I recently had an interesting conversation with some colleagues. We were talking about a young researcher in our field who happens to be absurdly productive — typically publishing four or five important results each year. In other words, this is someone with a highly-developed impact instinct.
最近，我与我的同事们有一次有趣的谈话。讨论的是，我们中间一位年轻的学者效率出奇的高——通常每年能发表4到5篇重要的研究成果。换而言之，这位学者有着高度自我影响的本能。
As you might expect from a group of assistant professors, we were interested in figuring out his secret.
也许你也想从中学到些什么，我们对找出其中的奥秘很有兴趣。
The easy answer is that he’s simply better than most people at solving hard problems. Perhaps where you or I might get stuck, he, in a flash of Good Will Hunting-style brilliance, taps the chalkboard four times and the proof is solved.
简单来说，他只是可能比绝大多数解决复杂问题的人要做得好一些。在解决问题的过程中，也许我们都会在某处卡壳，但闪瞬间，“狩猎风格”的才能迸发，好像对着黑板敲那么四下，问题就解决了。
Some of my colleagues, however, have collaborated with this star researcher, and could therefore paint a more nuanced picture. He is quite talented, it turns out, but not at what you might expect…
然而我的那些同事们，在于这位明星学者的合作中，描述给我们一副更为微妙的场景，他的确非常有才华，但却不是你想象中的那样。
According to my colleagues, this star researcher tends to begin with techniques, notproblems. He first masters a technique that seems promising (and when I say “master, ” I mean it — he really goes deep in building his understanding). He then uses this new technique to seek out problems that were once hard but now yield easily. He’s restless in this quest, often mastering several new techniques each year.
据我的同事们所说，这位明星学者在开始时更关注掌握技能，而非问题。他先是掌握了那些可能是问题所在的技能（在次我用的“掌握”，的确表达了那个意思——他对这个情况真正建立了很深的理解）。然后，才使用这个新的技能来找出问题，那个曾经很难解决的问题。他一刻不停地探索，每年都能成功掌握一些新的技能。
This sounds like an obvious approach, but it’s not. Most researchers are slow to adopt new bodies of knowledge — mainly because it’s really hard to do.
这看起来是一个显而易见的方法，但事实却不是。大多数学者多接受新知很慢——这也的确很难。
This star researcher, by contrast, is much more nimble — jumping from technique to technique, finding improvements and making connections.
相反地，这位明星学者却更为敏捷——能够掌握一个又一个技能，找出改进方法并建立联系。
What’s amazing about him, therefore, is not his ability to solve problems, but his ability to master things that are damn hard, damn quick.
所以，他最让人惊讶的一点并不是解决问题的能力，而是快速掌握理解哪些超难的事情的能力。
The Ultra-Learning Hypothesis
终极快速学习法的假说
Here’s something I’ve noticed more and more recently: this ultra-learning strategy is common in people who do remarkable things.
最近我越来越发现：这个终极快速学习法的战略在那些杰出的人中很常见。
Richard Feynman, for example, used to brag about his ability to learn any topic in a short amount of time, a skill that led to one of modern science’s most breathtakingly diverse and important bodies of work.
举个例子，Richard Feynman，曾经自夸过自己拥有能在短时间内学会任何东西的能力，这个能力致使现代科学丰富多彩并显得相当重要。
Steve Jobs spent his career diving deep into topic after topic in his field — industrial design, operating systems, 3D graphics — so that he could see clearly what was possible.
Steve Jobs 在他的职业生涯中一次又一次地对各种问题深入研究——工业设计、操作系统、3D图像技术——所以他才能够看清什么是可行的。
And so on.
等等。
I hypothesize two things. First, ultra-learning is difficult but it can be cultivated. Second, it might be one of the most important skills for consistently generating impact. Those who are able and willing to continually master hard new knowledge and techniques are playing on a different field than those who are wary of anything that can’t be picked up from a blog post. (And yes, I recognize the irony of that statement.)
我假设两件事。首先，终极快速学习法很难掌握，但这是能培养的。第二，这也许是能持续产生影响力的重要技能之一。那些有能力并且想要持续掌握新的知识和技能的人正与对blog上写的任何事情保持警惕的人来说已经是不一样了。
Both of these hypotheses might prove false. But what’s true is that they’re both deserving of more exploration.
这两条假设也许会被证明是错误的，但至少来说，他们都是值得研究的命题。
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