Embrace the near win

Sarah Lewis

I feel so fortunate that my first job was working at the Museum of Modern Art on a retrospective of painter Elizabeth Murray. I learned so much from her.?

我很幸運，我的第一份工作是在現代藝術博物館里，給畫家伊麗莎白·默里辦一個回顧展。我從她那里學到很多。

After the curator Robert Storr selected all the paintings from her lifetime body of work, I loved looking at the paintings from the 1970s.?

在館長羅伯特·斯托從她一生的作品中選取了畫作之后，我愛上了欣賞這些20世紀70年代的畫作。

There were some motifs and elements that would come up again later in her life. I remember asking her what she thought of those early works. If you didn't know they were hers, you might not have been able to guess.?

在她生命的后期，一些主題和元素得到重現。我記得自己問她，她對那些早期作品的想法是什么。如果人們起先不知道，也許就猜不到這些是她的作品了。

She told me that a few didn't quite meet her own mark for what she wanted them to be. One of the works, in fact, so didn't meet her mark, she had set it out in the trash in her studio, and her neighbor had taken it because she saw its value.

她告訴我，一些作品并沒有達到她所希望的水準。其中一幅，事實上，遠沒有滿足她的要求，她把它扔進了公寓的垃圾箱里，之后被她的鄰居拿走了，因為她看到了其中的價值。

In that moment, my view of success and creativity changed. I realized that success is a moment, but what we're always celebrating is creativity and mastery. But this is the thing: What gets us to convert success into mastery? This is a question I've long asked myself. I think it comes when we start to value the gift of a near win.

在那一刻，我對成功和創(chuàng)新的想法改變了。我意識到成功是一個瞬間，然而我們總是在慶祝創(chuàng)新和卓越。問題來了：我們如何將一次成功轉化為卓越的成就呢？這個問題我已經問了自己很久。我想這個轉換在于我們開始重視每一次“差一點的成功”。

I started to understand this when I went on one cold May day to watch a set of varsity archers, all women as fate would have it, at the northern tip of Manhattan at Columbia's Baker Athletics Complex. I wanted to see what's called archer's paradox, the idea that in order to actually hit your target, you have to aim at something slightly skew from it.

我是這樣開始理解這一點的：那是一個寒冷的五月天，我在曼哈頓的北角，哥倫比亞大學的貝克田徑綜合樓里，觀看校隊弓箭手比賽，碰巧的是選手全是女性。我很想看看所謂的“弓箭手悖論”，就是說，為了擊中目標，你必須在瞄準時稍微偏離目標。

I stood and watched as the coach drove up these women in this gray van, and they exited with this kind of relaxed focus. One held a half-eaten ice cream cone in one hand and arrows in the left with yellow fletching.?

我站在那里，看到教練把那些女生用灰色的卡車送過去，然后她們離開，神情自若，有個人的右手還拿著一個吃了一半的甜筒冰淇淋，左手拿著黃色箭羽的箭。

And they passed me and smiled, but they sized me up as they made their way to the turf, and spoke to each other not with words but with numbers, degrees, I thought, positions for how they might plan to hit their target.

她們笑著從我身邊走過，不過她們走向場地的時候打量了我一下，她們不出聲地彼此交流，我猜是用數字、角度之類來談論她們可能計劃好的射擊位置。

?I stood behind one archer as her coach stood in between us to maybe assess who might need support, and watched her, and I didn't understand how even one was going to hit the ten ring. The ten ring from the standard 75-yard distance, it looks as small as a matchstick tip held out at arm's length. And this is while holding 50 pounds of draw weight on each shot. She first hit a seven, I remember, and then a nine, and then two tens, and then the next arrow didn't even hit the target.?

我當時站在一個弓箭手后面，她的教練站在我們中間，可能是看看誰需要支撐，還有照看她，我甚至不知道怎么樣才能擊中十環(huán)。十環(huán)在75碼之外，看上去和一臂以外的火柴頭一般大小，而且每次發(fā)射都要發(fā)力50磅。而且每次發(fā)射都要發(fā)力50磅。那個弓箭手第一次射中了7環(huán)，我記得接下來是個9環(huán)，然后是2個十環(huán)，接下來的那支箭甚至沒有射到靶上。

And I saw that gave her more tenacity, and she went after it again and again. For three hours this went on. At the end of the practice, one of the archers was so taxed that she lied out on the ground just star-fished, her head looking up at the sky, trying to find what T.S. Eliot might call that still point of the turning world.

我看出這些使她更有韌性了，她一次又一次地射箭。三小時就這樣過去了。在練習的最后，其中一個弓箭手精疲力竭地躺在地上，像只海星，她仰頭望天，試圖尋找艾略特所說的（T.S.Eliot：詩人，1948年諾貝爾文學獎得主）轉動不息的世界里的靜止點。

It's so rare in American culture, there's so little that's vocational about it anymore, to look at what doggedness looks like with this level of exactitude, what it means to align your body posture for three hours in order to hit a target, pursuing a kind of excellence in obscurity. But I stayed because I realized I was witnessing what's so rare to glimpse, that difference between success and mastery.

在美國文化里，這種現象很少見。已經很少有如此專業(yè)的事情，看上去這么傻，還要如此精確。這意味著你要擺好姿勢，堅持3個小時去射擊一個目標，在一片模糊中追尋卓越。我留下來，是因為自己親眼目睹了這難得的瞬間：成功和卓越的區(qū)別。

So success is hitting that ten ring, but mastery is knowing that it means nothing if you can't do it again and again. Mastery is not just the same as excellence, though. It's not the same as success, which I see as an event, a moment in time, and a label that the world confers upon you. Mastery is not a commitment to a goal but to a constant pursuit. What gets us to do this, what get us to forward thrust more is to value the near win.?

所以說，成功是打中十環(huán)，然而卓越是你懂得：如果不去一次次地嘗試，就會一無所得。但是，卓越和優(yōu)異不盡相同，也和成功不一樣，成功在我看來是一次事件，一個時刻，一個世界賦予你的標簽。卓越不是對某個目標的承諾，而是一個持續(xù)的追求。而讓我們不斷追求，能把我們推得更遠的方法，就是重視“差一點的勝利”。

How many times have we designated something a classic, a masterpiece even, while its creator considers it hopelessly unfinished, riddled with difficulties and flaws, in other words, a near win?

有多少次我們將一些作品定義為經典之作，甚至是大師級作品，即使作者認為它根本無望完成，充滿了困難和瑕疵，換言之，是一個“差一點的成功”？

?Elizabeth Murray surprised me with her admission about her earlier paintings. Painter Paul Cézanne so often thought his works were incomplete that he would deliberately leave them aside with the intention of picking them back up again, but at the end of his life, the result was that he had only signed 10 percent of his paintings.?

伊麗莎白·默里讓我感到驚訝，她接受了自己早期的畫作。畫家保羅·塞尚經常認為他的作品不夠完善，他會故意把它們丟在一邊，心里想著一會再撿回來。然而到了他生命的終點，結果就是他只在10%的畫作上簽了名。

His favorite novel was "The [Unknown] Masterpiece" by Honoré de Balzac, and he felt the protagonist was the painter himself. Franz Kafka saw incompletion when others would find only works to praise, so much so that he wanted all of his diaries, manuscripts, letters and even sketches burned upon his death. His friend refused to honor the request, and because of that, we now have all the works we now do by Kafka: "America," "The Trial" and "The Castle," a work so incomplete it even stops mid-sentence.

塞尚最喜歡的小說是巴爾扎克的《不為人知的杰作》，他覺得自己就是那個畫家主角。弗蘭茲·卡夫卡能看到缺點，而其他人只找到贊美的作品，以至于他想把他所有的日記、手稿、信件和草稿，死后全部焚燒。他的朋友拒絕這樣做，正因如此，我們現在還有這些卡夫卡的作品：《亞美利加》、《審判》、《城堡》，這個作品不完整到有破句。

The pursuit of mastery, in other words, is an ever-onward almost.

換句話說，對卓越的追求幾乎是一種不斷前進的過程。

"Lord, grant that I desire more than I can accomplish," Michelangelo implored, as if to that Old Testament God on the Sistine Chapel, and he himself was that Adam with his finger outstretched and not quite touching that God's hand.

?“神啊，您賜給我的欲望超過了我的能力?！懊组_朗基羅這樣禱告，對著西斯廷教堂穹頂上的舊約之神，他自己變成了亞當，向前伸出手指卻無法碰觸到神的手。

Mastery is in the reaching, not the arriving. It's in constantly wanting to close that gap between where you are and where you want to be. Mastery is about sacrificing for your craft and not for the sake of crafting your career. How many inventors and untold entrepreneurs live out this phenomenon? We see it even in the life of the indomitable Arctic explorer Ben Saunders, who tells me that his triumphs are not merely the result of a grand achievement, but of the propulsion of a lineage of near wins.

卓越在于追求的過程，而不是結果。它要持續(xù)不斷地縮小現實的自己和理想的自己之間的差距。卓越是為自己的才華而做出犧牲，而不是為了開發(fā)自己的事業(yè)。有多少發(fā)明家和無名的企業(yè)家們在現實中印證了這一現象？我們甚至能看到不屈不撓的北極探險家本·桑德斯，他跟我說起自己的輝煌不僅僅是一次偉大成功的結果。而是由一系列“差一點的成功”推動的。

We thrive when we stay at our own leading edge. It's a wisdom understood by Duke Ellington, who said that his favorite song out of his repertoire was always the next one, always the one he had yet to compose.?

當我們處于領先優(yōu)勢時，我們就能成長。艾靈頓公爵領悟了這一智慧，（DukeEllington（1899–1974年），美國著名作曲家、鋼琴家、樂隊隊長。）他說在自己的作品中，最喜歡的永遠是下一首。永遠是他還沒有寫好的那首。

Part of the reason that the near win is inbuilt to mastery is because the greater our proficiency, the more clearly we might see that we don't know all that we thought we did. It's called the Dunning–Kruger effect. The Paris Review got it out of James Baldwin when they asked him, "What do you think increases with knowledge?" and he said, "You learn how little you know."

差一點的勝利是卓越的內涵，一部分是因為我們做事越熟練，就越清楚地知道：我們并不完全了解那些我們自認為了解的事物。這被稱為“達克效應”。（Dunning–Krugereffect）《巴黎評論》采訪詹姆斯·鮑德溫時，（JamesBaldwin：美國當代著名小說家、散文家、戲劇家和社會評論家）他的回應正是如此。他被問道：“您認為是什么隨著知識而增加？”他回答說：“你會知道你學到的太少了。”

Success motivates us, but a near win can propel us in an ongoing quest. One of the most vivid examples of this comes when we look at the difference between Olympic silver medalists and bronze medalists after a competition.?

成功激勵我們，然而“差一點兒成功”能推動我們不斷追尋。最生動的例子之一，就是當奧運比賽結束時，我們觀察銀牌獲得者和銅牌獲得者之間的差距。

Thomas Gilovich and his team from Cornell studied this difference and found that the frustration silver medalists feel compared to bronze, who are typically a bit more happy to have just not received fourth place and not medaled at all, gives silver medalists a focus on follow-up competition.?

托馬斯·季洛維奇和他在康奈爾大學的團隊研究了銀牌和銅牌獲得者的情緒差別。他們發(fā)現銀牌獲得者相對沮喪，而銅牌獲得者通常更開心一點，因為他們沒有拿到第四名，總比沒有獎牌的強。在后續(xù)的比賽中集中關注銀牌獲得者。

We see it even in the gambling industry that once picked up on this phenomenon of the near win and created these scratch-off tickets that had a higher than average rate of near wins and so compelled people to buy more tickets that they were called heart-stoppers, and were set on a gambling industry set of abuses in Britain in the 1970s.?

我們發(fā)現甚至在博彩界，那里從前就深諳“差點就成功”這一現象?！肮喂螛贰鳖愋偷牟势北粍?chuàng)造出來，這些彩票可能的中獎率超過平均數，這樣會促使人們去買更多的彩票，這些人被稱作"心臟驟停者",這些博彩界的濫用手法發(fā)生在1970年代的英國。

The reason the near win has a propulsion is because it changes our view of the landscape and puts our goals, which we tend to put at a distance, into more proximate vicinity to where we stand.

差一點的成功之所以有推動力，是因為它改變了我們觀察的角度，同時，把我們的目標從我們認為的那個距離拉近到我們所在的地方。

?If I ask you to envision what a great day looks like next week, you might describe it in more general terms. But if I ask you to describe a great day at TED tomorrow, you might describe it with granular, practical clarity. And this is what a near win does. It gets us to focus on what, right now, we plan to do to address that mountain in our sights.

如果我請你想象下周一個美好的日子，你可能會更籠統(tǒng)地描述。然而，如果我請你描述一下明天在TED，美好的一天是什么樣的，你也許會說得很清晰又真實。這就是“差一點的成功”做到的。它能讓我們集中注意力在當下的計劃，去處理我們目之所及的那座大山。

It's Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who in 1984 missed taking the gold in the heptathlon by one third of a second, and her husband predicted that would give her the tenacity she needed in follow-up competition. In 1988, she won the gold in the heptathlon and set a record of 7,291 points, a score that no athlete has come very close to since.

杰西·喬伊娜-柯西(Joyner-Kersee)在1984年以三分之一秒的差距和七項全能金牌失之交臂，她的丈夫預測說，這個經歷會帶給她在后續(xù)比賽中所需要的韌性。1988年，她獲得了七項全能金牌，并刷新了7291分的記錄，之前從未有運動員能接近這個分數。

We thrive not when we've done it all, but when we still have more to do. I stand here thinking and wondering about all the different ways that we might even manufacture a near win in this room, how your lives might play this out, because I think on some gut level we do know this.?

我們不是在一切完工之后再突破，而是當我們還有更多作為的時候。我站在這里思索和想象每一種方法，讓我們有可能在這個房間里完成哪怕一項差一點的成功。你的生命可能如何去實現這一切，因為我想，潛意識里我們確實知道。

We know that we thrive when we stay at our own leading edge, and it's why the deliberate incomplete is inbuilt into creation myths. In Navajo culture, some craftsmen and women would deliberately put an imperfection in textiles and ceramics. It's what's called a spirit line, a deliberate flaw in the pattern to give the weaver or maker a way out, but also a reason to continue making work. Masters are not experts because they take a subject to its conceptual end. They're masters because they realize that there isn't one.

我們知道當我們處于領先地位時，我們就能迅速成長，這就是為什么在創(chuàng)新的神話里蘊含了有意識的未完成。在納瓦霍文明中，一些男女工匠會故意在紡織品和陶瓷上留下一點缺陷。這被稱為“精神之線”，在花樣上有意留下缺陷，不去太苛求紡織工和制陶工人，同時也是為了讓制作過程得以繼續(xù)下去。大師之所以是專家，并不是因為他們完結了某個學科的概念。而是因為他們意識到終點并不存在。

Now it occurred to me, as I thought about this, why the archery coach told me at the end of that practice, out of earshot of his archers, that he and his colleagues never feel they can do enough for their team, never feel there are enough visualization techniques and posture drills to help them overcome those constant near wins.

如今當我想到這些，我明白了為什么在那場練習的最后，在隊員聽不見的地方，射箭隊教練告訴我，他和他的同事們總是覺得為隊伍做的還是不夠?？傆X得還有更多的視覺技巧、姿勢訓練可以幫助她們去克服那些連續(xù)的“差一點的成功”。

It didn't sound like a complaint, exactly, but just a way to let me know, a kind of tender admission, to remind me that he knew he was giving himself over to a voracious, unfinished path that always required more.

這聽上去真不像什么抱怨，而是為了讓我明白，一種軟性的承認，提示我，他知道自己全身心地投入了這條沒有止境的征程，這條路還在不停地延伸。

We build out of the unfinished idea, even if that idea is our former self. This is the dynamic of mastery. Coming close to what you thought you wanted can help you attain more than you ever dreamed you could. It's what I have to imagine Elizabeth Murray was thinking when I saw her smiling at those early paintings one day in the galleries. Even if we created utopias, I believe we would still have the incomplete. Completion is a goal, but we hope it is never the end.

我們挖掘未完成的想法，即使它們就是過去的自己。這就是卓越的動態(tài)優(yōu)化。不斷接近你心中想要的東西，可以幫助你獲得比你一度夢想的還要多的東西。當我看到有一天，伊麗莎白·默里對著畫廊里她的早期畫作微笑的時候，我想她一定也是這么想的。雖然我們創(chuàng)作出了烏托邦，我相信我仍舊有未完成的追求。完滿是一種目標，但我們希望它永無止境。