My Takeaway Points From Paul Graham’s “The bus ticket of genius”閱讀心得：保羅葛拉罕的〈通往天才的車票〉

I’ve been reading loads of blogs and some of them are from Y Combinator’s founder Paul Graham. Wrote some takeaways for myself, put it here as a record. This is the first one. 最近照著興趣隨機閱讀了很多部落格文章，好一部分來自美國創業加速器Y Combinator創辦人Paul Graham，記錄一下。這是寫了記錄的第一篇。（中文版下滑）

Obsessive interest is the most important one among all the three factors that make great work. Why? Since there won’t be an obsessive interest in something without ability in it, and obsessive interest makes you work harder than determination does. In other words, I can only look into what I’m obsessively interested in and follow them to do great work. However, even though great works come from interest, there’s no saying that all obsessive interests lead to great work, like alchemy and theology being Newton’s interest as Physics did; only his interest in using math to describe the world paid off eventually. So, uncertainty is intensely involved. Not only is risk proportionate to reward, but the same interest and the same hard work at different times may lead to different outcomes as well. How can I deal with it?

First, suppose I insist only on following my interests. In that case, there are still some paths that are more likely to yield something great than others despite the uncertainty — when you’re creating instead of consuming things created by others; when it’s something very difficult but is more difficult for others instead of for you; or it’s something that talented people are also interested in.

Those are the traits I can pay attention to when I’m looking at my interests: reading is good, but writing afterthoughts is better, and writing on my ideas is even better. Always thinking is good, but thinking in an organized way to produce something new is better. And since writing and thinking systematically are things that talented people do all the time, those two interests I can dig deep into — or at least I can keep. Turning back to tackling the uncertainty, there are two solutions: I can either reduce risk by following the routes that are known for promising rewards, or I can also separate my interest into different areas and be interested in many other things, which is exactly what I am good at naturally.

Both of the above solutions have their shortcomings: one is the reduction of reward, owing to the nature of risk and reward growing simultaneously, and the other is that you might get distracted by too many interests and will not be able to get deep into each of them. I have experienced too much of the latter solution and have been afraid to or, to be honest, thought of myself too high to take the first one. Thus, I still didn’t get any helpful advice from this essay regarding how concentrated I should be and can be, but I was encouraged to pursue my interests more.

Despite all these, since natural ability, hard work, plus interest make great work, that is to say, people can cultivate interest to cultivate genius, and there’s no reason I can’t use the same way on myself.

Some other a bit tangent but interesting ideas in the essay: people are less likely to do great work after having children, not only because they have less time, but also because they have other interests — spending time with their children. Which reminds me of my interest to look into women marital situations in academic areas especially in higher education system. Also, I can see why my productivity lately is declining — — or, let’s face the reality, my entire college time — — since I’m continuously in relationships, not to mention I got even further now — — I’m in an open relationship. If I count my interest in romantic relationships, that could explain my low productivity and lack of concentration. Yet that’s only explainable, not acceptable. But I literally can’t live without a relationship, so that’s something I should work on more, seriously.

The second is why age affects people’s ability to do great work. And It’s not age, but the responsibility on one’s shoulder matter. The writer’s suggestion is to be irresponsible, to do irrelevant and random projects that their most significant advantage is my interest. Interesting. Isn’t that something I’ve been doing for my whole life? After giving it some seconds, I realized this is not necessarily true, although I always think of it this way. I still spent too much time caring about other people’s opinions and how I looked. Anyway. I now am certain my analytics regarding this topic before were correct; at least some great man who’s done great work thinks the same as I do, so the rest is to decide, and that’s my but no one’s decision to make.

Questions brought in the essay: Q1: what are the most important problems in your field, and why aren’t you working on one of them? Q2: if you could take a year off to work on something that probably wouldn’t be important but would be really interesting, what would it be?

（原文是用英文寫的，中文翻譯自deepl、繁體簡體轉換。） 在成就偉大作品的三個因素中，「執著的興趣 」是最重要的因素。為什麽？因為沒有能力就不會對某件事情產生執著的興趣，而執著的興趣會讓你比決心更努力。換句話說，我只能研究我癡迷的東西，並跟著它們去做偉大的作品。 然而，即使偉大的作品來自興趣，也不能說所有癡迷的興趣都能帶來偉大的作品，比如煉金術和神學是牛頓的興趣，物理學也是如此；只有他用數學描述世界的興趣最終得到了回報。

因此，不確定性是非常重要的。不僅風險與回報成正比，而且同樣的興趣和同樣的努力在不同的時間也可能導致不同的結果。我該如何應對呢？

首先，假設我只堅持追隨自己的興趣。在這種情況下，盡管存在不確定性，但仍有一些路徑比其他路徑更有可能產生偉大的成果 — 當你在創造而不是消費別人創造的東西時；當這是一件非常困難的事情，但對別人、而不是對你來說更困難時；或者這是一件有才華的人也感興趣的事情。當我審視自己的興趣時，我可以注意到這些特點：閱讀是好事，但寫讀後感更好，而寫出自己的想法更好。總在思考是好事，但有條理地思考以產生新東西則更好。由於寫作和有條理的思考是有才能的人一直在做的事情，所以這兩個興趣我可以深入挖掘 — 至少我可以保持。

回到解決不確定性的問題上，有兩種解決方案： 我可以沿著已知的有希望獲得回報的路線前進，從而降低風險；我也可以將自己的興趣分成不同的領域，對許多其他事情感興趣，這正是我天生擅長的事情。 上述兩種解決方案都有其不足之處：一是由於風險和回報同時增長的特性，回報會減少；二是你可能會被太多的興趣分散注意力，無法深入到每個興趣中去。我經歷了太多的後一種解決辦法，不敢說，或者說實話，自視過高而不敢采取第一種辦法。因此，我還是沒有從這篇文章中得到任何關於我應該如何集中精力以及可以如何集中精力的有用建議，但我得到了更多追求自己興趣的鼓勵。盡管如此，既然天賦、勤奮加上興趣可以造就偉大的作品，也就是說，人們可以通過培養興趣來培養天才，我沒有理由不用同樣的方法來培養自己。

這篇文章中還有一些有點偏題但很有趣的觀點：人們在有了孩子之後就不太可能做出偉大的作品，這不僅是因為他們的時間少了，還因為他們有了其他的興趣 — 花時間陪孩子。這讓我想起了我對研究學術領域，尤其是高等教育系統中女性婚姻狀況的興趣。另外，我也明白了為什麽我最近的工作效率在下降 — 或者說，面對現實吧，其實是我的整個大學時光 — 因為我一直關係中，更不用說我現在更進一步談起開放式的戀愛。如果談戀愛算是一種興趣，這就可以解釋我工作效率低、注意力不集中的原因了。然而，這只能解釋，不能接受。但我確實是個得一直維持在關係裡的人，所以這真的是件我應該認真努力思考得到解法的事情。

其次是為什麽年齡會影響人們幹大事的能力。不是年齡，而是肩上的責任。作者的建議是不負責任，做一些無關緊要的、隨意的項目，它們最大的優勢就只是我的興趣。這很有意思。這不是我一輩子都在做的事情嗎？幾秒鐘之後，我意識到這並不一定是真的，盡管我總是這麽想。我還是花了太多時間去在意別人的看法和自己做的事看上去如何。 總之。我現在確信，我之前對這個話題的分析是正確的；至少有一些做了偉大工作的偉人和我的想法是一樣的，所以剩下的就是自己的決定了，這是我的決定，但不是任何人的決定。

文章中提出的問題： 問題 1：你所在領域最重要的問題是什麽？為什麼你並不是正在研究它？ 問題 2：如果你能請一年假去研究一個可能並不重要但非常有趣的問題，那會是什麽？