人可以效仿阿基米德的榜样，将我们的大部分注意力投入到一种工作中。事实证明，他最终成为了一个榜样，还有一群其他人，他的同时代人会觉得将他们视为一个独特的群体是很奇怪的，因为创造新事物的人的脉络与社会等级制度成直角。
What kinds of new things count? I'd rather leave that question to the makers of them. It would be a risky business to try to define any kind of threshold, because new kinds of work are often despised at first. Raymond Chandler was writing literal pulp fiction, and he's now recognized as one of the best writers of the twentieth century. Indeed this pattern is so common that you can use it as a recipe: if you're excited about some kind of work that's not considered prestigious and you can explain what everyone else is overlooking about it, then this is not merely a kind of work that's ok to do, but one to seek out.	什么样的“新事物”才算数？我宁愿把这个问题留给创造它们的人。试图定义任何类型的门槛都是一项冒险的尝试，因为新型工作最初往往会被鄙视。雷蒙德·钱德勒写的是名副其实的通俗小说，现在他被认为是二十世纪最好的作家之一。事实上，这种模式非常普遍，你可以把它当作一个秘诀：如果你对某种不被认为是声望很高的工作感到兴奋，并且你可以解释其他人忽略了它的什么，那么这不仅是一种可以做的工作，而且是一种应该寻找的工作。
The other reason I wouldn't want to define any thresholds is that we don't need them. The kind of people who make good new things don't need rules to keep them honest.	我不想定义任何门槛的另一个原因是，我们不需要它们。创造美好的新事物的人不需要规则来保持他们的诚实。
So there's my guess at a set of principles to live by: take care of people and the world, and make good new things. Different people will do these to varying degrees. There will presumably be lots who focus entirely on taking care of people. There will be a few who focus mostly on making new things. But even if you're one of those, you should at least make sure that the new things you make don't net harm people or the world. And if you go a step further and try to make things that help them, you may find you're ahead on the trade. You'll be more constrained in what you can make, but you'll make it with more energy.	所以，这是我对一套生活原则的猜测：照顾他人和世界，并创造美好的新事物。不同的人会以不同的程度做到这些。可能会有很多人完全专注于照顾他人。会有少数人主要专注于创造新事物。但即使你是其中之一，你也至少应该确保你所创造的新事物不会对他人或世界造成净_伤害_。如果你更进一步，尝试创造对他们有帮助的事物，你可能会发现你在这笔交易中处于领先地位。你所能创造的东西会受到更多限制，但你会更有活力地创造它。
On the other hand, if you make something amazing, you'll often be helping people or the world even if you didn't mean to. Newton was driven by curiosity and ambition, not by any practical effect his work might have, and yet the practical effect of his work has been enormous. And this seems the rule rather than the exception. So if you think you can make something amazing, you should probably just go ahead and do it.	另一方面，如果你创造了一些令人惊叹的东西，你通常会帮助他人或世界，即使你不是故意的。牛顿的动力来自于好奇心和雄心壮志，而不是他的工作可能产生的任何实际效果，然而他的工作的实际效果是巨大的。这似乎是规则而不是例外。所以，如果你认为你能创造一些令人惊叹的东西，你应该直接去做。
Notes	注释
[1] We could treat all three as the same kind of should by saying that it's one's duty to live well — for example by saying, as some Christians have, that it's one's duty to make the most of one's God-given gifts. But this seems one of those casuistries people invented to evade the stern requirements of religion: you could spend time studying math instead of praying or performing acts of charity because otherwise you were rejecting a gift God had given you. A useful casuistry no doubt, but we don't need it.We could also combine the first two principles, since people are part of the world. Why should our species get special treatment? I won't try to justify this choice, but I'm skeptical that anyone who claims to think differently actually lives according to their principles.	[1] 我们可以将这三者都视为同一种“应该”，即认为好好生活是人的责任——例如，正如一些基督徒所说的那样，充分利用上帝赋予的礼物是人的责任。但这似乎是人们为了逃避宗教的严格要求而发明的一种诡辩：你可以花时间学习数学，而不是祈祷或行善，因为否则你就是在拒绝上帝给你的礼物。毫无疑问，这是一种有用的诡辩，但我们不需要它。我们也可以将前两个原则结合起来，因为人是世界的一部分。为什么我们的物种应该得到特殊待遇？我不会试图为这种选择辩护，但我怀疑任何声称有不同想法的人实际上是按照他们的原则生活的。
[2] Confucius was also excluded from public life after ending up on the losing end of a power struggle, and presumably he too would not be so famous now if it hadn't been for this long stretch of enforced leisure.Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.	[2] 孔子在权力斗争中失败后也被排除在公共生活之外，如果不是因为这段漫长的强制休闲时间，他现在可能也不会如此出名。感谢 Trevor Blackwell、Jessica Livingston 和 Robert Morris 阅读了本文的草稿。