Go deep on things. Become an expert. Read alot. Make things.
深入钻研事物，成为某领域专家，大量阅读，做事！
Every now and again, someone emails me and asks for very general advice. (“How do I change the world?”) With the caveat that I’ve only lived a fraction of one life, and am still trying to figure things out, here’s the advice I’d give past me.
时不时地，会有人给我发电子邮件，向我征求一些非常宽泛的建议。（“我要如何改变世界？”）需要说明的是，我只经历了人生的一小部分，而且仍在努力摸索，以下是我想给过去的自己的建议。
如果你 10 到 20 岁： 这是黄金时期！
If you’re 10–20: These are prime years!
- Go deep on things. Become an expert.
- 深入钻研事物。成为某方面的专家。
- In particular, try to go deep on multiple things. (To varying degrees, I tried to go deep on languages, programming, writing, physics, math. Some of those stuck more than others.) One of the main things you should try to achieve by age 20 is some sense for which kinds of things you enjoy doing. This probably won’t change a lot throughout your life and so you should try to discover the shape of that space as quickly as you can.
- 尤其要尝试在多个领域深入钻研。（在不同程度上，我曾尝试深入钻研语言、编程、写作、物理和数学。其中有些钻研比其他的更有成效。）在 20 岁之前，你应该努力达成的主要目标之一，就是对自己喜欢做的事情有一定的认知。这在你一生中可能不会有太大变化，所以你应该尽快探索出这个领域的大致轮廓。
- Don’t stress out too much about how valuable the things you’re going deep on are… but don’t ignore it either. It should be a factor you weigh but not by itself dispositive.
- 不要过于纠结你所深入钻研的事物有多大价值…… 但也不要忽视这一点。它应该是你权衡的一个因素，但仅凭这一点并不能起决定性作用。
- To the extent that you enjoy working hard, do. Subject to that constraint, it’s not clear that the returns to effort ever diminish substantially. If you’re lucky enough to enjoy it a lot, be grateful and take full advantage!
- 只要你享受努力工作，那就去做。在这个前提下，很难说努力的回报会大幅减少。如果你足够幸运，非常享受努力工作，那就心怀感恩并充分利用这一点！
- Make friends over the internet with people who are great at things you’re interested in. The internet is one of the biggest advantages you have over prior generations. Leverage it.
- 在网上与那些擅长你所感兴趣之事的人交朋友。互联网是你相对于前几代人所拥有的最大优势之一。好好利用它。
- Aim to read a lot.
- 目标是大量阅读。
- If you think something is important but people older than you don’t hold it in high regard, there’s a reasonable chance that you’re right and they’re wrong. Status lags by a generation or more.
- 如果你认为某件事很重要，但比你年长的人却不重视它，那么很有可能你是对的，而他们是错的。地位的变化往往滞后一代人甚至更久。
- Above all else, don’t make the mistake of judging your success based on your current peer group. By all means make friends but being weird as a teenager is generally good.
- 最重要的是，不要犯以当前同龄人来评判自己是否成功的错误。一定要交朋友，但青少年时期有点特立独行通常是好事。
- But having good social skills confers life-long benefits. So, don’t write them off. Get good at making a good first impression, being funny (if possible… this author still working on it…), speaking publicly.
- 但是，拥有良好的社交技能会带来终身的益处。所以，不要忽视它们。要擅长给人留下良好的第一印象，风趣幽默（如果可能的话…… 本文作者仍在努力……），以及公开演讲。
- Make things. Operating in a space with a lot of uncertainty is a very different experience to learning something.
- 动手去做。在充满不确定性的环境中行动，与学习某样东西是截然不同的体验。
- More broadly, nobody is going to teach you to think for yourself. A large fraction of what people around you believe is mistaken. Internalize this and practice coming up with your own worldview. The correlation between it and those around you shouldn’t be too strong unless you think you were especially lucky in your initial conditions.
- 更广泛地说，没有人会教你如何独立思考。你周围的人，他们的很多观点都是错误的。要牢记这一点，并尝试形成自己的世界观。除非你认为自己的初始条件格外幸运，否则你的世界观与周围人的世界观之间的关联不应过于紧密。
- If you’re in the US and go to a good school, there are a lot of forces that will push you towards following traintracks laid by others rather than charting a course yourself. Make sure that the things you’re pursuing are weird things that you want to pursue, not whatever the standard path is. Heuristic: do your friends at school think your path is a bit strange? If not, maybe it’s too normal.
- 如果你身处美国，并且上的是一所好学校，那么会有诸多因素促使你去追随他人铺设好的轨道，而非自己规划路线。要确保你所追求的是那些你自己想追求的独特事物，而不是循规蹈矩地走常规路线。判断方法是：你学校里的朋友是否觉得你的道路有点奇怪？如果没有，那可能就太普通了。
- Figure out a way to travel to San Francisco and to meet other people who’ve moved there to pursue their dreams. Why San Francisco? San Francisco is the Schelling point for high-openness, smart, energetic, optimistic people. Global Weird HQ. Take advantage of opportunities to travel to other places too, of course.
- 想办法前往旧金山，结识其他为了追逐梦想而搬到那里的人。为什么是旧金山呢？旧金山是高度开放、聪慧、充满活力且乐观之人的谢林点(博弈论概念，意为“共同选择”)。全球奇人汇聚之地。当然，也要抓住机会去其他地方走走。
- Find vivid examples of success in the domains you care about. If you want to become a great scientist, try to find ways to spend time with good (or, ideally, great) scientists in person. Watch YouTube videos of interviews. Follow some on Twitter.
- 在你关心的领域中寻找生动的成功案例。如果你想成为一名伟大的科学家，试着想办法亲自与优秀（或者，理想情况下，杰出）的科学家相处。观看 YouTube 上的访谈视频。在推特上关注一些科学家。
- People who did great things often did so at very surprisingly young ages. (They were grayhaired when they became famous… not when they did the work.) So, hurry up! You can do great things.
- 成就伟大事业的人，往往在极其年轻的时候就做到了。（他们成名时已是满头白发…… 但做出成就时并非如此。）所以，赶紧行动起来！你也能成就伟大。
If you’re 20–30: I don’t know yet. I plan to think about this when I’m 35-40.
如果你已经20-30岁： 我也不知道，我打算到35-40岁时思考这个问题。