从读创业指南想到的是
之前写过的一篇文章，多是我的碎碎念叨，今天又翻到分享给你。
今天和你分享的是读书笔记，来自Peter Thiel和Blake Masters写的Zero to One. 这本书自面世以来一直都是”爆款“，虽然是写给Start-ups的，我们这些门外汉读起来却也有另一番收获。这篇文章夹杂了一些私货，有鸡汤有吐槽，请慎重。
Peter Thiel是个太聪明的人, 字里行间里体现了他独特的洞察力, 例如他在定义indefinite的时候以美国的教育为例:
Indefinite attitudes to the future explain what’s most dysfunctional in our world today. Process trumps substance: when people lack concrete plans to carry out, they use formal rules to assemble a portfolio of various options. This describes Americans today. In middle school, we’re encouraged to start hoarding “extracurricular activities.” In high school, ambitious students compete even harder to appear omnicompetent. By the time a student gets to college, he’s spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse résumé to prepare for a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he’s ready — for nothing in particular.
“Process trumps substance” 这句话也是对我们的英文学习的一个写照。大家不知道怎么学也不知道自己为什么要学，就开始随波逐流的去报培训班去口语角去研究各种背单词的方法。你会经常听到这样的讨论或者广告“我要考雅思，去哪个培训班比较好？” -- 好像参加培训班成了天经地义缺一不可的一个环节。当然，我不是说“培训班、口语角、研究背单词”不好，而是不要忘记我们学英文的目的是什么，不要忘记我们参加这些活动、培训班的目的是什么。
抱着“听了XX的课，考试就怎么怎么样”的幻想去学习，和“一个女演员不好好苦练基本功整天想着要炒作借人上位”有什么区别？
一句老话: 师傅领进门，修行在个人。
我们一边吵着要“批判性思维”，要“独立辩证的思考”，另一边我们急功近利耐不住等待，心里想的是“我不听，我不听！告诉我那个答案是什么就好了！” “标准答案是什么?!” 导致的一个结果是我们的「教育」越来越差，有的只是越来越多的「培训」。
我们一边喝着各式鸡汤各种八卦广告,对他人的失败嘲笑对成功不屑，一边相信转发着毫无逻辑反智的言论 — doublethink
Peter Thiel又说一个创业者必须做到的事情是:
“Question received ideas and rethink business from scratch.”
“ The first step to thinking clearly is to question what we think we know about the past.”
这和我们的英文学习一样，多想一想为什么 －－是否我们一直认为是对的东西实际上只是我们的观点而不是事实？是否我们埋头听VOA,BBC对我们学习英文的目的是建设性的行动？英文思维到底是什么个东西? 解决问题的第一步是认识到这个问题是什么，还没确诊就开始寻找灵丹妙药，到头来疲惫不堪多是无用功。
太多时候是我们高估了自己的中文水平 — 如果我们没有辩证的思考和基本的逻辑，神一样的写作技巧也救不了我们的作文; 或者是我们高估了自己的用功程度 — 看起来很努力，实际上每天学习的时间都不超过一小时；或许这一小时内也只是机械抄笔记。踏实和诚实(自知之明)是学习任何技能的重要品质。
有的人说羡慕大神，羡慕那些人生赢家 — 羡慕有什么用! 我们要能够把所有的羡慕，或者更多的是嫉妒，化作自己努力的动力 — 别人能做到我们至少也要拼一拼试一试。别还没有开始付诸行动就说“这个我一定做不好”；别刚有了一点挫折就说“这个不适合我”; 别看别人比你优秀就说“反正我再努力也比上TA”. 拜托，我们的人生不是用来饱尝失败滋味的。
或许是我们天赋不如他人，运气也一直很差，家里也没什么条件，不过又能怎么样！如果说我们来人间一遭不是为了改变时间，那至少是做一个更优秀的自己。也许这辈子我们都只是一个loser, 那也要做一个有自信有骨气的一个。
Sometimes you do have to fight. Where that’s true, you should fight and win. There is no middle ground: either don’t throw any punches, or strike hard and end it quickly.
最后分享这本书的105-106页，What to Do with Secrets.
If you find a secret, you face a choice: Do you tell any one? Or do you keep it to yourself?
It depends on the secret: some are more dangerous than others. As Faust tell Wagner:
The few who knew what might be learned,
foolish enough to put their whole heart on show,
And reveal their feelings to the crowd below,
Mankind has always crucified and burned.
Unless you have perfectly conventional beliefs, it’s rarely a good idea to tell everybody everything that you know.
So who do you tell? Whoever you need to, and no more. In practice, there’s always a golden mean between telling nobody and telling everybody — and that’s a company. The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside. A great company is a conspiracy to change the world; when you share your secret, the recipient becomes a fellow conspirator.
As Tolkien wrote in The Lord of the Rings:
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Life is a long journey; the road marked out by the steps of previous travelers has no end in sight. But later on in the tale, another verse appears:
Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate,
And though we pass them by today,
Tomorrow we may come this way
And take the hidden paths that run
Towards the Moon or to the Sun.
The road doesn’t have to be infinite after all. Take the hidden paths.
多一点勇气和踏实，始于足下，独自等待。