If you collected lists of techniques for doing great work in a lot of different fields, what would the intersection look like? I decided to find out by making it.

如果你收集了许多不同领域中做出卓越工作的技巧清单，那么这些清单的交集会是什么样子呢？我决定通过实践来找出答案。

Partly my goal was to create a guide that could be used by someone working in any field. But I was also curious about the shape of the intersection. And one thing this exercise shows is that it does have a definite shape; it's not just a point labelled "work hard."

我的目标部分是想创建一份适用于任何领域的指南。但我同样对各个领域之间的交集形态感到好奇。通过这个练习，我发现交集确实有一个明确的形态，并不仅仅是简单地被标记为“努力工作”。

The following recipe assumes you're very ambitious.

这个食谱是为非常有挑战精神的人准备的。

The first step is to decide what to work on. The work you choose needs to have three qualities: it has to be something you have a natural aptitude for, that you have a deep interest in, and that offers scope to do great work.

第一步是决定要做什么工作。你所选择的工作需要具备三个特点：首先，你需要对它有天生的才能；其次，你要对它有浓厚的兴趣；最后，它还应该有发挥出色工作的空间。

In practice you don't have to worry much about the third criterion. Ambitious people are if anything already too conservative about it. So all you need to do is find something you have an aptitude for and great interest in.

实际情况下，你不必过于担心第三个标准。雄心勃勃的人通常在这方面反而显得有些过于保守。因此，你只需要找到自己有天赋并且非常感兴趣的事情就可以了。

That sounds straightforward, but it's often quite difficult. When you're young you don't know what you're good at or what different kinds of work are like. Some kinds of work you end up doing may not even exist yet. So while some people know what they want to do at 14, most have to figure it out.

这听起来很简单，但实际上往往很难。当你年轻的时候，你并不清楚自己擅长什么，也不了解各种工作的性质。有些你以后从事的工作现在可能根本不存在。因此，尽管有些人在 14 岁时就知道自己想做什么，但大多数人需要慢慢摸索找到答案。

The way to figure out what to work on is by working. If you're not sure what to work on, guess. But pick something and get going. You'll probably guess wrong some of the time, but that's fine. It's good to know about multiple things; some of the biggest discoveries come from noticing connections between different fields.

要知道该做些什么，最好的方法就是直接动手去做。如果不确定要做什么，就大胆猜测一下，然后选择一个方向开始行动。可能有时候会猜错，但这没关系。了解多方面的东西是有好处的，因为一些重大发现往往来源于不同领域之间的联系。

Develop a habit of working on your own projects. Don't let "work" mean something other people tell you to do. If you do manage to do great work one day, it will probably be on a project of your own. It may be within some bigger project, but you'll be driving your part of it.

养成独立进行项目的习惯，不要把“工作”仅仅看作是别人要求你去做的事情。假如有一天你能够做出卓越的成就，那极有可能是在你主导的项目中实现的。即便是在一个更大的项目中，你也应该掌握自己负责部分的主动权。

What should your projects be? Whatever seems to you excitingly ambitious. As you grow older and your taste in projects evolves, exciting and important will converge. At 7 it may seem excitingly ambitious to build huge things out of Lego, then at 14 to teach yourself calculus, till at 21 you're starting to explore unanswered questions in physics. But always preserve excitingness.

你应该选择什么样的项目呢？是那些令你感到振奋且充满挑战的项目。随着年龄的增长及对项目的兴趣变化，你会发现令人振奋的事情也会变得重要。在你 7 岁时，可能觉得用乐高建造大型结构很有吸引力；到了 14 岁，可能会自学微积分；而在 21 岁时，你可能会开始探索物理学中尚未解决的问题。但无论如何，都要保持对项目的热情和兴奋。