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3月31日 什么是重要的事情？(转）美国著名出版家Tim O'Reilly最近写了一篇好文章，谈到了如何选择人生道路。
他说：
接下来，他举出了三大标准。如果你做的事情，符合这三条，那就属于重要的事情，值得做下去。否则，你最好思考一下，是否应该就此罢手。 下面就是他的三大标准，以及我的理解。 ====================
1. 不仅仅为了赚钱 青年人容易犯的一个大错误，就是太关注钱，将金钱作为衡量成功的唯一标准。实际上，钱的作用在于，你能用它来干自己想干的事。钱本身并不是生活的目的，你自己想干的事才是。钱就好比汽油，生活的目的不是为了获得汽油，而是为了让汽车加满油之后，去那些你想去的地方。 不要去想你怎样才能赚到钱，而要去想你对他人、对社会的价值在哪里。你要相信，如果你对社会是有价值的，你就一定能够赚到钱，虽然未必很多。 不要让自己变得太现实。很多中国年轻人工作的目的，就是为了早日买到一套自己的房子。你应该有一些更远大的追求，天下的房子有无数套，但是你的人生只有一次。就像网上流传的一句话所说的，“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。” 不要害怕失败。有一句西方谚语说得好，“杀不死你的东西，让你变得更强大。”（What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger.）德国诗人里尔克说过：“同渺小的对手战斗，胜利只能使我们变得同样渺小。我们真正需要的，是英勇地被更强大的对手击败。”（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.） 当你干一件事的时候，如果你更关心什么时候你才能获得回报，而不是什么时候你能做出更大的成果，这通常是一个危险的信号，表明你的人生可能走错了路，你正在浪费自己的生命。 2. 创造了更多的价值 如果你干的事情，不能为世界创造更多的价值，不能抵消成本，那就别去干它。典型的例子就是彩票和博弈。如果你把博彩当作自己的事业，那就太危险了。因为彩票业作为一个整体，不创造任何社会财富，反而要消耗大量的社会财富。只有行将崩溃的乱世，彩票业才会有大发展；任何欣欣向荣的社会，都不会鼓励发展这种浪费社会资源的事情。此外，很大程度上，证券业同博彩业是类似的。许多青年人迷恋炒股，无异于将人生投入赌场，最终只能是浪费了自己宝贵的青春，而一无所获。用经济学的语言说，就是你要回避“零和游戏”，绝不参加像彩票那样的“负和游戏”，而要去做那些为双方带来共赢的事情。 任何真正成功的人生，都是为他人创造价值的人生；任何真正成功的企业，都是为客户创造价值的企业。如果一个朋友不能为我们带来任何正面的反馈，交往就无法维持；如果一个企业的产品，不值客户支付的价钱，客户就会流失，企业就会关门。我们的人生通过不断与他人进行双赢的价值交换，达到壮大自己和发展自己的目的；整个社会通过这样的交换，实现了繁荣和进步。 第一条原则同这一条，是紧密联系在一起的。前者用来判断你选择怎样的事业；后者用来判断你的事业能否成功。以微软公司为例，它的目标从一开始就是“让每个家庭的每一张桌子上，都有一台电脑。”（a computer on every desk and in every home.）这符合原则一。然后，微软公司制造了Windows操作系统，大大增加了电脑的易用性，改变了人类的生活方式。这符合原则二。就是因为微软做到了这二点，所以它成了世界上最赚钱的公司，这并非偶然。 当然，这并不意味盈利是不重要的。相反，它是非常重要的。如果赚不到钱，我们就无法满足生存的基本需要。这里面存在一个平衡问题。我们必须经常自省：我们得到了什么？我们又创造了什么？ 3. 符合长期利益和整体利益 人类的生命只有几十年，这注定了人类是一种短视的动物。我们无法跳脱局部的和短期的视角，来判断自己的利益，尤其不愿意用短期的牺牲，来换取长期的利益。这就是为什么一些对社会发展最重要的事，都是由非营利性组织来推动的原因。 但是，这样做是不对的，是用现在换取将来。规划人生的时候，必须有长期观点，考虑5年后、10年后、甚至20年后的发展。现在有一种论调，提倡大学生“先就业再择业”，这本来只是无路可走时的应急方法，倘若作为找工作的指导思想，就大错特错了。正是因为人生太短暂，一旦走错路，将来再想回头，几乎是不可能的。所以，当短期利益与长期利益发生冲突时，你必须非常小心，必须多考虑将来的需要。 另一方面，当局部利益与整体利益发生冲突时，你还必须考虑到其他人的利益，甚至是子孙的利益。（政府庞大的财政赤字就是在花子孙的钱。）所有人的命运是休戚相关的，你个人的成功是建立在你对集体的价值之上的，所以对你来说重要的事，往往对其他人也是重要的。除了你自己的立场，你还必须站在其他人的立场，判断某件事是否重要。 （完）http://www.ruanyifeng.com/blog/2009/01/stuff_that_matters.html
by Tim O'Reilly | comments: 75 Work on Stuff that Matters: First Principles
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. 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.
I addressed this topic in my commencement address at SIMS a few years ago, and I'll think I'll just quote myself here.
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.
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. Focusing on big goals rather than on making money, and on creating more value than you capture are closely related principles. The first one is a test that applies to those starting something new; the second is the harder test that you must pass in order to create something enduring. 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. 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. That's why a time like this, when the bubble is bursting, is a great time to see how important it is to think about the big picture, and what matters not just to us, but to building a sustainable economy in a sustainable world. |
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