Luck

I claim that luck will not cover everything. And I will cite Pasteur who said, “Luck favors the prepared mind.”And I think that says it the way I believe it. There is indeed an element of luck, and no, there isn’t. The prepared mind sooner or later finds something important and does it.

我认为运气并不能覆盖一切。我会引用巴斯德的话，“幸运眷顾有准备的头脑。”我认为这就是我所相信的。确实有运气的成分，但不，没有。有准备的头脑迟早会发现一些重要的事情并去做

Independence

One of the characteristics you see, and many people have it including great scientists, is that usually when they were young they had independent thoughts and had the courage to pursue them.

你看到的特征之一，包括伟大的科学家在内的许多人都具有这种特征，就是他们通常在年轻时就有独立的思想，并且有勇气去追求它们

Courage

One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage. Once you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems, then you can. If you think you can’t, almost surely you are not going to. Courage is one of the things that Shannon had supremely. You have only to think of his major theorem.

成功科学家的特征之一就是有勇气。一旦你鼓起勇气并相信你可以解决重要的问题，那么你就可以。如果你认为你做不到，几乎可以肯定你不会这么做。勇气是香农所拥有的至高无上的品质之一。你只要想想他的大定理就可以了

Working Conditions

What most people think are the best working conditions, are not. Very clearly they are not because people are often most productive when working conditions are bad. One of the better times of the Cambridge Physical Laboratories was when they had practically shacks - they did some of the best physics ever.

大多数人认为是最好的工作条件，但事实并非如此。很明显，情况并非如此，因为当工作条件恶劣时，人们的生产力往往最高。剑桥物理实验室最好的时光之一是他们几乎拥有棚屋的时候——他们做了一些有史以来最好的物理学。

Conscientiousness

What Bode was saying was this: Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest. Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it is very much like compound interest. I don’t want to give you a rate, but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime. I took Bode’s remark to heart; I spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit harder and I found, in fact, I could get more work done. I don’t like to say it in front of my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There’s no question about this.

博德所说的是这样的：“知识和生产力就像复利。”如果两个人的能力大致相同，而一个人比另一个人多工作百分之十，那么后者的产出将是前者的两倍多。你知道的越多，你学到的就越多；你学得越多，你能做的就越多；你能做的越多，机会就越多——这很像复利。我不想给你一个价格，但这是一个非常高的价格。如果两个人的能力完全相同，那么一个人日复一日地多花一小时思考，一生的生产力就会大大提高。我把博德的话牢记在心；几年来，我花了很多时间尝试更加努力地工作，我发现，事实上，我可以完成更多的工作。我不喜欢在我妻子面前说这些，但有时我确实有点忽视了她；我需要学习。如果你想完成你想做的事，你就必须忽略一些事情。这是毫无疑问的。

Work Smarter

这就是问题所在；误用的驱动力并不能让你取得任何进展。我经常想，为什么我在贝尔实验室的许多好朋友，他们工作得和我一样努力或比我更努力，但却没有那么多的成果。努力的误用是一个非常严重的问题。仅仅努力是不够的 - 它必须明智地应用。

That’s the trouble; drive, misapplied, doesn’t get you anywhere. I’ve often wondered why so many of my good friends at Bell Labs who worked as hard or harder than I did, didn’t have so much to show for it. The misapplication of effort is a very serious matter. Just hard work is not enough - it must be applied sensibly

Uncertainty

There’s another trait on the side which I want to talk about; that trait is ambiguity.

还有另一种特质我想谈谈，那就是模糊性。

Most people like to believe something is or is not true. Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very well. They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement theory. If you believe too much you’ll never notice the flaws; if you doubt too much you won’t get started. It requires a lovely balance.

大多数人喜欢相信某件事是或不是真的。伟大的科学家非常能够容忍模糊性。他们足够相信理论来继续前进；他们又对其持足够的怀疑，以便注意到错误和缺陷，从而推进并创建新的替代理论。如果你过于相信，你永远不会注意到缺陷；如果你怀疑得太多，你就不会开始。这需要一个很好的平衡。

Subconscious(潜意识)

If you are deeply immersed and committed to a topic, day after day after day, your subconscious has nothing to do but work on your problem. And so you wake up one morning, or on some afternoon, and there’s the answer. For those who don’t get committed to their current problem, the subconscious goofs off on other things and doesn’t produce the big result.So the way to manage yourself is that when you have a real important problem you don’t let anything else get the center of your attention—you keep your thoughts on the problem. Keep your subconscious starved so it has to work on your problem, so you can sleep peacefully and get the answer in the morning, free.

如果你深深地沉浸在一个主题中，日复一日，你的潜意识除了解决你的问题之外什么也不做。所以你有一天早上或某个下午醒来，就会得到答案。对于那些不致力于解决当前问题的人来说，潜意识会在其他事情上闲逛，并且不会产生重大结果。所以管理自己的方法是，当你遇到一个真正重要的问题时，你不要让任何其他事情成为你注意力的中心——你把你的想法集中在这个问题上。让你的潜意识处于饥饿状态，这样它才能解决你的问题，这样你就可以安然入睡，并在早上自由地得到答案。

The Importance of Importance

I had worked with one of the fellows, DaveMcCall; furthermore he was courting our secretary at the time. I went over and said, “Do you mind if I join you?” They can’t say no, so I started eating with them for a while. And I started asking, “What are the important problems of your field?” And after a week or so, “What important problems are you working on?” And after some more time I came in one day and said, “If what you are doing is not important, and if you don’t think it is going to lead to something important, why are you at Bell Labs working on it?”

我曾与其中一位研究员戴夫·麦考尔（Dave McCall）一起工作。此外，他当时正在向我们的秘书求爱。我走过去说：“你介意我加入你们吗？”他们不能拒绝，所以我开始和他们一起吃了一会儿。我开始问，你所在领域的重要问题是什么？”大约一周后，你正在研究哪些重要问题？”又过了一段时间，有一天我进来说，如果你是什么做什么并不重要，如果你认为这不会带来重要的结果，那你为什么要在贝尔实验室从事这方面的工作

Great Thoughts Fridays

I finally adopted what I called “Great Thoughts Time”. When I went to lunch Friday noon, I would only discuss great thoughts after that. By great thoughts I mean ones like: “What will be the role of computers in all of AT&T?”, “How will computers change science?”

我最终采纳了我称之为“伟大思考时刻”的方法。当我在周五中午去吃午饭时，之后我只会讨论伟大的想法。所谓伟大的想法，我指的是像：“计算机在整个AT&T中的角色会是什么？”、“计算机会如何改变科学？”这样的问题。

Open Door Policy

Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed26. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don’t know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important.

另一个特点，我花了一段时间才注意到。我注意到以下关于那些开门或关门工作的人的事实。我注意到，如果你关上办公室的门，你今天和明天就会完成更多的工作，而且你的工作效率会比大多数人更高。但 10 年后，不知何故，你不太清楚哪些问题值得解决；你所做的所有努力都显得无关紧要。敞开大门工作的人会受到各种干扰，但他偶尔也会得到一些线索，了解世界是什么以及什么可能是重要的。

Solve More General Problems

You should do your job in such a fashion that others can build on top of it, so they will indeed say, “Yes, I’ve stood on so-and-so’s shoulders and I saw further.”29 The essence of science is cumulative. By changing a problem slightly you can often do great work rather than merely good work.

你应该以这样的方式做你的工作，让其他人可以在它的基础上继续发展，这样他们确实会说，“是的，我站在某人的肩膀上，我看得更远。”科学的本质是累积的。通过稍微改变一个问题，你通常可以做得很好，而不仅仅是做好工作。

Selling Science

I have now come down to a topic which is very distasteful; it is not sufficient to do a job, you have to sell it.

我现在谈到一个非常令人反感的话题； 仅仅做一份工作是不够的，你必须去销售他。

The world is supposed to be waiting, and when you do something great, they should rush out and welcome it. But the fact is everyone is busy with their own work. You must present it so well that they will set aside what they are doing, look at what you’ve done, read it, and come back and say, Yes, that was good.

你做了一些伟大的事情时，他们应该冲出来并欢迎它。但事实是每个人都忙着自己的工作。你必须把它展示得很好，这样他们就会把他们正在做的事情放在一边，看看你做了什么，读完它，然后回来说，“是的，那很好“

There are three things you have to do in selling. You have to learn to write clearly and well so that people will read it, you must learn to give reasonably formal talks, and you also must learn to give informal talks.

销售时必须做三件事。你必须学会​​写得清楚、写得好，以便人们能够阅读，你必须学会​​进行相当正式的演讲，你还必须学会进行非正式的演讲。

Success Summary

多年来的每个周五下午的伟大思考时刻练习，意味着我投入了我10%的时间去尝试理解这个领域中更大的问题，即什么是重要的，什么不是。我发现在早期，我曾相信这个方向，但整个星期我都朝那个方向前进。这有点愚蠢。如果我真的相信行动在那边，为什么我要往这个方向前进呢？我要么需要改变我的目标，要么改变我所做的事。所以我改变了我所做的某些事，并朝我认为重要的方向前进。

Friday afternoons for years - great thoughts only - means that I committed 10% of my time trying to understand the bigger problems in the field, i.e. what was and what was not important. I found in the early days I had believed this’ and yet had spent all week marching in that’ direction. It was kind of foolish. If I really believe the action is over there, why do I march in this direction? I either had to change my goal or change what I did. So I changed something I did and I marched in the direction I thought was important.

Causes of Failure

在贝尔实验室的数学系里，有不少人比我更有能力、更有天赋，但他们的成果却没有我那么多。他们中有些人的产量确实比我多；有些人的产量确实比我多。香农的产出比我多，其他一些人的产出也很多，但我在对抗许多其他装备更好的人时效率很高。为什么会这样呢？他们发生了什么？为什么这么多有远大前途的人却失败了？

Lack of Conscientiousness

原因之一是动力和承诺。那些能力较差但全身心投入工作的人，比那些技术精湛、涉足其中、白天工作回家做其他事情第二天又回来工作的人完成更多的工作。他们没有真正一流工作所必需的坚定承诺。

Inability to Delegate(缺乏委派工作的能力)

第二个我认为是性格缺陷的问题：有些人有想要完全掌控的性格缺陷，不愿意承认自己需要系统的支持，这样局限了他们的产出上限——他们个人能力的上限。

Fighting the System

Personal Attire

Another personality defect is ego assertion

另一个人格缺陷是自我主张

I had to make the decision - was I going to assert my ego and dress the way I wanted to and have it steadily drain my effort from my professional life, or was I going to appear to conform better? I decided I would make an effort to appear to conform properly. The moment I did, I got much better service.

我必须做出决定——我是要坚持我的自我，按照我想要的方式穿着，让它逐渐耗尽我在职业生活中的精力，还是让我显得更顺从？我决定努力表现得合乎规矩。当我这样做的那一刻，我得到了更好的服务。我知道不要让我的衣服、我的外表、我的举止妨碍我关心的事情。许多科学家认为他们必须维护自己的自我并按照自己的方式做事。

Hills To Die On

Which do you want to be? The person who changes the system or the person who does first-class science? Which person is it that you want to be? Be clear, when you fight the system and struggle with it, what you are doing, how far to go out of amusement, and how much to waste your effort fighting the system. My advice is to let somebody else do it and you get on with becoming a first-class scientist. Very few of you have the ability to both reform the system and become a first-class scientist.

你想成为哪一个？改变制度的人还是做出一流科学的人？你想成为哪一个人？清楚地知道，当你与系统作斗争并与之斗争时，你在做什么，离娱乐有多远，以及在与系统作斗争时浪费了多少精力。我的建议是让别人去做，然后你就可以成为一流的科学家。你们中很少有人有能力既改革体制又成为一流的科学家。

Negativity

寻找事情积极的一面，而不是消极的一面

I converted what was apparently a defect to an asset. I’ll give you another example. I am an egotistical person; there is no doubt about it. I knew that most people who took a sabbatical to write a book, didn’t finish it on time. So before I left, I told all my friends that when I come back, that book was going to be done! Yes, I would have it done—I’d have been ashamed to come back without it! I used my ego to make myself behave the way I wanted to.

我如何通过改变看待问题的方式，将明显的缺陷转化为资产。我再举一个例子。我是一个自负的人；这个毋庸置疑。我知道大多数利用休假来写书的人都没有按时完成。所以在我离开之前，我告诉我所有的朋友，当我回来时，那本书就要完成了！是的，我希望能完成它——如果没有它，我会感到羞愧！我用我的自我让自己按照我想要的方式行事。

I bragged about something so I’d have to perform. I found out many times, like a cornered rat in a real trap, I was surprisingly capable. I have found that it paid to say, “Oh yes, I’ll get the answer for you Tuesday”, not having any idea how to do it. By Sunday night I was really hard thinking on how I was going to deliver by Tuesday. I often put my pride on the line and sometimes I failed, but as I said, like a cornered rat I’m surprised how often I did a good job.

我吹嘘了一些事情，所以我必须表演。很多次我发现，我就像一只陷入困境的老鼠，能力惊人。我发现，在不知道该怎么做的情况下说“哦，是的，我周二会给你答案”是值得的。到了周日晚上，我真的很努力地思考如何在周二之前交付。我经常把自己的自尊置于危险之中，有时我会失败，但正如我所说，就像一只走投无路的老鼠，我很惊讶自己有多少次做得很好

如果你真的想成为一名一流的科学家，你需要了解你自己，你的弱点，你的优点，以及你的缺点，比如我的自私。

Q&A

问：图书馆工作应该投入多少精力？

答：贝尔实验室有一个人，一个非常非常聪明的人。他总是在图书馆；他阅读了所有内容。如果你想要推荐信，你就去找他，他给了你各种推荐信。但在形成这些理论的过程中，我形成了一个命题：从长远来看，不会有以他命名的效应。他现已从贝尔实验室退休，担任兼职教授。他非常有价值；我不是质疑这一点。他写了一些非常好的《物理评论》文章；但没有任何效应以他的名字命名，因为他读得太多了。如果你一直阅读其他人所做的事情，你就会以他们的方式思考。如果你想思考不同的新想法，那就像很多有创造力的人所做的那样——把问题弄清楚，然后拒绝看任何答案，直到你仔细思考问题，你会如何做，如何做。

问： research or management？

当你对自己想做的事情的愿景是你可以单枪匹马完成的事情时，那么你应该追求它。当你的愿景、你认为需要做的事情比你单枪匹马能做的事情更大的时候，那么你就必须走向管理。愿景越大，你在管理上就必须走得越远。