每个人自己的项目A project of one's own— Paul Graham

英文题名：A project of one's own-Paul Graham-2021 年 6 月几天前，在放学回家的路上，我九岁的儿子告诉我，他迫不及待地想回家写更多他正在创作的故事。这让我和我听到他说的任何话一样开心——不仅仅是因为他对自己的故事感到兴奋，还因为他发现了这种工作方式。

从事自己的项目与普通工作的不同，就像滑冰与步行那样。它更有趣，但也更有效率。从这个意义上说，滑冰的人完成了多少伟大的工作？如果不是全部，当然很多。从事自己的项目有一些特别之处。我不会说你更快乐。一个更好的词是兴奋或参与。当事情进展顺利时你会很高兴，但通常情况并非如此。

我在写essay的时候，大部分时间都在担心和困惑：担心essay结果会很糟糕，困惑是因为我在摸索一些我看不清楚的想法。我能用语言来确定吗？

最后我通常可以，如果我花足够长的时间，但我永远不确定；最初的几次尝试经常失败。当事情顺利时，你会有幸福的时刻，但它们不会持续很长时间，因为那样你就会面临下一个问题。那么为什么要这样做呢？因为对于喜欢这种工作方式的人来说，没有什么比这更合适的了。

你觉得自己就像是自然栖息地中的动物，做着你想做的事——也许并不总是快乐，但清醒而活着。许多孩子都体验到为自己的项目工作的兴奋。困难的部分是让这与你作为一个成年人所做的工作相融合。而我们的习俗让它变得更难。我们将“玩耍”和“爱好”视为与“工作”有着本质的区别。

对于建造树屋的孩子来说，不清楚从那里到建筑或工程有直接（虽然很长）的路线。我们没有指出路线，而是通过隐含地将孩子们所做的事情视为与实际工作不同的事情来隐藏它。[ 1 ] 我们不是告诉孩子们他们的树屋可以走上他们成年后工作的道路，而是告诉他们这条路要经过学校。

不幸的是，功课往往与自己的项目工作大不相同。它通常既不是一个项目，也不是一个人自己的项目。

因此，随着学校变得更加严肃，从事自己的项目可能会幸存下来，如果有的话，就像一条细线。这是一个有点伤感地认为所有的高中孩子们把他们的背上建设树屋和坐在课堂尽职尽责地了解达尔文和牛顿通过一些考试，当由达尔文和牛顿著名的工作实际上更接近于在精神建设树屋而不是为了考试而学习。

如果我必须在我的孩子取得好成绩和从事他们自己的雄心勃勃的项目之间做出选择，我会选择这些项目。不是因为我是一个放纵的父母，而是因为我一直在另一端，我知道哪个更有预测价值。当我为 Y Combinator 挑选初创公司时，我并不关心申请人的成绩。

但如果他们从事自己的项目，我想听听所有这些。[ 2 ] 学校就是这样，这可能是不可避免的。我并不是说我们必须重新设计它（尽管我并不是说我们不需要），只是我们应该了解它对我们的工作态度有何影响——它通常会引导我们从事尽职尽责的工作以比赛为诱饵，远离滑冰。

有时，学业成为自己的项目。每当我不得不写一篇论文时，那将成为我自己的一个项目——具有讽刺意味的是，除了在英语课上，因为人们必须在英语课上写的东西太 假了。当我上大学并开始学习 CS 课程时，我必须编写的程序变成了我自己的项目。每当我写作或编程时，我通常都在滑冰，从那以后就一直如此。

那么自己的项目优势究竟在哪里呢？这是一个有趣的问题，部分是因为答案太复杂，部分是因为有太多的利害关系。结果证明，工作可以是自己的，有两种感觉：1）你是自愿做的，而不仅仅是因为有人告诉你，2）你是自己做的。前者的边缘相当锋利。非常在意工作的人通常对拉动和被推动之间的区别非常敏感，工作往往属于一类或另一类。

但测试不仅仅是你是否被告知要做某事。你可以选择做你被告知要做的事情。事实上，你可以比告诉你去做的人更彻底地拥有它。

例如，对于大多数人来说，数学作业是他们被告知要做的事情。但对我父亲来说，他是一名数学家，事实并非如此。我们大多数人认为数学书中的问题是测试或发展我们对每个部分中解释的材料的知识的一种方式。但对我父亲来说，问题才是最重要的部分，文本只是一种注释。

每当他拿到一本新的数学书时，对他来说就像是给了一个谜题：这里有一组新问题需要解决，他会立即着手解决所有问题。一个项目是自己的——由自己来完成——的另一种感觉具有更柔和的优势。它逐渐转变为合作。有趣的是，它以两种不同的方式融入合作。一种协作方式是共享一个项目。

例如，当两个数学家在他们之间的对话过程中合作完成一个证明时。另一种方式是当多个人在他们自己的独立项目上工作时，这些项目就像拼图游戏一样组合在一起。

例如，当一个人写一本书的文本而另一个人进行图形设计时。[ 3 ] 这两条合作路径当然可以结合起来。但在适当的条件下，从事自己的项目的兴奋可以保留一段时间，然后分解为大型组织中动荡的工作流程。事实上，成功组织的历史部分是保持这种兴奋的技术的历史。

[ 4 ] 制作原始 Macintosh 的团队就是这种现象的一个很好的例子。像 Burrell Smith、Andy Hertzfeld、Bill Atkinson 和 Susan Kare 这样的人并不仅仅是服从命令。它们不是史蒂夫乔布斯击中的网球，而是史蒂夫·乔布斯发射的火箭。

他们之间有很多合作，但他们似乎都各自感受到了为自己的项目工作的兴奋。在 Andy Hertzfeld 关于 Macintosh 的书中，他描述了他们如何在晚饭后回到办公室并工作到深夜。从未体验过在他们兴奋的项目上工作的快感的人无法将这种长时间的工作与血汗工厂和锅炉房中发生的那种工作区分开来，但他们处于光谱的两端。

这就是为什么教条地坚持“工作/生活平衡”是错误的。事实上，仅仅用“工作/生活”这个词就包含了一个错误：它假设工作和生活是不同的。对于那些“工作”这个词自动暗示尽职尽责的人来说，他们是。但对于滑手来说，工作和生活的关系最好用破折号来表示，而不是斜线。

我不希望在任何我不想要的事情上花费我的人生。当然，当你制作 Macintosh 之类的东西时，更容易达到这种动机水平。很容易让新事物感觉像是你自己的项目。这就是程序员不得不重写不需要重写的东西，并为已经存在的东西编写自己的版本的趋势的原因之一。

这有时会引起管理人员的警觉，并且根据键入的字符总数来衡量，这很少是最佳解决方案。但它并不总是由傲慢或无知驱动的。从头开始编写代码也更有回报 - 尽管字符浪费令人震惊，但一个优秀的程序员最终可以领先于网络。事实上，它鼓励这种重写可能是资本主义的优势之一。

一家公司需要自己的软件来完成无法使用另外一家公司已有的软件达成的目标，不得不自己开发，这往往更好。[ 5 ] 滑冰和解决新问题之间的自然一致性是初创公司回报如此之高的原因之一。不仅未解决问题的市场价格更高，而且你在处理这些问题时还可以享受生产力折扣。

事实上，你的工作效率会翻倍：当你进行干净的设计时，更容易招募滑冰者，并且他们可以将所有时间都花在滑冰上。史蒂夫·乔布斯看过史蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克 (Steve Wozniak)，对滑冰运动员有了一两件事。如果你能找到合适的人，你只需要告诉他们在最高级别做什么。

他们会处理细节。确实，他们坚持这样做。为了让项目感觉像你自己的，你必须有足够的自主权。你无法按订单工作或放慢速度 由于官僚主义。确保自主权的一种方法是根本没有老板。有两种方法可以做到这一点：自己做老板，以及在工作以外的项目上工作。尽管它们在财务上处于规模的两端，但初创公司和开源项目有很多共同点，包括它们经常由 skaters 经营的事实。

事实上，从天秤的一端到另一端都有一个虫洞：发现创业想法的最好方法之一就是为了好玩而从事一个项目。如果你的项目是赚钱的项目，那么处理它们很容易。当他们不是的时候就更难了。最难的部分通常是士气。这就是成年人比孩子更难的地方。孩子们只需投入并建造他们的树屋，而不必担心他们是否在浪费时间，或者与其他树屋相比如何。

坦率地说，我们可以从这里的孩子身上学到很多东西。大多数成年人对“真正”工作的高标准并不总是对我们有用。一个人自己的项目中最重要的阶段是在开始阶段：当你从认为做 x 可能很酷到实际做 x 时。在这一点上，高标准不仅无用，而且有害。有一些人开始了太多的新项目，但我怀疑，更多的人因为害怕失败而不敢开始如果他们开始就会成功的项目。

但是，如果我们作为孩子不能从我们的树屋正在走向成熟项目的道路上受益，那么我们至少可以从我们的项目走回树屋的道路上作为成年人受益。还记得你小时候在开始新事物时粗心大意的自信吗？那将是重新夺回的强大事物。如果作为成年人更难保持这种信心，我们至少往往更清楚我们在做什么。

孩子们从一种工作跳到另一种工作，几乎没有意识到发生了什么。而我们对不同类型的工作了解得更多，并且对我们所做的工作有更多的控制权。理想情况下，我们可以两全其美：慎重选择从事我们自己的项目，并在开始新项目时漫不经心地自信。

现在这意味着不真实的工作 —— 一个人不能被评判的工作——但最初它只是意味着一种相当普遍意义上的痴迷（甚至是一种政治观点，例如），比喻像孩子骑爱好马一样骑马。很难说它最近的狭义含义是变好还是变坏了。肯定有很多误报——很多项目最终很重要，但最初只是作为业余爱好而被驳回。

但另一方面，这个概念为早期丑小鸭阶段的项目提供了宝贵的保障。[ 2 ] 虎父母，就像父母经常做的那样，正在打最后一场战争。在过去，成功的途径是获得证书时，成绩更重要 在上升一些预定义的阶梯时。但同样好，他们的策略专注于成绩。如果他们侵犯了项目的领域，从而迫使他们做这种工作，从而使他们的孩子厌恶这种工作，那将是多么糟糕。

成绩已经是一个冷酷、虚假的世界，不会受到父母干涉的太大伤害，但在自己的项目上工作是一件更微妙、更私密的事情，很容易被破坏。[ 3] 在自己的项目上工作与与他人合作之间复杂而渐进的边缘是对“孤独天才”的想法存在如此多分歧的原因之一。在实践中，人们以各种不同的方式合作（或不合作），但孤独天才的想法绝对不是神话。

它有一个与某种工作方式相匹配的真理核心。[ 4] 协作也很强大。最佳的组织将以最小的损害最小的方式将协作和所有权结合起来。有趣的是，公司和大学部门是从相反的方向接近这个理想的：公司坚持合作，偶尔也会设法招募滑手并允许他们滑冰，大学部门坚持独立研究的能力（习惯上被视为滑冰，无论是否），以及他们雇用的人尽可能多地合作。

[ 5] 如果一家公司能够以这样一种方式设计它的软件，即最好的新来的程序员总能得到一张白纸，那么它就可以拥有一种永恒的青春。那可能不是不可能的。如果你有一个定义了游戏的充分清晰的规则的软件框架，并且有足够清晰的规则，那么个人程序员就可以编写自己的播放器。

感谢Trevor Blackwell、Paul Buchheit、Andy Hertzfeld、Jessica Livingston 和 Peter Norvig 阅读本文的草稿。A few days ago,on the way home from school,

my nine year old son told me he couldn't wait to get home to write more of the story he was working on. This made me as happy as anything I've heard him say — not just because he was excited about his story,

but because he'd discovered this way of working. Working on a project of your own is as different from ordinary work as skating is from walking. It's more fun,

but also much more productive. What proportion of great work has been done by people who were skating in this sense?If not all of it,certainly a lot. There is something special about working on a project of your own. I wouldn't say exactly that you're happier. A better word would be excited,

or engaged. You're happy when things are going well,but often they aren't. When I'm writing an essay,most of the time I'm worried and puzzled:

worried that the essay will turn out badly,and puzzled because I'm groping for some idea that I can't see clearly enough. Will I be able to pin it down with words?

In the end I usually can, if I take long enough, but I'm never sure;the first few attempts often fail. You have moments of happiness when things work out,

but they don't last long,because then you're on to the next problem. So why do it at all?Because to the kind of people who like working this way,

nothing else feels as right. You feel as if you're an animal in its natural habitat,doing what you were meant to do — not always happy,maybe,

but awake and alive. Many kids experience the excitement of working on projects of their own. The hard part is making this converge with the work you do as an adult. And our customs make it harder. We treat "playing" and "hobbies" as qualitatively different from "work". It's not clear to a kid building a treehouse that there's a direct (though long) route from that to architecture or engineering. And instead of pointing out the route,

we conceal it,by implicitly treating the stuff kids do as different from real work. [1] Instead of telling kids that their treehouses could be on the path to the work they do as adults,

we tell them the path goes through school. And unfortunately schoolwork tends to be very different from working on projects of one's own. It's usually neither a project,

nor one's own. So as school gets more serious,working on projects of one's own is something that survives,if at all,as a thin thread off to the side. It's a bit sad to think of all the high school kids turning their backs on building treehouses and sitting in class dutifully learning about Darwin or Newton to pass some exam,

when the work that made Darwin and Newton famous was actually closer in spirit to building treehouses than studying for exams. If I had to choose between my kids getting good grades and working on ambitious projects of their own,

I'd pick the projects. And not because I'm an indulgent parent,but because I've been on the other end and I know which has more predictive value. When I was picking startups for Y Combinator,

I didn't care about applicants' grades. But if they'd worked on projects of their own,I wanted to hear all about those. [2] It may be inevitable that school is the way it is. I'm not saying we have to redesign it (though I'm not saying we don't),

just that we should understand what it does to our attitudes to work — that it steers us toward the dutiful plodding kind of work,

often using competition as bait,and away from skating. There are occasionally times when schoolwork becomes a project of one's own. Whenever I had to write a paper,

that would become a project of my own — except in English classes,ironically,because the things one has to write in English classes are so bogus. And when I got to college and started taking CS classes,

the programs I had to write became projects of my own. Whenever I was writing or programming,I was usually skating,and that has been true ever since. So where exactly is the edge of projects of one's own?

That's an interesting question,partly because the answer is so complicated,and partly because there's so much at stake. There turn out to be two senses in which work can be one's own:1) that you're doing it voluntarily,rather than merely because someone told you to,

and 2) that you're doing it by yourself. The edge of the former is quite sharp. People who care a lot about their work are usually very sensitive to the difference between pulling,

and being pushed,and work tends to fall into one category or the other. But the test isn't simply whether you're told to do something. You can choose to do something you're told to do. Indeed,

you can own it far more thoroughly than the person who told you to do it. For example,math homework is for most people something they're told to do. But for my father,

who was a mathematician,it wasn't. Most of us think of the problems in a math book as a way to test or develop our knowledge of the material explained in each section. But to my father the problems were the part that mattered,

and the text was merely a sort of annotation. Whenever he got a new math book it was to him like being given a puzzle:

here was a new set of problems to solve,and he'd immediately set about solving all of them. The other sense of a project being one's own — working on it by oneself — has a much softer edge. It shades gradually into collaboration. And interestingly,

it shades into collaboration in two different ways. One way to collaborate is to share a single project. For example,when two mathematicians collaborate on a proof that takes shape in the course of a conversation between them. The other way is when multiple people work on separate projects of their own that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. For example,

when one person writes the text of a book and another does the graphic design. [3] These two paths into collaboration can of course be combined. But under the right conditions,

the excitement of working on a project of one's own can be preserved for quite a while before disintegrating into the turbulent flow of work in a large organization. Indeed,

the history of successful organizations is partly the history of techniques for preserving that excitement. [4] The team that made the original Macintosh were a great example of this phenomenon. People like Burrell Smith and Andy Hertzfeld and Bill Atkinson and Susan Kare were not just following orders. They were not tennis balls hit by Steve Jobs,

but rockets let loose by Steve Jobs. There was a lot of collaboration between them,but they all seem to have individually felt the excitement of working on a project of one's own. In Andy Hertzfeld's book on the Macintosh,

he describes how they'd come back into the office after dinner and work late into the night. People who've never experienced the thrill of working on a project they're excited about can't distinguish this kind of working long hours from the kind that happens in sweatshops and boiler rooms,

but they're at opposite ends of the spectrum. That's why it's a mistake to insist dogmatically on "work/life balance." Indeed,

the mere expression "work/life" embodies a mistake:it assumes work and life are distinct. For those to whom the word "work" automatically implies the dutiful plodding kind,

they are. But for the skaters,the relationship between work and life would be better represented by a dash than a slash. I wouldn't want to work on anything that I didn't want to take over my life. Of course,

it's easier to achieve this level of motivation when you're making something like the Macintosh. It's easy for something new to feel like a project of your own. That's one of the reasons for the tendency programmers have to rewrite things that don't need rewriting,

and to write their own versions of things that already exist. This sometimes alarms managers,and measured by total number of characters typed,

it's rarely the optimal solution. But it's not always driven simply by arrogance or cluelessness. Writing code from scratch is also much more rewarding — so much more rewarding that a good programmer can end up net ahead,

despite the shocking waste of characters. Indeed,it may be one of the advantages of capitalism that it encourages such rewriting. A company that needs software to do something can't use the software already written to do it at another company,

and thus has to write their own,which often turns out better. [5] The natural alignment between skating and solving new problems is one of the reasons the payoffs from startups are so high. Not only is the market price of unsolved problems higher,

you also get a discount on productivity when you work on them. In fact,you get a double increase in productivity:when you're doing a clean-sheet design,it's easier to recruit skaters,and they get to spend all their time skating. Steve Jobs knew a thing or two about skaters from having watched Steve Wozniak. If you can find the right people,

you only have to tell them what to do at the highest level. They'll handle the details. Indeed,they insist on it. For a project to feel like your own,

you must have sufficient autonomy. You can't be working to order,or slowed down by bureaucracy. One way to ensure autonomy is not to have a boss at all. There are two ways to do that:to be the boss yourself,and to work on projects outside of work. Though they're at opposite ends of the scale financially,

startups and open source projects have a lot in common,including the fact that they're often run by skaters. And indeed,

there's a wormhole from one end of the scale to the other:one of the best ways to discover startup ideas is to work on a project just for fun. If your projects are the kind that make money,

it's easy to work on them. It's harder when they're not. And the hardest part,usually,is morale. That's where adults have it harder than kids. Kids just plunge in and build their treehouse without worrying about whether they're wasting their time,

or how it compares to other treehouses. And frankly we could learn a lot from kids here. The high standards most grownups have for "real" work do not always serve us well. The most important phase in a project of one's own is at the beginning:

when you go from thinking it might be cool to do x to actually doing x. And at that point high standards are not merely useless but positively harmful. There are a few people who start too many new projects,

but far more,I suspect,who are deterred by fear of failure from starting projects that would have succeeded if they had. But if we couldn't benefit as kids from the knowledge that our treehouses were on the path to grownup projects,

we can at least benefit as grownups from knowing that our projects are on a path that stretches back to treehouses. Remember that careless confidence you had as a kid when starting something new?

That would be a powerful thing to recapture. If it's harder as adults to retain that kind of confidence,we at least tend to be more aware of what we're doing. Kids bounce,or are herded,

from one kind of work to the next,barely realizing what's happening to them. Whereas we know more about different types of work and have more control over which we do. Ideally we can have the best of both worlds:

to be deliberate in choosing to work on projects of our own,and carelessly confident in starting new ones. Notes [1] "Hobby" is a curious word. Now it means work that isn't real work — work that one is not to be judged by — but originally it just meant an obsession in a fairly general sense (even a political opinion,

for example) that one metaphorically rode as a child rides a hobby-horse. It's hard to say if its recent,narrower meaning is a change for the better or the worse. For sure there are lots of false positives — lots of projects that end up being important but are dismissed initially as mere hobbies. But on the other hand,

the concept provides valuable cover for projects in the early,ugly duckling phase. [2] Tiger parents,as parents so often do,

are fighting the last war. Grades mattered more in the old days when the route to success was to acquire credentials while ascending some predefined ladder. But it's just as well that their tactics are focused on grades. How awful it would be if they invaded the territory of projects,

and thereby gave their kids a distaste for this kind of work by forcing them to do it. Grades are already a grim,fake world,and aren't harmed much by parental interference,

but working on one's own projects is a more delicate,private thing that could be damaged very easily. [3] The complicated,

gradual edge between working on one's own projects and collaborating with others is one reason there is so much disagreement about the idea of the "lone genius." In practice people collaborate (or not) in all kinds of different ways,

but the idea of the lone genius is definitely not a myth. There's a core of truth to it that goes with a certain way of working. [4] Collaboration is powerful too. The optimal organization would combine collaboration and ownership in such a way as to do the least damage to each. Interestingly,

companies and university departments approach this ideal from opposite directions:companies insist on collaboration,and occasionally also manage both to recruit skaters and allow them to skate,

and university departments insist on the ability to do independent research (which is by custom treated as skating,whether it is or not),and the people they hire collaborate as much as they choose. [5] If a company could design its software in such a way that the best newly arrived programmers always got a clean sheet,

it could have a kind of eternal youth. That might not be impossible. If you had a software backbone defining a game with sufficiently clear rules,

individual programmers could write their own players. Thanks to Trevor Blackwell,Paul Buchheit,Andy Hertzfeld,Jessica Livingston,and Peter Norvig for reading drafts of this.