Reading Paul Graham’s “A Project Of One’s Own as the pre-reading before writing about how to deal with two or more of the highest goals in my career 寫作〈如何處理大於或等於兩個的夢想〉的前閱讀：保羅葛拉罕的〈一個自己的專案〉

To answer the question — of how to deal with two or more of the highest goals in my career — I’ve been pondering all the time these days; I want to write an essay about it and see if I can develop some new ideas which I may ignore when I only think about it in my head, or at least convince myself more about why I should do what I’m doing now and have no better ways with it.

要回答這個問題 — — 在我的職業生涯中如何處理兩個或更多的最高目標 — — 這些日子我一直在深思；我想寫一篇關於這個話題的文章，看看能否激發出一些我在僅僅頭腦思考時可能忽略的新想法，或者至少更加確信我現在所做的是對的，並且沒有更好的方法來處理它。（中文版下滑）

Before I started writing, I talked to others and read essays about it. Paul Graham’s “A Project Of One’s Own “is one of the essays I read; it’s a pretty easy and pleasant reading. In Paul Graham’s definition, a project of one’s own is, and I directly quote: “1) that you’re doing it voluntarily, rather than merely because someone told you to, and 2) that you’re doing it by yourself. “Under this definition, the essay suggests its benefits and what attitude we should hold against it. For the starter, most excellent works are accomplished by people who follow their interests, and a project of one’s own is surely something you do out of passion. But even though great works are from projects led by interests in many situations, there’s no guarantee that one’s own project will be a success eventually, so what good we should expect from working on our own projects is the feeling of “awake “and “alive, “and most important of all, “to the kind of people who like working this way, nothing else feels as right. “I couldn’t agree with this feeling more. When writing those words, I’m also working on my own project. The anxiety of being unable to find the proper word, failing to elaborate my ideas, or even lack of sensitivity to distinguish between similar feelings have been and will always be haunting. Still, the satisfaction I gain every time is more than everything.

But we all know ordinary schools kill our creativity and imagination by telling us what we should learn and do, and the mortal part is schoolwork takes up almost all our time. In Paul Graham’s essay, he points out we should benefit from both the adult way and the children way of thinking: “to be deliberate in choosing to work on projects of our own, and carelessly confident in starting new ones“ but it’s a pity that he didn’t give any suggestion in the essay on how to regain the passion of wanting to create our own projects, keep the passion burning as the project goes on, and how to be always confident in those we’re working on. I can imagine Paul Graham’s answer to it would be to follow our interests and passions but to fuel the fire more; self-discipline also matters a lot.

So the relationship between this essay and my question about how to deal with two or more of the highest goals in my career is that regardless of whether one should pursue more than one goal in their career life, the better way to do it is to start as their own projects — voluntarily, and do it on their own — and start as early as possible.

（原文以英文寫作，中文由Chat-GPT4翻譯。）

在我開始寫作之前，我與他人交談並閱讀了有關這個話題的文章。我讀到的一篇是保羅葛拉罕的《一個自己的專案》，這是一篇相當容易且愉快的閱讀。在保羅葛拉罕的定義中，一個人自己的項目是，我直接引用：“1）你是自願做的，而不僅僅是因為有人告訴你要做；2）你是獨自完成的。”根據這個定義，文章建議了我們應該持有什麼態度以及它的好處。首先，大多數優秀的作品都是由追隨自己興趣的人完成的，而一個人自己的項目當然是你出於熱情所做的事情。但即使許多偉大的作品都來自於以興趣為導向的項目，也不能保證一個人自己的項目最終一定會成功，所以我們應該從自己的項目中期待的好處是“清醒”和“活著”的感覺，最重要的是，“對於喜歡這種工作方式的人來說，沒有什麼比這更對了。”我非常認同這種感覺。在寫這些話的時候，我也在從事我的個人專案。找不到合適的詞語，無法闡述我的想法，甚至缺乏區分相似感受的敏感性，這些焦慮一直困擾著我，但我每次獲得的滿足感遠遠超過一切。

但我們都知道，普通學校通過告訴我們應該學習和做什麼，扼殺了我們的創造力和想像力，致命的是學業佔據了我們幾乎所有的時間。在保羅葛拉罕的文章中，他指出我們應該從成人的思維方式和孩童的思維方式中受益：“有意識地選擇從事自己的項目，並且在開始新項目時無憂無慮地充滿信心”，但遺憾的是他沒有在文章中給出如何重新獲得創造自己項目的熱情，保持項目進行時的熱情，以及如何對我們正在進行的項目始終充滿信心的建議。我可以想象保羅葛拉罕的回答會是追隨我們的興趣和熱情，但為了進一步激發內心的火焰，自律也非常重要。

因此，這篇文章與我關於如何處理職業生涯中兩個或更多最高目標的問題之間的關係是，無論一個人是否應該在他們的職業生活中追求多於一個目標，更好的方式是把它們當作自己的項目來開始 — — 自願地，獨自完成 — — 並儘早開始。