life is short 中譯本（嘗試中）

《黑客與畫家》作者的文章。嘗試翻譯，剛開始。打算從必應機器翻譯開始，一點一點校對。這裡只選了前半段開始，看進度再繼續。最底下的是機翻，還沒整理。
Life is Short
January 2016
原文地址：http://www.paulgraham.com/vb.html

生命苦短 2016 年 1 月
Life is short, as everyone knows. When I was a kid I used to wonder about this. Is life actually short, or are we really complaining about its finiteness? Would we be just as likely to feel life was short if we lived 10 times as long?
眾所周知，生命是短暫的。當我還是孩子的時候，我常常對此感到疑惑。生命是真的短暫，還是我們在抱怨它的有限性？如果我們的壽命延長了10倍，我們是否會同樣覺得生命是短暫的呢？

Since there didn't seem any way to answer this question, I stopped wondering about it. Then I had kids. That gave me a way to answer the question, and the answer is that life actually is short.
既然似乎沒有辦法回答這個問題，我不再想它了。後來我有了孩子。這給了我一個回答這個問題的方法，答案是生活其實真是短暫的。

Having kids showed me how to convert a continuous quantity, time, into discrete quantities. You only get 52 weekends with your 2 year old. If Christmas-as-magic lasts from say ages 3 to 10, you only get to watch your child experience it 8 times. And while it's impossible to say what is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity like time, 8 is not a lot of something. If you had a handful of 8 peanuts, or a shelf of 8 books to choose from, the quantity would definitely seem limited, no matter what your lifespan was.
有了孩子，我學會了如何將連續的數量和時間轉換成離散的數量。你只有52個週末與你2歲的寶貝相處。如果聖誕節的魔法可以從3歲持續到10歲，你也只能和你的孩子體驗8次。對於像時間這類持續不斷的東西，我們不能說什麼是很多或很少，但8的確不是很多。如果你有8個花生，或者8本書可供選擇，不管你壽命如何，這個數量肯定都是有限的。

Ok, so life actually is short. Does it make any difference to know that?
好吧，所以生命其實很短。知道這一點，有什麼意義嗎？

It has for me. It means arguments of the form "Life is too short for x" have great force. It's not just a figure of speech to say that life is too short for something. It's not just a synonym for annoying. If you find yourself thinking that life is too short for something, you should try to eliminate it if you can.
對我而言這有意義。它意味著像"生命太短以至於我不能做某事"這類話很有力量。說生命對於某事來說太短暫不僅僅是打一個比方。這也不是一個令人討厭的同義詞。如果你發現自己認為生命太短了，你應該儘量消除它，如果你可以。
When I ask myself what I've found life is too short for, the word that pops into my head is "bullshit." I realize that answer is somewhat tautological. It's almost the definition of bullshit that it's the stuff that life is too short for. And yet bullshit does have a distinctive character. There's something fake about it. It's the junk food of experience. [1]

If you ask yourself what you spend your time on that's bullshit, you probably already know the answer. Unnecessary meetings, pointless disputes, bureaucracy, posturing, dealing with other people's mistakes, traffic jams, addictive but unrewarding pastimes.

There are two ways this kind of thing gets into your life: it's either forced on you, or it tricks you. To some extent you have to put up with the bullshit forced on you by circumstances. You need to make money, and making money consists mostly of errands. Indeed, the law of supply and demand insures that: the more rewarding some kind of work is, the cheaper people will do it. It may be that less bullshit is forced on you than you think, though. There has always been a stream of people who opt out of the default grind and go live somewhere where opportunities are fewer in the conventional sense, but life feels more authentic. This could become more common.

You can do it on a smaller scale without moving. The amount of time you have to spend on bullshit varies between employers. Most large organizations (and many small ones) are steeped in it. But if you consciously prioritize bullshit avoidance over other factors like money and prestige, you can probably find employers that will waste less of your time.

If you're a freelancer or a small company, you can do this at the level of individual customers. If you fire or avoid toxic customers, you can decrease the amount of bullshit in your life by more than you decrease your income.

But while some amount of bullshit is inevitably forced on you, the bullshit that sneaks into your life by tricking you is no one's fault but your own. And yet the bullshit you choose may be harder to eliminate than the bullshit that's forced on you. Things that lure you into wasting your time have to be really good at tricking you. An example that will be familiar to a lot of people is arguing online. When someone contradicts you, they're in a sense attacking you. Sometimes pretty overtly. Your instinct when attacked is to defend yourself. But like a lot of instincts, this one wasn't designed for the world we now live in. Counterintuitive as it feels, it's better most of the time not to defend yourself. Otherwise these people are literally taking your life. [2]

當我問自己，我發現生命太短了，突然出現在我腦海中的詞是"廢話"。"，我意識到答案有點自大。這幾乎是廢話的定義，它是生命太短的東西。然而，廢話確實有一個獨特的特點。有假貨這是經驗中的垃圾食品。[1]

如果你問自己，你花了你的時間，這是廢話，你可能已經知道答案。不必要的會議，毫無意義的爭端，官僚主義，姿態，處理別人的錯誤，交通堵塞，上癮但無回報的消遣。

這種事情進入你的生活有兩種方式：要麼強迫你，要麼欺騙你。在某種程度上，你必須忍受環境所強加給你的廢話。你需要賺錢，賺錢主要由差事組成。事實上，供求規律確保：一種工作的回報越多，人們就越會這樣做。不過，可能比你想象的要少胡說八道。總是有一批人選擇退出預設的磨難，去一個傳統意義上的機會較少的地方生活，但生活感覺更真實。這可能變得更加普遍。

您可以以較小的比例進行操作，而無需移動。你花在廢話上的時間因僱主而異。大多數大型組織（和許多小型組織）都沉浸其中。但是，如果你有意識地把迴避廢話放在金錢和聲望等其他因素之上，你可能會發現僱主會浪費更少的時間。

如果您是自由職業者或小公司，您可以在個人客戶級別上執行此操作。如果你解僱或避開有毒客戶，你一生中的廢話數量會減少超過你的收入。

但是，雖然一些廢話不可避免地強加給你，通過欺騙你潛入你的生活的廢話不是任何人的錯，而是你自己的錯。然而，你選擇的廢話可能比強加給你的廢話更難消除。吸引你浪費時間的事情必須非常善於欺騙你。很多人熟悉的一個例子是在網上爭論。當有人反駁你時，他們從某種意義上說是在攻擊你。有時相當明顯。你被攻擊時的本能是保護自己。但是，像許多本能一樣，這個不是為我們現在生活的世界設計的。儘管感覺有悖常理，但大多數時候最好不要為自己辯護。否則，這些人真的拿走了你的生命。[2]