试问谁不想成功呢?于是,此书似乎就成了通往成功之路的宝典。但细细品味,你会发现作者笔下的成功秘密更多的是我们早就熟悉的内容,比如说熟能生巧、比如说勇于付出。当然,观察入微的作者,也发现了一些前人不曾提到的细节,例如为什么比尔·盖茨和史蒂夫·乔布斯都出生在1955年?为什么英超球员大部分在9到11月出生?读完此书,你会得出一个结论,原来真的没有偶然的成功。
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Chapter 8 Rice Paddies and Math Tests (Excerpt)
第八章 稻田种植与数学考试 (节选)
Throughout history, not surprisingly, the people who grow rice have always worked harder than almost any other kind of farmer.
回溯一下历史,毫无疑问,耕种稻米的农民总是比耕种其他农作物的农民更辛苦。
That statement may seem a little odd because we have a sense that everyone in the pre-modern world worked really hard. But that simply isn’t true. All of us, for example, are 1)descended at some point from hunter-gatherers, and many hunter-gatherers, by all accounts, had a pretty leisurely life. The Kung bushmen of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, who are one of the last remaining practitioners of that way of life, 2)subsist in large part on the Mongongo nut, an incredibly plentiful and protein-rich source of food that lies thick on the ground. They don’t grow anything, and it’s growing things—preparing, planting, weeding, harvesting, storing—that takes time. Nor do they raise any animals. Occasionally the male Kung hunt, but chiefly for sport. All told, Kung men and women work no more than 12 to 19 hours a week with the balance of the time spent dancing, entertaining and visiting family and friends. That’s, at most, a thousand hours a year of work.
或许这个结论看起来有点奇怪,因为我们都会觉得所有生活在非现代化社会的人工作都十分辛苦。这实际上是个误解。举个例子,从不同的历史阶段看,我们所有人都是捕猎者和采集者的后代。通常很多捕猎者和采集者都过着十分悠闲的生活。在博茨瓦纳喀拉哈里沙漠中生活着昆族布须曼人,他们是至今还保持着这种生活方式的人群之一。他们赖以生存的是一种大量散落在地上、富含蛋白质的坚果。他们从不耕种——耕种需要花费很多时间去准备、播种、除草、收获、储藏。他们也不圈养家畜。他们中的男性偶尔打打猎,但也只是为了娱乐。总的来说,他们一个星期的工作量不会超过12到19个小时,其他的时间都用在跳舞、消遣及走亲访友上。那么他们每年花在劳作上的时间最多也就一千个小时。
Or consider the life of a peasant in 18th century Europe. Men and women in those days probably worked from dawn to noon 200 days a year, which works out to about 1,200 hours of work annually. Working in a rice field is 10 to 20 times more labor intensive than working on an equivalently-sized corn or wheat field. Some estimates put the annual workload of a wet rice farmer in Asia at 3,000 hours a year.
或者想想生活在18世纪的欧洲农民。当时的农夫和农妇们每年大概有两百天在田里从日出干到中午。这样算下来,每年的劳作时间大约是一千两百多个小时。相对于那些在相同面积的玉米地或麦田里耕种的农民而言,稻农的劳动强度是前者的十倍到二十倍。一些统计表明,在亚洲,一名种植水稻的农民每年的工作量达三千个小时。
Think for a moment about what the life of a rice farmer must have been like. Three thousand hours a year is a staggering amount of time to spend working.
想象一下,一名稻农的生活会是什么样子的。每年花费在劳作上的时间居然有三千个小时,这的确让人感到不可思议。
What redeemed the life of a rice farmer, however, was the nature of that work. It was meaningful. First of all there was a clear relationship in rice farming between effort and reward. The harder you work a rice field, the more it yields. Second, it’s complex. The rice farmer isn’t simply planting in the Spring and harvesting in the Fall. He or she is effectively a small businessman, 3)juggling a family workforce, 4)hedging uncertainty through seed selection, building and managing a sophisticated irrigation system, coordinating the complex process of harvesting the first crop while simultaneously preparing the second crop.
而能够让稻农觉得这种生活有回报的是这种劳作的本身,它是很有目的性的。首先,对于种植水稻的农民来说,付出与回报之间的关系是显而易见的。你在稻田里付出的越多,收成也就越多。第二,水稻种植是一件很复杂的工作。种稻不只是简单地在春季播种,然后就可以在秋季里收获。他们实际上是小生意人,比如说需要整合家中的劳力,选择不同的稻种来以保证一年的收成;修建并管理复杂的灌溉系统,还要做好协调,在进行第一造收割的同时,准备好下一造的播种。
And, most of all, it’s autonomous. The thing about wet rice farming is not only that you need phenomenal amounts of labor, but it’s very exacting. You have to care. It really matters the field is perfectly leveled before you flood it. It really matters the water is in the field for just the right amount of time. There’s a big difference between lining up the seedlings at exactly the right distance and doing it sloppily. You’re controlling all the inputs in a very direct way.
最重要的是,大多数的农民是有自主权的。种植水稻不仅仅是需要付出大量的劳动,而且还是件精确度很高的工作,你得用心去做。在灌溉前,田地平整与否很重要,浇水的时间也非常关键。插秧时,秧苗之间的距离恰到好处还是马虎了事,对产量也会产生很大的影响。稻农对各种投入有着直接的控制权。
Chinese proverbs are striking in their belief that hard work, 5)shrewd planning and self-reliance or cooperation with a small group will, in time, bring 6)recompense. Most telling of all; “No one, who can rise before dawn 360 days, fails to make his family rich.”
中国的谚语明显地反映出他们的心声,这就是努力工作,周密计划,依靠自己,或者与小集体通力合作,总会获得回报。而最有力的莫过于这句话:一年到头都在天还没亮的时候起床的人肯定能让家人过上好日子。
Rise before dawn? Three hundred and sixty days a year? This is not, of course, an unfamiliar observation about Asian culture. Go to a college campus and students will say that the Asian students are overwhelmingly the ones studying at the library long after everyone else has left.
天还没亮就起床?每天都这样?当然,这种亚洲文化处处有迹可寻。去大学的校园打听一下,学生们会告诉你,在其他学生离开后依然会在图书馆学习很长时间的大多数是亚洲学生。
But a belief in work is, in fact, a thing of beauty. Virtually every success story we’ve seen in this book so far involves someone or some group working harder than their peers. Working really hard is what successful people do, and the genius of the culture formed in the rice paddies is that hard work gave those in the fields a way to find meaning in the midst of great hardship and poverty. That lesson has served Asians well in many endeavors.
但相信自己的努力是一种美德。这本书中提到的几乎每一个成功人士或集体都付出了比普通人更多的努力。每一位成功的人士都付出了辛勤的汗水。而在水稻田里形成的文化精神则是在田里辛苦劳作让人在艰辛和贫穷的生活中看到希望。这种精神已经使亚洲人获益良多。 翻译:旭文
作者简介 
马尔科姆·格拉德威尔(Malcolm Gladwell)曾是《华盛顿邮报》专栏作家,目前是《纽约客》杂志专职作家。他在2005年被《时代》周刊评为全球最有影响力的100位人物之一。2005年,他更是创造书市神话,两部作品《引爆点》(Tipping Point)和《瞬间》(Blink)同时位居《纽约时报》畅销书排行榜精装本和平装本第一名。马尔科姆曾经做过卫生政策和科学新闻方面的记者,其文章喜欢以小见大。他是一个非常有创意的作家,他认为自己的文风属于一种adventure of ideas的风格,虽然大部分作品都不属于虚构,又不是围绕一个人物或者一个故事展开,但其中的故事情节却一般比较曲折,看他的文章很有adventure波澜起伏的韵味。