步行如何成为我的生产力系统
// 本来写了洋洋洒洒大几百字推荐语，结果浏览器崩了，没找回来，哭。从简推荐吧：这篇访谈不错，内容很合我意。我中英对照机翻了一下。原文《Walking as a Productivity System》地址在左下角原文链接。
Walking as a Productivity System
步行作为一个生产力系统
Most writers have a system in place to drive the work they do. My own system, for example, is mad and unpredictable, and it’s based on a mysterious alchemy of guilt, panic, dumb luck, and caffeine-induced tweaking.
大多数作家都有一套系统来驱动他们的作品。例如，我自己的系统是疯狂和不可预测的，它是基于一种神秘的内疚、恐慌、运气和咖啡因引起的扭曲。
Craig Mod, on the other hand, has a fascinating (and slightly less neurotic) method for driving his work as a writer: walking.
另一方面，克雷格 · 莫德(craigmod)用一种迷人的(稍微不那么神经质的)方法来推动他作为一名作家的工作: 散步。
Craig thinks of a walk as an operating system that he can use to support, feed, and inspire all the basic functions of his writing. Walking gets his mind moving, stimulates his bottomless curiosity, and energizes his creative force.
克雷格认为散步是一个操作系统，他可以用它来支持、反馈和激发他写作的所有基本功能。走路可以使他的思维活动起来，激发他无尽的好奇心，激发他的创造力。
But it’s more than that: the whole gamut of work Craig does, whether digital, or tangibly, unapologetically analog—is supported by his approach to walking. Both how he writes and what he writes about are inextricably linked to the process,
但不仅如此: 克雷格所做的全部工作，无论是数字化的，还是具体的、无可辩驳的模拟化的，都是由他的步行方式所支持的。他的写作方式和写作内容都不可避免地与一只脚踏在另一只脚前的过程、纪律和经验联系在一起。
The results speak for themselves. Craig’s writing has developed an engaged and loyal following over the years—tens of thousands of people read his multiple newsletters, and his work has appeared in publications like Eater, Wired, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic.
结果不言自明。多年来，克雷格的作品吸引了大量忠实的追随者ーー成千上万的人阅读了他的多种通讯，他的作品发表在《 Eater 》、《 Wired 》、《 The New Yorker 》和《 The Atlantic 》等刊物上。
His greatest love, though, is making books. It’s the most
不过，他最大的爱好是制作书籍。这是他所有行走过程中最有形和最令人心满意足的工作成果。最新的是 Kissa by Kissa，目前正在进入其第三个手工印刷，还有另一个作品朝着九月的印刷机前进。
So how does Craig transform steps into words, and words into books? Let's take a stroll together to see how walking enables Craig to do what he does.
那么，克雷格是如何将步骤转化为文字，将文字转化为书籍的呢？让我们一起散散步，看看克雷格是如何做到他所做的事情的。
Craig Mod introduces himself
克雷格 · 莫德自我介绍
When people ask what I do, to keep it simple, I just say I'm a writer and I work on books.
当人们问我是做什么的，为了简单起见，我只是说我是个作家，我写书。
Walking—and walking in Japan—is a core part of my identity
步行ーー和在日本步行ーー是我身份的核心部分
I’ve lived in Japan for most of my adult life, and I went on my first ‘real’ walk here about twenty years ago. I’ve gone on countless big walks around Japan—sometimes with friends and mentors, but more often alone.
我成年后的大部分时间都生活在日本，大约20年前，我第一次来到这里“真正”散步。我在日本进行了无数次大型散步ーー有时是和朋友和导师一起，但更多时候是独自一人。
Last month, I finished a 435-kilometer walk along a few routes of the Kumano Kodō UNESCO World Heritage pilgrimage trail:
上个月，我沿着熊野县联合国教科文组织世界遗产的几条朝圣路线完成了435公里的徒步旅行:
Arriving in the rhythm of a long walk can take a few days, but I find that once I’m there, a momentum takes over—I get a natural high, the mind seems to open up, I become more creative, and I start to truly notice things.
以长距离步行的节奏到达目的地可能需要几天时间，但我发现，一旦到达那里，一种动力就会占据上风ーー我会获得一种天然的兴奋感，头脑似乎会打开，我会变得更有创造力，并开始真正注意到事物。
Through walking, I feel like I accidentally discovered a way of more fully interacting with place, and of connecting with people in situations that I would never otherwise get to be in. For example, I spend a lot of my time on these walks talking with farmers, say, or charcoal makers—folks I’d otherwise never bump into in my ‘normal’ life. But in the context of a long walk, our paths naturally converge.
通过散步，我感觉我意外地发现了一种更全面地与场所互动的方式，以及在我永远不会处于的情况下与人们联系的方式。例如，我在这些散步中花了很多时间与农民或木炭工人交谈，否则在我的“正常”生活中绝不会遇到他们。但是在漫长的路途中，我们的道路自然会汇合。
Since my earliest walks, I’ve been investigating what I can do with walks. I like to carry out experiments to see what the experience of the walk might lead me to create or publish, in sounds, images, and words.
从我最早的散步开始，我就一直在研究我可以用散步来做什么。我喜欢进行实验，看看散步的经历会带领我创造或发表什么声音、图像和文字。
I think of my walks as an operating system—a platform for creative work
我认为我的步行是一个操作系统ーー一个创造性工作的平台
For me, a walk is a tool or platform upon which I can build, sort of like an operating system. When I become fully immersed in ‘walk mode’ the operating system begins to hum along, becoming almost autonomous, and I find the experience of this incredibly empowering. It just feels like the world and my place within it vibrates at a higher, more finely tuned level.
对我来说，散步是一个工具或平台，我可以在上面构建，有点像一个操作系统。当我完全沉浸在‘步行模式’中时，操作系统开始嗡嗡作响，变得几乎是自治的，我发现这种难以置信的授权体验。它只是感觉像是世界和我在其中的位置在一个更高的，更精确的调整水平上振动。
I realize this sounds somewhat insane, and I suppose that’s true—but a long walk contains within it the act of losing your mind: the long hours, the endless kilometers. On a properly executed long walk, it feels like the world pops from HD to 4K in terms of detail and texture, if that makes any sense.
我知道这听起来有点疯狂，我想这是真的ーー但是长时间的散步包含着让你失去理智的行为: 长时间的工作，无尽的公里。在一个适当执行的长距离步行，它感觉就像世界突然从高清到4 k 的细节和纹理，如果这有什么意义。
As I walk throughout the day, I find myself thinking about what I will write that night. And I become absorbed by engaging with the towns and villages I pass through and connecting with the people I meet.
当我一整天都在散步的时候，我发现自己在思考那天晚上要写些什么。我沉浸在与我经过的城镇和村庄的接触中，与我遇到的人们保持联系。
If I’ve ‘programmed’ the operating system well, I’ll get into that elevated state of creativity and rigor.
如果我对操作系统进行了很好的编程，我将进入创造力和严谨性的提升状态。
I program my walks by setting rules
我通过制定规则来安排我的步行
Different walks have different rules, but when I’m on a walk, a typical rule is that I consume no newspapers, articles, or podcasts, and I use no social networks—nothing that could mentally teleport me out of the walk. I use Freedom to block all of this on my laptop and smartphone.
不同的散步有不同的规则，但是当我散步的时候，一个典型的规则是我不看报纸、文章或播客，我不使用社交网络ーー没有任何东西可以在心理上把我从散步中传送出去。我用自由屏蔽我的笔记本电脑和智能手机上的所有信息。
That doesn’t mean I don’t use technology on my walks. Under the rules I made for a walk last year on the historic Tōkaidō road between Tokyo and Kyoto, I produced videos every day, made recordings of ambient sounds on the walk for my SW945 podcast, and wrote and published essays every night.
这并不意味着我在散步时不使用科技产品。根据我去年在东京和京都之间的 t kaid 历史性的公路上散步时制定的规则，我每天制作视频，为我的 SW945播客录制环境声音，每天晚上撰写和发表文章。
That meant that after a full day of walking, I had to import gigabytes of data, process audio, process video, export it, get it into a YouTube-friendly format, write and edit a newsletter, then push it through my complicated publishing system.
这意味着在走了一整天之后，我必须导入千兆字节的数据，处理音频，处理视频，导出它，把它转换成 youtube 友好的格式，编写和编辑新闻通讯，然后通过我复杂的发布系统推送它。
So even if I felt completely spent, and was certain that I would die if I didn’t get to sleep immediately, the rules I set created an
所以即使我感到精疲力尽，并且确信如果我不马上入睡，我就会死去，我制定的规则创造了一个我认真对待的责任: 他们说我必须完成这一切。因为我处于这种高高在上的，苦行僧式的行走模式中，我做到了！我完成了所有的工作ーー即使我在键盘前几乎要睡着了。
Of course, when I come to the end of a walk, I'm absolutely zonked and I need a few weeks to recover—but I feel more of a deep-seated sense of being energized and having used my body and mind well, rather than pure exhaustion—and I love working this way.
当然，当我结束一次散步的时候，我完全处于昏迷状态，我需要几周的时间来恢复，但是我感觉更多的是一种根深蒂固的精力充沛的感觉，我已经很好地运用了我的身体和思想，而不是纯粹的精疲力竭，我喜欢这样工作。
I use Google Sheets to plan all my walks
我用谷歌表格来计划我所有的步行
Planning a walk on a spreadsheet is a critical part of my process. I take care of all the logistics and planning in advance, so I don’t have to think about the day-to-day. I can be 100% present in the walk. Even choosing a hotel for the next day would occupy too much mental space while in the walk itself. I’d rather that time be spent on photography, writing, synthesis, or recovery.
计划在电子表格上行走是我的过程中的一个关键部分。我提前做好了所有的后勤和计划，所以我不用考虑日常的事情。我可以100% 的投入到这次旅行中。即使是为第二天选择一家酒店，也会占据太多的精神空间。我宁愿把时间花在摄影、写作、合成或恢复上。
Here’s the Sheet for my walk on the Nakasendō in 2019. As you can see, each row is a day of walking, with a starting and an end point. Sometimes a day takes up multiple rows, with a row for each town I’ll be passing through. I include an estimated distance of the walk (usually an underestimate!), actual distance once I’ve walked it, and everywhere I’m going to stay. I book all my accommodations in advance—a lot of inns in Japan don’t have websites, and have to be booked with a phone call. This takes ages. I probably spend a dozen hours on the phone and websites mapping out a month of walking.
下面是我2019年在中山散步的照片。正如你所看到的，每一行都是一天的行走，有起点和终点。有时候一天要走好几行，每一行代表我要经过的每一个城镇。我包括一个估计的步行距离(通常是低估了!)，实际距离一旦我已经走了，无论我要去哪里。我提前预订了所有的住宿ーー日本很多旅馆都没有网站，只能打电话预订。这需要很长时间。我可能花了十几个小时在电话和网站上计划一个月的步行时间。
I keep a record of each inn’s cost, and whether or not meals are included with my lodging. That way I know in advance if I need to make special plans for food. I also have a column for general notes, where I record hotel reviews or keep a record of places of historical interest.
我会记录下每家旅馆的开销，以及是否包括食宿费用。这样我就可以提前知道我是否需要为食物做特别的计划。我还有一个一般笔记专栏，我在那里记录酒店评论或保存历史名胜的记录。
Making these spreadsheets in advance of a walk serves as a kind of forcing function for me, too: with the days ‘set’ in advance, my chances of slacking off in the middle of a particularly rigorous walk are greatly reduced. I try to be kind to myself by keeping the days reasonable, but I know that if I were planning it all in real-time, I’d be much more of a wimp, take much more time off, and be far less rigorous.
在散步之前做这些电子表格对我来说也是一种强制功能: 随着时间的提前设置，我在特别艰苦的散步中放松的机会大大减少了。我试图通过保持合理的日子来善待自己，但我知道如果我实时地计划这一切，我会变得更加懦弱，花更多的时间休息，也不会那么严格。
My ‘horizon goal’ is to make books
我的“视野目标”是制作书籍
Rather than having a singular set of goals that I try to reach, I have one, main ‘horizon goal’. To stick within the walking metaphors: the horizon is something you’ll never reach, no matter how long you walk—it’s something you keep moving towards.
我有一个主要的“地平线目标”，而不是一系列我试图达到的单一目标。用行走的比喻: 无论你走多远，地平线都是你永远无法到达的地方ーー它是你不断前进的方向。
The horizon goal I’ve been moving towards for the last thirty years is bookmaking. Since I was a kid, I’ve looked at books as work or objects to aspire to, and now, having made some myself, I'm even more inspired by their power.
在过去的三十年里，我一直朝着地平线的目标前进，那就是博彩。从我还是个孩子的时候起，我就把书看成是工作或者是渴望的对象，现在，我自己也做了一些，我更加被它们的力量所鼓舞。
My latest book is Kissa by Kissa, about my experiences of walking 1000 kilometers of Japanese countryside along the old Nakasendō highway. It sits somewhere between travelogue, photo book, and ethnographic study.
我最近的一本书是 Kissa by Kissa，讲述了我沿着古老的 Nakasendō 公路在日本乡村行走1000公里的经历。它介于游记、照片集和人种学研究之间。
The title refers to ‘ 这个标题指的是kissaten 接吻’: small old-style cafés that dot the Japanese countryside and cities. These places often serve some variant on the curiously alluring American-influenced—but uniquely Japanese—pizza toast, which is exactly what it sounds like, as you can see in one of my photos!
点缀在日本乡村和城市的小型老式咖啡馆。这些地方经常供应一种奇特的、受美国人影响的、但独具日本特色的披萨烤面包，正如你在我的一张照片中看到的那样，听起来就是这个样子：
Kissa by Kissa was produced entirely in Japan. I’m proud of the work that the book gave to the people involved in production—from the paper makers, to the printers and binders. My goal was not to optimize for lowest cost of production, but rather to create an ecosystem feeding back into high-quality, sustainably priced books, produced by well-paid and talented print technicians.
Kissa 的 Kissa 完全是在日本制作的。我为这本书给生产人员带来的工作感到骄傲，从造纸工人到印刷工人和装订工人。我的目标不是优化最低的生产成本，而是创建一个生态系统，反馈给高质量、可持续定价的书籍，这些书籍由高薪、有才华的印刷技术人员制作。
I hope that everything I do supports my horizon goal
我希望我所做的一切都能支持我的地平线目标
Many of my ongoing projects may seem like they have little to do with the production of physical books. But I think of everything I do as a series of experiments that inform the development and content of the books I may make in the future.
我的许多正在进行的项目看起来似乎与实体书的制作没有什么关系。但是我认为我所做的每一件事都是一系列的实验，这些实验告诉我未来我可能会写的书的发展和内容。
For that reason, I try to ensure that the constellation of projects I take on elevates my book work. At the moment, those projects include three separate newsletters, which go out to tens of thousands of subscribers per month. I think of them as my public sketchbooks.
出于这个原因，我努力确保我所做的一系列项目能够提升我的著作质量。目前，这些项目包括三个单独的时事通讯，每月发送给数以万计的订阅者。我把它们看作是我的公共素描本。
I also produce a podcast called On Margins, made of interviews with folks about ‘book-shaped’ work—people writing books or designing books or publishing books.
我还制作了一个名为“边缘”(On margines)的播客，采访了一些“书形”的工作——写书、设计书籍或出版书籍的人。
My membership program acts as an accelerant for my horizon goal
我的会员计划就像是我的地平线目标的催化剂
The most powerful tool I’ve found for helping me achieve my book-making goal is Special Projects, the membership program I started a little over two years ago.
我发现帮助我实现出书目标的最有力的工具是特殊项目，这是我两年多前开始的会员项目。
For one thing, the members provide me with a sense of community—a collection of interesting and talented people I can bounce ideas off. They also keep me honest—I try to be accountable to them, which drives me to be the best creative version of myself.
首先，这些成员给我一种社区感ーー他们是一群有趣而有才华的人，我可以从他们身上得到启发。他们也让我保持诚实ーー我努力对他们负责，这促使我成为最有创造力的自己。
My members help me with planning, too. Earlier this year, I held what I called a ‘board meeting’, where I gave a presentation about what I’m going to produce this year, when, and why. I’ve never been big on granular scheduling, so this was one of the first times in my life that I’ve ever planned a whole year out.
我的会员也帮助我制定计划。今年早些时候，我召开了一个我称之为“董事会会议”的会议，我在会上做了一个关于今年我要做什么、什么时候、为什么要做的演讲。我从来不喜欢粒度安排，所以这是我生命中第一次计划一整年。
I went through the year month by month, and we discussed making another book based on my walks—the plan is to finish it in mid-summer, launch in August, and go to print in September. I found the process weirdly useful, and it’s something I plan on continuing to run going forward, perhaps on a once-every-six-months schedule.
我一个月一个月地过了一年，我们讨论了根据我的散步情况再写一本书ーー计划是在仲夏完成，8月上市，9月出版。我发现这个过程非常有用，而且我计划继续进行下去，也许每六个月进行一次。
How I avoid the pitfalls of a membership program
我如何避免会员计划的陷阱
I try to avoid what I think is the scariest part of running a membership program—having it become a gilded cage.
我尽量避免我认为运行一个会员计划最可怕的部分ーー把它变成一个镀金的笼子。
That can happen if, for example, you get good at publishing newsletters, but instead of continuing to write newsletters about subjects you’re interested in, you end up becoming the person who writes about how to write newsletters. You become the meta-version of yourself.
例如，如果你擅长出版时事通讯，但是不再继续写你感兴趣的主题的时事通讯，你最终会成为写时事通讯的人。你变成了你自己的元版本。
In other words, you end up not doing the stuff you set out to do at the beginning. It’s easy for that to happen, too—it tends to be more profitable (it’s a form of self-help, which is always quite profitable), and it can be easier to grow—but it’s something I’ve always been wary of.
换句话说，你最终并没有完成开始时设定的任务。这种情况也很容易发生ーー它往往更有利可图(这是一种自助形式，总是相当有利可图) ，而且它可能更容易成长ーー但我一直对此持谨慎态度。
In my case, with Special Projects, I’m lucky that I’ve never felt like I had to make any compromises to get members. Growth has been slow. But over the years, I’ve cultivated a following of people who seem to appreciate the weird tenor of work that I’m doing, and they want to see that continue.
就我而言，在特殊项目中，我很幸运，因为我从来没有觉得需要做出任何妥协才能获得成员。经济增长缓慢。但是这些年来，我已经培养了一批追随者，他们似乎欣赏我正在做的这种奇怪的工作方式，他们希望看到这种情况继续下去。
So I don’t offer members-only how-to-run-membership-programs classes, or a book on newsletter writing. Instead, Special Projects has been tied to the creation of well-made, limited-edition books—which is the very thing I’ve wanted to do all along.
因此，我不提供会员-只有如何运行会员-程序类，或一本关于通讯写作的书。相反，《特别计划》与制作精良的限量版书籍紧密相连——这正是我一直想做的事情。
I divide my time into chunks to help with focus-shifting
我把我的时间分成小块来帮助我转移注意力
The different things that I do—walking, writing, admin work, keeping up with my members, and actually making books—require some different modes of working. I’ve found that the best way to handle the necessary shifts in focus is to divide my work into chunks. Sometimes those chunks are a few hours or days, and sometimes, those chunks have to be quite big—weeks or months.
我所做的不同的事情ーー走路、写作、行政工作、与会员保持联系，以及实际的制作书籍ーー都需要一些不同的工作模式。我发现处理注意力的必要转移的最好方法就是把我的工作分成小块。有时候，这些时间段需要几个小时或几天，有时候，这些时间段需要相当大的时间ーー几个星期或几个月。
When I was doing production work for Kissa by Kissa in 2020, for example, I wasn’t really doing any real creative writing. Instead, there was a two-month period where all I did was think about book production—stuff like paper types, how to develop images depending on the paper, different ways of binding, and how to set up order fulfillment once the book was published.
例如，当我在2020年为 Kissa 的 Kissa 做制作工作时，我并没有真正做任何有创意的写作。相反，在两个月的时间里，我所做的一切都是在思考图书生产——比如纸张类型、如何根据纸张冲洗图像、不同的装订方式，以及一旦图书出版后如何完成订单。
Obviously, ‘walk mode’ takes up a huge chunk of time. Going on a long walk requires a specific quality of time to give to the work. I chunked out a huge block of time for that month-long walk I did on the old Tōkaidō highway in November last year:
很明显，步行模式占用了大量的时间。长时间的散步需要一定的时间来完成工作。去年11月，我在老 t kaid 高速公路上步行了一个月，花了大量时间:
Then, after that walk was over, at the beginning of this year, I decided not to ‘be creative’ until February. Instead, I chunked the whole month of January into catching up on administrative work, as well as writing up some reflections on the past year. I was able to finish off a lot of the tasks that tend to feel like ‘homework’ and are therefore easy to put off. But once that was done, I was free to dive back into more creative spaces.
然后，在散步结束后，在今年年初，我决定在二月份之前不要有创造性。相反，我用整个一月的时间来补上行政工作，同时也写下了对过去一年的一些反思。我能够完成许多感觉像是“家庭作业”的任务，因此很容易推迟。但是一旦这样做了，我就可以自由地潜入更有创造力的空间。
And when I had made the decision to go on a walk this May and June, I just circled those two months in my calendar, and completely blocked off that chunk of time as well.
当我决定今年五月和六月去散步的时候，我只是在日历上圈出了这两个月，并且把这段时间也完全排除了。
Some of the tools I use
我使用的一些工具
I’ve described myself as a ‘mega geek’, and I use a wide array of sometimes onerous tools—which I’m constantly tweaking and refining—to get things done.
我把自己描述成一个“超级极客”，我使用各种各样有时很麻烦的工具——我不断地调整和完善这些工具——来完成工作。
For email, I use the Mail app on Mac
对于电子邮件，我在 Mac
I write the drafts of my newsletters and essays in Ulysses, and I use FSNotes as my main note-taking program since I switched to it from NV-alt. I use it for meeting notes, or during my weekly
我用《尤利西斯》来写我的时事通讯和论文的草稿，而且自从我从 NV-alt 转用它以来，我使用 FSNotes 作为我的主要笔记程序。例如，我用它来做会议记录，或者在每周的治疗过程中。我还用它来起草 Instagram 帖子:
I use Figma as a kind of generic sketchbook. I have a giant Figma file for Special Projects—here’s where I try out different typefaces for the branding, and organize and create assets and icons:
我用 Figma 作为一种通用的素描本。我有一个巨大的 Figma 文件用于特殊项目ー在这里我尝试了不同的品牌字体，并组织和创建资源和图标:
I used to work with Figma’s co-founder and CEO Dylan Field ten or eleven years ago, and it’s been fantastic to see that company do as well as it’s done. Dylan’s a great guy and Figma is a great product—it’s essentially an infinitely large canvas for creativity. I’m proud of what they’ve built.
十年或十一年前，我曾与 Figma 的联合创始人兼首席执行官迪伦 · 菲尔德一起工作，看到这家公司如此成功真是太棒了。迪伦是一个伟大的人，Figma 是一个伟大的产品ーー它本质上是一个无限大的创造力画布。我为他们的成就感到骄傲。
I use the Hugo static site tool to make my homepage—I love having total control over how it looks and feels (though I wouldn’t recommend this to everyone!). Messing around with code is a kind of cheap
我使用 Hugo 静态网站工具来制作我的主页ーー我喜欢完全控制它的外观和感觉(尽管我不会向所有人推荐这个工具!).对我来说，乱写代码是一种廉价的治疗方法。我也喜欢能够在自己的域名上发表文章，而不是依附于一个风险投资支持的平台，这个平台会让我以自己无法选择的方式发表或塑造自己的作品。
I run Memberful as the backend for Special Projects, which is great because it plugs into Campaign Monitor—which I use as my email and newsletter provider—and into Stripe, for payments and payouts. The whole setup is fairly nimble and independent.
我运行 Memberful 作为特殊项目的后端，这很棒，因为它可以插入 Campaign monitor (我用它作为我的电子邮件和时事通讯提供商)和 Stripe (用于支付和支付)。整个设置相当灵活和独立。
I deliberately set up forcing functions for myself
我特意为自己设置了强制函数
A creative person—a novelist, say—who writes a lot and publishes a new novel every couple of years is someone who probably has a system that makes words come out. They’re either naturally good at creating that system themselves, or they rely upon some external motivator they’ve set up.
一个富有创造力的人ーー比如说小说家ーー每隔几年写很多作品并出版一本新小说，他很可能有一套能让文字脱颖而出的系统。他们要么天生擅长自己创造这个系统，要么依赖于自己建立的某种外部动力。
One example is the author Karl Ove Knausgård, who has had a massive output in terms of words written and published. His forcing function in writing his multi-volume My Struggle was to get on the phone with his editor daily and read him everything he’d written that day.
一个例子是作家 Karl Ove knausg å rd，他写了大量的文字并出版了。他写多卷本《我的挣扎》的强迫作用，就是每天打电话给他的编辑，读他那天写的所有东西。问责制导致生产力。
For me, newsletters are my forcing function. Whether I’m at home or in the middle of a walk, writing newsletters forces me to look back on what I’ve done, seen, and thought about over the last week or month.
对我来说，时事通讯是我的强制功能。不管我是在家还是在散步，写时事通讯迫使我回顾自己在过去一周或一个月里所做、所见、所想的事。
By having set deadlines as part of my day-to-day, I find that I produce more.
通过把截止日期作为我日常生活的一部分，我发现我的工作效率更高了。
I even use Japan’s weather as a forcing function: I would have preferred to wait a bit longer before going on the walk I did this past May and June, but I had to get it done before the monsoon season began. Otherwise, I would have had to wait until November or December—and I want to be setting out on yet another walk then!
我甚至把日本的天气作为一个强制功能: 我本来更愿意在去散步之前再等一段时间，但是我必须在季风季节开始之前完成。否则，我就得等到11月或12月ーー我想到那时再开始另一次散步！
When it comes to creative work, the more you do the better
当涉及到创造性的工作时，你做的越多越好
If you're trying to write an 80,000 word novel and you only write 80,000 words, it might be acceptable. But if you wrote 300,000 or 400,000 words and cut that back to 80,000, it’s almost certain that it would be a better novel.
如果你想写一本80000字的小说，而你只写了80000字，这也许是可以接受的。但是如果你写了30万或者40万字，然后把它减少到8万字，几乎可以肯定这会是一本更好的小说。
Kissa by Kissa is one example. It only has 12,000 or 13,000 words in it, even though I wrote more than ten times that amount. That’s an interesting kind of reduction: basically a tenth of what I wrote became that book. To me, that feels like a durable ratio.
Kissa 的 Kissa 就是一个例子。它只有12,000或13,000字，即使我写了10倍以上的数量。这是一个有趣的缩减: 基本上是我写的东西的十分之一变成了那本书。对我来说，这就像是一个持久的比例。
The last two or three years have been the most productive of my life. I feel that I’ve been honest with my own impulses—I’ve spent time in a way that feels very much aligned with how I hope to spend it. It feels as if time itself and my place within time are being respected. And because of the
过去的两三年是我生命中最富有成效的时光。我觉得自己对自己的冲动很诚实ーー我花时间的方式与我希望如何度过时间的方式非常一致。感觉好像时间本身和我在时间中的位置受到了尊重。由于我必须展示的纯粹的工作成果，我想我将能够回顾我生命中的这段时期，而不会觉得我在玩弄我的大拇指时把它烧焦了。
Massive scale alone doesn’t excite me
仅仅是大规模并不能让我兴奋
Back when I was working in Silicon Valley, I worked on software that was used by tens of millions of people—and I was kind of shocked to discover how little of an emotional impact that level of scale had on me.
当我在硅谷工作的时候，我研究的软件有数千万人在使用，当我发现这种规模对我的情感影响如此之小时，我有点震惊。
I have nothing against mammoth scale in and of itself, but to me, doing something ‘big’ just for the sake of ‘big’ isn't interesting. I’m simply not interested in working on a newsletter that has 300,000 subscribers if I’m not passionately ensorcelled by what the newsletter is about.
我并不反对庞大的规模本身，但是对我来说，仅仅为了“大”而做一些“大”的事情并不有趣。如果我没有对新闻稿充满热情的话，我对一份拥有30万订阅者的新闻稿不感兴趣。
Not that I’d turn up my nose at a chance, for example, to work on a book with a big New York publisher! But it would have to be a project that got the publisher excited, while also being fully aligned with my interests. I’m all for ways of working that enable me to reach a bigger audience while also staying true to my creative goals.
我并不是说我会对一个机会嗤之以鼻，例如，与纽约一家大出版商合作出书！但它必须是一个让出版商兴奋的项目，同时又与我的兴趣完全一致。我所有的工作方式，使我能够达到一个更大的观众，同时也保持我的创造性目标真实。
For me, there’s a happiness cutoff line when it comes to scale. Do I want to be operating on a micro scale of tens of people? No, but the scale at which I’m producing books right now—thousands or tens of thousands—feels like a powerful one. It’s financially sustainable, reaches a decently-sized audience, and I don’t have to compromise on my vision.
对我来说，当涉及到规模时，有一个幸福的分界线。我是否想要在数十人的微观尺度上运作？不，但是我现在正在创作的书籍——成千上万本——的规模感觉非常强大。它在经济上是可持续发展的，拥有相当数量的观众，我不需要在我的愿景上妥协。
I’m very thankful to everyone who supports my work. I feel extremely grateful to have the audience that I do, and be able to produce work at this level—it's fantastic.
我非常感谢每一个支持我工作的人。我非常感激能有我这样的观众，并且能够创作出这种水平的作品ーー这太棒了。
A book recommendation
一本书的推荐
I'm in the middle of reading The Ministry For The Future by Kim Stanley Robinson on Kindle.
我正在 Kindle 上阅读金·史丹利·罗宾逊的《未来部》。
The book is set in a fuzzy near-future, maybe fifteen or twenty years down the road. The author speculates about some of the potential effects of climate change, as well as some possible mitigation efforts. It's very wonky, with a lot of technical information about climate change and its political and organizational aspects.
这本书的背景设定在一个模糊的不久的将来，也许是十五年或二十年以后。作者推测了气候变化的一些潜在影响，以及一些可能的缓解措施。它非常不靠谱，包含了大量关于气候变化的技术信息，以及政治和组织方面的信息。
The author could simply have written a bunch of essays about climate change and why our institutional structures keep us from passing meaningful legislation to combat it. Instead, he does an amazing job of incorporating those elements into the swirl of a story to make us feel—on an emotional level—what the world faces if we don’t take action. He casts the banal in well-crafted myth, and from that, one hopes, action will be inspired.
作者可以简单地写一大堆关于气候变化的文章，以及为什么我们的体制结构阻止我们通过有意义的立法来对抗它。相反，他把这些元素融入到故事的漩涡中，让我们在情感层面上感受到，如果我们不采取行动，这个世界将面临什么。他把陈词滥调投射到精心编造的神话中，人们希望从中得到启发，采取行动。
That’s the real power of writing!
这才是写作的真正力量！