463
什么是生产率，steve告诉我们了一个简单定义生产率=价值/时间。关注价值因素来获取高的生产率是划算的，因为时间我们无法控制，时间成本总是难以避免的。若是关注时间，那么本身就是一种水中捞月，刻舟求剑的愚蠢行为。还是那句简单的话：做对的事情比把事情做对重要太多。
What Is Productivity?
By Steve Pavlina
In this post we're going to take a deep look into the concept of productivity.
Here's my personal definition of productivity:
Productivity = Value / Time (productivity equals value divided by time)
By this definition there are two primary ways of increasing productivity:
- Increase the value created
- Decrease the time required to create that value
You can complicate this definition by including other factors like energy and resources, but I prefer the simplicity of time because in most cases factors like
energy and resources are reducible to time anyway. Time also makes it very easy to compare different levels of productivity, such as output per hour or per
day.
Apparently you can make some significant gains on the time side. There are many personal productivity optimizations which, especially if you introduce them
in your youth, will produce a massive net savings of time over the course of your life. Consider your typing speed, for instance. If you invest the time to get your speed up to 90 words per minute or faster, it will be well worth the initial time investment if you happen to do a lot of typing over your lifetime, compared to allowing your speed to linger at 50 wpm or slower year after year. The extra hours of practice will be nothing compared to the time you save typing emails, letters, or blog entries over the next few decades. Other time-based optimizations include improving your sleeping habits, minimizing commute
time, or dropping time-wasting habits like smoking.
The main limit of time-based optimizations is that the optimization process requires an input of time itself. It takes time to save time. So the more time
you invest in optimizing time usage, the greater your initial time investment, and the greater your need for a long-term payoff to justify that investment. This
limit creates an upper bound for any time-based optimizations you attempt, in accordance with the law of diminishing returns. The more time you invest
in any optimization attempt, the lower your net return, all else being equal.
upper bound上界
This law of diminishing returns points us back to the value side. While we might be stuck with diminishing returns by trying to optimize the time side alone, we
may notice that working to optimize the value side is less limiting and more open-ended.
diminishing returns 收益递减
462
狄更斯的《大卫科波菲尔》我还没读，不过应该挺好的。《圣诞欢歌》我倒是读过。
David Copperfield: Preface to the 1850 Edition
By Charles Dickens
I do not find it easy to get sufficiently far away from this Book, in the first sensations of having finished it, to refer to it with the composure which this formal heading would seem to require.
感觉sensation镇静composure
My interest in it, is so recent and strong; and my mind is so divided between pleasure and regret—pleasure in the achievement of a long design, regret in the
separation from many companions—that I am in danger of wearying the reader whom I love, with personal confidences, and private emotions.
wearying疲惫的
Besides which, all that I could say of the Story, to any purpose, I have endeavoured to say in it.
It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know, how sorrowfully the pen is laid down at the close of a two-years' imaginative task; or how an Author feels
as if he were dismissing some portion of himself into the shadowy world, when a crowd of the creatures of his brain are going from him for ever.
幽暗的shadowy
Yet, I have nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess (which might be of less moment still) that no one can ever believe this Narrative, in the reading, more than I have believed it in the writing.
Instead of looking back, therefore, I will look forward. I cannot close this Volume more agreeably to myself, than with a hopeful glance towards the time when I
shall again put forth my two green leaves once a month, and with a faithful remembrance of the genial sun and showers that have fallen on these leaves of
David Copperfield, and made me happy。
agreeably愉快地 genial欢乐的
461
介绍Uber的新CEO
Uber chooses a surprising new leader: the CEO of
Expedia
By Elizabeth Dwoskin
SAN FRANCISCO —Uber has selected the chief executive of Expedia, Dara Khosrowshahi, as its new leader, a surprising turn after board members
considered two other stalwarts of industry, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Sunday.
The move comes after a weekend of frantic meetings with two other final candidates, Meg Whitman, chief executive of Hewlett Packard Enterprises, and Jeff Immelt, the departing chief executive of GE. Immelt made it clear the job would not be his in a tweet Sunday. And a divided board shifted between Whitman and Khosrowshahi throughout the weekend, the people said, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private meetings.
Khosrowshahi an Iranian-American who has run Expedia since 2005, was an unexpected and lesser-known choice; his interest in the position was
largely kept secret until today. The agreement came together only in the last few days, such that even family members and friends close to Khosrowshahi
were surprised by the news.
But within Silicon Valley, Khosrowshahi is well liked and respected. He has presided over a huge expansion of the online travel company to over 60
countries. Khosrowshahi is also a vocal critic of President Trump, particularly his travel ban against Muslim Americans.
People who know him said Khosrowshahi brings two assets to Uber. For one, he is considered even-keeled and low-key -- a sharp contrast to Uber's former chief executive and co-founder Travis Kalanick, who has been known to fly into fits of anger. (In one infamous episode that was caught on video earlier this year, Kalanick unloaded onto an Uber driver who criticized the company's wages).
even-keeled and low-key一碗水端平和低调
"My whole life, anytime I've faced a high-pressure decision, my model for mature behavior has been, 'what would Dara do'? He's one of the humblest and most even-keeled people I know," said Ali Partovi, an entreprenuer and technology investor, who is Khosrowshahi's second cousin. The two went to primary school together in Iran.
Khosrowshahi's other asset is his skill as a dealmaker in the highly competitive market for online travel. He has expanded Expedia into an even larger online travel conglomerate by acquiring other consumer brands, such as bookings sites
Travelocity and Orbitz, and home rental site Homeaway.
460
本周亮点文章，很久以来在培养好习惯上，我就很泄气。想每天朗读一小时，可是总会因为一两次断掉而放弃。这篇文章告诉我想要每天坚持做一些事情的想法不好，要时刻重新开始培养，把做到当成目标，而不是坚持每天做到当成目标，这样不仅没有压力，而且会随着时间积累更有成就感。
Starting, Over and Over Again
By Leo Babauta
There's a hope that when we start creating a new habit that we'll master it and never have to worry about it again, or when we start a new project that
it'll go perfectly.
Unfortunately, life never goes according to our plans. We travel, and eating and exercise habits go out the door. We get sick, and our meditation habit falls off.
We have visitors, and our writing project falls into a deep abyss.
I know from my own experience, and coaching thousands of others, that habits and projects are a messy affair. We get good at building and maintaining 5-6 habits, or we get off to an amazing start with a new project, and then everything falls apart when our lives get disrupted. And this becomes a huge problem — we get discouraged!
But what if the disruption and falling off isn't the problem? What if the problem is our hope that we'll never have to get disrupted, that things will always go perfectly?
This hope is, of course, greatly misguided. Things don't ever go smoothly, progress is never linear, and we'll always get disrupted. It would be best to give
up that hope, and instead deal with the reality of our lives.
What we need to do is get good at starting, then starting again. And again. This is an incredible skill that becomes a superpower, when everyone else is wringing their hands about how much they suck at life, how difficult things are, how everything has fallen apart. Instead, we just focus on starting again, and let go of all the stress.
wring their hands扭绞双手（表示焦虑紧张的意思）
459
马云说未来30年那些靠快速计算和记忆的工作将被人工智能取代，但是琴棋书画和诗歌不会。
Men At Forty
By Donald Justice
Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.
At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it
Moving beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.
And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practices tying
His father's tie there in secret
And the face of that father,
Still warm with the mystery of lather.
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something
That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses
458
乐观积极是否真的有效？《秘密-吸引力法则》这部小说和同名电影火了好一阵子，可是，心理学专家并不买账。他们认为一个人成功远比有积极心态更复杂。这里区别就在于，对待障碍和困难的估计要有一个认识，而不能说盲目的乐观。
Don't think too positive
Fantasies about the future have a troubling effect on achieving actual goals. If positive thinking doesn't work, what does?
By Gabriele Oettingen
Do you believe that positive thinking can help you achieve your goals? Many people today do. Pop psychology and the $12 billion self-help industry reinforce a widespread belief that positive thinking can improve our moods and lead to beneficial life changes. In her book The Secret Daily Teachings (2008), the self-help author Rhonda Byrne suggested that: ‘Whatever big thing you are asking for, consider having the celebration now as though you have received it.'
Yet research in psychology reveals a more complicated picture. Indulging in undirected positive flights of fancy isn't always in our interest. Positive thinking can make us feel better in the short term, but over the long term it saps our motivation, preventing us from achieving our wishes and goals, and leaving us feeling frustrated, stymied and stuck. If we really want to move ahead in our lives, engage with the world and feel energised, we need to go beyond positive thinking and connect as well with the obstacles that stand in our way. By bringing our dreams into contact with reality, we can unleash our greatest energies and make the most progress in our lives.
unleash解除...束缚，释放
Now, you might wonder if positive thinking is really as harmful as I'm suggesting. In fact, it is. In a number of studies over two decades, my colleagues and I have discovered a powerful link between positive thinking and poor performance. In one study, we asked college students who had a crush on someone from afar to tell us how likely they would be to strike up a relationship with that person. Then
we asked them to complete some open-ended scenarios related to dating. ‘You are at a party,' one scenario read. ‘While you are talking to [your crush], you see a girl/boy, whom you believe [your crush] might like, come into the room. As she/he approaches the two of you, you imagine…'
建立关系 strike up a relationship with
Some of the students completed the scenarios by spinning a tale of romantic success. ‘The two of us leave the party, everyone watches, especially the other girl.' Others offered negative fantasies about love thwarted: ‘My crush and the other girl begin to converse about things which I know nothing. They
seem to be much more comfortable with each other than he and I….'
编造spin 交谈converse
We checked back with the students after five months to see if they had initiated a relationship with their crush. The more students had engaged in positive fantasies about the future, the less likely they were actually to have started up a romantic relationship.
457
Some will always say you're wrong
By Derek Sivers
Some people are into money. Some aren't.Some people are inspired by helping the needy.Some aren't.Some are into fame, power, and prestige. Others are into anonymity and freedom from responsibility.
It gets more interesting when you realize people have different preferences in the different parts of their life. Famous online, but anonymous in their local community. Generous with time, stingy with money. Introvert when working, extrovert when not.
You have to know your preferences well, because no matter what you do, someone will tell you you're wrong.If you're not into money, many people will say you're foolish.If you're not into charity, many people will say you're greedy.
If you're not into crowds, many people will say you're missing out. Some careers come with excuses:
The classic novelist thrives in solitude. Alone in a cabin in the woods, writing books that reach millions. The classic journalist thrives in a crowd. Talking with everyone, building the story from a thousand accounts.The shy librarian. The aggressive lawyer. The flaky artist. No explanation needed.
flaky古怪的
But some careers need explanations when you go against the mold:The entrepreneur who's not into money. The musician who avoids crowds. The ambitious conservationist. The artist into discipline.The rich poet. But if you expect this criticism in advance, and take pride in your stance, you can bash on with a smile, being who you want to be. Then every time they say you're wrong, that's a sign you're doing it right.
自然保护主义者conservationist为自己的立场take pride in your stance猛击bash
456
很有哲理的小对话
Procrastination Hack : change and to or
By Derek Sivers
“When do you go running?”
“When the time is right.”
“When is the time right?”
“When it's a nice day, and I've finished my work, and I
haven't just eaten, and I'm feeling energetic.”
“Repeat that last sentence, changing ‘and' to ‘or'.”
“When it's a nice day, OR I've finished my work, OR I
haven't just eaten, OR I'm feeling energetic.”
“That sounds like a better plan.”
Got a list of conditions you need satisfied before you do something?
Try changing and to or.
455
世界不一一个人的意志为转移，在我们出生之前世界已经存在上亿万年了，我们死后它仍然运转。有的时候听天由命是有道理的，因为太多因素左右一件事物的发展，而我们做的就是尽自己所能去行动，感知，然后顺命。
The Surrender Experiment
By Michael Singer
Section 1
Waking Up
Life rarely unfolds exactly as we want it to. And if we stop and think about it, that makes perfect sense. The scope of life is universal, and the fact that we are not actually in control of life's events should be self-evident. The universe has been around for 13.8 billion years, and the processes that determine the flow of life around us did not begin when we were born, nor will they end when we die. What manifests in front of us at any given moment is actually something truly extraordinary—it is the end result of all the forces that have been interacting together for billions of years. We are not responsible for even the tiniest fraction of what is manifesting around us. Nonetheless, we walk around constantly trying to control and determine what will happen in our lives. No wonder there's so much tension, anxiety, and fear. Each of us actually believes that things should be the way we want them, instead of being the natural result of all the forces of creation.
Every day, we give precedence to our mind's thoughts over the reality unfolding before us. We regularly say things like, “It better not rain today because I'm going camping” or “I better get that raise because I really need the money.” Notice that these bold claims about what should and shouldn't be happening are not based on scientific evidence; they're based solely on personal preferences made up in our minds. Without realizing it, we do this with everything in our lives—it's as though we actually believe that the world around us is supposed to manifest in accordance to our own likes and desires. If it doesn't, surely something is very wrong. This is an extremely difficult way to live, and it is the reason we feel that we are always struggling with life.The question is :does it have to be this way?
454美国普通办公人员也是把大量时间花在路上的。
A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 A.M.
Like many in the housing-starved San Francisco region, Sheila James has moved far inland, gaining affordable space at the price of a brutal commute.
By Conor Dougherty and Andrew Burton
STOCKTON, Calif. — Sheila James starts her Monday, and the workweek, at 2:15 a.m. This might be normal for a baker or a morning radio host, but Ms. James is a standard American office worker.
She is 62 and makes $81,000 a year as a public health adviser for the United States Department of
Health and Human Services in San Francisco. Her early start comes because San Francisco is one of
the country's most expensive metropolitan areas. Ms. James lives about 80 miles away in Stockton,
which has cheaper homes but requires her to commute on two trains and a bus, leaving at 4 a.m.
Plenty of office workers get up at 5 a.m. or a bit before, but 2:15 is highly unusual.
“Two-fifteen is early enough that some people are still having their evening,” she said on a (very) early
morning. But she likes to take her time and have coffee. She keeps the lights low and the house quiet
and Zen-like. “I just can't rush like that,” she said.
When the second alarm goes off at 3:45 — a reminder to leave for the train in 15 minutes — her
morning shifts from leisure to precision.
It is a seven-minute drive to the station, where she catches the Altamont Corridor Express train.
It takes her four minutes to find parking and walk to the platform, where she waits for the train on the
same rectangle each day with her roller bag and floral print lunch bag. When the 4:20 train pulls in,
she is in front of her preferred door, and she walks to the rear-facing seat that she favors.
“It's like school,” she said.
453
有人认为困难很可怕，失败很可怕。事实是，没有困难的目标你觉得有意思吗？那明显是低于你的水平的。凡是困难的目标都会带来痛苦，但是也必然带来成长。只想着实现目标而不愿去承担痛苦，多半会半途而废。这篇文章分析地很到位。
The Harder It Is, The More You Must Love It
By Steve Pavlina
Some goals are far more difficult than you first imagined. Perhaps you've tried all the easy and obvious approaches, but the goal simply won't succumb.
Sometimes you have to make a couple hundred failed attempts to find an approach that works beautifully for you.
Don't give up just because you missed 20 times or so. You may be 10% of the way to a brilliant solution.
Does that sound promising or annoyingly discouraging?
If you only want the end result but resist the difficulty of grinding it out, you'll likely give up long before you even reach the 10% mark.
For harder goals, you'd better find an approach to the daily grind that you can fall in love with.
You may need to make hundreds of attempts on certain goals, not necessarily because they require so much experimentation but because you need all that training to become strong enough to succeed.
The work may be hard, but can you love it anyway? Can you love it not in spite of the difficulty but because of the difficulty? Can you look at something really tough and say, “I love that you're so challenging because just attempting you will make me stronger”?
You won't accomplish much in life if you refuse to fall in love with the grind.
Stop trying to make everything in life easier. Learn to cultivate tenacious determination to conquer a goal because it's ridiculously tough.
If a goal isn't tough, it's probably beneath you.
If you learn to love difficulty, you reduce resistance to goals that you associate with hard work. This puts more options within your reach. Labeling a goal as “too difficult” as if the difficulty is something undesirable is the same as saying, “I'm not ready to receive this desire.”
Eliminate your resistance to difficulty, and you'll find, with much universal irony, that your resistance to difficulty was actually your greatest roadblock preventing the achievement of the goal.
The harder it is, the more you must love it.
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一生只做一件事，大部分人包括我都会觉得枯燥无聊，但如果这是富有的一种方法你愿意去尝试做吗？
THE ONE THING
By Gary Keller with Jay Papasan
“Be like a postage stamp— stick to one thing until you get there.” —Josh Billings
On June 7, 1991, the earth moved for 112 minutes. Not really, but it felt that way.
I was watching the hit comedy City Slickers, and the audience's laughter rattled and rocked the theater.
油嘴滑舌的骗子slicker
Considered one of the funniest movies of all time, it also sprinkled in unexpected doses of wisdom and insight. In one memorable scene, Curly, the gritty cowboy played by the late Jack Palance, and city slicker Mitch, played by Billy Crystal, leave the group to search for stray cattle. Although they had clashed for most of the movie, riding along together they finally connect over a conversation about life.
Suddenly Curly reins his horse to a stop and turns in the saddle to face Mitch.
Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?
Mitch: No. What?
Curly: This. [He holds up one finger.]
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that
and everything else don't mean shit.
Mitch: That's great, but what's the “one thing”?
Curly: That's what you've got to figure out.
Out of the mouth of a fictional character to our ears comes the secret of success. Whether the writers knew it or unwittingly stumbled on it, what they wrote was the absolute truth. The ONE Thing is the best approach to getting what you want.
