阮一峰的網絡日誌
美國著名出版家Tim O'Reilly最近寫了一篇好文章，談到了如何選擇人生道路。
他說：
I spent a lot of last year urging people to work on stuff that matters. This led to many questions about what that "stuff" might be.
去年，我花了很多時間，鼓動大家去做重要的事情。很多人問我：「什麼是重要的事情？」
I've been a bit reluctant to answer those questions, because the list is different for everyone.
我不太願意回答這個問題，因為每個人的判斷標準不同。
I thought I'd do better to start the new year with some ideas about how to think about this for yourself.
不過，新的一年來到了，我想最好還是說一下我的看法，供你們參考。
接下來，他舉出了三大標準。如果你做的事情，符合這三條，那就屬於重要的事情，值得做下去。否則，你最好思考一下，是否應該就此罷手。
下面就是他的三大標準，以及我(阮一峰)的理解。
1. 不僅僅為了賺錢
青年人容易犯的一個大錯誤，就是太關注錢，將金錢作為衡量成功的唯一標準。實際上，錢的作用在於，你能用它來幹自己想幹的事。錢本身並不是生活的目的，你自己想幹的事才是。錢就好比汽油，生活的目的不是為了獲得汽油，而是為了讓汽車加滿油之後，去那些你想去的地方。
不要去想你怎樣才能賺到錢，而要去想你對他人、對社會的價值在哪裡。你要相信，如果你對社會是有價值的，你就一定能夠賺到錢，雖然未必很多。
不要讓自己變得太現實。很多中國年輕人工作的目的，就是為了早日買到一套自己的房子。你應該有一些更遠大的追求，天下的房子有無數套，但是你的人生 只有一次。就像網上流傳的一句話所說的，「Make big dreams, because if you don't, you will end up in small places; Take small steps, otherwise you will end up with big troubles。」
不要害怕失敗。有一句西方諺語說得好，「殺不死你的東西，讓你變得更強大。」（What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger.）德國詩人里爾克說過：「同渺小的對手戰鬥，勝利只能使我們變得同樣渺小。我們真正需要的，是英勇地被更強大的對手擊敗。」（What we fight with is so small, and when we win, it makes us small. What we want is to be defeated, decisively, by successively greater things.）
當你幹一件事的時候，如果你更關心什麼時候你才能獲得回報，而不是什麼時候你能做出更大的成果，這通常是一個危險的信號，表明你的人生可能走錯了路，你正在浪費自己的生命。
2. 創造了更多的價值
如果你幹的事情，不能為世界創造更多的價值，不能抵消成本，那就別去幹它。典型的例子就是彩票和博弈。如果你把博彩當作自己的事業，那就太危險了。 因為彩票業作為一個整體，不創造任何社會財富，反而要消耗大量的社會財富。只有行將崩潰的亂世，彩票業才會有大發展；任何欣欣向榮的社會，都不會鼓勵發展這種浪費社會資源的事情。此外，很大程度上，證券業同博彩業是類似的。許多青年人迷戀炒股，無異於將人生投入賭場，最終只能是浪費了自己寶貴的青春，而一無所獲。用經濟學的語言說，就是你要迴避「零和遊戲」，絕不參加像彩票那樣的「負和遊戲」，而要去做那些為雙方帶來共贏的事情。
任何真正成功的人生，都是為他人創造價值的人生；任何真正成功的企業，都是為客戶創造價值的企業。如果一個朋友不能為我們帶來任何正面的反饋，交往就無法維持；如果一個企業的產品，不值客戶支付的價錢，客戶就會流失，企業就會關門。我們的人生通過不斷與他人進行雙贏的價值交換，達到壯大自己和發展自己的目的；整個社會通過這樣的交換，實現了繁榮和進步。
第一條原則同這一條，是緊密聯繫在一起的。前者用來判斷你選擇怎樣的事業；後者用來判斷你的事業能否成功。以微軟公司為例，它的目標從一開始就是 「讓每個家庭的每一張桌子上，都有一台電腦。」（a computer on every desk and in every home.）這符合原則一。然後，微軟公司製造了Windows操作系統，大大增加了電腦的易用性，改變了人類的生活方式。這符合原則二。就是因為微軟做 到了這二點，所以它成了世界上最賺錢的公司，這並非偶然。
當然，這並不意味盈利是不重要的。相反，它是非常重要的。如果賺不到錢，我們就無法滿足生存的基本需要。這裡面存在一個平衡問題。我們必須經常自省：我們得到了什麼？我們又創造了什麼？
3. 符合長期利益和整體利益
人類的生命只有幾十年，這注定了人類是一種短視的動物。我們無法跳脫局部的和短期的視角，來判斷自己的利益，尤其不願意用短期的犧牲，來換取長期的利益。這就是為什麼一些對社會發展最重要的事，都是由非營利性組織來推動的原因。
但是，這樣做是不對的，是用現在換取將來。規劃人生的時候，必須有長期觀點，考慮5年後、10年後、甚至20年後的發展。現在有一種論調，提倡大學生「先就業再擇業」，這本來只是無路可走時的應急方法，倘若作為找工作的指導思想，就大錯特錯了。正是因為人生太短暫，一旦走錯路，將來再想回頭，幾乎是不可能的。所以，當短期利益與長期利益發生衝突時，你必須非常小心，必須多考慮將來的需要。
另一方面，當局部利益與整體利益發生衝突時，你還必須考慮到其他人的利益，甚至是子孫的利益。（政府龐大的財政赤字就是在花子孫的錢。）所有人的命運是休戚相關的，你個人的成功是建立在你對集體的價值之上的，所以對你來說重要的事，往往對其他人也是重要的。除了你自己的立場，你還必須站在其他人的立 場，判斷某件事是否重要。
（完）
------------------------------Work on Stuff that Matters: First Principles
by Tim O'ReillyI spent a lot of last year urging people to work on stuff that matters. This led to many questions about what that "stuff" might be. I've been a bit reluctant to answer those questions, because the list is different for everyone. I thought I'd do better to start the new year with some ideas about how to think about this for yourself.
First off, though, I want to make clear that "work on stuff that matters" does not mean focusing on non-profit work, "causes, or any other form of "do-goodism." Non-profit projects often do matter a great deal, and people with tech skills can make important contributions, but it's essential to get beyond that narrow box. I'm a strong believer in the social value of business done right. We need to build an economy in which the important things are paid for in self-sustaining ways rather than as charities to be funded out of the goodness of our hearts.
There are a number of half-unconscious litmus tests I use in my own life. I'm going to try to tease them out here, and hope that you can help me think this through in the comments.
- Work on something that matters to you more than money.
I addressed this topic in my commencement address at SIMS a few years ago, and I'll think I'll just quote myself here.
Some of you may end up working at highflying companies. Some of you may succeed, and some of you may fail. I want to remind you that financial success is not the only goal or the only measure of success. It's easy to get caught up in the heady buzz of making money. You should regard money as fuel for what you really want to do, not as a goal in and of itself. Money is like gas in the car -- you need to pay attention or you'll end up on the side of the road -- but a well-lived life is not a tour of gas stations!
One test of a bubble is how many entrepreneurs are focused on their upcoming payday rather than on the big things they hope to accomplish. Me-too products are almost always payday-focused; the entrepreneurs who first made the market often had much less expectation of easy success, and were instead wrestling, like Jacob with the angel, with a hard problem that they thought they could solve, or at the very least make a dent on.Whatever you do, think about what you really value. If you're an entrepreneur, the time you spend thinking about your values will help you build a better company. If you're going to work for someone else, the time you spend understanding your values will help you find the right kind of company or institution to work for, and when you find it, to do a better job.
Don't be afraid to think big. Business author Jim Collins says that great companies have " big hairy audacious goals." Google's motto, "access to all the world's information" is an example of such a goal. I like to think that my own company's mission, "changing the world by sharing the knowledge of innovators," is also such a goal.
Don't be afraid to fail. There's a wonderful poem by Rainer Maria Rilke that talks about the biblical story of Jacob wrestling with an angel, being defeated, but coming away stronger from the fight. It ends with an exhortation that goes something like this: "What we fight with is so small, and when we win, it makes us small. What we want is to be defeated, decisively, by successively greater things."
It's also clear that if you're thinking more about the competition than you are about customers and the value you're going to create for them, you're on the wrong path. As Kathy Sierra once put it, "In many cases, the more you try to compete, the less competitive you actually are."
The most successful companies treat success as a byproduct of achieving their real goal, which is always something bigger and more important than they are.
- Create more value than you capture.
It's pretty easy to see that Bernie Madoff wasn't following this rule; nor were the titans of Wall Street who ended up giving out billions of dollars in bonuses to themselves while wrecking our economy. It's harder to judge the average small business, but it's pretty clear that most businesses do in fact create value for their community and their customers as well as themselves, and that the most successful businesses do so in part by creating a self-reinforcing value loop with their customers.
For example, a bank that loans money to a small business sees that business grow, perhaps borrow more money, hire employees who make deposits and take out loans, and so on. The power of this cycle to lift people out of poverty has been demonstrated by microfinance institutions like the Grameen Bank. Grameen is clearly focused on creating more value than they capture; not so the like of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, or WaMu, or many of the other failed financial institutions involved in the current financial meltdown. They may have started there, but at some point, they clearly became more concerned with how much value they could capture for themselves.
If you're succeeding at this goal, you may sometimes find that others have made more of your ideas than you have yourself. It's OK. I've had more than one billionaire (and an awful lot of startups who hope to follow in their footsteps) tell me how they got their start with a couple of O'Reilly books. I've had entrepreneurs tell me that they got the idea for their company from something I've said or written. That's a good thing! I remember back in the early days of the Internet, when the buyer at Borders told me after one of my talks, "Well, you've just given your competitors their publishing program for the year." If my goal is really "changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators," I'm thrilled when my competitors jump on the bandwagon and help me spread the word!
Look around you: How many people do you employ in fulfilling jobs? How many customers use your products to make their own living? How many competitors have you enabled? How many people have you touched that gave you nothing back?
There's a wonderful section in Les Miserables about the good that Jean Valjean does as a businessman (operating under the pseudonym of Father Madeleine). Through his industry and vision, he makes an entire region prosperous, so that "there was no pocket so obscure that it had not a little money in it; no dwelling so lowly that there was not some little joy within it." And the key point:
Father Madeleine made his fortune; but a singular thing in a simple man of business, it did not seem as though that were his chief care. He appeared to be thinking much of others, and little of himself.
Take Microsoft. They started out with a big goal, "a computer on every desk and in every home," and for many years unquestionably created more value than they captured. They helped grow the PC industry as a whole; they built a platform that helped many small software vendors to flourish. But over time, they began to capture more value than they created: as the cost of PCs plummeted, hardware vendors had to survive on the slimmest of margins while Microsoft collected monopoly rents; bit by bit, Microsoft consumed its own developer ecosystem by building the features of successful startups into their own products, and using their operating system dominance to crush the early movers. As I've written elsewhere, I believe that Microsoft must re-commit itself to big goals beyond its own profitability, and to creating more value than it captures if it is to succeed. (Danny Sullivan wrote a great piece about the strategic relevance of this very idea just last week, Tough Love for Microsoft Search.)
Or take Google. Again, a huge goal: "Organize all the world's information." And like Microsoft in its early years, they are enabling others while making a pile of money for themselves. Any business with a web presence need only take a look at its referrer logs if it questions that assertion. How much of your traffic comes from Google? But again, as I've written previously, this test still looms in Google's future. Will they continue to create more value than they capture, or will they seek to capture more of the value for themselves?
It's a matter of balance. Every business needs to pay attention to its bottom line; every individual needs to put a roof over his or her head and provide food for loved ones. But take a look inside: how much are you thinking about yourself and what you might gain, versus what you might create?
It's particularly tough to stay focused on big issues in the face of an economic downturn, because getting paid looms large. I look back at some of the decisions I made after the crash in 2001, when I became far more focused on the survival of my business than on the value we were going to create in the marketplace. We did some me-too publishing that I really regret; the things that ultimately made a bigger difference to our bottom line were commitments to the future: our Web 2.0 events were driven by the goal of reigniting enthusiasm in the computer industry as well as helping people to understand the new rules of the emerging internet platform; Safari Books Online was driven by the desire to create a new revenue model not just for ourselves but for all publishers; Make: was a celebration of the next generation of hackers; Foo Camp started as a way to give something back to all the people who'd contributed to our success.
But these two tests are not enough, because it's become clear that we need a long term ecological perspective as well. So I'd add a third principle:
3. Take the long view.
Brian Eno tells a great story about the experience that led him to conceive of the ideas that led to The Long Now Foundation:
It was 1978. I was new to New York. A rich acquaintance had invited me to a housewarming party, and, as my cabdriver wound his way down increasingly potholed and dingy streets, I began wondering whether he’d got the address right. Finally he stopped at the doorway of a gloomy, unwelcoming industrial building. Two winos were crumpled on the steps, oblivious. There was no other sign of life in the whole street.In the talk many years ago where I first heard him tell this story, Brian went on to describe the friend's apartment, the space she controlled, as "the small here," and the space outside, full of winos and derelicts, as "the big here." He went on from there, along with others, to come up with the analogous concept of the Long Now."I think you may have made a mistake", I ventured.
But he hadn’t. My friend’s voice called "Top Floor!" when I rang the bell, and I thought - knowing her sense of humour - "Oh - this is going to be some kind of joke!" I was all ready to laugh. The elevator creaked and clanked slowly upwards, and I stepped out - into a multi-million dollar palace. The contrast with the rest of the building and the street outside couldn’t have been starker.
I just didn’t understand. Why would anyone spend so much money building a place like that in a neighbourhood like this? Later I got into conversation with the hostess. "Do you like it here?" I asked. "It’s the best place I’ve ever lived", she replied. "But I mean, you know, is it an interesting neighbourhood?" "Oh - the neighbourhood? Well…that’s outside!" she laughed.
It's very easy to make local optimizations, but they eventually catch up with you. Our economy has many elements of a ponzi scheme. We borrow from other countries to finance our consumption, we borrow from our children by saddling them with debt and using up non-renewable resources.
It's hard to see beyond the "small here" and the "short now," especially if you live in a favored place and time. That's why so many of the really important things do end up on the plates of non-profits.
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