翻译哈佛商业评论经典文章

万花筒里看成功5

成功的复杂性3

在我们的研究里，那些取得多方面令人满意的、持久成功的人，会有意识的在这四个要素上进行努力，而不会忽视自身的价值和天赋。他们似乎本能的明白构成持久成功中的悖论：即要在那些你对美好生活的各种重要衡量标准上取得更多的胜利。为了四个要素整体的利益，我们必须明白自己在每件事情上的限度，不能因为要把某一件事要做到极致，而忽略了其他方面的需求。正如我们平常所说的那样，“理性的追求刚刚好也是一种艺术”。

这一原则与流行的观点相悖，流行的观点认为成功就是要突破局限，拥有更多，成为更多，做到更多。我们的研究表明，真正感到满意的成功人士是通过有意识地施加一些限制来获得这种满足感的。他们都有着多方面的才能，我们将之称为“转换和连接的能力”：他们都能够非常的专注于一项工作，直到这项工作能做到一定的满意程度，然后放下它，接着充满活力和成就感的投入到另一类要素的事情上。他们能不断转换自己的注意力，不论是在同一件事情上（例如，当你的产品策略建立在实现利润目标，还有关心客户的基础上时），还是涉及到不同领域的事情上（比如能在工作中停下来，转而和朋友开个玩笑）。

在我们的研究中，那些特别擅长筛选不断变化的目标，并只追求那些能够产生持久回报目标的人具有两个共同点。首先，他们将成功看作是广泛而流动的成就体验，其中包括所有四个类别的成就。他们不会把成功归于一个单一的事件或者生活中某个单一的领域。其次，他们那些在现实中被定义为成功的事例，都包括规模大不相同的成就。他们不会在每一个类别上设立一个极限的目标；相反，他们会设置一些小目标，还会设立一些需要持续付出努力才能实现的目标。他们的底线不是设定在某个类别的活动数量或者是得到奖励的量，而是设法保证在四个类别中都有所得。每个人都能学着这样做，你只需要一个更大的框架来理解这四个类别的动态平衡。

Success That Lasts 5

The Complexity of Success 3

Those in our research who achieved satisfying, enduring, multidimensional success consciously went after victories in all four categories without losing touch with their values and special talents. They seemed to understand intuitively the paradox we uncovered at the heart of enduring success: To get to more wins on the various important measures that make up your notion of the good life, success has to rest on a paradigm of limitation in any one activity for the sake of the whole. Or, as we call it, “on the reasoned pursuit of just enough.”

This principle flies in the face of the popular opinion that success is all about breaking through limitations, that it’s about having more, being more, doing more. Our research shows that the high-powered people who experienced real satisfaction achieved it through the deliberate imposition of limits. They all shared a versatile talent that we call “switching and linking”: They were able to focus intensely on one task until it gave them a particular sense of satisfaction, then put it down and jump to the next category with a feeling of accomplishment and renewed energy. This versatile refocusing could occur within the same activity (say, when you base your product strategy on accomplishing your profit goal and on caring for the customer), or it can involve switching attention between two realms (taking a break from work to joke with a friend).

The people in our research who were particularly skilled at sifting through the moving targets and going after only those that would produce lasting rewards shared two characteristics. First, they viewed success as a broad and dynamic experience of accomplishment, one that factored in all four categories. They didn’t attribute their success to one single event or even one single realm of life. Second, their concrete examples of what counted as “real” success included accomplishments of wildly varying magnitude. They weren’t setting maximum goals for themselves in each category; rather, they set some at a small scale and some at a scale that demanded sustained effort. The baseline for these individuals wasn’t the amount of activity or number of rewards in any one category, but the securing of a proportionate mix of all four. Anyone can learn to do this; you just need to have a larger framework in which to understand the dynamics of the four categories.

See you tomorrow