o You Have to Be a Jerk to Be Great?

只有混蛋的偏执狂才能变得伟大吗？

Soren Kierkegaard asked God to give him the power to will one thing. Amid all the distractions¹ of life he asked for the power to live a focused life, wholeheartedly, toward a single point.

索伦·基尔克果(Soren Kierkegaard)要上帝赋予他得到一样事物的力量。生活中充满分心之物，他要求得到这种力量，让他度过全心全意、只追求一个目标的一生。

And we've all known geniuses and others who have practiced a secular² version of this. They have found their talent and specialty³. They focus monomaniacally upon it. They put in the 10,000 hours (and more) that true excellence⁴ requires.

我们都知道，天才和其余的人实践过这个故事的世俗版本。他们找到了自己的天赋和专长。他们像偏执狂一样专注于其中。他们投入了实现真正的卓越所需的一万个（甚至更多）小时。

I just read "You Must Change Your Life," Rachel Corbett's joint biography of the sculptor⁵ Auguste Rodin and his protégé, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and they were certainly versions of this type.

我刚读完《你必须要改变生活》(You Must Change Your Life)，它是蕾切尔·库贝特(Rachel Corbett)为雕塑家奥古斯特·罗丹和他的门生、诗人莱纳·玛利亚·里尔克所著的联合传记，他们无疑属于这种类型。

The elder Rodin had one lesson for the young Rilke. "Travailler, toujours travailler." Work, always work.

老罗丹给年轻的里尔克上了一堂课。“Travailler, toujours travailler.”工作，一直工作。

This is the heroic vision of the artist. He renounces⁶ earthly and domestic pleasures and throws himself into his craft. Only through total dedication⁷ can you really see deeply and produce art.

这是艺术家的英雄式视野。他放弃了世俗和家庭的快乐，一心钻研他的技艺。只有全身心地投入，你才能真正看得透彻并创造出艺术。

In his studio, Rodin could be feverishly⁸ obsessed⁹, oblivious¹⁰ to all around him. "He abided by his own code, and no one else's standards could measure him," Corbett writes. "He contained within himself his own universe, which Rilke decided¹¹ was more valuable than living in a world of others' making."在他的工作室里，罗丹可能会疯狂沉迷、察觉不到周围的一切。“他遵循自己的准则，其他人的标准没有能用来衡量他的，”库贝特写道。“他把自己关在自己的宇宙里，里尔克认定，这比生活在他人创造的世界里更有价值。”

Rilke had the same solitary¹² focus. With the bohemian revelry of turn-of-the-century Paris all around him, Rilke was alone writing in his room. He didn't drink or dance. He celebrated¹³ love, but as a general outlook and not as something you gave to any one person or place.

里尔克有着同样孤独的专注点。世纪之交的巴黎，周围尽是波西米亚式的狂欢，里尔克却独自在房间里写作。他没去饮酒或跳舞。他赞美爱，但却是就广义而言，而非作为你给予任何人或任何地方什么东西。

Both men produced masterworks that millions have treasured. But readers finish Corbett's book feeling that both men had misspent their lives.

两人都创造出了世人所珍视的杰作。但在合上库贝特的书时，读者的感觉是，两人都虚度了他们的生命。

They were both horrid¹⁴ to their wives and children. Rodin grew pathetically creepy, needy¹⁵ and lonely. Rilke didn't go back home as his father was dying, nor allow his wife and child to be with him as he died. Both men lived most of their lives without intimate care.

他们对待自己妻儿的方式令人惊骇。罗丹的怪异、取索和孤僻已经到了可悲的地步。里尔克在父亲临终前没有回家，本人去世时也不让妻子和孩子陪在身边。两人一生中大部分时间都没有得到亲密的关爱。

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Their lives raise the question: Do you have to be so obsessively¹⁶ focused to be great? The traditional masculine answer is yes. But probably the right answer is no.

他们的人生引出了一个问题：你要如此痴迷专注才能变得伟大吗？传统上的男性化回答是肯定的。但很可能，正确的答案是否定的。

In the first place, being monomaniacal may not even be good for your work. Another book on my summer reading list was "Range," by David Epstein. It's a powerful argument that generalists perform better than specialists.

首先，当个偏执狂或许甚至对你的工作没有好处。我夏季阅读清单上的另一本书是戴维·爱泼斯坦(David Epstein)的《范围》(Range)。该书阐述了通才胜过专才的有力论点。

The people who achieve excellence tend to have one foot outside their main world. "Compared to other scientists, Nobel laureates are at least 22 times more likely to partake as an amateur actor, dancer, magician or other type of performer," Epstein writes.

实现卓越的人往往会在主领域外有所涉猎。“与其他科学家相比，诺贝尔奖获得者同时也是业余演员、舞者、魔术师或其他类型表演者的可能性，是常人的22倍，”爱泼斯坦写道。

He shows the same pattern in domain¹⁷ after domain: People who specialize in one thing succeed early, but then they slide back to mediocrity as their minds rigidify¹⁸.

他指出各个领域都存在同样的模式：专长于一样事物的人能在早年取得成功，但此后随着头脑僵化，他们会沦为平庸之辈。

Children who explore many instruments when they are young end up as more skilled musicians than the ones who are locked into just one. People who transition between multiple careers when they are young end up ahead over time because they can take knowledge in one domain and apply it to another.

小时候曾经探索很多乐器的孩子，最终会成为比局限于一种乐器的孩子更有技巧的音乐家。年轻时在多个职业之间转换的人最终会取得领先，因为他们可以把一个领域的知识应用到另一个领域。

A tech entrepreneur who is 50 is twice as likely to start a superstar company than one who is 30, because he or she has a broader range of experience. A survey of the fastest-growing tech start-ups found that the average age of the founder¹⁹ was 45.

50岁的科技创业者创办超级明星公司的可能性，是30岁企业家的两倍，因为他或她拥有更广泛的经验。一项对增长最快的科技初创企业的调查发现，创始人的平均年龄为45岁。

For most people, creativity is precisely²⁰ the ability to pursue multiple interests at once, and then bring them together in new ways. "Without contraries is no progression," William Blake wrote.

对大多数人来说，创造力正是同时追求多种兴趣，然后以新的方式将它们结合在一起的能力。“没有对立就没有进步，”威廉·布莱克写道。

Furthermore, living a great life is more important than producing great work. A life devoted²¹ to one thing is a stunted²² life, while a pluralistic life is an abundant one. This is a truth feminism has brought into the culture. Women have rarely been able to live as monads. They were generally compelled to switch, hour by hour, between different domains²³ and roles: home, work, market, the neighborhood.

此外，过一种伟大的生活比创作伟大的作品更重要。专注于一件事的人生是未能充分发展的人生，多元的人生才是丰富的人生。这是女权主义带入文化的真理。女性很少能像单细胞生物一样生活。她们无时无刻都要被迫在不同的领域和角色之间转换：家庭、工作、市场和邻里。

A better definition of success is living within the tension of multiple commitments and trying to make them mutually enhancing. The shape of this success is a pentagram — the five-pointed star. You have your five big passions in life — say, family, vocation²⁴, friends, community, faith — and live flexibly within the gravitational pull of each.

对成功更好的定义是生活在多重承诺的压力中，并努力令它们相互促进。这种成功的形状是一个五角星——你在生活中拥有的五种激情——家庭、职业、朋友、社区、信仰——并在每一种激情的引力之下灵活地生活。

You join communities that are different from one another. You gain wisdom by entering into different kinds of consciousness. You find freedom at the borderlands between your communities.

你加入彼此不同的社区。你通过研究不同的意识获得智慧。你在社区之间的边界找到自由。

Over the past month, while reading these books, I attended four conferences. Two were very progressive, with almost no conservatives. The other two were very conservative, with almost no progressives. Each of the worlds was so hermetically sealed I found that I couldn't even describe one world to members of the other. It would have been like trying to describe bicycles to a fish.

在过去的一个月里，当我读这些书的时候，我参加了四个会议。其中两个非常进步，几乎没有保守派。另外两个非常保守，几乎没有进步派。每一个世界都是如此封闭，我发现我甚至不能向其他成员描述一个世界。就像试图向鱼描述自行车一样。

I was reading about how rich the pluralistic life is, and how stifling²⁵ a homogeneous life is. And I was realizing that while we're learning to preach a gospel of openness and diversity, we're mostly not living it. In the realm of public life, many live as monads, within the small circles of one specialty, one code, no greatness.

我读到多元生活是多么丰富多彩，而同质生活又是多么沉闷乏味。我意识到，当我们在学着宣扬开放和多样性的福音时，我们大多并没有实践它。在公共生活领域，许多人都像单细胞生物一样生活，局限在一个专业、一种规范的小圈子里，看不到更广阔的天地。