托尼·法德尔谈戒除咖啡因和酒精

Tony，欢迎来到节目。

Tony, welcome to the show.

嗨 Tim，很高兴来到这里。

Hi Tim, great to be here.

我真的很激动终于能进行这次对话。我们有一群虚拟朋友，当然还有好人 Scott Belsky，所以感谢 Scott 的介绍。

I am so thrilled to finally be having this conversation. We have a bunch of virtual friends, and of course the good man Scott Belsky is one of them, so thanks to Scott for making the introduction.

没错，他是个很棒的人。

Alright, great guy.

他给我提了一些建议话题，我们稍后会聊到。但我想从录音开始前提到的一件事开始。我提到我需要打开我的咖啡因——我面前有一些马黛茶——而你说你不摄入咖啡因。我计划问你的一个问题还有关于酒精的，因为据我所知你也不喝酒。你能描述或解释一下这两件事的原因吗？

I have some suggested topics from him that we'll get to at some point. But I thought that we could begin with something that came up before we started recording. I mentioned that I needed to open up my caffeine — I have some yerba mate here sitting in front of me — and you said that you don't do caffeine. And one of the questions I plan on asking you is about alcohol, because my understanding is that you don't do alcohol either. Could you describe or explain why that is in both cases?

嗯，咖啡因和酒精显然是我的日常习惯，或者说缺乏这些习惯，但它们发生在不同时期。对我来说，酒精的戒断实际上源于我去沙特阿拉伯待了两周，和一位朋友在一起，我停止了饮酒。那是在我快 40 岁的时候。所以我在那里两周没喝酒，突然之间我感觉好多了。我睡得更好，醒来也更清醒。你知道，就像，哦，我不再处于那种迷雾中了。我不需要等到 11 点或 12 点才能真正清醒。所以对我来说，这真的是关于那种感觉好多了。然后我想，等等，如果我喝酒，好吧，有酒精的热量，然后它让我做什么，通常是吃太多甜点，或者任何甜点。你肯定在那方面控制力更差。然后我半夜醒来，因为我心跳加速，因为我无法处理酒精糖分。所以就像，然后第二天早上我感觉糟透了。我心想，我为什么要在感觉好得多的时候对自己做这种事？而且我年纪越来越大，情况不会好转，所以干脆戒掉。 literally 是一夜之间就戒掉了。

Well, the caffeine thing and the alcohol are obviously my daily habits, or lack thereof, but they happened at different times. For me, the alcohol was really an outpouring of when I went to Saudi Arabia for two weeks to be with a friend there, and I stopped drinking. It was just before I was 40 years old. So I was there for two weeks and not drinking, and all of a sudden I started feeling completely better. I was sleeping better, I was waking up better. You know, you're like, oh, I'm not in this fog. It didn't take until 11 o'clock or 12 o'clock to actually be present. So for me, it was really about that feeling much better. And then I was thinking, wait a second, so if I drink alcohol, well, there's the calories from the alcohol, then it's what it makes me do, which is usually eat too much dessert, or any dessert at all. Definitely you have less control there. And then I wake up in the middle of the night because I get happy heart because I can't process the alcohol sugars. So it's like, and then I feel like crap the next morning. I'm like, why am I doing this to myself when I feel so much better? And I'm like, I'm getting older, it's not getting any better, so let's just cut it out. And literally it was overnight and just cut it out.

哇。所以那是酒精的部分，对吧？沙特阿拉伯之旅。那咖啡因呢？

Wow. So that was the alcohol piece, right? The trip to Saudi Arabia. And what about the caffeine?

嗯，咖啡因——你知道，我基本上在 20 多岁的时候，在一家叫 General Magic 的公司工作时，过量摄入了糖水或阿斯巴甜水。所以我可能每天喝 8 到 12 瓶健怡可乐，对吧？充满咖啡因。那是在那些含有额外咖啡因的疯狂饮料出现之前，但那就是支撑我继续下去的东西。但它正在杀死我。所以我就说，我要停止摄入咖啡因，停止喝汽水，不管有没有糖，然后直接戒掉了。这帮助了整个进程。那是我从 24、25 岁开始，到今天为止，整个生活改变过程的开始。所以我们不会在这上面花太多时间，但我感觉这里有一些值得深入探讨的好东西。

Well, the caffeine — you know, I basically overdosed on sugar water, or aspartame water, back in my 20s when I was at a company called General Magic. So I was probably drinking between eight and twelve Diet Cokes a day, right? Loaded with caffeine. That was just before the times of those crazy drinks with all the extra caffeine and everything, but that's what kept me going. But it was killing me. So I just then said, I'm stopping the caffeine and I'm stopping the sodas, whether they were sugared or not, and just went cold turkey on it. And that helped a whole process. That was the beginning of a whole process of life changes that I made from the time I was 24, 25, to get to this point today. So we won't dwell on this too long, but I have a feeling there's some good stuff to unpack here.

所以突然戒掉咖啡因会有一些影响，对吧？通常会有一些身体上的戒断症状，即使每天摄入的咖啡因剂量非常低。所以我想到两件事：第一，为什么是那一天？那一天和之前的日子有什么不同，催化剂是什么？第二，你后来是如何处理排毒期或适应期的？

So the cold turkey with caffeine has some repercussions, right? There are generally some physical withdrawal symptoms, even at very low daily doses of caffeine. So two things popped to mind: number one, why that particular day? What made that day different from the days before, and what was the catalyst? And number two, how did you handle the detox period or acclimation period afterwards?

嗯，我们稍后可以更深入地讨论这个，但推动力，我这样做的原因，是我在 25 岁左右基本上重置了我的整个生活，当时我每周工作 80、100、120 小时的一家公司，叫 General Magic，彻底失败了。它成了我生活的全部。我甚至没有，你知道，在某种程度上没有顾及我的家人。我只想让 General Magic 这家公司成功。所以当它彻底失败、成为一场灾难时，我有点踏上了自己的旅程，然后我开始重新思考生活中的各种事情。所以那是一件大事。但戒断——戒断实际上是连续三周的剧烈头痛。那是持续不断的头痛。你得吃 Advil 或泰诺之类的，但头痛一直持续。这让我意识到它对我的影响有多大，我很高兴我挺过来了。但是的，那很痛苦。我敢肯定它没有典型的毒瘾那么难戒，但咖啡因是一种非常非常强大的药物。而且我从不喝咖啡。我一生可能只喝过两三杯，仅此而已。

Well, we can get into this more later, but the impetus, the reason why I did that, was I basically pressed reset on my whole life when I was about 25, when a company that I was working at 80, 100, 120 hours a week at, called General Magic, totally failed. It became my entire life. I didn't, I shouldn't even, you know, my family to a certain extent. I just wanted to make this company General Magic happen. So when it was an utter failure and a disaster, I kind of went away on my journey, and then I started rethinking all kinds of things in my life. So that was one big thing. But the withdrawal — the withdrawal was literally three weeks of insane headaches. It was continual headaches. You had to pop the Advil or the Tylenol or whatever it was, but it was continual headaches. And it just made me realize how much that was affecting me, and that I'm glad I got through it. But yeah, it was painful. I'm sure it wasn't as hard as a typical drug addiction, but caffeine is a powerful, powerful drug. And I never drank coffee either. I probably had two cups, three cups of my life, that's it.

如果我们把时钟拨回童年，当然，在准备这次对话时，我做了不少阅读，我读到从修补的角度、从建造的角度——我们可能会深入探讨——你的祖父经常被提到。我很好奇你是在哪里发展出，或者说如何发展出你的销售、营销和展示能力的？因为你不仅是一个好的建造者，你还非常擅长以非常有说服力的方式展示想法。那么这来自哪里？

If we rewind the clock and go way back to childhood, of course, in prepping for this, I've done a fair amount of reading, and I've read that from the tinkering perspective, from the building perspective — which we could get into — your grandfather comes up a lot. I'm curious where you developed, or how you developed, your ability to sell, to market, to present. Because you're not only a good builder, you're also very good at presenting ideas in very persuasive ways. So where does that come from?

嗯，这是个好问题。我父亲是 Levi Strauss 的销售员。他是销售主管。他卖了 33 或 34 年的牛仔裤。他一直在这家公司。我想他是在我两岁的时候开始在那工作的。所以我一直看着他去卖衣服。他一路给了我一些小建议。有时我实际上会和他一起去他的销售会议，他会和零售商交谈，告诉他们最新的系列或黄金销售目标之类的。所以我得以观察他的工作并向他提问。他给了我一些非常重要的建议。那是第一个，这一定融入了我的 DNA，因为我父亲有那种技能。但随着时间的推移，实际上是在 General Magic 阶段之后，我开始理解其他人的语言——营销的语言、财务的语言、商业的语言——并试图真正理解工程学之外的那些语言，并将它们融合在一起。然后说，等等，每件事都是关于用其他人的语言沟通，对吧？他们会如何理解？另一个是来自内心真正有意义的地方。当你用对方的语言谈论你在做什么时，最终随着时间的推移，通过失败和其他所有事情，真正理解与他们谈论他们需要什么、他们的问题是什么以及你如何试图解决它们。所以你越设身处地为他们着想，我认为这是一个持续的过程。然后，你知道，受到 Steve Jobs 的指导更是将这一切融会贯通，对吧？看着他，这位绝对的大师，做这件事，然后我学到了更多的技巧和方法，并在此之后不断精进。

Well, it's a great question. So my dad was a salesman for Levi Strauss. He was a head sales guide. He was selling jeans for 33 or 34 years. He was with the company. So he started there, I think, when I was two years old. So I watched him all the time going and selling clothes. And he gave me little tips along the way. Sometimes I'd actually go with him to his sales meeting, where he would be talking to a retailer and telling him about the latest line or about gold sales goals or what have you. So I got to watch him do his work and ask him questions about that. And he gave me some really big tips on that. That was the first one, which is it must be built into my DNA because my dad has that skill. But then over time, it was really after the General Magic phase, then starting to understand other people's languages — the language of marketing, the language of finance, business — and trying to really understand those languages beyond engineering, and blending those together. And saying, wait a second, every single thing is about communicating in other people's languages, right? How would they understand? And then the other one is then coming from a place in the heart that's really meaningful. When you are talking the other person's language about what you're doing, and then ultimately over time, through failures and all these other things, it's really understanding talking to them about what they need and what their problems are and how you're trying to solve them. So the more you put yourself in their shoes, I think it was a continual thing. And then, you know, being mentored by Steve Jobs just kind of drilled it all home, right? To watch him, the absolute master, do it, then I picked up more tips and techniques and refined and refined after that.

我们可能稍后会回到这个话题，因为它与具体项目有关。General Magic 被提及过几次，我听说它被称为硅谷诞生过的最重要的公司，却几乎没人听说过。当然，说完全没人听说过也不准确，但它确实不像很多其他名字那样家喻户晓。那么，你是怎么进入 General Magic 的？在解释这个之前，General Magic 是什么？你可以按自己的方式来讲。

We'll probably come back to that as it relates to specific projects. General Magic has come up a couple times and I have heard it described as the most important company to come out of Silicon Valley that no one's ever heard of. Now it's not quite true that no one's ever heard of it, but it's not as recognizable as a lot of other names. Of course, how did you end up at General Magic? And in explaining that, what was General Magic? You can tackle that however you like.

当然。首先，现在有一部电影叫《General Magic 电影》，你可以去看。电影里讲述了我是怎么到那里的。但除此之外，对我来说，我从 70 年代起就是一个充满热情的极客，用的是 Apple II。嗯，最开始是一台有纸显示器和打孔卡的电脑，对吧？所以我是从那里开始的，然后是 Apple II 之类的。我一直是苹果的粉丝。我想是从 79 年或 80 年开始的，然后 Mac 出现了，我就成了 Mac 的粉丝。我开始学得越来越多，因为我真的深入进去了。不只是使用它，而是学习它，学习工艺，了解背后的人。那全都是关于 Mac 团队的。因为在那之前，在苹果之前，在 Mac 之前，苹果真的只是关于产品。那时甚至不是关于史蒂夫·乔布斯，真的只是关于 Apple II。当 Mac 出现时，它是一整套产品，包括史蒂夫·乔布斯以及背后的团队。你可以读到各种关于团队的文章。那时我开始真正思考：这些人是谁？他们是做什么的？所以我一直追踪他们，看他们去了哪里。有些人留在苹果，有些人离开了，有些人又回到苹果，来回变动。当我快毕业时，在《MacWeek》杂志的背面有一个小专栏，总是关于谣言工厂的。那是谣言工厂，我会读它。上面说 Mac 的创始团队离开去做了这个项目，这家公司叫 General Magic，叫 Pocket Crystal。我当时想，那是什么？所以每周你都会寻找那些小消息，那一周我找到了。之后，当我读到那个——因为那时没有互联网，对吧？——我读到后就想，好吧，现在目标明确了。不管它做什么，我想我会弄清楚这家公司在做什么，我需要看看我能不能去那里工作。因为我快毕业了。我当时有一个初创公司，但情况不太好。我在一个小池塘里。那时我在密歇根，因为还没有今天的移动革命。所以我必须去硅谷。我必须去见那个团队。然后最终，你知道，破门而入。我应该说，踢开门去那里工作。为了补充一些细节，我确实看了那部纪录片。你基本上——我不知道该怎么说——骚扰了人力资源主管，我觉得这个词不算过分，就是不停地打电话、不停地纠缠，直到他们终于注意到你。是这样吗？你能补充一些细节吗？

Sure, sure. Well, first there's a movie out now called The General Magic Movie, so you can see it. It has the filmmakers telling my story of how I got there. But beyond that, for me, it was really that I was a passionate geek since the 70s with an Apple II. Well, first with a computer that had a paper display and punch cards, right? So I started there, and then an Apple II and what have you. So I was always an Apple fan. I was a fan since I think '79 or '80, and then the Mac came, and so I was a fan of the Mac. I started to learn more and more because I was really diving in deep. It wasn't just using it; it was learning about it, learning about the craft, and learning who's behind it. And that was all about the Mac team. Because before that, before Apple, before the Mac, Apple was really just about the product. It wasn't even about Steve Jobs at that time; it was really just about the Apple II. When the Mac came, it was a whole set of the product, Steve Jobs, as well as the team behind it. And you were able to read all kinds of articles about the team. That's when I started to really just go, who are these people? What are they all about? So I kept tracking them and watching where they went. Some stayed at Apple, some left, some went back to Apple and back and forth. When I was getting out of school, there was in the back of MacWeek magazine a little column that was always about the rumor mill. It was the rumor mill, and I would read that. It said the founding team from the Mac has gone off to do this project and this company called General Magic, called Pocket Crystal. And I was like, what is that? So every week you would look for those little nuggets, and that week I found it. So after that, when I read that — because there was no internet back in the day, right? — I read that and I was like, okay, now tunnel vision. Whatever it does, I think I'll figure out what this company is doing, and I need to see if I could go work there. Because I was graduating. I had a startup at the time, but it was like this, it wasn't working. I was in a tiny pond. I was in Michigan at the time, because it wasn't the mobile revolution we have today. So I had to get to Silicon Valley. I had to go see that team. And then ultimately, you know, knock down the door. I should say, kicked in the door to get to work there. And to add some color to that, I did watch the documentary. And you basically — I don't know how to put this — harassed, I think is probably not too far off, the head of HR and just called and called and pestered and pestered until they finally paid attention. Is that accurate? Can you add a little bit of detail?

当然。首先，是纠缠硅谷内部的人，找到 General Magic 里可以交谈的人。所以第一步是，我决心找到公司里一个我能交谈的人。所以我必须和不同的人交谈。我写了信——我真的是打字然后寄给各种风险投资人和各种人，说“你认识某某公司的谁吗？”所以我必须找到那个人。然后我最终找到了那个人，是 Didi Young，然后开始跟踪公司——早上坐在门口试图进去见人——以及给 Didi 打电话争取面试，争取面试后的回复，所有这些事。大概花了六个月——让我想想，我那年大概是四月开始的，然后在同年十一月得到了职位。那是 1991 年。

Sure. Well, first it was pestering the people inside Silicon Valley to find the people at General Magic to talk to. So first was, okay, I'm determined to find a person at the company I could talk to. So I had to talk to various people. I wrote letters — I literally typed letters and sent them to various VCs and various people, saying who do you know at blah blah blah? So I had to find the person. And then I ultimately found that person, which was Didi Young, and started stalking both the company — sitting at the doorstep trying to get in in the mornings to meet somebody — as well as placing calls to Didi to get that interview, to get a response from the interview, all those things. It took probably six — let's see, I started in I think April that year, and then I landed the position in November that year. And that was 1991.

我对这部电影的记忆——这也是我对 General Magic 的全部了解——是，你并不是唯一一个睡在外面或试图在这家公司谋得职位的人。他们看中了你什么？你觉得你的方法或简历中哪些因素让你得到了这份工作？

My recollection of the film, which is really all I know of General Magic, is that you are not the only person who was, say, sleeping outside or trying to get a position at this company. What did they see in you? What were the elements in your approach or resume that got you a job, do you think?

嗯，我不能猜测，但——首先，那时我已经在高中和另一个人创办了一家初创公司。我们做教育——销售 Apple II 外设，并为这些外设编写 Apple II 软件。那家公司叫 Quality Computer。Joe Gleeson 是个很棒的人，他只比我大两岁。就我们两个人做这个。之后，在大学里，我和另一个人创办了一家芯片公司，我们逆向工程并制作了 65C816 处理器的新版本，用于 Apple IIGS——实际上是 Apple II 的 16 位版本，因为我们太喜欢它了。所以我们制作了一个处理器，并且真的制造出来了。然后我们——我还和密歇根大学的教授 Elliot Soloway 创办了一家软件初创公司叫 Constructive Instruments，当时我们做教育多媒体软件。所以我认为这些创业经历——芯片、软件、销售、零售、邮购和客户支持——让我有了一点优势。再加上我的热情，就是“请让我进去”。他们就想，“哦，这个孩子是谁？他刚出校门。嗯，但他有这么多经验。好吧，我们以微薄的薪水雇佣他”——确实如此——“然后试试看。”

Well, I can't speculate, but it was — well, first I had already, at that time, I had a startup company in high school with another guy. We were doing educational — selling Apple II peripherals and writing software for the Apple II for those peripherals. That was called Quality Computer. Joe Gleeson was a great guy, and he was just two years my senior. It was the two of us doing that. Then after that, in school, in college, I created a chip firm with another guy, and we reverse-engineered and made a new version of the 65C816 processor in school for the Apple IIGS — literally a 16-bit version of the Apple II because we loved it so much. So we made a processor and actually had it fabricated. And then we also — I also had a software startup called Constructive Instruments with my professor Elliot Soloway at the University of Michigan, and we were doing educational multimedia software at the time. So I think those few entrepreneurial endeavors — chips, software, sales, retail, mail order, and customer support — gave me a little leg up. Plus my passion for just "please let me in." And they were like, "Oh, who's this kid? He's fresh out of school. Well, he's got all this experience. Okay, let's hire him for a pittance" — which it was — "and we'll give him a try."

为什么 General Magic 拥有这样的全明星团队——我的意思是，当时的大明星和后来成为大明星的人——却失败了？为什么没有成功？他们在做什么，为什么没有成功？

Why did General Magic, with this all-star team — I mean, just the superstars of the time and soon-to-be superstars of later times — fail? Why did it not work? What were they doing and why didn't it work?

嗯，General Magic 试图创造本质上就是 iPhone 的东西，但早了大约 15 年。对吧？我们现在知道 iPhone，但那时没有数字电话网络或移动网络——都是模拟的。没有互联网。几乎没有多媒体。而且大多数人甚至还没用上电子邮件，对吧？所以我们创造的是这个过早的 iPhone。但它描绘了未来的图景。所以我们在技术上太超前了。甚至处理器都不够快，电池寿命也太短。太多因素了。我们远远领先于——远远领先于未来，可以这么说。所以这是其中一点。但另一点真正、真正击垮 General Magic 的是，我认为，缺乏纪律。缺乏关于谁是我们的客户、我们在制造什么产品、什么是……的纪律。

Well, General Magic was trying to create what was in essence the iPhone about 15 years too soon. Okay? So we know the iPhone today, but back then there were no digital telephone networks or mobile networks — they were all analog. There was no internet. There was almost no multimedia. And most people didn't even use email yet, right? So what we were creating was this iPhone too early. But it was a picture of what was to come. So we were too early for the technology. Even the processors weren't fast enough, and the battery life was too short. So many elements. We were well ahead of our — well ahead of the future, let's put it that way. So that was one piece. But then the other piece that really, really cut General Magic down was, I would think, a lack of discipline. A lack of discipline about who our customer was, what the product was we were making, what the...

你能描述一下你第一次接触史蒂夫·乔布斯的情景吗？

Could you describe your first contact with Steve Jobs?

我第一次接触是在安迪·赫兹菲尔德的生日派对上。对于听众来说，安迪·赫兹菲尔德是 Macintosh 的主要软件开发者之一。他和比尔·阿特金森、苏珊·凯尔等人创造了 Macintosh，他们当时都在 General Magic。所以安迪过生日时邀请了 General Magic 的团队去他家。你猜谁来了？我想他当时正骑着自行车，和史蒂夫一起，史蒂夫就住在大概五六个街区之外。所以他骑着自行车就来了，然后他就在那里了。我们都围了过去，因为史蒂夫当时显然在 NeXT 很忙。安迪和史蒂夫关系非常密切，经常讨论不同的技术和事情。那是我第一次见到史蒂夫。

My very first contact was at Andy Hertzfeld's birthday party. For people listening, Andy Hertzfeld was one of the principal software developers of the Macintosh. He and Bill Atkinson, Susan Kare, and others created the Macintosh, and they were all at General Magic. So Andy was having his birthday and invited the team from General Magic to his house. Lo and behold, who shows up? I think he was riding his bicycle at the time, with Steve, who literally lived like five or six blocks away. So he just rolled up on his bike, and there he was. We were all gathered around because Steve was obviously busy at NeXT at the time. Andy and Steve had a really close connection and would always talk about different technologies and things. That was the time I first got to meet Steve.

你当时是什么印象？你是不是被迷住了？

What were your impressions at the time? Were you starstruck?

完全被迷住了。哦天哪，史蒂夫。我当时只有 22 岁，所以就像见到你最喜欢的摇滚明星一样。你完全不知所措。他可能只是奇怪地看着我，觉得我是个疯小子。但印象是，他说话的方式非常果断。他确保那是他的观点，就这样。你可以和他争论什么的，那是很棒的调侃，很有趣。但另外，在 General Magic，我每天都会听到史蒂夫的故事。每天都会听到关于 Apple II 或 Macintosh 团队发生的事。所以从那些和他一起经历过最紧张和最欢庆时刻的人那里，我对史蒂夫有了一个印象。我敢肯定很多故事都被夸大了。所以我有了这样一个画面：有时是绝对的天才，有时是绝对的疯狂。我该害怕退缩吗？你真的不知道该怎么理解，因为你在真正见到一个人之前就有了对他难以置信的印象。

Absolutely starstruck. Oh my god, Steve. I was only 22 at the time, so it was like going up to your favorite rock star. You just don't know what to do. He probably just looked at me weirdly, like I was this crazy kid. But the impression was that he was very definitive in the way he spoke. He made sure it was his opinion and that was it. You could argue with him or whatever, and it was great banter, fun. But also, at General Magic, I would hear Steve stories every day. Every day you'd hear about something that happened on the Apple II or the Macintosh team. So I had this vision of Steve from the people who were with him in the most intense and celebratory times. I'm sure a lot of those stories were larger than life. So I had this picture: sometimes absolute genius, other times absolute madness. Should I cower in fear? You don't really know what to make of it because you have this incredible impression of a person before you've really met them.

我能想象那种“鱼有这么大”的故事，所有那些添油加醋的讲述，尤其是当你有这么好的原始素材时。

I can imagine the fish was this big type of story, all the elaboration that comes in chromatic storytelling, especially when you have such good raw material to begin with.

所以我会再问你更多关于史蒂夫的事，但在此之前，我想谈谈你在 General Magic 之后的重新开始。那么你当时完全……我们开始吧。你的重新开始有哪些要素，以及几年后的结果是什么？

So I will ask you more about Steve, but before we get there, I want to talk about your reboot post-General Magic. So you were full... let's go. What were the elements of your reboot and then the consequences a few years later?

当然。它始于个人贡献。我以为我贡献得很好，在团队层面表现出色。然后 General Magic 崩盘了。一切都发生了。你夜以继日地工作，视野狭窄，想着‘我这辈子在做什么？’每次你和父母说话，你都说‘我得走了，我得做这个。’只是为了一个唯一的目标而关闭一切。当那个时刻来临时，非常黑暗和孤独。幸运的是，我有一个来自 General Magic 的朋友，桑德拉·卡德，她来和我坐在一起，和我聊天，帮助我度过难关。她说，‘这很有价值，别担心那个，’然后把我带出那个环境，让我看到更远的地方。当时我在硅谷，大概四年里，我真的没去过离 General Magic 和我住的地方超过几英里的地方。我没去过旧金山，没去过海边。那是生活的唯一目标。所以她帮我摘掉眼罩，看到更多。然后我开始想，‘对 General Magic 来说什么是对的？产品该往哪里去？’我开始思考这个，也思考我的生活该往哪里去。我需要理解平衡。我开始阅读、设计、思考客户和营销。我看到了所有在 General Magic 崩溃的东西，心想‘我本该参与那个，我本该学习那些东西。’所以在那段时间，我在为 General Magic 重新设计一个我认为会成功的产品。我更多地了解了自己。当我觉得有了一些东西时，我把它带给 General Magic 的掌权者，说‘我认为这个真的很棒。’他们说‘不错，托尼，但我们有其他优先事项。’当然，这打击了我。我意识到我无法实现这个东西，因为他们有不同的事情想做。所以在从优秀到卓越的旅程中，我决定成为一名经理/领导者。我带着那个设计去找 General Magic 的不同授权商。我们有很多大公司合作：索尼、松下和飞利浦。所以我向当时的飞利浦 CEO 推销我的设备，说‘我们可以用这个做……’

Sure. It started with individual contribution. I thought I was contributing well, performing at the team level. Then the bottom fell out at General Magic. Everything happened. You're working night and day, tunnel vision, and you think, 'What am I doing with my life?' Every time you talk to your parents, you say, 'I gotta go, I gotta work on this.' It was just shutting everything down for one sole purpose. When that time came, it was very dark and lonely. Luckily, I had a friend from General Magic, Sondra Card, who came and sat with me, talked to me, helped me get through it. She said, 'This is valuable, don't worry about that,' and got me out of that element to see beyond. When I was in Silicon Valley at that moment, for probably four years, I literally didn't go further than a couple of miles from General Magic and where I lived. I didn't go to San Francisco, didn't go out to the ocean. It was a sole purpose in life. So she helped me take the blinders off and see more. Then I started thinking, 'What's the right thing for General Magic? Where would the product go?' I started thinking about that and also where my life was going. I needed to understand balance. I started reading, designing, thinking about the customer and marketing. I saw all these things that were breaking down at General Magic and thought, 'I should have been involved in that, I should have learned about those things.' So during that time, I was redesigning a product for General Magic that I thought would be a success. I learned more about myself. When I thought I had something, I took it to the powers at General Magic and said, 'This is what I think is really great.' They said, 'That's nice, Tony, but we have other priorities.' Of course, it hit me. I realized I couldn't make this thing real because they had different things they wanted to do. So on the journey from good to great, I decided to become a manager/leader. I took that design and went to different licensees of General Magic. We had many big companies working with us: Sony, Panasonic, and Philips. So I pitched my device to the CEO of Philips at the time and said, 'This is what we can do with...'

你在 General Magic 的那笔投资，他们就说‘太好了，我们干吧。好了，现在你来为我们做这件事。’我当时想‘哇，什么？’所以那时我 24、25 岁。后来经过一系列事情，我成了这个项目的负责人，要在硅谷为飞利浦从零开始组建团队，打造这个设备。General Magic 失败了，然后突然间，小心许愿，它可能成真。我从来没管过人，什么都没做过。所以我开始雇我认识的人，组建团队。头六个月我大概是天底下最差劲的经理。你知道，就像‘这么做，那么做， blah blah blah，你根本不知道自己在干嘛。’所以我不得不退回去，我失败得一塌糊涂。我在一家大公司，办公室昏暗，老派，不是初创公司，跟 General Magic 完全不一样。我离开了我熟悉的一切，来到这家大公司做这件事。我完全不知道自己在做什么，而且搞砸了。然后我不得不开始另一段旅程，比如‘我是什么？我是谁？什么是好经理？什么是好领导？我怎么学这些？我怎么反思自己的行为？我怎么获得反馈？’那是另一步。那段时间也是一段身体上的旅程。因为如果你看过那部电影，你可能在电影里看到过我。我看起来不像我喜欢的那个样子，非常不同。所以我是在放长线。我想让自己在 20 多岁的时候看起来尽可能糟糕，这样随着年龄增长我只会看起来更好。所以有心理上的旅程和情感上的旅程，但还有身体上的治愈之旅，从各个方面向上攀登那个金字塔，试图纠正航向，重新完整起来，然后超越它，把所有那些非常负面的经历转化为积极的东西。

This general magic investment you made and they were like 'That's great, let's do this. Okay, now you're gonna come on and do it for us.' I was like 'Whoa, what?' And so literally I was 24, 25 at the time. And now, through a whole set of things, I was now the lead of this project and this new team that I had to build from scratch in Silicon Valley for Philips to create this device. So there was a failure of General Magic, and now all of a sudden, be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. I had never managed people, I'd ever done anything. So I started hiring people I knew and started building this team. I was probably the worst manager under the sun for the first six months. You know, just like 'Do it this way, do it that way, blah blah blah, you don't know what you're doing.' So I had to go back and I'm failing miserably. I'm in this big company with these dark offices, it's old, it's not a startup, it's nowhere near like General Magic. So I left everything I knew to go to this big company to do this thing. I had no clue what I was doing, and I was failing at it. So then I had to go on another journey of like 'Okay, what am I? Who am I? What's a great manager? What's a great leader? How do I learn about these things? How do I reflect and see what I'm doing? How do I get feedback?' And that was another step. And all through that time was also a physical journey. Because if you saw the movie, you probably saw me in the movie. I don't look quite like I loved it, very different. So I'm playing the long game. I wanted to look as horrible as I could in my 20s so I can only look better as I got old. So there was that mental journey and emotional journey, but then there was a physical journey of healing in every which way, of moving up through that pyramid of trying to kind of right the ship and get whole again, but then move well beyond it and take all those really negative experiences and turning them into something positive.

我们来探讨一下你的过程，也许不止一会儿，关于你所说的那些阶段转变或章节变化。当你问自己‘什么是好经理？我怎么获得反馈？’的时候，实际的过程是怎样的？我的意思是，你是去书店买十本书然后读十本书吗？你是试图抓住别人，拷问他们怎么管理吗？你实际上做了什么？过程是怎样的？

Let's explore your process for a second, or maybe more than a second, as it relates to these what you might call sort of phase shifts or chapter changes. When you're asking yourself 'What's a great manager? How do I get feedback?' What does the actual process look like when you did? I mean, are you going to the bookstore and buying 10 books and reading 10 books? Are you trying to pin people down to grill them about how they manage? What did you actually do? What was the process?

你说到点子上了。有书，大量阅读。另一个是和我信任的、能给我反馈的人交谈。然后我开始去上一些课，你知道，就这么做。

Well, you hit it on the head. There were books, a lot of reading. Another one was talking to people who I trusted who could give me feedback. And then I started kind of going to a couple of classes, you know, and just doing that.

嗯，抱歉打断一下，是什么样的课？

Well, and sorry to interrupt, what type of classes?

哦，就是那种管理课，或者你知道，做一些关于你的管理风格的小问卷，看看什么有效、什么无效。然后随着我越来越深入，我想‘等等，我需要更深入地了解自己。我需要更多地了解自己。’那么怎么做呢？你知道，运动员会去找教练，开始训练，他们还会注意饮食，吃什么、怎么睡、怎么锻炼，所有这些，甚至可能还有心理能力。所以我想‘好吧，如果我要做这个，我必须非常了解自己。’考虑到我成长过程中经历的事情，因为我在 15 年里上了 12 所学校，我在某种程度上是个流动儿童。所以有很多社交互动我经历过或没有经历过，因为我和一个群体待的时间都不长。有时候体育能给孩子这些，因为他们学会如何在团队中工作，但我从来没有过，因为我总是在搬家。所以我决定最好的办法是行动。因为我在读所有那些心理学书籍，比如《少有人走的路》。我在大学还辅修了哲学，所以我也回顾了一些那些内容，回顾了一些心理学之类的东西。我说‘好吧，我就去找一个我可以和ta谈论一切的人。’所以我去了一个心理医生那里。我没疯，我只是决定去找一个应该懂这个的人谈谈。所以我真的去了，每次一个半小时到两个小时，每周两次，持续了将近一年半，真的深入探讨一切。我说‘我今天有了这个经历，我今天有了那个经历。’这给了我时间自己去处理。那个人会问我问题，医生会问我不同的问题，然后我就想‘哦，我没那么想过。我没从那个角度看。哦，好吧。’所以我得以深入探索我生活的很多方面。那真是哇，就像巨大的灯光在闪烁，你就像‘哦天哪。’然后突然间变化开始发生。不只是行动，而是学习基本原理，不只是通过读书，而是真正在日常中看到它。所以我可以把日常的例子带到咨询中，就谈论它们。

Oh, they were just kind of like management classes, or you know, doing little like questionnaires of your management style and what's working, what's not. And then as I got deeper and deeper, I was like 'Wait a second, I need to get deeper into myself. I need to learn much, much more about myself.' And so how do you do that? You know, athletes go off and get a trainer and they start working on the training, and they work on their food, you know, what they eat, how they sleep, how they work out, all that stuff, maybe even their mental abilities. And so I was like 'Well, if I'm gonna do this, I got to know myself really well.' And given a lot of the stuff that happened growing up, because I went to 12 schools in 15 years, I was a transient kid in a way. And so there were all these social interactions that I had or I did not have, because I wasn't with a group for very long. Sometimes sports gives that to kids because they learn how to work on teams, but I never had that because I was always moving. And so I decided that what's the best thing to do is I'm gonna act. Because I was reading all these books about psychology, you know, 'The Road Less Traveled'. I was also a philosophy minor in college, so I was also going back to some of that, going back to some psychology and things. I said 'Okay, I'm just gonna go find a person that I can go talk to about everything.' So I went to a psychologist. I wasn't crazy, I just decided I'm gonna go talk to somebody who should know something about this. So I literally went to one and a half to two hour sessions twice a week for almost a year and a half, and literally just diving deep into everything. And I said 'I had this experience today, I had that experience today.' And it gave me the time for me to process it myself. And the person would ask me questions, the doctor would ask me different questions, but then I was like 'Oh, I didn't think about it that way. I didn't see it from that angle. Oh, okay.' And so I got to go really deep into so many pieces of my life. That was just wow, it was just like huge lights flashing and you're like 'Oh my god.' And all of a sudden the changes started occurring. It wasn't just doing, but it was learning the fundamentals and learning not just by reading a book but actually seeing it in your day-to-day. So I could bring examples from everyday into the sessions and just talked about them.

有道理。你是怎么找到那个心理医生的？你是怎么选这个人的？

That makes sense. How did you find the psychologist? How did you pick this person?

哦天哪，哇。我是怎么做到的？我想就是朋友的朋友推荐的。是的，是推荐。

Oh geez, wow. How did I do that? I think it was just a recommendation from a friend of a friend. Yeah, it was a recommendation.

你在咨询之外看到的一些结果是什么？对你来说的一些成果？

What were some of the results that you saw outside of the sessions? Some of the outcomes for you?

我认为是同理心。有很多同理心，设身处地为别人着想，理解他们在想什么，他们如何行动，他们可能如何回应你说的某些话。不同的领导和激励方法。关于我每天做的决定，以及我如何做出不同决定的一些事情。还有重新建立互动？就像我说的，我是角落里那个书呆子孩子，我总是那个新来的。如果你总是新来的，你会有某些倾向，你会很快融入，但你也不会建立深厚的联系。所以就是那些你必须应对、真正梳理并了解自己的事情。所以那就像一个 N。那就是身体变化、心理变化、领导力变化让我真正超越的地方。而且不只是通过很多错误学习。我通过错误学习，但那是快速迭代，因为你可能了解症状，但你是在了解根本原因。如果你试图修复根本原因，或者至少管理它。

I think it was empathy. There was a lot of empathy, putting yourself in other people's shoes and understanding what they were thinking, how they're acting, how they might be reacting to certain words that you're saying. Different approaches to leading and motivating. Certain things about the decisions I made every day and how I could go about making different decisions. How about just re-enabling interactions again? Like I said, I was the geeky kid in the corner, I was the new kid all the time. And if you're the new kid all the time, you're gonna have certain tendencies and you're gonna fit in really fast, but you're also not going to make deep connections. So it's those kinds of things that you had to grapple with and really tease apart and learn about yourself. And so that was like an N. And so that was where the physical change, the mental change, the leadership change allowed me to really propel beyond. And not just learn through lots of mistakes. I learned through mistakes, but it was a quick iteration because you could learn about the symptom, but you're learning about the root cause. If you're trying to fix the root cause, or at least manage it.

你为什么在 15 年里换了 12 所学校？

Why did you go through 12 schools in 15 years?

嗯，因为我父亲的工作。他在 Levi's 业务起飞的地方。他记得在 70 年代，Levi's 简直就像一种珍贵商品。在俄罗斯黑市上，人们把 Levi's 牛仔裤当货币交易。它就是那种抢手货，有点像 Supreme 曾经或现在的样子。所以我父亲总是去各种地方，要么是 Levi's 刚起步或推广的地方，因为它不是到处都有，只在某些地区。所以要么开拓新区域，要么扶持或整顿业务。我们经常搬家，因为我父亲很有野心，销售能力很强，所以他们不断提拔他，给他越来越难的任务。成功就是这样——你只会得到更多。就像我朋友说的，赢得吃派比赛的奖励就是更多的派。

Well, because of my dad's job. He was wherever the business at Levi's was taking off. He remembered in the 70s, Levi's was literally like a precious commodity. They were trading Levi's jeans as currency in Russia on the black market. It was that sought-after thing, maybe like Supreme is or was. So my dad would always go to various places where they were either starting and rolling out Levi's, because it wasn't everywhere, just in certain places. So starting up new territories or propping them up or fixing them in some way. We would move from place to place because my dad was ambitious and really good at sales, so they kept promoting him and moving him up the ranks, giving him harder and harder work. That's what happens when you're successful — they only give you more. As a friend of mine put it, your reward for winning the pie-eating contest is more pie.

是什么让你父亲那么擅长销售？有哪些特质让他如此出色？

What made your dad so good at sales? What are some of the things that made him so good?

他非常有人缘，很会与人相处。从他的脸上就能看出来——他不是个会说谎的人。我也一样，这点遗传自他。有一天开完销售会后，他跟我说——那是个销售会议，我在场，他把整条产品线都摆出来展示。我记得当时好像是 Bloomingdale's 或 Macy's。他说：‘好，这些是我们系列里的热销款。这些不太好，我不建议你们买。’我说：‘爸，你在干什么？你应该把所有东西都卖掉。’他说：‘不，我不应该卖所有东西。我应该卖那些客户真正需要、能让他们成功的东西。如果我没有能让他们成功的东西，我会推荐我的竞争对手，让他们去那里买。因为我要赢得他们的信任和尊重。这不是一笔交易，而是一段关系。他们会每天、每周都回来找我，知道我是他们想交谈的人。我会是首选。如果我有最好的产品，我会拿到最大的订单。但如果我总是卖那些差劲的东西，只是为了完成季度指标，我就会失去这段关系。生活中一切都关乎你的人际关系，以及你如何对待它们，无论时运好坏。’那天我学到的关键一课，我永远不会忘记。

He's a very personable guy, so he gets along. You can see it in his face — he is not a guy who can lie. And neither am I; I got that from him. He said to me one day after a meeting — there was a sales meeting, I was there, and he laid out the whole line of clothes and showed them. I think it was Bloomingdale's or Macy's at the time. He said, 'Okay, these are the hot sellers in our line. These aren't so good; I wouldn't recommend you buying these.' I was like, 'Dad, what are you doing? You're supposed to sell everything.' He goes, 'No, I'm not supposed to sell everything. I'm supposed to sell the things that the customer really should have and will be successful with. And if I don't have what they'll be successful with, I'll recommend my competitor and tell them to go there instead. Because I'm going to earn their trust and respect. It's not about a transaction; it's about a relationship. They will come back to me every day, every week, and know that I'm the person they want to talk to. I'll be first. If I have the best stuff, I'll get the biggest orders. But if I always sold the stuff that was dog, just to make my quarter, I would lose that relationship. Everything in life is about your relationships and how you treat them, whether times are down or good or bad.' That was a key piece I took away from that day, and I'll never forget it.

真是个好故事。多么宝贵的一课。真是一份礼物。

That is a great story. What a great lesson. What a gift.

后来在你的职业生涯中，你曾就管理给出建议，谈到了培养同理心、个人转变。当那些新手管理者——可能原本是优秀的产品人员，却被提拔到管理岗位而毫无准备——来找你，他们就像在飞行中造飞机，你会给他们什么建议或培训？

When you later in your career were giving advice on managing, you talked about developing empathy, a personal transformation. When people would come to you as novice managers who are trying to build the plane while they're mid-flight, what type of advice do you give to new managers who are maybe good product people but have been promoted into a management role without preparation?

所有新管理者都不可避免地会遇到一个问题：他们与另一位管理者——可能是他们的客户、供应商或其他——产生分歧。通常是团队内部的管理者。他们通常会来找我抱怨那个人或他们遇到问题的团队。然后另一方也会来找我。我总是对他们说：‘听着，我可以坐在这里给你一些建议，但最终我不会裁决这件事。我不会选边站，因为无论我站哪一边，你或对方都不会高兴。事情永远不会顺利。你们能做的最好的事情就是，每当遇到这些问题，就走进一个房间，像成年人一样交谈，而不是像爱发牢骚的孩子一样抱怨。走进房间，把问题摊开。试着像成年人一样彼此沟通，解决问题。如果还是解决不了，再来找我。但不要像大多数人那样——在这边抱怨，在那边抱怨，却从不试图与对方建立联系，找到共同点，并在此基础上努力。这就像今天政治的两极分化。你必须走进那个房间。这是解决冲突、在组织内建立关系的关键一步，这样你才能走得更远。你们总是需要一起工作。这不是一个零和游戏。也许有些公司是，但在我待过的公司，从来不是零和游戏。我们彼此需要。你不能总是让你的经理来替你解决。我一直主张在实践中学习，然后再进行后端教育。换句话说，经历失败时刻，挺过去，自己想办法解决，然后去阅读相关的东西，然后恍然大悟：‘哦，现在我明白了。’这样就能把它内化。很多人是先学再做。我喜欢先做，失败，再学。

What always inevitably happens with all new managers is they have a difference with another manager somewhere — their customer, their supplier, whatever. They have a difference with a manager inside the team. Usually they'll come and complain to me about that person or whoever they're having a problem with. Then the other team member will come up. I always would say to them, 'Look, I can sit here and give you some advice, but at the end of the day I am not going to rule on this. I'm not going to sit here and take a side, because whatever side I take, you won't be happy or the other person won't be happy. It will never go well. The best thing you can do is whenever you have these issues, get in a room and speak like adults instead of complaining like whiny children. Get in a room and hash it out. Try to speak like adults to each other and work it out. If you still can't work it out, come get me. But don't do what most people do — rant over here and rant over there, but never try to make a bond with that other person to find common ground and work from that. It's like the polarization of our politics today. You've got to get in the room. That's the biggest step for conflict resolution and to build your relationships inside the organization, so you can go further. You're always going to need to work together. It's not a zero-sum game. Maybe some companies are, but in the ones I had, it was never a zero-sum game. We needed each other. You can't always get your manager involved to do that. I'm always about learning by doing, then doing the education on the back end. In other words, have the failure moments, work through it, try to figure it out yourself, and then go read about it and go, 'Oh, now I get it.' So it kind of locks it in. A lot of people learn then do. I like to do, fail, then learn.

你有没有发现哪些特别有用的书，或者推荐给人们关于管理或沟通的书？如果有人来找你说：‘托尼，我想和这个人把问题谈清楚，但我是你的缩小版——热血沸腾，全速前进——我觉得我没有工具来进行这次对话，要么会变得非常激动，要么无法以高效的方式处理。我该怎么准备？’你会推荐他们什么？

Are there any particular books you have found useful or recommend to people related to management or communication? If somebody came to you and said, 'Tony, I want to hash it out with this guy, but I'm a miniature version of you — running red hot, in sixth gear — and I think I won't have the tools to have this conversation without getting really excited or managing it in a way that won't be productive. How should I prepare?' Where might you point them?

有两本书。一本是《Getting to Yes》（《达成一致》）——如果你读过的话。这本书讲的是如何讲述一个故事，如何在现场讲一个很棒的故事，让人们对你提出的任何建议说‘是’。另一本是《Who Moved My Cheese?》（《谁动了我的奶酪？》）——另一本非常简单的书。你不需要读那些厚重的心理学书籍，就能学到非常简单的道理。

There are two books. One is 'Getting to Yes' — if you've ever read that book. 'Getting to Yes' is all about telling a story, being there, and telling a really great story for why people should say yes to whatever you're proposing. The other one is 'Who Moved My Cheese?' — another really simple book. You don't have to go through all these psychological heavy books to get very simple lessons.

Cheese 就是当你发现有些东西变了，你不喜欢它了，而且它超出了你的控制。而 Getting to Yes 则是关于寻找共同点，让对方理解你的立场，并最终让他们说“是”。这两本书很简单，但它们是让人们开始合作的好起点。

Cheese is when you know basically something's changed and you don't like it anymore and it's out of your control. And then you know, getting to yes was all about trying to find the common ground and getting someone to see your side and hopefully getting them to say yes. So those two things are very simple books, but they're a good starter place to get people to work together.

谢谢。我正看着——通常我会为此道歉——这要变得有点元了。我正看着我的 iPhone，通常我会为此道歉，但在这里似乎非常合适。我要看看我的笔记，因为我们共同的朋友 Scott Belsky 发来了一条短信，里面有一些建议。这某种程度上算是对 Steve 的回归。他提到——我就读几件事——他说 Tony 是他认识的少数几个能同时驾驭原子和比特的人。然后他说 Tony 有很多关于 iPhone 和 iPod 早期 Steve 的故事，关于决策是如何做出的，当时那些反直觉的赌注。所以你能讲一个关于 Steve 时代某个决策或反直觉赌注的故事吗？

Thank you. So I'm looking—normally I would apologize for this—I'm looking at this is gonna get meta for a second. I'm looking at my iPhone, which normally I would apologize for, but it seems very appropriate here. And I'm gonna look at my notes because there's a text from our mutual friend Scott Belsky with a few suggestions. And this is going to be the return to Steve in a way. So he mentioned—I'll just read a few things—so he's one of the rare people I know who can work across atoms and bits, as he describes it. And then he said he has a ton of Steve stories from early days of iPhone and iPod, how decisions were made, counterintuitive bets taken at the time. So could you tell a story about any decision or counterintuitive bet from the Steve days?

反直觉的赌注？嗯，你知道，Apple 当时在 iPod 业务上是在为生存而战，对吧？那是在 iPod 之前。一个反直觉的赌注就是 Steve 说我们要造一个 iPod。它代号叫 Dulcimer。实际上，公司当时有 5 亿美元债务和 2.5 亿美元现金，每个季度勉强盈亏平衡，对吧？Steve 说，我们必须做这件事。项目代号 Dulcimer，最终变成了 iPod，但我们必须做这个项目。他说，好吧，我当时是个顾问，在搞这个项目，然后他说，你要加入进来，让这件事发生。他对房间里的人说，听着，这件事一定会发生，如果有人挡你的路，让他们打电话给这个房间里的任何人，或者打给我，我们会处理。所以确实有人设置障碍。你知道，我们称之为“公司抗体”，他们会说，等等，我们正在为生存挣扎，对吧？我们在为 Mac 挣扎。我们必须把所有资源投入 Mac。我们不能走不同的方向。我们必须团结一致，而你只是个顾问，你算老几？我说，我需要一些人帮忙，他们说，不行不行不行。然后我就呼叫空中支援：嘿，我需要帮助，不管是谁。然后那个人，那个挡路的人，经过四五次电话后，公司里就传开了：如果 Tony 找你帮忙，你就直接答应，因为你不想知道否则会有什么炸弹砸到你头上。所以那是一个非常反直觉的事情，完全由 Steve 和管理层（或当时的一部分管理层）保驾护航。

Counterintuitive bet? Well, you know, Apple was fighting for its life on the iPod base, right? So that was pre-iPod. So a counterintuitive bet was specifically Steve saying we are going to build an iPod. That was called Dulcimer. Literally, the company at that timeframe had, I think, $500 million in debt and $250 million in the bank, and it was breakeven quarter-to-quarter, right? And Steve was like, we need to do this thing. It was a code name called Dulcimer, which ultimately became iPod, but we need to do this project. And he said, okay, I was a consultant whipping this thing up, and then he was like, okay, you're gonna come on board and you're gonna make this happen. And the people in that room, he said, look, this is going to happen, and if anyone gets in your way, have them call either someone in this room or call me, and we're gonna take care of it. So literally there were people who put roadblocks. You know, we say it's the corporate antibodies that set in and say, wait a second, we're struggling for our life, right? We're struggling for our life for the Mac. We got to put all of our resources in the Mac. We can't be going in a different direction. We have to all be, you know, and you're just a consultant, who are you, kid? And I'm like, I need some people to help, and they're like, no, no, no, no. And then literally I'd call in the air cover: hey, I need some help, whoever that was. And then that person and that person, whoever was in the way, after about four or five calls, it got around the company like, if I ask you for help, you just say yes, because you don't want to know what's gonna come your way, what bombs gonna come and hit you otherwise. And so that was a very counterintuitive thing, and it was totally guarded by Steve and the management, or a part of the management team at the time.

是什么给了他做出那种决策的信心？或者也许信心这个词用在这里不对，我不确定。但如果你必须推测，或者你知道，是什么让他有能力做出那种承诺和决策？

What gave him the confidence to make that type of decision? Or maybe confidence is the wrong label to apply to it, I'm not sure. But if you have to speculate, or if you know, what gives or gave him the ability to make that type of commitment and decision?

嗯，你知道，我在第一个 iPod 之后看到了很多决策和很多事情，就像开了绿灯继续前进，对吧？所以我根据我看到的十年决策来推测。我认为在 iPod 这件事上，几乎每次我们不得不下大赌注，做一个非常大的、高风险、让公司面临巨大风险的决策时，都是因为我们受到了威胁。是的，没错。所以 iPod 是因为他们尝试了所有方法让 Mac 在三年内好转，但都不行，我们必须尝试不同的东西。我们在 Mac 上试了一切，没人愿意从 Windows PC 迁移，我们还能做什么不同的事？所以这看起来是第一件可能成功的事。MP3 正在兴起，当时所有的 MP3 播放器都很糟糕，而 iTunes 在 Apple 从 Jeff Robbin 那里收购之后开始获得 traction，Mac 也开始作为多媒体机器销售。你可以在上面做音乐。他说，好吧，如果我们有了 iPod，也许会让更多人想买 Mac，因为它有差异化。不仅仅是刻录 CD 之类的。人们会买更多 Mac，因为这款 iPod 能让他们做别人做不到的事，尤其是在 PC 端做不到的事。所以我们受到了威胁。Michael Dell 对全世界说，Apple 应该收拾东西回家，把剩下的钱分给股东，然后关门。对吧？情况就是这样。Steve 不想让这种事发生，所以他寻找任何可能突破的东西。而且他热爱音乐，我们都热爱音乐。所以我认为他下了那个赌注，而且做这件事的成本并不高。

Well, you know, I saw a lot of decisions and a lot of stuff after the first iPod, kind of green light to start to keep going, right? So I'm gonna speculate based on those ten years of decisions I saw. What I think happened at the iPod thing, which was literally almost every time we had to make a big bet, a very big decision that would be kind of high risk, put the company at high risk, it was always because we were under threat. Yeah, okay. So the iPod was because they tried everything to get the Mac to go over three years and it wasn't going, and we have to try something different. We tried everything on the Mac, no one wants to move off Windows PCs, what are we going to do differently? And so this looked like the first thing that could happen. MP3s were taking off, all the MP3 players at the time were just horrible, and iTunes at the time, after Apple bought iTunes from Jeff Robbin, basically started gaining traction, and Macs were just starting to sell as multimedia machines. You could do your music on them. And he's like, okay, now if we get an iPod, maybe it will cause more people to want to buy Macs because it's differentiated. It's not just burning CDs or something. People will buy more Macs because this iPod will allow them to do something that nobody else can do, not especially, definitely not on the PC side. So we were under threat. Michael Dell said to the world, like, oh, Apple should pack up and go home, give all the money left over to the shareholders, and stop. Right? So that's the situation. And he didn't want that to happen, so he was looking for anything that could possibly break out. And he's a lover of music, we were all lovers of music, or are lovers of music. And so I think he made that bet, and it wasn't too expensive to go off and do.

作为其中一部分，iTunes 在 Apple 内部首次被原型化和开发的时间点是什么？按年份算大概是什么时候？

What is the timing for, just as one piece of it, iTunes within Apple when it's first being sort of prototyped and developed inside of Apple? What would have the timing been on that in terms of year?

大概是 2000-2001 年。是的，所以 iTunes，我相信是在 2000 年底被收购的。可能是——不，不，你知道——2000 年中期到早期到中期被收购的。然后它被快速改造成为 Apple 的产品，成为 iTunes。然后他们开始看到它起飞，他们希望它能与 MP3 播放器配合使用。那时 Apple 说，哦，我们需要一个设备。那时我接到了电话，一切就都凑齐了。所以是 2000 年初，然后我们讨论了 iPod。我在 2001 年 1 月底被引入，然后在 2001 年 3 月的第三或第四周看到项目获批，然后在同年 10 月的第一周发货。就是这么快。组建了整个团队，打造了整个产品。那是一个疯狂、疯狂、疯狂的日程。

Like 2000-2001. Yeah, so iTunes, I believe, was bought in late 2000. It might have been—no, no, do you know—middle to early to middle of 2000, it was bought. And then it was quickly rejiggered to be an Apple product, to be iTunes. And then they started seeing it taking off, and they wanted it to work with MP3 players. And that's when Apple said, oh, we need a device. And that's when I got the call, and everything came together. So it was early 2000, and then we had the discussion about the iPod. I was brought in in late January 2001, and then I would see signed off on it in the third or fourth week of March of 2001, and then we shipped it in the first week of October that year, in 2001. So it was that fast. Built the whole team, built the whole thing. It was a crazy, crazy, crazy schedule.

讲一个世界真小的故事。我刚搬到硅谷，在圣何塞工作，住在山景城。我有一间非常非常小的卧室，每月租金大概要五百万美元，还有一辆牧场车。我开着我妈传给我的破旧小货车，那车简直是个灾难。在我的公寓楼里，有个家伙，就在对面，有一个小水泥池塘。我是说，那真的很搞笑，但住着非常舒服。这家伙——我不想给任何人惹麻烦，所以我不说他来自哪里——但他总是在深夜抽烟。我是个夜猫子，所以我会在凌晨两三点起来做我的第一家公司。那家伙走了，我们聊了几分钟。

Just as a small world story of sorts, so I had just moved to Silicon Valley and I was working in San Jose, living in Mountain View. And I had this tiny, tiny, tiny bedroom which cost like five million dollars a month, and a ranch. I was driving my mom's hand-me-down piece-of-shit minivan, this thing was a disaster. And in my apartment complex there's this guy, sort of across the way, there's this little concrete pond. I mean it was really pretty hilarious, but perfectly comfortable place. And this guy—I don't want to get anybody in trouble, so I won't mention where he's from—but he would always be smoking late at night. And I was a night owl, so I'd be up at like 2:00, 3:00 in the morning working on this first company. And the guy's gone, and we talked for a few minutes.

那算是我们每晚的闲聊，我看到这家伙，他在苹果工作，样子越来越憔悴。当时他没告诉我名字什么的，只是说：‘你看，我自己都搞不懂了。你能过来看看这个界面，给我点意见吗？我已经盯着它看了差不多 20 个小时了。’后来我才意识到，那是一个非常早期的 iTunes 原型。

And was sort of our nightly chat and I saw this guy, he worked at Apple, and he got progressively more and more haggard looking. And it turned out at the time he didn't give me any name or anything, but he's like, 'Look, I can't even make sense of this anymore. Can you come over here and give me your thoughts on this interface? Because I've just been looking at it for like 20 hours straight.' And it was, I later realized, a very early sort of mock-up of iTunes.

是啊，回想起来真有意思。那家伙工作那么拼命，是个好员工。我敢肯定他本来不该给我看的，但他需要第二意见。现在回头看那东西变成了什么，你还会感到震撼吗？你的 TED 演讲很棒，讲了很多关于习惯化的事。但当你看到人们拿着 iPhone 或 Nest 这些你深度参与的产品走来走去时，还会不会偶尔让你停下来？还是说这些东西太普遍了，对你来说已经视而不见了？

Yeah, it's a while to look back. But this guy, he was working so hard, he was a good employee. I mean, he probably—I'm sure—wasn't supposed to show me, but he needed a second opinion. And it's just reflecting back on what that has become. Does it still hit you? Your TED talk is wonderful, talks a lot about habituation. But when you see people walking around with one of these devices, right, an iPhone, or some of these products, Nest, that you've been so critically involved with, does it ever still just kind of stop you? Or is it so ubiquitous that it's become invisible to you?

嗯，你知道，当它变得无处不在、变得稀松平常时，基本上就是‘哦，随便啦’。然后你回头一想，‘对啊，我都忘了自己参与过’，因为你每天都在用。对我来说，在我们这一行，做过的事都是老黄历了。永远只关注你现在在做什么，或者你计划做什么，对吧？所以我们从来不会——就像团队里说的，我们只庆祝一纳秒，然后继续前进。看看 iPod，每一代我们都在拼命。iPod 直到第三代才算成功，对吧？第一代挺酷，但没人买。第二代酷了一阵子，多了一些人买。第三代才开始真正起飞。到了 iPhone 的时候，我们已经有了一些成功的底子，但那时我们面对的是那些巨头公司，就像之前对付索尼一样。我们想：‘是啊，这真的很难。我们能行吗？’然后我们做到了。但接着我们又想：‘但这还不够。我们得做下一个，再下一个。’所以这是一段令人喘不过气的旅程。最后当你到达终点时，你会想：‘哦对，我们做了这一切。’然后你去试着写历史，就会感叹：‘哇，我们确实做了好多事。’但你知道吗，在经历了那种神奇的体验和在硅谷十年的失败之后，我一直抱着成功的希望，但从不觉得‘一定会成功’，因为我已经经历过那种身心俱疲的痛苦。所以我从来没有达到那种‘天哪，我们是冠军’的状态——那种感觉早就从我身体里消失了。永远都是攀登下一座山丘或山峰，最终做出真正伟大的东西。而如今这些东西还在进化，看到这一点很棒。

Well, you know, when it becomes everywhere and becomes mundane, basically, you know, just like 'whatever.' And then you kind of look back, 'Oh yeah, I forgot I was involved in it,' because you're just using it every day. It wasn't like—so to me, you know, in our business, whatever you did was ancient history. It's always about what you're doing or what you're planning to do, right? So we could never—you know, as we said on the team, we'd only celebrate for a nanosecond and move on. And if you look at iPod, we were fighting for our life with every generation. iPod wasn't a success until the third generation, right? So the first one was like cool, and then it was—nobody bought it. Second one, cool for a little while, then a few more people bought it. The third one is where that started happening. And then when iPhone happened, you know, we had a lot of success underneath our wings at that point, but then it was like we're taking on these monster companies, just like we took on Sony. It's like, 'Yeah, and this is really hard. Can we do this?' And we did it. But then we're like, 'But that's not enough. We got to do the next one and the next one.' So it's a breathless journey that you have. And then finally when you're there, you're like, 'Oh yeah, we did all that.' And then you go and try to like write down the history and like, 'Wow, we sure did a ton of stuff.' You know, but after having that general magic experience and ten years of failure for me in the valley, it was always a hope we would be successful, but never a 'it's gonna be,' because I already went through that physical and emotional pain. So I never got to that point where 'Yes, oh my god, we're the champions.' That left my body. It was always about climbing the next part of that hill or that mountain, to ultimately get to—you know—making something that's really great. And you know, those things today are still evolving, and it's great to see.

我们接下来会聊很多你离开苹果后的经历，但在此之前，你在对话开头提到从 Steve 身上学到了很多。你从他那里学到了什么，或者从他身上汲取了什么？随便说说。

We're gonna talk about a lot of your post-Apple experiences, but before we get there, you mentioned early in the conversation that you learned a lot from Steve. What are some of the things that you learned from Steve or picked up from Steve? Anything at all.

最大的收获就是讲故事。讲故事、讲故事、讲故事。无论你做什么，都要有好的故事和好的类比，因为你需要在对方的层面上与他们沟通。如果你能给出好的类比，那么无论你是讲产品故事还是软件故事，甚至是你想改变工作流程，或者决定该和哪些供应商合作——你都需要一个好故事来支撑，这样你才能让大家跟上你的思路，并通过一种有趣的方式来理解事实，你明白我的意思吗？‘我们经历了这个，这是旅程的第一步、第二步，我们学到了这些，现在我们面临今天的这个决定。这些是我们想确保避免的过去的问题，但这些是我们未来需要的。这会很冒险。’但讲这些故事，如果你能找到人人都能理解的类比，那就会变得非常简单明了。

The biggest one was storytelling. Storytelling, storytelling, storytelling. Always, whatever you're doing, have great stories and great analogies, because you need to relate to people on their level. And if you can give them great analogies, so if you're trying to—whether it's a product story or software story, but even if you try to change the way you know you're doing a process at work, or who are the right vendors we should be working with—you need a great story behind that, so you can get people on board and understand the facts through a fun way of learning about the facts, if you know what I mean. 'We went through this, and here's step one of our journey, step two of our journey, this is what we learned, and now we're at this decision today. Here are the things that we want to make sure we avoid from the past, but we need these things in the future. It's going to be risky.' But telling those stories, and then if you can find the analogies by which everyone can relate, it makes it really just drop-dead simple.

你有没有什么类比的例子，不管是 Steve 的，还是你自己后来的经历，可以拿来举例说明？

Do you have any examples of analogies, whether from Steve or from your own journey later, that you could use to illustrate?

当然。比如 Steve 在台上和 Walt Mossberg 对话时有一个完美的例子：Mac 就像给地狱里的人递上一杯冰水。对吧？你会想：‘哦对，当然。’你会觉得：‘哦，太清爽了。我需要这个。我渴了这么久。你某种程度上救了我的命。’这就是一个经典的例子。但我们也在营销中一直尝试这么做。在 Nest 的时候，我们在营销中就这么做。在 iPod、iPhone 上也是。但有时候你甚至不需要类比，如果你能把它说得非常精炼。iPod 的第一句广告语就是‘把一千首歌装进口袋’。对吧？这可能是史上最短、最简洁、最戏剧化的产品广告语了，对吧？当你听到这句话时，我们总是用它作为标杆。我们把它当作之后所有事情的衡量标准。比如，我们的营销怎样才能达到那种效果？或者我们想表达的东西怎样才能达到那种效果？要让它如此精炼、如此易懂，让人恍然大悟：‘天哪，对啊，就这么简单。’这是一个非常漂亮、优雅的例子，展示了好处而非特性，对吧？而不是当时常见的那些规格参数，比如兆字节、传输速度、CD 速度。

Sure. You know, like Steve had this perfect one he did with Walt Mossberg on stage, which was like, you know, the Mac was like bringing a glass of ice water to somebody in hell. Yeah, right? You're like, 'Oh yeah, of course.' You're like, 'Oh, it's so refreshing. I need this. I've been dying for so long. You've now saved my life in a way.' And so that was one, just a classic example of that. But you know, we try to do that all the time in our marketing. You know, when we were at Nest in our marketing, we try to do that. In iPod, iPhone. But you know, sometimes you don't even need an analogy, though, if you can really get it crisp. And that was the first tagline for the iPod, which was 'A thousand songs in your pocket.' Right? It is probably the shortest, most concise, most dramatic tagline of any product ever in existence, right? And when you hear that, you'd like—we always use that. We hold that up as kind of the measuring stick for everything we do after that. Like, how do we get to that point with our marketing? Or how do we get to that point whatever we're trying to say? To get it so crisp, so understandable for everyone, that is like, 'Oh my god, duh, yeah.' It's such a beautiful, elegant example of the benefits versus features, right? And instead of what you saw a lot at the time, which was the specs, right? The megabytes or the feeds and speeds, the CD speeds. Exactly.

而且，这种广告语正好击中了既完全易懂又易于传播的甜蜜点，对吧？它真的完美地把握住了那个度。

And man, it's also the type of tagline that hits that sweet spot of perfectly understandable and shareable, right? Which is, it really did just read that needle perfectly.

另外，关于类比还有一点：如果你能给别人一个很好的类比，他们会不断向其他人重复。所以即使他们没有掌握所有细节，无法精确复述整个故事或所有来龙去脉，他们也能说出这个类比，然后每个人都会说：‘哦，现在我明白了。’对吧？所以很大程度上，这是另一件事：给你的听众，或者你想说服的人，一种超能力。给他们那句关键的话，让他们觉得自己真的懂了，然后他们就能复述，然后觉得：‘没错，我懂行。’这很酷。

After a below, what do they think of analogies? Yeah, one other thing about analogies: if you can have a great analogy for someone, they will continue to repeat that to everyone else. So even if they didn't get all the details and everything else, and they can't articulate exactly the story or all the house-wise and what's, they can tell the analogy, and everyone goes, 'Oh, now I get it.' Right? Yeah. So for the most part, and so that's another thing: is trying to give the people your listeners, or the people you're trying to persuade, a superpower. Give them that key line to make them feel like they really know what's going on, and then they can reiterate and then like, 'Yes, I'm in the know,' and it's cool. Totally.

而且，那个单一的类比或那句话，那个令人难忘的短语，至少在我的经验里，也常常成为其他信息的锚点，对吧？但他们需要那个最初的锚点，才能进入回忆的链条，从而获得其他细节。

And that single analogy or that single line, that one memorable phrase, at least in my experience, also often acts as an anchor for other pieces of information, right? But they need that first anchor in order to access that chain of recall that gives them the other details.

没错。他们会说：‘哦，现在我听进去了。’

Exactly. They go, 'Oh, now I'm listening.'

我现在明白了，我在听。是的，我们……你说得对。在我看过的所有视频里，当然还有这次对话，你看起来是个非常适应高转速的人。我读到——当然网上说的不能全信，所以你可以随时纠正——但我读到，离开苹果后，你的目标是“感到无聊”（这是《卫报》的引述）。然后你带着年幼的家人环游世界一年半，把孩子送进法国幼儿园等等。你的目标真的是感到无聊吗？如果是，能解释一下这是什么意思吗？

I get it now. I'm listening. Yeah, we were... yeah, you're right. In all the videos that I've watched, and certainly just having this conversation, you seem like a guy who's very comfortable at high RPMs. I read — and certainly you can't believe everything you read on the internet, so feel free to fact-check — but I read that upon leaving Apple, your goal was to 'get bored' (in quotation marks, this is from The Guardian). And then he traveled around the world with his young family for a year and a half, put his children in French preschool, etc. Was the goal to get bored, and if so, could you explain what that means?

所以“感到无聊”——很多人来找我寻求职业建议，那些为我工作过、与我共事过的人。他们来说：“托尼，我在考虑下一步。”在你的职业生涯中，你会到达一个能够花时间做决定的节点。大多数人在职业生涯早期，你得吃饭，你得从监狱跳出来，你得从一个荷叶跳到另一个荷叶，你必须确保它稳固可靠，因为你担心你的生活、你的家庭。到了某个阶段，你实际上可以暂停一下，喘口气，重新思考，获得灵感。所以我说“感到无聊”，就是跳出你所在的日常琐事，编辑它。只是说：“好吧，这一周或这两周我尽可能多地收集信息，弄清楚我要跳到哪里，然后我就跳过去。管他呢，我会搞定的。”我对人们说的是：“不，别这样。”他们就会说：“哦，我现在职位很高。如果我停下来，我会失去一切，不得不从零开始。”我说：“不，你不会。”你需要做的是——如果你职业生涯规划得当，每八到十年，你会有不同的人生篇章、职业篇章。如果你想做任何有意义的事，大概就是八到十年。有些人认为是四到五年，但我不认为如果你在做真正重要和不同的事情会是这样。所以当那些暂停出现，或者那些重大转变发生时，你需要非常清晰地思考，因为你即将与某件事“结婚”十年或八年，全身心投入。如果你选择正确，那不是为了钱，而是为了使命、你想学什么、你想挑战自己什么、你想为世界带来什么。所以你应该抽出时间，感到无聊，退出竞争。我得到了一小段时间来思考未来。我把未来看作今天、两周、两个月。之后可能就模糊了，也许是假期。但除此之外，就像“好吧，我甚至不知道外面有什么”。花时间感到无聊——如果可以的话，花三到六个月，或者至少两到三周。感到无聊。把你所有的事情都放下，也许去清理车库什么的。通过这个过程，你会开始以不同的方式思考，你的行为会略有不同，你的思维可能会向其他灵感来源、其他问题、其他事物敞开。你开始想：“哦，现在我看到了不同的东西。我不会仅仅因为了解这个领域就跑到竞争对手那里，因为他们会给我更好的工作。我想去一个完全不同的领域，我想学习，那会挑战我。”这样我就不是每天打卡上班，而是真正在成长。

So 'getting bored' — and a lot of people come to me for career advice, people who worked for me, worked with me, whatever. They come and say, 'Tony, I'm thinking about doing the next thing.' You get a point in your career where you have the ability to take time to make decisions. Most people very early in their career, you know, you have to eat, you have to jump from jail, you have to jump from lily pad to lily pad, and you have to make sure it's going to be solid and stable and everything else because you're worried about your life, your family. You get a certain point in your career where you can actually take a pause, you can breathe, and you can think again, and you can get inspired. So when I say 'get bored,' it's get out of the process you're in, the day-to-day grind, and edit it. Just saying, 'Okay, I've taken as much information as I can in this week or these two weeks of figuring out where I'm jumping to, and I'm just gonna jump to it. Damn the torpedoes, I'll make it work.' What I say to people is, 'No, don't.' They're like, 'Oh, I have this great position now in title. If I stop, I'm going to lose it all and have to start from zero again.' And I'm like, 'No, you don't.' What you need to do is — if you do your career right, between every eight to ten years, you're going to have a different chapter of your life, of your career. If you want to do anything substantial, it's probably between eight and ten years. Some people think it's four to five; I don't think that if you're doing something that's really important and different. So when those pauses come up, or when those big transitions happen, you need to think very clearly because you are about to get married for ten years or eight years to something else that you're going to put your heart and soul into. If you're choosing correctly, it's not about the money; it's about the mission, what you want to learn, what you want to challenge yourself with, and deliver to the world. So you should take the time out, get bored, get out of the rat race. I got a sliver of time to think about the future. I think about my future as today, two weeks, two months. Maybe after that it's a blur, maybe holidays. But other than that, it's like, 'Okay, I don't even know what's out there.' Get the time to get bored — spend three, six months if you can, or at least two or three weeks outside of that. Get bored. Just put away all of your things, maybe go clean up the garage or whatever it is. Through that, you're going to start to think differently, you're going to act slightly differently, and your mind might open up to other sources of inspiration, other problems, other things. You start to go, 'Oh, now I see differently. I'm not just going to run to the competitor because I understand the space and go work for them because they're going to give me a better job. I want to go to a whole different thing that I want to learn about, that's going to challenge me.' So I'm not just checking in every day and doing my work; I'm actually growing through that.

这太棒了。我想继续聊下去。你能给我一个你生活中这样做的个人例子吗？无论是现在还是过去，任何你想得到的、能很好说明这一点的例子？

This is great. I'm going to keep going with this. Could you give me a personal example from your life of doing this, whether it's current day, past, anything that comes to mind that makes for a good illustration?

嗯，你已经提到了：我们环游世界一年半的那段时间。整个目标就是离开原来的地方。那时，我已经在硅谷待了——让我想想——18、19 年。就是离开，带着当时一岁和两岁的孩子去看看世界。我们很少见到他们，因为我妻子也为史蒂夫工作——我妻子为史蒂夫工作，我为史蒂夫工作——所以我们忙着帮助苹果。有了孩子后，有一天我们回到家，发现我们不在他们身边。我们意识到我们不在他们身边；他们遇到问题会跑去找保姆，而不是我们，因为他们不认识我们。所以我们说：“这样不行。”于是我们决定改变一切，出去了解生活中的其他事物，努力和家人在一起。通过那次旅行，我们去了许多不同的国家，住在不同的房子里——住在西班牙、法国、夏威夷、加利福尼亚的不同地方。我们到处搬家。在那段旅程中，去不同的艺术博物馆，与人交谈，住在不同的房子里，Nest 的想法就诞生了。实际上，我们住在世界各地这些房子里，都遇到同样的问题。你住在西班牙，住在弗雷斯诺，住在夏威夷，你会想：“等等，它们在家居控制等方面都有相同的基本问题。”与此同时，我还在远程设计太浩湖的一栋房子。所以，在太浩湖设计——那是一个很好的分心，是我一直想做的事——然后住在这些不同的地方，体验设计中的相同问题，并理解我看到了世界各地不同的生活方式，我想：“等等，我觉得我们可以解决这个问题。”一步一步地，Nest 经过了九个月的孕育——思考、阅读、学习、体验——然后想出了那个解决方案。如果我还在硅谷，我永远想不出这个点子。

Well, you brought it up already: the time that we went around the world for a year and a half and traveled. The whole goal there was to get out of the same place. At that point, I had been — let's see — 18, 19 years in Silicon Valley. It was to get out, see the world with our kids who were one and two at the time. We didn't see them very much because my wife also worked for Steve — my wife worked for Steve, I worked for Steve — so we were busy helping Apple. When we had kids, we came home one day and we weren't with them. We learned that we weren't with them; they were running to the nanny when they had a problem instead of us because they didn't know who we were. So we said, 'This is not working.' So we said we're going to change everything and go out and understand other things in life and try to be with family. Through that, we went to many different countries and lived in different houses — lived in Spain, France, Hawaii, different parts of California. We moved all around. Through that journey, going to different art museums, talking to people, living in different houses, that's where the idea for Nest came up. Literally, we were living in all these homes around the world with all the same problems. You're living in Spain, you're living in Fresno, you live in Hawaii, and you're like, 'Wait a second, they all have the same fundamental problems with their home controls and things.' At the very same time, I was designing a house remotely in Lake Tahoe. So between Lake Tahoe designing — that was a great distraction, it was something I always wanted to do — and then living in these different places and experiencing the same problems in that design here, and understanding that I saw different ways of living all around, I was like, 'Wait a second, I think we can fix this problem.' Step by step, Nest was created over a nine-month gestation — thinking, reading, learning, experiencing — to then come up with that solution. If I was still in Silicon Valley, I would have never come up with it.

你现在在哪里？我现在在巴黎。那你这些天大部分时间在哪里？还有，为什么是巴黎？

Where are you now? Right now, I'm in Paris. And where do you spend most of your time these days? And along with that, why Paris?

所以巴黎是在那次旅行中发生的——那一年半的旅行。巴黎本来只打算待两周，一次快速的成人旅行：我们来这里，在巴黎，会是一次很棒的父母体验，但孩子就不那么好了。我们到了这里，然后开始四处看看，真正地生活。在那两周里，就进入各种奇特的……

So Paris happened during that trip — that year-and-a-half travel. Paris was only supposed to be a two-week kind of quick adult trip: we're going to come here and be in Paris, it's going to be a great parents' experience, but the kids not so much. We got here and then we started looking around and really living. In those two weeks, just go into this various odd...

舞蹈之类的事情，就像，等等，这太棒了。孩子们，尤其是他们这个年纪，感觉就像，哦，这太美妙了。我妻子说，这太好了，我们就留下来吧。我们只是，因为我们有能力，我们就留下来了。我们就继续待在巴黎。然后通过那段时间，我们遇到了各种各样非常有趣的人，了解了文化，学习了语言，并且越来越热爱这里。我还去了各种博物馆，了解那些艺术家以及他们所处的时代。比如，哦，毕加索的蓝色时期，他的下一个时期，再下一个时期。每次他们休息的时候，就像，哦，我们在那些休息中获得灵感，就像他们一样。这很酷。所以巴黎就成了我们的一部分。然后另一个因素是，我们想，等等，我们可以回硅谷，但我们的孩子真正能学到什么呢？我们想，他们可以学一门语言。学习第二语言一直是我的梦想。在中西部长大，在美国长大，你知道，至少在 70 年代和 80 年代，你不会觉得第二语言很重要。今天，显然它越来越重要，尤其是在加州和其他州，比如德克萨斯州等等。但我一直想这么做。我想，我们可以把这个给我们的孩子。他们可以学那个。他们当然会学习社交，但他们可以学数学、历史和科学，但他们也可以学一门语言。我们来做吧，把这份我一直渴望的礼物送给我们的孩子。这就是巴黎的联系。然后我们每年夏天都回来。我们的孩子一直参加法语课程，并且变得流利。最后我们在这里买了房子。然后在我完成 Google Nest 的工作后，我妻子说，嘿，我们在巴黎有个地方，我们就搬过去吧。我说，就这么办，成交。事情就是这样发生的。但从那以后，从 2016 年开始，我们也决定进一步拓展。现在我们花很多时间在东南亚和巴黎，我们来回奔波，让我们的孩子在那里上学。你知道，有家教在我们去不同地方时帮助我们的孩子。就像你多次说过的，经历是学习非常强大的东西。所以这让父母也脱离舒适区，就像孩子第一次学习一样。我们作为一个家庭单位学习。我们会弄清楚，比如，当你在印度尼西亚时，货币是什么？他们为什么这样做？为什么会这样？哦，天哪，这太酷了。为什么我们在发达国家不这样做？为什么我们要做所有这些不同的事情？这有助于建立，我认为，我们的家庭以及我们的孩子看待世界的方式。这是一个非常棒的礼物，不仅给你自己，也给你的孩子，一个完全不同的视角，不仅看待物理世界，还有构成我们现实的这些结构、概念、标签和语言。这真的很令人兴奋。

Dance and things of that nature were like, wait a second, this is great. Kids, especially at their age, and it's like, oh, this is wonderful. My wife's like, this is great, let's just stay. And we just, because we had that ability, we just stayed. We just continued to stay in Paris. And then through that, we met all kinds of very interesting people, learned about the culture, learned about the language, and just fell more and more in love. And I was going to various museums and learning about those artists and learning about their periods in time. So like, oh, certain, you know, Picasso's Blue Period, and his next period, and his next period. And each time they take these breaks, there's like, oh, we're on those breaks getting inspiration, just like they did. It's like, this is cool. And so Paris just became part of us. And then the other piece of the puzzle was, we're like, well, wait a second, we can go back to Silicon Valley, but what are our kids really going to learn? We're like, they could learn a language. It was always my dream to learn a second language. Growing up in the Midwest, growing up in the US, you know, you don't really think a second language, at least in the 70s and 80s, was important. Today, obviously, it's more and more important, especially in California and other states, Texas, and those things. But I always wanted to do that. I was like, well, we could give that to our kids. They could learn that. They're going to learn socialization, of course, but they can learn math and history and science, but they could learn a language. Let's do that, and let's give that gift to our kids that I always wish I had. And so that was the Paris connection. And then we kept coming back every summer. Our kids always stayed in French programs and became fluent in French. And then ultimately, we bought here. And then after I got done with Google Nest, my wife just said, hey, we have a place in Paris, let's just move. I'm like, let's do it, done. That's how it all happened. But since then, since that happened in 2016, we've also decided to branch out further. And now we spend a lot of time in Southeast Asia and in Paris, and we go back and forth and put our kids in school there. You know, homeschoolers that help our kids when we're in different places and those things. Just because, as you've said so many times, experiences are incredibly powerful things to learn from. So it's knocking the parents off the foundation, just like the kids are learning for the first time. And we learn as a family unit. And we figure out things like, when you're in Indonesia, what's the currency? Why do they act this way? Why is it this way? Oh my god, that's really cool. Why don't we do that in the developed world? Why do we do all of these different things? It just helped to build, I think, our family and the way our kids see the world. It's such an incredible gift that you're giving, of course yourselves, but your kids as well, an entirely different lens through which to view not just the physical world, but these are constructs and concepts and labels and language that make up our realities. It's really exciting.

让我很兴奋。在你的某些集里，你谈了很多关于语言的话题，我想你在学校写的某篇论文里也提到了语言。你知道，当我听你的一些播客时，我就想，是的，你说得完全正确。有一些叫做语言的容器。当你看到他们在不同语言中说话的方式有多么不同，哪些词有意义，哪些词在那种语言中甚至不存在，你就会想，哦，这极大地塑造了文化。这就是那种，你知道，像精神食粮一样的东西，至少对我来说，你会想，哦，天哪，我以前从未那样想过那个问题。啊，它给你看待世界的方式带来了如此清晰的视角或解决方案，在很多方面和不同方面。所以这很酷。

Makes me excited. Some in here, in some of your episodes, you talk a lot about language, and I think you also had that in one of your papers you wrote in school or something about language. And you know, when I was listening to some of your podcasts, I'm like, yes, you are absolutely right. There are these containers that are called language. And when you see how differently they speak in a different language, and what words are meaningful and what words they don't even have in that language, you're like, oh, that shapes the culture in a dramatic way. And that's the kind of things where you go, you know, it's like brain food, at least for me, where you're like, oh my god, I've never thought of that problem that way before. Ah, it brings such clarity or brings such resolution to how you see the world in many ways in different respects. So it's cool.

所以这看起来可能是一个 90 度的转弯。我不这么认为，但我想提出来，而且本来也打算提出来。塑料。是的，塑料。你为什么对塑料这么感兴趣？

So this might seem like a 90-degree turn. I don't think it is, but I want to bring it up, and was planning on bringing it up anyway. Plastics. Yeah, plastics. Why are you so interested in plastics?

塑料。嗯，当你住在东南亚时，你开始真正理解塑料，因为它们无处不在，在地上、水里，甚至空气中。你到处都能看到它，然后你开始问，为什么他们有这个问题，而在世界其他地方我们似乎没有这个问题？所以在过去一年半的旅程中，我意识到很多关于塑料的有趣事情。所以对我来说，塑料是我们都有的一个问题，只是在世界许多地方被隐藏了，因为有垃圾处理，它被运走了，我们再也看不到了。但它仍然是一个巨大的问题，而且在某些方面，这些地方没有垃圾处理反而是一种祝福，因为你可以亲眼看到我们对环境造成的破坏。这不仅仅是收集起来的问题，也不仅仅是回收的问题，每个人都告诉你这些。这实际上是我们使用方式和材料本身的问题，以及我们如何使用它，如何用它设计，我们正在把后代埋在这个有毒的烂摊子里。我们一直在谈论二氧化碳，谈论燃煤电厂，谈论气候变化。气候变化背后有各种各样的事情将成为后代的问题，我们也必须关注。在某些情况下，其中一些其他事情，就像塑料一样，实际上对气候变化问题的贡献与其环境破坏一样大，即使持续 500 年。所以在印度尼西亚，你真的能切身感受到，你就会想，这是一个大问题。这就是我喜欢的。这就是我大脑开始转动的时候。我想，这是一个大问题，我们如何解决它？这不是一个社会问题，这真正是一个设计问题。我们设计了这个烂摊子，我们必须设计出摆脱它的方法，就像我们在气候变化中必须做的那样。所以我想，那是我们造成的。它对我冲击如此之大，以至于我想，好吧，我们如何设计出一条出路？所以我花了过去一年半的时间来学习它。

Plastics. Well, when you live in Southeast Asia, you start to really understand plastics because they're all around you, on the ground, in the water, even in the air. And you see it everywhere, and you start saying, why do they have this problem, and in other parts of the world we don't seem to have that problem? And so, over the journey of the past year and a half, I've come to realize a lot of interesting pieces about plastics. And so for me, plastics are a problem that we all have, it just is hidden in many parts of the world from us because there is waste management, in quotes, it's taken away and we don't see it any longer. But it is still an incredible problem, and it's in some ways a blessing that there is not waste management in many of these places, so you can see the damage we're doing to the environment firsthand. And it's not just about gathering it up, and it's not just about recycling, which everyone tells you about. It's really a problem with our usage and the material itself, and how we use it, how we design with it, that we are burying our future generations in this toxic mess. We talk about CO2 all the time, we talk about coal plants, we talk about climate change. We have all kinds of things behind climate change that are going to be problems for future generations that we also have to pay attention to. And in some cases, some of these other things, just like plastics, is actually contributing to our climate change issue as much as its environmental damage, if for 500 years. And so being in Indonesia, you know, you really feel it viscerally, and you're just like, there's a big problem. This is what I love. This is when I get like, my brain turns. I'm like, this is a big problem, how can we solve it? And this is not a problem like a societal problem, this is truly a design problem. This is we designed this mess, we got to design ourselves out of it, just like we have to do in climate change. So I'm like, that was us. It hit me so hard that I'm like, okay, how are we going to design our way out of it? And so I spent the last year and a half learning about it.

好的，所以我可以……是的，那不是我。是的，是的，不，这是一个很好的……我想继续那个点。当然。我想谈谈可能的解决方案或解决方案的方向。但在那之前，因为我非常感兴趣你的思维如何处理这样的事情，你如何开始剖析一个可能有如此广泛范围的问题，对吧？有太多可能的方向。你甚至如何开始，作为一个知道如何从设计角度或其他角度构建的人，你如何开始解构它？

Okay, so I can... Yeah, that's not me. Yeah, yeah, no, it's a great... I want to pursue that dot. Sure. I want to talk about possible solutions or directions for solutions. But before we get there, because I'm so interested in how your mind approaches something like this, how do you begin to dissect a problem that could have such a broad umbrella, right? There's so many possible directions to go. How do you even begin, as someone who knows how to build from a design perspective or other perspectives, how do you begin to deconstruct that?

嗯。好吧，我们就……我就回到塑料这个话题，你知道吧？是的，我不是塑料专家……

Hmm. Well, let's just... I'm gonna just go back through the plastics thing, you know? Yeah, I'm not a plastics expert by...

我以前对塑料的最终归宿知之甚少。我当时想，印尼到处是垃圾，那为什么不像美国那样做呢？直接回收不就行了？只要做好分类收集就行。然后你开始深入挖掘，开始学习。你试着建模，觉得照搬美国的做法就能解决问题。接着你开始问更多问题，比如，这些垃圾到底去了哪里？你越挖越深。我常说，连续问五次为什么，通常就能得到很好的答案或真正关键的问题。为什么这样？为什么那样？为什么这样？所以对我来说，研究塑料的过程就是一连串的为什么，你不停地追问，从不轻信任何人的表面答案。这完全是一个研究的过程。直到有一天我突然意识到，等等，这套逻辑在这里根本不成立。等等，有人给我们编了个故事，说塑料在生命周期结束时是如何处理的，但现实根本不是那样。真正发生了什么？你越挖越深。所以对我来说，关键就是：你开始应用这些知识，永不放弃，直到找到真正的根本原因，然后从根本上解决问题，而不是修修补补。我就是这样一步步走到今天的，而且我还在问很多为什么，但至少对塑料问题的某些方面，我已经有了相当深刻的认识。

I really didn't know a lot about the end of life of plastics. I was like, okay, there's all this waste everywhere in Indonesia. Well, why don't we just do what we do in the US? We'll just recycle it, right? And we'll just make sure there's good collection. Then you kind of dig in and start learning. You try to model, saying, oh, we're just gonna fix it by doing what we do there. Then you start asking more questions, like, where does that go exactly? You just dig deeper and deeper. I always say you can usually get to a great answer or a really great question by asking why about five times. Why this? Why that? Why this? So literally, the process for me about plastics was why, why, why, why, and you just kept digging. You never just took anybody at face value for the answer. So for me, it's been all research. Then I got to the point where it's like, wait a second, this logic does not apply here. Wait a second, someone's selling us a story about how plastics are really treated at the end of life. That's not what happens. What really happens? You keep diving deeper and deeper. So for me, it's really about that: you start to apply things and just never give up till you find the real root cause, and then unwind, right? Don't just try to patch. That's how I got to, you know, and I'm still asking a lot of whys, but I got to a really good point, at least on some pieces of the plastic issue that we have.

能谈谈你现在的想法到了什么阶段吗？

Can you talk about where you are now in your thinking?

当然。最开始是收集和废物管理：我们把所有垃圾都收集起来，确保它们不会乱丢，然后进行回收。但现在我主要谈的是两种塑料。一种是耐用塑料，比如汽车保险杠，它们能用五到十年，有实际用途，材料也很适合。另一种我们称之为短暂塑料、一次性塑料或极低使用频率塑料，这类产品只用一两次就被丢弃了。耐用塑料方面还有很多工作要做，远非完美。但看看增长最快的领域，包装、一次性用品和这些短暂应用正在疯狂扩张。事实上，很多石化公司，也就是石油公司，他们根本不担心电动汽车会取代汽油，因为他们看到这些石化产品——所有塑料制品——正在持续消耗石油。所以你会想，等等，石化巨头们并不害怕，因为我们在包装上用了这么多塑料，而且用量还在疯狂增长。

Absolutely. So it first started with collection and waste management: let's just collect it all and make sure it doesn't get there, and then we'll recycle it. But what I'm mostly talking about now is there are two types of plastics. There are plastics that are durable, things like your car bumpers. They last for five or ten years, they serve a purpose, and the material is really good for that. Okay. Then there's another purpose, which we call ephemeral or single-use or very low use plastics, where we're using this product once or a couple of times and then we discard it. There's still a lot of things that need to be done on the durable side, and it's not perfect by any means. But if you look at what's growing exponentially, it's packaging and single-use and these ephemeral applications that are going wild. In fact, many of the petrochemical companies, like the petroleum companies, they're actually not worried about electric vehicles taking away all the gas because they see these petrochemicals, all these plastics and these things consuming oil over time. So you're like, wait a second, the petrochemical guys aren't scared because we're using so much plastic in packaging and it's growing crazy.

那么，回收真的有效吗？

So is it really recycling?

我谈的是包装和回收问题。我在 80 年代就在密歇根大学开始做回收了。当你深入了解后会发现，就算产品上有可回收标志，它也不一定真的被回收了。实际上，它们要么被填埋，要么被焚烧，产生有毒灰烬。真的就是埋掉或烧掉，或者直接进入环境，成为我们看到的垃圾或海洋污染物。你会想，等等，有回收标志不代表它真的被回收了。真正被回收的少之又少。然后你意识到，这是个问题，而且还在指数级增长。即使是世界上资源最丰富的国家，也负担不起回收的成本，因为经济上根本不可行。所以我想，等等，这些东西被焚烧或填埋后会发生什么？然后你发现它们会变成微塑料和纳米塑料，在环境中存留 500 年。接着你发现，它们存在于我们喝的水、呼吸的空气、土壤、水、雪中，甚至以雨雪的形式降落在极地冰盖上。你会想，等等，这种塑料无处不在，而且将持续存在 500 年。这些微小的纳米塑料，虽然看不见了，但依然存在。那么，它们会带来什么影响呢？它们会进入我们的身体。通常，这些纳米塑料会吸附生物累积性毒素，这些毒素会牢牢附着在塑料上，然后进入我们的身体和血液。目前有非常初步的研究——尚未发表——但我与许多研究人员交流过。当这些纳米塑料进入人体后，就像石棉一样，会引起体内炎症，身体会攻击它们，可能导致各种问题。我们还需要进行相关性研究。所以有人说，哦，纳米塑料没关系，水里只有百万分之几。但我觉得，很多人都在告诉我们这些东西不重要，就像他们曾经说香烟不重要、糖不重要一样。但事实是，它们很重要。它们已经存在于我们体内，存在于环境中，我们正在污染子孙后代的环境。

So I'm talking about packaging and recycling. I started recycling at the University of Michigan back in the 80s. When you start to learn about it, you find out that just because it has the recyclable label on it, it's not recycled. It's literally buried or burned, setting off toxic ashes. Literally, it's buried or burned, or it ends up in the environment like we see as litter or in the oceans. You're like, wait a second, just because it has a recycling label doesn't mean it's recycled. Very, very few of them are actually recycled. And you're like, okay, this is a problem, and it's growing exponentially. Even the best countries in the world with all these resources cannot afford to recycle because it doesn't make any economic sense. So I'm like, wait a second, what happens to all this stuff once it's burned or buried? Then you find out it turns into micro and nano plastics that remain in the environment for 500 years. Then you learn it's in everything we drink, it's in the air we breathe, it's in the soil, it's in the water, it's in snow. It's falling down as rain or snow on the polar caps. You're like, wait a second, this plastic is everywhere. It's going to be everywhere for 500 years. And it's these tiny nano plastics. Just because it goes away, it's still there. And you're like, well, what does that do? It goes into our body. Typically, those nano plastics pick up bio-accumulative toxins, and those toxins literally latch onto them, and then they go into our bodies and into our blood streams. We have very, very early research—it isn't published yet—but I've talked to a lot of researchers. When those nano plastics get into us, it's like asbestos. It causes inflammation in the body, and the body attacks it, and it could cause all kinds of things. We still have to do the correlation. So people say, oh, it's nano plastics, don't worry, it's in your water but it's small parts per million. But look, I think it's just a lot of people telling us these things don't matter, just like they said cigarettes don't matter, or sugar doesn't matter. It matters. And it's in us, it's in our environment, and we're polluting for generations.

那么，现在我们有了纳米塑料问题，它将持续 500 年。包装用量疯狂增长，又无法回收。我们该怎么办？我们必须为所有包装开发新材料和新设计，让包装像自然界那样循环。东南亚有个很好的例子：当你点外卖或买东西时，食物是用香蕉叶包裹的。你会觉得，哇，真酷。然后你把香蕉叶扔掉——当然最好是放进堆肥箱——但就算丢在街上，它也会在 30 到 50 天内自然降解。我们需要这种类型的包装。事实上，现在已经存在这样的包装，成本效益高，由不同材料制成。其中一种叫 PHA。还有其他材料，可以利用废弃物来制造，无论是薄膜、瓶盖、瓶子，这些都可以做到消费后可堆肥。也就是说，你可以直接丢弃。就算乱扔，它也会降解；如果掉进海里，45 到 120 天内就会消失，不会产生纳米塑料或微塑料。这就是终极解决方案。现在已经有公司在做这件事了，我们正在寻找并帮助他们，同时推动人们用这些材料进行设计。这就是我们需要做的。与此同时，我们必须停止使用所有一次性塑料制品，甚至应该直接禁止，因为我们正在给地球制造巨大的混乱，而人们还没有意识到这一点。

So okay, now we have this nano plastics problem. It's gonna be there for 500 years. Packaging's going crazy. It can't be recycled. So what do we do? We have to come up with new materials and new designs for all this packaging to allow us to live like they do. This is a great thing in Southeast Asia: when you order something, we get takeout or you get anything, it comes out of banana leaf or it's wrapped in a banana leaf. You're like, oh cool. And you take the banana leaf, you could just chuck it. Obviously you put it in a compost bin, but if you don't and it just ends up on the street, it goes away in 30, 40, 50 days. So we need to get to that type of packaging. So guess what? There are packages like that out there that are cost effective, from different materials. Some of it's called PHA. There are other ones out there that can come from waste product, by waste to create this, whether it's a film, a bottle cap, a bottle, these different things that can then be consumer compostable. So literally, you can just drop it in. If you litter it, it goes away. If you put it in the ocean, it goes away in 45 to 120 days. No nano plastics, no micro plastics. Just goes away. And that is the holy grail. There are companies that are doing that today, and we're trying to find them and help them, and try to get people to design with them. That's what we need to do. In the meantime, we need to stop all this single-use stuff. We need to literally ban it, because we are creating a huge mess on this planet, and we just don't realize it.

我想再补充一点。你可以加三点，如果你愿意的话。回收：可回收并不意味着它真的被回收了。所以不要相信你的回收标签。如果你确实回收了，你仍然应该回收，但大多数情况下，它可能不会被重新利用。回收的塑料，即使被回收了，也只能用两到三次，然后它们就变成了劣质塑料，因为它们是机械回收的。塑料的长链变成了短链，无法用来制造东西，而且变得非常脆。所以实际上，你只能回收它们几次，不像铝、玻璃和纸。下一件事是，人们说，“哦，如果你不回收，你可以堆肥。”也许你见过这些盒装水的东西，你知道，就像盒装水。不，没错。他们说你可以回收它，但你必须去一个偏僻的特殊设施。它实际上并没有被回收。你听说过可堆肥的东西。那意味着它必须进入工业堆肥设施，并经过特殊的热处理和空气处理才能分解。那也行不通。所以我们一直在漂绿回收、可堆肥，所有这些不同的说法都是为了说塑料是绿色的或生物基的。错，错，错。现在唯一真正重要的是基于生物废物的、消费者可堆肥的塑料。那是我们唯一应该选择的。如果我们不能选择那个，就选一种不同的材料。不要使用塑料。我知道这是一段长篇大论，但我想把这条信息传达给人们。这就是为什么它非常重要。这就是为什么我们有长对话，这样我们可以深入探讨这些东西。

I would add one more thing. You can add three if you'd like. Recycling: just because it's recyclable doesn't mean it's recycled. So don't trust your recycling labels. If you do recycle, you should still recycle, but for the most part, it's probably not going anywhere to be reused. Recycled plastics, even if they are recycled, are only good for two to three uses, and then they become bad plastics because they're mechanically recycled. The long chains of plastic become short chains, and they can't make things with them, and they become too brittle. So literally, you can only recycle them a few times, unlike aluminum, glass, and paper. The next thing is that people say, "Oh, if you don't recycle, you can compost it." Maybe you saw these boxed water things, you know, like boxed water. No, it's right. They say you can recycle it, but you have to go to a special facility in the middle of nowhere. It doesn't really get recycled. You hear things about compostable things. What that means is it has to go into an industrial composting facility and get special heat treatment and air treatment and all this stuff to be able to break down. That doesn't work either. So we have been greenwashing recycling, compostable, all of these different languages used to say plastics are green or they're bio-based. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The only thing that really matters now is bio-waste-based plastics that are consumer compostable. That's the only thing that we should be selecting. And if we can't select that, pick a different material. Do not use plastics. I know that was a diatribe, long-winded, but I'm trying to get that message out to people. That's why it's really important. That's why we have long-form conversations, so we can unpack some of this stuff, so to speak.

你提到了寻找公司、帮助公司。那是通过 Future Shape 还是通过其他方式？对于不了解 Future Shape 的人，你能描述一下它是什么吗？

You mentioned finding companies, helping companies. Is that done through Future Shape or through a different vehicle? And for people who don't know Future Shape, could you describe what it is?

Future Shape 是我们家族的一个投资工具，旨在寻找伟大的创业者和公司，他们正在努力进行非常艰难的开发，创造深层技术，以帮助修复我们的星球、修复我们的社会、修复我们的社区，并以某种绿色方式推动我们前进，或者使中小型企业主能够蓬勃发展，并以某种方式摆脱他们长期受制于的系统。所以我们试图找到这些东西，我们不称自己为风险资本家，也不称自己为天使投资人。我们称自己为“有资金的导师”。我们首先是导师，然后我们言行一致，投入资金来帮助这些创业者，帮助这些公司实现这些目标、这些梦想、这些技术，以帮助我们的世界。而这些都需要时间来构建，对吧？它们需要时间、努力和对所发生事情的信念。这就是我们所做的。我们投资了全球超过 200 家公司，并在它们生命周期的某些阶段提供指导，努力成为那个团队，在他们低落时、在做正确的事情时给予信心，或帮助他们找到所需的资源，或帮助他们学习领导力，你知道，如何做领导，或找到合适的人，或进行招聘。所有这些真实的事情，如果你很长时间没有做过，你可能不会感到自信。所以这是一种推动来帮助他们。有时我们可能像大哥或大姐一样。

Future Shape is an investment vehicle from our family to find great entrepreneurs and companies trying to do really hard developments and create deep technologies to help fix our planet, fix our societies, fix our communities, and get us forward in a green way, in some way green, or to enable small and medium business owners to then be able to flourish and get out from underneath the system in some way that they've been subject to for a long time. So we try to find these things, and we don't call ourselves venture capitalists, we don't call ourselves angels. We call ourselves mentors with money. We are mentors first, and we come and we put our money where our mouth is to help these entrepreneurs, to help these companies realize these goals, these dreams, these technologies to help our world. And they take time to build, right? They take time, effort, and belief in what's going on. So that's what we do. We've invested in over 200 companies around the world, and we mentor them at certain parts of their lifecycle, and just try to be that team that can help them with the confidence when they're down, when they're doing the right thing, or help them find whatever resources they need, or help them when they're trying to learn leadership, you know, how to do leadership, or find the right person, or do the hiring. All those kinds of real things that if you haven't done them for a long time, you may not feel confident about. So it's that nudge to help them. Maybe we act like big brother or big sister sometimes.

Future Shape 是你现在投入大部分精力的地方吗？还是你个人主要把精力花在什么地方？

Is Future Shape where you're putting most of your energy these days, or what are you personally spending most of your energy on?

Future Shape 已经运作了大约八年，也许十年，取决于你怎么算。我几乎把所有时间都花在 Future Shape 和我的团队上。我们的团队一起，我们都为这些公司工作，因为我们学到的是，我们可以做一件事并创办另一家公司，但我们把所有的经验、知识、资源带到世界各地，帮助其他 200 家公司蓬勃发展，真正实现他们想要在这个世界上做出的改变。所以我们想使用一个杠杆模型。我们真的在努力利用它，对我们来说这非常有趣，当他们追求棘手的问题时，我们的好奇心总是被激发。我们得以深入其中，在某种程度上和他们一起成为初学者，或者向他们学习，然后我们运用我们的专业知识，与他们的专业知识相结合。所以这非常有益。如果在我成长和经历那些事情时没有人指导我，我今天就不会在这里。所以在某个时刻，我环顾四周，心想，“等等，现在轮到我了。”是时候努力不辜负导师们教给我的东西，努力达到那个理想，现在传递接力棒，并将这门艺术、这门手艺灌输给我们试图帮助的其他人。因为把东西传递下去，让后代变得更好，这非常重要。这是重要的工作。

Future Shape has been going now for about eight years, maybe ten, depending on how you count. And I spent almost all of my time on Future Shape and my team. Our team together, we all work on these companies because what we've learned, I learned over the time, is we could do one thing and start another company, but we take all of the experience, the knowledge, the resources that we can bring to bear anywhere in the world and help these other 200 companies to thrive and really make the change that they want to make in this world. So we want to use a leverage model. We're really trying to leverage it, and for us it's incredibly fun, and our curiosity is piqued all the time when they're going after tough problems. And we get to dive in and be beginners with them in a way, or get to learn from them, and then we get to take our expertise and combine it with their expertise. So it's incredibly rewarding. And if people didn't mentor me when I was growing up and going through that thing, I would never be here today. So at some point I looked around and went, "Wait a second, I guess that's me now." It's time to try to live up to what the mentors taught me, try to live to that ideal, and pass the baton now, and instill this art, this craft with these other people that we try to help. Because it's really important that we try to pass the stuff down to try to make it better for other generations. It's important work.

你提到了成为初学者，这是我在你的 TED 演讲中看到的，在史蒂夫的背景下，用初学者的眼光看事物。你个人目前有没有特别关注的技能，或者新的行为，无论是结束还是开始的行为，在个人领域？或者我应该说个体，可能更好的说法。你目前有什么在努力的事情吗？

You mentioned being beginners, and that's something I came up in your TED talk within the context of Steve and looking at things with beginners' eyes. Are there any particular skills that you're currently focused on personally, or new behaviors, either ending or starting behaviors within the personal realm? Or I should say individual, probably a better way to put it. Is there anything that you're currently working on?

从初学者的角度来看，在很多方面我现在就在塑料领域。我只是一个小人物，打电话给研究人员说，“你能帮我吗？我想弄明白这个。嗯，怎么做到的？为什么它会这样工作？”你知道，阅读研究论文，真正回到学校，在某种程度上像个本科生，希望向最优秀的人学习。所以我努力让自己处于极度好奇的位置。我有技能，分析技能，也许能理解他们在做什么，但我没有足够的数据真正理解到那个水平。所以对我来说，我总是努力让自己处于不舒服的位置来做重大决定，比如我们是否应该投资，是否应该做任何事，因为那种紧张感让事情对我来说非常有趣和令人兴奋。我称之为“大脑食物”。所以我每天都和公司一起这样做。我们帮助投资了 Impossible Foods。我对食品科学一无所知，对那方面一无所知，所以去学习它。或者我们做 Modern Meadow，那是没有牛的皮革，对吧？你怎么在没有有机体的情况下培养皮肤，没有更大的有机体？那意味着什么？怎么做？等等。所有这些东西。

From a beginner standpoint, in many ways I'm in the plastics right now. I'm just a little guy calling up researchers saying, "Could you help me? I'm trying to get this. Well, how? Why does it work this way?" You know, reading research papers and really going back to school, being an undergrad in a way, and learning hopefully from the best. So I try to put myself in a position where I'm incredibly curious. I have skills, analytical skills to understand maybe what they're doing, but I don't really have the data to really understand it to that level. So for me, I'm always trying to put myself in an uncomfortable position to make big decisions, like should we invest, should we do whatever, because that kind of tension makes things really fun and really exciting for me. I call it brain food. So I try to do that every day with the companies. We help to invest in Impossible Foods. I didn't know anything about food science, know anything about that, so go learn about that. Or we're doing Modern Meadow, which is leather without a cow, right? How do you grow skin without an organism, without a larger organism? What does that mean? How? Whatever. So all of these things.

对于正在收听或观看的人来说，按任何客观标准，人们都会认为你很成功。在这些对话中我喜欢做的，而且幸运的是在你的履历中也很清楚，那并不是一条从左下到右上的线性路径。你走的是一条非常曲折的路。你挣扎的是什么？你觉得困难的事情是什么？

For people who are listening or watching, by any objective measure, people would consider you successful. And what I like to do in these conversations, and fortunately in your bio it's very clear that it wasn't a linear path from bottom left to top right. You followed a very jagged path. What do you struggle with? What are things that you find difficult?

对我来说，我觉得是重度的分析工作。任何非常分析性的事情——我得去感受它，得去看它，得去体会它。我不能只是坐在那里盯着数字。另一件对我来说非常困难的事情是任何形式的长时间写作。那真的很难。我挣扎于不耐烦。这些事情花的时间比你希望的要长。你能看到它，能感觉到它，能抓住它，但你得说，“不，快点，我们直接到那一步吧。”而你却只能坐在副驾驶座上等待事情发生。所以我试着用喜欢做那些事的人来补充我不喜欢做的事情。比如我们团队里的迈克，他是个很棒的法律专家，这就是他喜欢做的事。所以我就说，“迈克，你去做吧。那不是我的事。”但到了真正情绪化的事情上——我希望未来现在就到来——我一直都在挣扎。我就是不想等。为什么要等，尤其当我们知道现在就是时机的时候？曾经有一种普遍的魔力——那不是时机，太早了。但当你看到它，当你完美地看到它，你看到那个时刻，你就会说，“走吧，我们得搞定这个，拿下那座山头，快点。”那是最令人沮丧的事情。总是有科幻和未来的东西，但当你看到它并感觉到它时，你知道，去做吧，让我们把它完成。

For me, I think it's heavy-duty analytics. Anything that's very analytical — I have to feel it, I have to see it, I have to feel it. I can't just sit there and stare at numbers. Another thing that's really hard for me is any kind of long-form writing. That's really hard. I struggle with impatience. These things take longer than you'd like. You can see it, you can feel it, you can grasp it, but you have to go, "No, come on, let's just get there." And you have to be in the passenger seat waiting for things to happen. So I try to augment the things I don't like to do with people who like to do that. Like Mike on our team is an amazing legal guy, and this is what he loves to do. So I'm like, "Mike, just go do it. That's not my thing." But when it comes to the real emotional stuff — I want the future to be here now — that I struggle with all the time. I just don't want to wait. Why should we wait, especially when we know now is the time? There was a general magic — it wasn't the time, it was way too early. But when you see it, when you can see it perfectly, you see the moment, you're like, "Let's go, we gotta get this done, take the hill, come on." That's the most frustrating thing. There's always science fiction and future stuff, but when you see it and you can feel it, you know, go for it, let's get it done.

我们来深入谈谈不耐烦，因为不耐烦一直——我愿意认为，也许这是妄想——是我最大的资产之一，也是我最大的障碍之一。你是如何看待你的不耐烦，或者如何克服它的，以便你能从紧迫感和在有益时推动中获得好处，而不会成为一个到处留下焦土的令人难以忍受的讨厌鬼？因为我肯定在某些时候是后者，人们会说，“该死的，没那么快，”然后你把所有人都惹毛了。你是怎么考虑找到中间道路的，如果有的话？

Let's dig into impatience a bit, because impatience has been — I would like to think, and maybe this is delusional — one of my greatest assets and also one of my greatest handicaps. How do you think about your impatience or work on your impatience so that you get the benefits of feeling a sense of urgency and pushing when those pushes are helpful, without being just an insufferable pain in the ass who leaves scorched earth everywhere? Because I've certainly been the latter at points where people are just like, "God damn it, doesn't happen that fast," and you're pissing everybody off. How have you thought about finding the middle path with that, if there is one?

我每天都在挣扎。有时候你在做事情，和别人一起工作，你知道你经历过，而且应该更快。比如，“好吧，为什么我们不更快地做这个？把东西弄出去就行了。”这不像是在研究和工程化，为 XYZ 找到正确的部件。这真的只是完成它的过程。就像，“拜托，伙计们，我理解你们不想做，这是个很大的风险，你们犹豫不决，但我们得继续前进，对吧？”所以你不想有分析瘫痪。所以你得把它分类。你得说，“好吧，这只是他们的心理状态。我们得哄着他们度过，给他们帮助，或者帮助我自己度过那个阶段，教育他们，然后我们得加快速度。”然后是另一个阶段，即发现的过程，获得洞察的过程。这类事情总是需要更长时间。还有另一个你无法控制的情况：与其他外部团队合作，你无法真正推动他们。你只能勉强忍受，并不断重新评估合作关系。“我们该和他们合作吗？”并以非常积极但非常直接的方式沟通：“让我告诉你我们现在在挣扎什么。一切并不都是美好的。我们必须做出这些决定，因为你正在拖延，或者发生了这个，或者这对我们的业务造成了影响。”你必须非常坦诚，就像我谈到的那两位经理或那两个人，他们必须相处并弄清楚——我们必须对我们的合作关系以及它如何不起作用坦诚相待，然后说，“我们要怎么做才能克服它？”所以我认为是这类事情，以及退一步。你脖子紧绷，然后你深呼吸。确保我做完瑜伽，确保我做些事情来说，“好吧，只是在某些情况下试着冷静下来。”

I struggle with it every day. There are times when you're working on things and working with people when you know you've been there and it should go faster. Like, "Okay, why aren't we doing this faster? Just get the stuff out the door." It's not like researching and trying to engineer and find the right correct widget for XYZ. It's really just the process of getting it done. It's like, "Come on guys, I understand you don't want to, this is a big risk and you're tentative about it, but we just got to move on, right?" So you don't want to have analysis paralysis. So you have to bucket it. You have to say, "Okay, this is just their mental state. We have to coax them through it, give them help, or help myself to get through that phase, educate, and then we got to get faster." Then there's the other phase, which is the process of discovery, the process of getting to insight. Those kinds of things always take longer. And then there's another one which is out of your control: working with other external teams that you can't really push. You just have to kind of grin and bear it, and you keep reassessing the partnership. "Should we be doing with them?" And communicating in a very positive but very direct way: "Let me tell you what we're grappling with now. It isn't all rosy. These are the kind of decisions we have to make because you are delaying, or this is happening, or this is what's happening to our business." You have to be really upfront, just like I was talking about the two managers or the two people who had to get along and figure out — we got to be upfront and honest about our partnership and how it's not working, and go, "What are we going to do to get over it?" So I think it's those types of bidding, and also just taking a step back. You tense up your neck, and you just go breathe. Make sure I get my yoga done, make sure I do what have you to say, "Okay, it's just to try to calm down in certain instances."

我的下一个问题本来是关于自我关爱的，所以瑜伽是一个完美的过渡。你有哪些自我关爱的做法，无论是每天还是每周的？

My next question was going to be related to self-care, so the yoga is a perfect segue. What are some of your self-care practices, whether on a daily or weekly basis?

嗯，饮食是第一位的。饮食是最重要的。你的饮食是什么样的？嗯，是素食，不含咖啡因，不含酒精。而且绝对——世界上最难的是精制糖。试图远离那个野兽……我太喜欢它了。事情就是这样。所以你尽量做你能做的，尽可能减少它。就是这样：健康饮食，吃全食物，诸如此类。然后是锻炼。每天至少锻炼一小时，每周六天，也许七天。也许两三个小时，用徒步或其他方式分开，但总是锻炼。我已经练瑜伽 25 年了。那也是我重启的一部分。瑜伽练了 25 年。我希望当我 75 岁或更老的时候，这将是我唯一会做的运动，因为我认为它是心理、力量、塑形等方面的正确平衡。什么类型的瑜伽？我基本上什么都做：哈他、阿斯汤加、比克拉姆，你说得出来。我在那方面并不教条，因为我总是认为有更多东西要学习和尝试，尝试不同的事情，与不同的教练合作。然后是举重训练和拉伸，我应该多做拉伸。

Well, the diet is the first one. The diet is the most important. And what is your diet? Well, it's vegetarian without caffeine without alcohol. And it's an absolute — the hardest thing in the world is refined sugars. Trying to just stay off that beast is... I like it too much. It just is what it is. So you try to do what you can, minimize that as much as possible. So that's that: eating healthy, eating whole foods, that kind of stuff. Then there's exercise. Exercising at least an hour a day, six days, maybe seven days a week. Maybe two hours or three hours, breaking it up with a hike or whatever, but always exercising. I've been doing yoga for 25 years now. That was also part of my reboot. Yoga for 25 years. I hope it will be the only exercise I will be doing when I'm 75 or older, because I think it's the right balance of mental and strength and toning and those kinds of things. What type of yoga? I'll do basically anything: Hatha, Ashtanga, Bikram, you name it. I'm not religious in that way because I always think there's more things to learn about and do, try different things, work with different instructors. Then there's weight training, and stretching, which I should be doing more of.

你记得是什么时候吗？嗯，大概……这取决于你几点睡、最后一杯酒几点喝的。但似乎总是在最后一杯酒后大约四到四个半小时，然后你入睡。至少对我来说，心跳会加速，然后你会醒来，接着因为你是 A 型人格，开始胡思乱想，再也睡不着，还会出汗，然后整晚睡眠都很糟糕。但对我来说就是这样。

Do you recall when? Yeah, it was around... well, it depends on when you went to sleep and when you had your last drink. But it always seemed to be about four to four and a half hours after that last drink, and you went to sleep when? At least for me, my heart would race, and then you would wake up, and then because you're just a Type A personality, you start thinking and you can't go back to sleep, and you're sweating, and then you have a horrible night's sleep. But that was it for me.

我觉得它绝对迷人，因为我只经历过……这本书讲的是日本前工业时代，人们在家如何生活，以及西方技术后来进入家庭后他们如何生活。作者对比了之前和之后的生活。而我永远无法做到这一点，因为我只活在这个后工业世界。所以他解释了一些事情：比如我们以前用木勺，后来用金属勺；以前用木碗，后来用瓷碗。木勺碰木碗的声音与金属碰瓷器的声音，前者多么悦耳，后者多么刺耳。还有人造光与自然光、漫射光，你的眼睛和精神状态在这两种条件下会截然不同。所以这简直是通过一位了不起的作家，浓缩地比较了前工业和后工业生活。你会开始想：“等等，我从未在生命中如此细致地考虑过这些细节。”然后你会说：“这就是保持初学者心态，对吧？”你会说：“天哪，我从未想过这个。”这让我重新思考许多从未想过的事情，把你带入一个完全不同的世界。但最具体让我印象深刻的是漆器。我高中时在日本做了一年交换生，住在三个家庭里，所以看到了不同的房间和家居风格。《阴翳礼赞》中有一段谈到某些……你可以认为是受中国影响的日本碗和家具多么俗艳，因为它们镀金或涂成亮色，金漆。没错。我完成第二本书后（那本书更像一份作业），送给自己的礼物之一就是一个日本漆器马鞍，它正好体现了这一点。书中的观点是，这些东西看起来俗艳，是因为它们原本是在昏暗灯光下欣赏的。一旦你用现代白炽灯照射，就变得很难看。我当时想：“哇，我从未考虑过光源和强度。”这完全改变了你观察不同物品、不同历史物品的方式，对吧？你理所当然地认为光线是恒定的，但回想起来当然不是恒定的。

I find it absolutely fascinating because I only grew up... so the book is all about Japan before the pre-industrial era and how they lived at home and how they lived when Western technology entered the home afterwards. And he was comparing his life before and after. And I was never able to do that because I only lived in this world, in this post-industrial world. And so he was explaining things like: we had wooden spoons before metal spoons, and we had wooden bowls before we had porcelain bowls, and just the sound of the spoon hitting the bowl when it was wood on wood versus metal on porcelain, and how that would be grating to your ear and how soothing it was when it was wood on wood. Or artificial light versus natural light and diffuse light, and how your eyes and how your mental state would be very different under these two conditions. So it was literally comparing this pre-industrial and post-industrial life through an incredible writer who could encapsulate it. And you start to go, 'Wait a second, I never considered those details in my life to this level.' And you're like, 'That's about staying beginner, right?' You say, 'Yeah, oh my god, I've never even thought about that.' And this makes me rethink so many things that I never thought of, and it takes you to a whole other world. Yet the one that stuck with me most concretely was the lacquerware. I lived in Japan for a year in high school as an exchange student and lived with three families, so I got to see different rooms in the house and different styles of home. And there's a short portion in 'In Praise of Shadows' that talks about how gaudy certain types of... you could consider them sort of Chinese-influenced Japanese bowls and furniture are because they're covered in gold plating or painted to look very bright and gold lacquered. Exactly. And what was one of my gifts to myself after finishing my second book, which is definitely not sure... well, it is more of a homework assignment, was a lacquered Japanese saddle actually, which kind of typifies this. And the point in the book was that it looks gaudy because things were lacquered in those types of materials due to dim lighting. They were intended to be looked at in very dim lighting, and as soon as you put incandescent modern lighting on it, it looks terrible. And I was like, 'Wow, I've never even considered the source and strength of lighting.' And then it just totally changes how you look around at different objects, different historical objects, right? You kind of take as a given that the lighting is a constant, but of course it's not a constant in retrospect.

你还有没有其他经常推荐或自己重读的书？

Do you have any other books that you recommend often or have reread yourself?

是的，有一本书我总会回头重读，因为它不仅让我思考书中的观点，也让我反思自己的生活，那就是丹尼尔·卡尼曼的《思考，快与慢》。他是诺贝尔奖得主，非常了不起。读这本书时，你会真正理解大脑是如何运作的，然后可以联系到自己以及自己如何做决策。这本书讲的是抑制你身体中情绪化的部分，让更逻辑、更理性的部分来做决策。但我也觉得，这对某些决策是好的，但不是所有决策都适用，因为他实际上是在倡导摒弃情绪系统。我喜欢这本书，是因为我可以真正选择使用哪个系统，因为有时是事实驱动的决策，有时是观点驱动的决策或情绪驱动的决策，你必须真正理解在特定时间点你正在做哪种类型的决策。

So yeah, there's one I think I always go back to because it makes me think about the ideas in the book, but also it makes me think about my life, which is Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. He's a Nobel laureate, amazing guy. When you read that, you really get to understand how your brain works, and then you can relate it to yourself and how you make decisions. It's about depressing the emotional part of your body and your decision making for the more logical, rational part. But then I also go, well, that's good for some decisions but not all decisions, because he really is advocating for getting rid of one system, the emotional system. And I like it because I can really choose which one I want to use, because sometimes there are fact-based decisions, and other times there are opinion-based decisions or emotional-based decisions, and you have to really understand which type of decision you're making for that given point in time.

《思考，快与慢》——信不信由你，我本科时曾是丹尼·卡尼曼一些实验的受试者。我们每小时赚四美元，按空格键参与各种关于快思考和慢思考分离的实验。

Thinking Fast and Slow — I was, believe it or not, a subject as an undergrad in some of Danny Kahneman's experiments. You got paid, whatever, four dollars an hour to press spacebar for various experiments on that thinking fast, thinking slow separation.

如果我们看情绪驱动的决策——我不想说冲动，但就是那种非常快速、带着几百万年进化输入做出的决定，比如列利弊清单，或者没读就快速转发某条推文——你生活中有没有一些例子，你做了非常好的快速决定，而如果当时试图分析，反而会做出错误决定？

If we look at the emotion-based decisions, whether that's what I don't want to say impulsive but very quick decisions that are sort of made with a few million years of evolutionary input, like a pro/con list, or whether to retweet something very quickly without reading it — are there any examples that come to mind from your life where you've made very, very good snap decisions, where if you had tried to analyze that you would have made the wrong decision?

是的，我一生中最好的决定之一就是向我妻子求婚，而我在做之前 15 分钟、10 分钟都还不知道。哇，我完全不知道，毫无预兆。那是一个神奇的星期，那时我们才约会了 11 周。然后从我说“我要做”到真正去做，只有 15 分钟，从我说“我要做”到做完只有 10 分钟。我毫无准备，甚至都没想过她会说“不”该怎么办。

Yeah, well, one of the best decisions I ever made in my life was to ask my wife to marry me, and I didn't know literally 15 minutes, 10 minutes before I was going to do it that I did it. Wow. I didn't even know, I had no clue. It was an amazing week, and that was after 11 weeks of dating. Then literally it was in a span of 15 minutes from the time I said I'm gonna do it, 10 minutes from the time I said I'm gonna do it till I did it. I wasn't prepared, I didn't even know that I wasn't prepared for her to say no.

跟我详细说说吧。发生了什么？是突然冒出来的念头，还是那天有更多铺垫？

Walk me through this a bit. What happened? I mean, did it just randomly pop into your head, or was there more to it on that day?

嗯，是的。那其实是个周一早上，最不浪漫的时候，对吧？不。事情是这样的，我有一些非常亲密的朋友，他们过来玩。他们说：“哦，我遇到了一个很棒的女人，我想让你们见见她，大家一起聚聚。”因为最糟糕的事情——不知道你有没有这样的朋友——就是你有一个很好的异性朋友，然后他们遇到了某人，坠入爱河，然后你试着去见那个他们深爱的人，结果发现“我就是和他们合不来”。你会想，“哦，我差点失去一个朋友。”这很让人揪心。所以我希望我的朋友们喜欢她，因为我们已经约会了 11 周，相处得很愉快，但我在想，“我是不是陷入了一种疯狂的迷雾？”我当时年纪大一些，有很多经验，他们见证过我之前的几段感情，也给过反馈。所以他们来了，我们一起度过了整个周末，非常开心。那天早上，我开车送他们去机场，他们刚和我妻子——当时还是女友——道别。整晚都在下倾盆大雨。在车里，我的朋友桑迪和丹尼尔说：“天哪，她太棒了。你们太相爱了。她比你之前约会过的任何女人都强出一大截。”我说：“是啊，我就是这么感觉的。”我高兴极了。我送他们下车，然后掉头回去接我妻子——当时还是女友——一起开车上班。回来的路上，云层散开，出现了一道彩虹，天空变得格外明亮。我一直在想：“什么时候才是合适的时机？你怎么知道这就是对的人？”考虑到我当时 15 年的约会史，我想：“以前从来没有这种感觉。”我可以列出所有理性的论据，但到了某个时刻，你会想：“去他的吧。”我开车回家，突然收音机里放了我最喜欢的一首歌。我想：“天哪，这太棒了。”还有彩虹什么的。我开到门口，房子前面有一丛玫瑰。平时花开得很好，但那天晚上雨下得很大。我看着那朵玫瑰——我经常剪一朵送给她。我想：“它今晚挺过来了。这是我见过最美的玫瑰。”我摘掉刺，剪下来，打算直接送给她。我走进门，她正提着一篮衣服下楼——真的是一篮我两周没洗的衣服。她走下来，我看着她。我说：“给你一朵玫瑰，亲爱的。”她说：“哦，真好看。”我说：“等等，不，不。把篮子给我，把玫瑰给我。”我单膝跪地，她站在楼梯上，我说：“你愿意嫁给我吗？”就这样。我完全是盲目的。我就在那里说了“你愿意嫁给我吗？”那是一个周一早上。我没有戒指，什么都没有。

Well, yeah, there was. It was actually a Monday morning, of all things, real romantic, right? No. So what had happened was, I had some very, very close friends, and they came down. They said, 'Oh, I met this wonderful woman, and I would love to get you guys to meet her, and just see if we can all hang out.' Because the worst thing that ever happens — I don't know if you've had any friends like this — is you have a girl or a guy friend, and they're really great friends of yours, and then they meet somebody and they fall in love, and then all of a sudden you try to meet that person that they love so much, and you're like, 'I just don't click with them.' It's like, 'Oh, I almost lost a friend.' It's heart-wrenching. So I wanted my friends to like her, because I was 11 weeks in and we're having a great time, and I'm like, 'Am I in some crazy fog?' I was older at the time, so I had a lot of experience, and they saw some of my other relationships and gave me feedback on them. So they came over, and we hung out the whole weekend together, and we had an amazing time. So that morning, I was driving them to the airport after they said goodbye to my wife — then girlfriend — and all night long it was pouring rain, crazy rain. In the car, Sandy and Daniel, my friends, said, 'Oh my god, she's amazing. You guys are so in love. She's head and shoulders over any woman you've ever dated before.' And I was like, 'Yeah, that's how I feel.' I was on cloud nine. So I dropped them off, and then I turned around to come back because I was going to pick up my wife — then girlfriend — to drive to work together. As I'm coming back, the clouds open up, a rainbow opens up, and literally this brilliant sky comes into view. I'm thinking the whole time, 'Well, when's the right time? How do you know it's the right time that this is the right person?' Given my 15 years of dating history at the time, I'm like, 'It's never felt like this before.' I can work through all the rational arguments, but at some point you're like, 'Screw that.' So I'm driving home, and then all of a sudden one of my favorite songs comes on the radio. I'm like, 'Oh my god, this is amazing.' The rainbow and everything else. I drive up, and I had a rosebush in the front of the house. They're great roses often, but it was raining so hard that night. I looked at the rose, and I always clipped one and gave it to her. I looked at that and I was like, 'That survived tonight. It was the most beautiful rose I've ever seen.' I took off the thorns, clipped it, and I was going to just give it to her. So I walk in the door, and she's coming down the stairs with a basket of laundry — literally a basket of my laundry from like two weeks. She's coming down, and I'm looking at her. I go, 'Here's a rose, honey.' And she said, 'Oh, that's very nice.' And I said, 'Wait, no, no. Give me the basket, give me the rose.' I got down on one knee while she's on the stairs, and I said, 'Will you marry me?' Literally like that. I was blind. I just said, 'Will you marry me?' right there and then. That was a Monday morning. I had no ring, nothing.

哇，这故事太不可思议了。真是难以置信。这就是那种疯狂——你知道就是知道。同样的事情在我生活的其他方面也发生过，比如接受苹果的工作也是那样。当你知道了，你就知道了，这太疯狂了。太棒了，托尼。

Wow, that's an incredible story. That is just incredible. Well, that's the kind of craziness — you know when you know. And the same thing happened in different parts of my life, like taking the job at Apple was just like that as well. It's crazy, crazy when you know you know. Amazing, Tony.

让你回去忙吧，但这真的很有趣。非常感谢你抽出时间，我当然希望这不是我们最后一次交谈。也许我们将来会见面。

Let you get back to your day, but this has been so fun. I really appreciate you taking the time, and I certainly hope it's not the last time that we get to have a conversation. Perhaps we'll meet sometime in the future.

当然，任何地方都可以。告诉你，我世界各地到处跑。我一定会保持联系。不用谢，这真的很有趣，我们聊了很多别人从未问过的有趣问题。所以谢谢你。

Sure, anywhere. Let you know I'm in different places of the world. I'll be sure to stay in contact. And no thanks, this has been a lot of fun, and we went into all kinds of interesting questions that no one ever asked. So thank you.

哦，这是我的荣幸。如果人们想找到 Future Shape，是 future-shape.com 吗？网址对吗？

Oh, my pleasure. And if people can find Future Shape at future-shape.com? Is that the right URL?

没错。你最好的社交平台是 Twitter 吗？是 @tfadell，T-F-A-D-E-L-L。

That's correct. And what is your best social? On Twitter, is that the best? People at tfadell, T-F-A-D-E-L-L.

我会把所有内容以及我们讨论的一切都链接到节目笔记里，这样大家就能很容易找到你。在我们结束之前，你还有什么想说的、推荐的、总结的，或者任何临别赠言吗？

And I'll link to all of that and everything else we discussed in the show notes for people, so they'll be able to find you very easily. Is there anything that you'd like to say, recommend, conclude with, suggest any parting comments or anything at all before we wrap up?

你知道吗，我认为最重要的一点是，我们一生中都会经历所有这些变化。我们会经历失败。只要你愿意学习，愿意接受失败并努力拼搏……我一开始并不顺利。我非常努力，但起步并不好。但如果你真的不断努力，无论是失败还是成功，最终都能有所成就。即使成功之后也要继续努力，保持初学者的心态，保持谦逊，并尝试与他人合作，因为归根结底，这才是你的超能力。

You know, I think the biggest thing is that we all go through all of these changes in our lives. We go through failure. If you are just open to learning and you're open to the failure and pushing hard... You know, I didn't have the best start. I tried really hard, but I didn't have the best start. But it can end up happening if you really keep pushing, whether it's a failure or a success. Keep pushing even beyond success, and keep staying a beginner, trying to stay humble, and trying to work with others, because that's your superpower at the end of the day.

是的，确实如此。你知道吗，在你的 TED 演讲中，你谈到了要看到那些看不见的问题，而不仅仅是显而易见的问题。我觉得你不仅向外观察世界，也向内审视自己的主观体验，比如和那位心理学家合作，让自己更了解内心的过程。这真是一个令人难以置信且鼓舞人心的故事。我是说，为了帮助他人，我觉得这非常棒。我相信当时一定很艰难，你在人生的不同阶段遇到了很多挑战。

Yeah, for sure. And you know, in your TED talk, you talked about seeing the invisible problems instead of just the obvious problems. And it strikes me that you've done that looking out at the world, but also looking inward at your own subjective experience, as in working with that psychologist to become more aware of your internal processes. And it's just such an incredible and inspiring story. I mean, for the purposes of helping people, I think it's so wonderful. I'm sure it was difficult at the time that you had so many challenges at various points in the road.

是的，绝对如此。挑战一直存在，而且永远会有。我仍在学习，仍在成长，诸如此类。但你也一样会经历这些。每个人都要经历。拥抱它们吧。你看到别人成功，并不意味着他们没有经历过这些。他们很可能经历过，或者如果没有，将来某个时候也会经历。每个人都会。

Yeah, absolutely. There was, and there's always challenges. And I'm still learning and I'm still growing and all those things. But you're gonna go through them too. Everyone's got to go through them. And just embrace them. And just because you see success doesn't mean they didn't go through them as well. They most likely did, or if they haven't, they will at some point. Everyone does.

哦，当然。是的，你应该继续前进。每个人都在战斗，或者曾经战斗过，而你对此一无所知。每个人都有自己的事情。非常感谢你，Tony。

Oh, for sure. Yeah, you should keep going. Everyone's fighting or has fought battles that you know nothing about. Everybody's got their own stuff. Thank you so much, Tony.

好的，谢谢 Jim。祝你有美好的一天。期待保持联系。

Good, thanks Jim. And have a great day. Looking forward to staying in touch.

彼此彼此。好的，老兄。干杯，再见。

Likewise. All right, my man. Cheers, man. Bye bye.