“当你真正为自己工作时，你将没有爱好，你将没有周末，你将没有假期，但你也不会有工作。” “When you truly work for yourself, you won’t have hobbies, you won’t have weekends, and you won’t have vacations, but you won’t have work either.”

这是为自己工作的悖论，每个企业家或个体经营者都熟悉这一点，那就是当你开始为自己工作时，你基本上牺牲了工作与生活的平衡。 This is the paradox of working for yourself, which every entrepreneur or every self-employed person is familiar with, which is that when you start working for yourself, you basically sacrifice this work-life balance thing.

你牺牲了工作与生活之间的界限。不再有朝九晚五的生活，不再有办公室。没有人告诉你该做什么，也没有剧本可以遵循。同时，也没有什么可以关闭的。你无法关闭它。你就是生意。你就是产品。你就是工作。你就是实体，而你关心一切。 You sacrifice this work-life distinction. There’s no more nine-to-five. There’s no more office. There’s no one who’s telling you what to do. There’s no playbook to follow. At the same time, there’s nothing to turn off. You can’t turn it off. You are the business. You are the product. You are the work. You are the entity, and you care.

如果你正在做一件真正属于你自己的事情，你会非常投入，所以你无法停止。这就是企业家的魔咒。但企业家的好处在于，如果你做得对，如果你出于正确的理由或以正确的方式与正确的人一起做，如果你能抛开未能实现目标的压力——这种压力是真实存在的，而且很难抛开——那么你就不会觉得是在工作。 If you’re doing something that’s truly yours, you care very deeply, so you can’t turn it off. And that’s the curse of the entrepreneur. But the benefit of the entrepreneur is that if you’re doing it right, if you’re doing it for the right reasons or the right people in the right way, and if you can set aside the stress of not hitting your goals, which is real and hard to set aside, then it doesn’t feel like work.

而这正是你最高效的时候。你基本上只被衡量你的产出。你只会被要求达到你为自己设定的标准。所以这会让人极其兴奋和自由。这就是为什么我很久以前就说过，尝到自由的滋味会让你失业。 And that’s when you’re most productive. You are basically only measured on your output. And you’re only held up to the bar that you raised for yourself. So it can be extremely exhilarating and freeing. And this is why I said a long time ago that a taste of freedom can make you unemployable.

这就是自由的滋味。它让你无法找到传统的朝九晚五、照本宣科、有老板的工作。但一旦你摆脱了这种状态，一旦你走上了一条没有工作网、没有老板、没有工作的钢丝——顺便说一句，这种情况甚至可能发生在初创公司的小团队里，因为你非常有上进心。你会遇到一些在普通人看来非常不利的事情：没有周末，没有假期，没有休息时间，没有工作与生活的平衡。但与此同时，当你工作的时候，感觉不像是在工作。这是你非常有动力去做的事情，这就是回报。 And so this is exactly that taste of freedom. It makes you unemployable in the classic sense of nine-to-five and following the playbook and having a boss. But once you have broken out of that, once you’ve walked the tight rope without a net, without a boss, without a job—and by the way, this can even happen in startups in a small team where you’re just very self-motivated. You get what look like huge negatives to the average person that you don’t have weekends, you don’t have vacations, and you don’t have time off, you don’t have work-life balance. But, at the same time, when you are working, it doesn’t feel like work. It’s something that you’re highly motivated to do and that’s the reward.

总的来说，我确实认为这是一扇单行道。我认为，一旦人们体验到与自己真正喜欢的人一起做自己在乎的事情，并且能够自我激励，他们就很难找到工作了。他们无法回到普通的工作岗位，有经理、有老板，需要签到，朝九晚五，以及“这周这天到，坐在这张办公桌前，这个时间通勤”的那种生活。 And net-net, I do think this is a one-way door. I think once people experience working on something that they care about with people that they really like in a way they’re self-motivated, they’re unemployable. They can’t go back to a normal job with a manager and a boss and check-ins and nine-to-five and “Show up this day, this week, sit in this desk, commute at this time.”

我认为这条推文中也有一个隐藏的含义，我猜这是有意的。它以“当你真正为自己工作时”开头，我猜大多数人会认为这意味着“你是自己的老板”。但我读到的另一种方式是，你是在为自己工作。 I think there’s a hidden meaning in the tweet too, which I’m guessing is intentional. It starts off with “When you truly work for yourself,” which I’m guessing most people are going to take that to mean “You’re your own boss.” But the other way that I read it is that you are working for yourself.

所以，你的劳动体现了你的身份和本质。这是一种自我表达。而这并非易事。 So your labor is an expression of who and what you are. It’s self-expression. And that’s not an easy thing to figure out.