读 Derek Sivers: Anything You Want

初稿：2020年07月19日

现在时间是2020-07-19 15:29:57，周日的下午，在一个书店。

这本书是 Derek Sivers，就放在他的博客上，可以免费来读，当然我也下载了电子版，他说只需要1个小时就能读完，我试试，不在电子书上记录笔记，我就把这一些都记录在这里。作为一种新的尝试。

书的地址：https://sivers.org/a

补：2020年08月01日18:50:34，我发现使用这种方式来阅读，是一种非常棒的享受，慢慢读，大量的时间都花在了自己去想东西上了，读书实际上花的时间并不多。

最近在学习翻译，并翻译一些文章来试验，给了我一些新的启发。翻译是为了把英语翻译成中文，便于理解。那么我实际上可以使用同样的概念，将中文的意思翻译给自己。很多中文的字面意思，只是识字而已，并没有深究自己对这句话意思，哪些概念一知半解。

对一些好书，实际上是可以这样来读的。逐句逐段的来读。很多中文的句子实际上也需要自己翻译给自己，翻译到自己心里。

我在将这种方法应用到我当下的阅读学习中。不追求快，追求理解。

补：2020年08月10日21:17:57，从上周五晚上，一直到今晚，我把 Derek 刚发的两本书听完了，每本都听了有2个半小时。

这是我第一次买电子版的书，本来只买了一本的，后来 Derek 网站的发货系统出了点问题，就把两本书都发过来了。有文字版和他本人的录音版。

我一边听一边看，用听的速度来强迫自己不听下来，是很好的一种体验。非常好的两本书。过段时间，我会逐章读完，然后做一些自己的笔记。

Derek 新书的地址见，https://sive.rs/。我把他的 Anything You Want，Your Music and People，Hell Yeah or No，这三本读完了。今年他应该还能完成一本书，即How to Live，希望今年能读到。

1

I’m pretty unusual, so what works for me might not work for others.

guru 导师

2

compass 指南针

Most people don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing.

Don’t be on your deathbed someday, having squandered your one chance at life, full of regret because you pursued little distractions instead of big dreams.

utopia 乌托邦

moot 没多少意义

The real point of doing anything is to be happy, so do only what makes you happy.

3

play a gig 现场演奏

produce records 制作唱片

circus 马戏团

record label 唱片公司

with deep pockets

It’s not that distributors were evil. It was just an awful system, and I wanted nothing to do with it.

I didn’t know any programming, but I copied some examples from a programming book, with lots of trial and error.

我：他从不会编程，但是认为原有的唱片分发系统不好，所以想要自己弄一个。

4

distributor 分销商，批发公司

That’s it! That was my mission. I liked it. It was a worthy hobby. I named it CD Baby, and put my friends’ CDs there.

When you make a business, you get to make a little universe where you control all the laws. This is your utopia.

5

You set the selling price at whatever you want. We keep a flat $4 cut. And we pay you every week.

album 唱片

those same two numbers were the sole source of income for the company: a $35 setup fee per album and a $4 cut per CD sold.

A business plan should never take more than a few hours of work. Hopefully no more than a few minutes. The best plans start simple. A quick glance and common sense should tell you if the numbers will work. The rest are details.

6

a quirky person 奇怪的人

true love

But if you think true love looks like Romeo and Juliet, you’ll overlook a great relationship that grows slowly.

If you think your life’s purpose needs to hit you like a lightning bolt, you’ll overlook the little day-to-day things that fascinate you.

If you think revolution needs to feel like war, you’ll overlook the importance of simply serving people better.

我：人很容易将商业比作革命，但是忽视了小小的，不断的发展。

7

For the first time in my life, I had made something that people really wanted.

It always felt like an uphill battle, trying to open locked or slamming doors.

resonates with people 和人们共鸣

Present each new idea or improvement to the world.

Don’t waste years fighting uphill battles against locked doors. Improve or invent until you get that huge response.

我：将自己做的东西推向世界，然后让人们来评判，如果反响不大，就不要太投入。再找其他的想法，推行，改进。

8

If you’re not saying “HELL YEAH!” about something, say “no”.

When deciding whether to do something, if you feel anything less than “Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!” — then say “no.”

Every event you get invited to. Every request to start a new project. If you’re not saying “HELL YEAH!” about it, say “no.”

我：这个准则不止可以用于别人的邀请，也可以用于自己为自己选择的事，选择哪些最喜欢的事情来做。

We’re all busy. We’ve all taken on too much. Saying yes to less is the way out.

9

When I first started CD Baby, I thought it was just a credit card processing service.

我：就是一个从信用卡扣钱的服务。

credit card 信用卡

I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe if I set it up like a store, I’d actually be doing my friends a bigger favor, by getting total strangers to buy their music, too.

Five years later, when the iTunes Music Store launched, Apple asked us to be a digital distributor. I hadn’t thought of that. But I said OK.

No business plan survives first contact with the customer.

我：没有一份商业商业计划书能在和客户的第一次接触中存活下来。

10

我：现在2020-07-19 16:39:35，看来我1个小时，看了不到10篇，整体看完得4个小时。

I’m so glad I didn’t have investors. I didn’t have to please anybody but my customers and myself. No effort spent on anything but my customers.

Since I couldn’t afford a programmer, I went to the bookstore and got a $25 book on PHP and MySQL programming. Then I sat down and learned it, with no programming experience. Necessity is a great teacher.

我：一个一直做音乐的人，学习编程，然后还能学会，然后还做了个网站卖CD，然后还能赚钱，然后还能保证用户扩大时的要求。简直了！

Never forget that absolutely everything you do is for your customers. Make every decision
— even decisions about whether to expand the business, raise money, or promote someone
— according to what’s best for your customers.

我：这个方法可以用于所有的行为。你的所作所为是否是全部为了客户。好吧，那么我的所作所为是否都是为了我的目标服务？比如各种各样的目标。

the open-ended question 开发性问题

If you’re ever unsure what to prioritize, just ask your customers the open-ended question, “How can I best help you now?” Then focus on satisfying those requests.

It’s counterintuitive, but the way to grow your business is to focus entirely on your existing customers. Just thrill them, and they’ll tell everyone.

我：很反直觉，培育自己的商业模式的方法是，关注与自己现有的客户，然后直接问客户需求，他们会给你答案的。

11

For an idea to get big big big, it has to be useful. And being useful doesn’t need funding.

If you want to be useful, you can always start now, with only 1% of what you have in your grand vision. It’ll be a humble prototype version of your grand vision, but you’ll be in the game.

我：使用你仅有的资源来做时，就像一个庞大系统的预演。
实际上这个思路同样应用于所有。把周末的2天，当做自己将来自己可以自由支配时间时候的一个预演，用来按照自己的意愿来安排生活，就像在面对自己几年以后财务自由以后的生活。
同样可以将一天的时间当做自己一生的预演，用对待一生的态度来对待一天。是一种完全有趣的尝试。

For example, let’s say you have a vision of making an international chain of enlightened modern schools. You picture it as a huge, world-changing organization, with hundreds of employees, dozens of offices, and expensive technology. But instead of waiting for that, you start by teaching somebody something this week. Find someone who will pay to learn something, meet him anywhere, and begin. It will be nothing but you, a student, and a notebook, but you’ll be in business, and you can grow it from there.

我：一个不太标准的翻译，是一个非常好的案例。书中还有被的案例。
译：比如，你有这样一个目标，想要建立国际间令人启发的现代化学校。你规划了一个庞大的，要改变世界的组织，有数百个职员，一群管理者，非常昂贵的技术。但是比坐着等，你可已选择这周就开始教别人一些东西。找一些愿意付费学习的人，见他，然后开始。不需要别的，只需要你，一个学生，一个笔记本就可以了，但是你已经在构建你的的生意了，并且你可以以此起步然后成长。

Starting small puts 100% of your energy on actually solving real problems for real people.

So no, your idea doesn’t need funding to start. You also don’t need an MBA, a particular big client, a certain person’s endorsement, a lucky break, or any other common excuse not to start.

我：所以不需要等别人来投资一个想法。如果想法很好，就现在就做起来，不要等。因为只是小而已，小能长大。而等着，就不是小不小的问题了，而是有没有的问题。

12

To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

我：想法不值钱，只有执行了的想法才值钱。

That’s why I don’t want to hear people’s ideas.

I’m not interested until I see their execution.

我：价值 = 想法 * 执行

我：价值 = 好想法（10）*好的执行（100,1000），所以一切都价值都来源于执行。将想法付诸行动，才是一切的开始。

13

I got such joy out of saying no to all of it.

They’ll play on your fears, saying that you need this stuff to protect yourself against lawsuits. They’ll scare you with horrible worst-case scenarios. But those are just sales tactics. You don’t need any of it.

我：当业务还小时，根本不需要律师，也不需要哪些隐私申明，一个经理。根本不需要，直接开始的拒绝。

14

When you build your business on serving thousands of customers, not dozens, you don’t have to worry about any one customer leaving or making special demands. If most of your customers love what you do, but one doesn’t, you can just say goodbye and wish him the best, with no hard feelings.

我：不要以为上了大的平台就好了，它有弊端，这样你得兼顾某些特定的客户；这些大平台会会成为你的老板让你，让你失去自由；你会失去和客户的直接接触，而需求来自于你的平台，你的市场敏感性一定乎下降。

我：如果选择服务小的多个群体，可以不取悦一些客户，只要绝大部分满意就可以。这些客户想走就让他们走，祝他们好运即可；你可以直接倾听所有人的意见，然后回应直接的需求，而不是经过过滤的需求。

15

You know you can’t please everyone, right?

You need to confidently exclude people, and proudly say what you’re not. By doing so, you will win the hearts of the people you want.

Hotel Café, a folk- and rock-music venue in Los Angeles, is a no-talking club. Big signs say, “No talking during performances!”

我：别在这个俱乐部说话，只听歌。遵守的人留下，然后这个俱乐部非常火爆。

I’d say, “Nope. They’re not allowed here.”

It’s a big world. You can loudly leave out 99 percent of it.

我：这个世界很大。你就算大声的拒绝了99%的人，剩下1%的人已经足够来维持自己的小店。
我：想这个书店，只服务了这个小区的几十个人，如果模式符合，只有喜欢的人来，足以维持小店的运转。
我：是否选择说不，拒绝不喜欢你的东西。

Have the confidence to know that when your target 1 percent hears you excluding the other 99 percent, the people in that 1 percent will come to you because you’ve shown how much you value them.

16

In a perfect world, would your website be covered with advertising?

When you ask your customers what would improve your service, has anyone said, “Please fill your website with more advertising”?

我：不在自己的网站上做广告。是需要赚钱，但是钱只能来自于卖唱片的收入。做广告了赚钱，违背了最初的想法，做一个服务于独立音乐制作人的网站。谁会喜欢在自己的网站上搞个讨厌的广告呢！

17

This is just one of many options

我：I like this. 我要把这一篇翻译出来。

你的选择只是众多选择中的一个。

You can’t pretend there’s only one way to do it. Your first idea is just one of many options. No business goes as planned, so make ten radically different plans.

Realizing the initial choice you made was just one of many brings all kinds of weathered wisdom and insight into your business.

Same thing with your current path in life:
Now you’re living in New York City, obsessed with success. Go!
Now you’re a free spirit, backpacking around Thailand. Go!
Now you’re a confident extrovert and everyone loves you. Go!
Now you’re married and your kids are your life. Go!
Now you spend a few years in relative seclusion, reading and walking. Go!

我：生活就是这样伟大的冒险，去假设一场不同的人生。

我：2020-07-19 18:12:32，我准备离场了，真是一场难得的体验。今天尽然能看到这样一篇文章，惊呆了。看这篇文章，都能看到写作时候的情况。

18

我：2020-07-21 19:35:09，我在创客广场，准备看两章。

I’d say, “I don’t have one. I surpassed my goals long ago. I’m just trying to help musicians with whatever they need today.”

So please don’t think you need a huge vision. Just stay focused on helping people today.

我：定一个革命性的目标，需要吗？可能并不需要。没有，就将当下的做到最好，是在帮助人，是在自己最有益，那就好好的做。

19

我：2020-07-21 21:10:03

There were only two numbers that mattered: how much is coming in, and how much is going out. As long as more in than out, everyone’s happy.

Never forget why you’re really doing what you’re doing.

20

We all grade ourselves by different measures

我：我们都按照不同的考虑来给自己打分。

For me, it’s how many useful things I create, whether songs, companies, articles, websites, or anything else.

But I’m also not interested in doing something useful unless it needs my creative input.

How do you grade yourself?

It’s important to know in advance, to make sure you’re staying focused on what’s honestly important to you, instead of doing what others think you should.

我：你是怎么评判自己的？
我：现在时间2020-07-21 21:26:59，看了一半了，以后再来看。

21

“Banks love to lend money to those who don’t need it.”

“When someone’s doing something for love, being generous instead of stingy, trusting instead of fearful, it triggers this law: We want to give to those who give.

It’s another Tao of business: Set up your business like you don’t need the money, and it’ll likely come your way.”

我：别仅仅为了钱来做生意，当你给予时，别人也会付钱给你。

22

“You can’t prevent bad things from happening. Learn to shrug.

Resist the urge to punish everyone for one person’s mistake.”

我：别为了一个人的错，而惩罚所有的客户。有时候，只是那个人错了，不需要过度反应。

23

我：每一个我发给别人的句子，我的邮件，读到它的人，都是一个真实的人，像我一样，一样容易受伤，当别人说他时会感到心碎。

“So when we yell at a website or a company, using our computer or our phone, we forget that it’s not an appliance but a person that’s affected.”

“we do things we’d never do if those people were sitting next to us.”

25 You should feel pain when unclear

“Writing that email to customers—carefully eliminating every unnecessary word, and reshaping every sentence to make sure it could not be misunderstood—would take me all day.”

我：写给客户的邮件，任何含糊之处，都会受到上千封邮件，不仅浪费尽力，并且让自己心情低落。
我：所以将邮件中无用的，不清晰的词都删掉，并将自己将要公布的文章都这么来。

我：其实不止写邮件，日常生活中，不明确导致的猜测，猜疑，同样害处很大。make it clear。这样只会带来好处。

26

“Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Friday, June 6th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as “Customer of the Year.”We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!”

“But please know that it’s often the tiny details that really thrill people enough to make them tell all their friends about you.”

我：真正打动人心的细节，让人为之一笑的细节，会使人激动和兴奋细节，能真正吸引人。
我：我能够创造这样的细节吗？
我：这篇文章，可以选择翻译出来。

27 Little things make all the difference

“Because we shipped FedEx at 5 p.m. each day, customers would often call and ask, “What time is it there? Do I still have time to get it sent today?” So I added two little lines of programming code that counted how many hours and minutes remained until 5 p.m. and then showed the result by the shipping options. “You have 5 hours, 18 minutes until our next FedEx shipment.” Customers LOVED this!”

我：Love this. 我可以写一个微信小程序，用来记录我是第几次到访我的公众号。

28 It’s OK to be casual

2020年07月30日20:38:02
我：漫不经心也挺好。

Because I was too busy to bother, I’d just ask my current employees if they had any friends who needed work.

The thought was that it’s almost impossible to tell what someone’s going to be like on the job until he’s actually on the job for a few weeks.

“Anyone have a friend who’s good with Linux? Yeah? Is he cool? OK, tell him to start tomorrow.”

我：通过当前员工的朋友来招新。一个人合不合适，只要让他来干上一两周即可，所以随意些也什么。

29 Naïve Quitting

我：他在20岁时，做了2年半唱片管理的工作，很喜欢。他想离职的时候，找了一个朋友来接替他，指导他朋友指导掌握，然后才和主管去说。
我：找自己的接替者。

After 2½ years, though, I decided to quit to be a full-time musician. (Partially because I was too happy there! I was scared that if I didn’t force myself to quit, I’d never leave. Too comfortable.)

Since I had never quit a job before, and didn’t know how, I did what seemed to be the respectful and considerate thing to do: I found and trained my replacement.

(It wasn’t my boss’s fault I wanted to quit, so why should I make it his problem? If I want to quit, it’s my problem.)

There’s a benefit to being naïve to the norms of the world — deciding from scratch what seems like the right thing to do, instead of just doing what others do.

from scratch，从头开始，从零开始。

30 Prepare to double

But no matter what business you’re in, it’s good to prepare for what would happen if business doubled.

Notice that “more of the same” is never the answer. You’d have to do things in a new way to handle twice as much business. Processes would have to be streamlined.

Instead, if your internal processes are always designed to handle twice your existing load, it sends an attractive “come on in, we’ve got plenty of room” message to everyone.

我：今日份的阅读读完了，2020年07月30日21:08:12。

31 It’s about being, not having

2020年07月31日23:07:07，继续。

我：用15年的时间学习唱歌。学习制作唱片。自己写代码。做它，而不是拥有它。
我：可以翻译。

32 The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote

I had promised something that was out of my control.

But I never again promised a customer that I could do something beyond my full control.

33 My $3.3M mistake

Instead of lending you money, start a corporation. Then the family business can buy shares in your corporation.

Yes, it turns out that one of those pieces of paper I signed without question had sold 90% of the shares of Hit Media Inc to his company.

Then because the bank teller advised me to make CD Baby an alias of Hit Media, that meant my dad’s company owned 90% of CD Baby as well.

34 Delegate or die: the self-employed trap.

After a long night of thinking and writing, I got myself into the delegation mindset.

I had to make myself unnecessary to the running of my company.

I repeated the situation and the question for everyone.

I answered the question, but more importantly, I explained the thought process and philosophy behind my answer.

To be a true business owner, make sure you could leave for a year, and when you came back, your business would be doing better than when you left.

35

OK，按时到此。2020年08月01日00:15:58。

36

Trust, but verify.

Remember it when delegating. You have to do both.

我：但委托一件事给别人做的时候，信任他，但是也要时常去核查。这不是不信任。

37

我：将自身权利过渡的让给他人，他人会对你不满。

Then I realized that there’s such a thing as over-delegation. I had empowered my employees so much that I gave them all the power.

But if you’ve ever had a romance break up, you know that sometimes it’s beyond repair.

Lesson learned too late: Delegate, but don’t abdicate.
我：委托，但别放弃权利。

38 How I knew I was done with my company

In 2007 I did a ground-up rewrite of the website from scratch. And man, it was beautiful code. The proudest achievement of my life so far is that rewritten software. Wonderfully organized, extensible, and efficient: the culmination of everything I’d learned about programming in ten years.

But just to be open-minded, that weekend I opened my diary and started answering the question, “What if I sold?”

I think his point was that my lack of enthusiastic vision was doing a disservice to my clients. It’d be better for everyone if I put the company in more motivated hands that could help them all grow.

39 Why I gave my company to charity

https://sivers.org/kimo

It’s not that I’m altruistic. I’m sacrificing nothing. I’ve just learned what makes me happy. And doing it this way made me the happiest.

I get the deeper happiness of knowing the lucky streak I’ve had in my life will benefit tons of people — not just me.

I get the pride of knowing I did something irreversibly smart before I could change my mind.

I get the safety of knowing I won’t be the target of a frivolous lawsuit, since I have very little net worth.

I get the unburdened freedom of having it out of my hands so I can’t do something stupid.

But most of all, I get the constant priceless reminder that I have enough.

40 You make your perfect world

Business is as creative as the fine arts. You can be as unconventional, unique, and quirky as you want. A business is a reflection of the creator.

No matter which goal you choose, there will be lots of people telling you you’re wrong.

Just pay close attention to what excites you and what drains you. Pay close attention to when you’re being the real you and when you’re trying to impress an invisible jury.

我：好的，看完了。最后看的有些快。2020年08月01日01:08:55。