It doesn’t matter what position you find yourself in right now. What matters is whether you improve your position today.
你现在处境并不重要。重要的是你今天是否改善了处境。
清晰思维的敌人
Never forget that your unconscious is smarter than you, faster than you, and more powerful than you. It may even control you. You will never know all of its secrets.
永远不要忘记，你的潜意识比你更聪明，比你更快，比你更强大。它甚至可能控制你。你永远不会知道它的所有秘密。
Criticizing others is easier than coming to know yourself.
批评别人比了解自己更容易。
I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything unless I know the other side’s argument better than they do.
发言者在表达自己的观点之前，会确保自己充分理解并掌握了与自己相对立的观点，甚至比持有这些观点的人更深入地了解。这种态度表明了对全面思考和公正性的高度重视，只有在全面掌握双方论据后，才会形成并表达自己的看法。
Life gets easier when you don’t blame other people and focus on what you can control.
当你不责怪别人并专注于你能控制的事情时，生活会变得更容易
决策：行动中的清晰思路
定义问题
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
如果你选择不做决定，你仍然做出了选择。
Defining the problem starts with identifying two things: (1) what you want to achieve, and (2) what obstacles stand in the way of getting it.
定义问题首先要确定两件事：
- 你想要实现什么
- 哪些障碍阻碍了实现它。
THE DEFINITION PRINCIPLE: Take responsibility for defining the problem. Don’t let someone define it for you. Do the work to understand it. Don’t use jargon to describe or explain it.
定义原则：负责定义问题。不要让别人为你定义它。做工作来理解它。不要使用行话来描述或解释它。
THE ROOT CAUSE PRINCIPLE: Identify the root cause of the problem. Don’t be content with simply treating its symptoms.
根本原因原则：确定问题的根本原因。不要满足于简单地治疗其症状。
探索可能的解决方案
Once you’re clear on the problem, it’s time to think of possible solutions—ways of overcoming the obstacles to get what you want. The way to come up with possible solutions is by imagining different possible futures—different ways the world could turn out.
一旦你弄清楚了问题，就该考虑可能的解决方案了——克服障碍以获得你想要的东西的方法。想出可能的解决方案的方法是想象不同的可能未来——世界可能变成不同的方式。
One of the most common errors at this stage of the decision-making process is avoiding the brutal realities.
在决策过程的这个阶段，最常见的错误之一是避免残酷的现实。
THE OPPORTUNITY-COST PRINCIPLE: Consider what opportunities you’re forgoing when you choose one option over another.
机会成本原则：考虑当您选择一个选项而不是另一个选项时，您会放弃哪些机会。The second principle is closely related:
第二个原则密切相关：
THE 3-LENS PRINCIPLE: View opportunity costs through these three lenses:
- (1) Compared with what?
- (2) And then what?
- (3) At the expense of what?[*]
三视角原则：通过这三个视角看待机会成本：- (1）与什么相比？
- (2）然后呢？
- (3）以牺牲什么为代价？[*]
Do it
You’ve considered the options. You’ve evaluated them. You’ve found the best. It’s time to act!
您已经考虑过这些选项。你已经评估了它们。你已经找到了最好的。是时候采取行动了！
There is no purpose to knowing what you should do and not doing it. If you want results, you need action.
知道你应该做什么和不做什么是没有目的的。如果你想要结果，你需要行动。
Consequential decisions affect the things that matter most: whom you marry, where you live, which business you launch. The more a decision affects what matters to you—either in the short term or the long term—the more consequential it is.
重大决策会影响最重要的事情：你嫁给谁，你住在哪里，你开展哪项业务。一个决定对你的影响越大——无论是短期还是长期——它就越重要。
行动的三项原则
THE ASAP PRINCIPLE: If the cost to undo the decision is low, make it as soon as possible.
尽快原则：如果撤销决定的成本很低，请尽快做出。
THE ALAP PRINCIPLE: If the cost to undo a decision is high, make it as late as possible.
阿拉普原则：如果撤销决策的成本很高，请尽可能晚。
When the stakes are high, and there are no take-backs, you want to decide at the last moment possible, and keep as many options on the table as you can while continuing to gather information.
当赌注很高，而且没有收回时，你要在最后一刻做出决定，并在继续收集信息的同时尽可能多地保留选择。
“THE STOP, FLOP, KNOW” 原则
用来帮助人们确定何时停止收集信息并作出决策。这个原则的核心思想是避免陷入过度分析，及时采取行动。它由三个部分组成：
STOP：当你不再能收集到有用的信息时，应该停止信息收集并做出决策。即如果继续收集不会对决策带来实质性帮助，那么就是停止的时刻。
FLOP（First Lose an OPportunity）：如果你已经错失了一个重要机会，那么意味着你等得太久，可能是时候做出决定了。这个点提醒你不要因为犹豫或过多分析而错失时机。
KNOW：当你获得了一条关键信息，足以让你清楚应该选择哪个选项时，就应该立刻做出决定。这意味着如果某条信息已经让你的选择显而易见了，那就不要再拖延。
安全边际
A margin of safety is like having insurance. If you know in advance you won’t need to make a claim this year, it’s a waste of money to buy insurance. The problem is that you don’t know in what year you’ll need to make a claim, so you buy it every year. It might seem like a waste of money in years when nothing happens, but it shows its real value in years when something does.
安全边际就像有保险一样。如果您提前知道今年不需要提出索赔，那么购买保险就是浪费钱。问题是你不知道在哪一年需要提出索赔，所以你每年都会购买。在什么都没发生的时候，这似乎是在浪费钱，但在发生事情的年份里，它显示了它的真正价值。
TIP: The margin of safety is often sufficient when it can absorb double the worst-case scenario. So the baseline for a margin of safety is one that could withstand twice the amount of problems that would cause a crisis, or maintain twice the amount of resources needed to rebuild after a crisis.
提示：当安全边际可以吸收两倍的最坏情况时，安全边际通常就足够了。因此，安全边际的基线是能够承受两倍于导致危机的问题，或者保持两倍于危机后重建所需资源的数量。
Yet even established patterns aren’t foolproof. As Nassim Taleb writes in The Black Swan, “Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird’s belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race ‘looking out for its best interests,’ as a politician would say. On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief.” Our outcomes can sometimes upend even our most well-established expectations.
然而，即使是既定的模式也不是万无一失的。正如纳西姆·塔勒布（Nassim Taleb）在《黑天鹅》（The Black Swan）中所写的那样，“想想每天喂食的火鸡。每一次喂食都会坚定这只鸟的信念，即每天由友好的人类成员喂食是生命的一般规则，正如政治家所说的那样，“为它的最大利益着想”。感恩节前的星期三下午，火鸡会发生意想不到的事情。这将导致信仰的修正。我们的结果有时甚至会颠覆我们最既定的期望。
However, if you have a lot of expertise and data, you can reduce your margin of safety yet further. Here’s an example: Warren Buffett aims to buy stocks that are 30–50 percent less than their true value. So he has a 30–50 percent margin of safety on stocks. But he’ll pay close to a dollar on the dollar for stocks that he understands well. So there’s only maybe a 20 percent margin of safety on the stocks he’s the most confident in.
但是，如果您拥有大量专业知识和数据，则可以进一步降低安全边际。举个例子：沃伦·巴菲特（Warren Buffett）的目标是购买比真实价值低30-50%的股票。因此，他在股票上有30-50%的安全边际。但他会为他熟悉的股票支付接近一美元的价格。因此，他最有信心的股票可能只有20%的安全边际。
One of Warren Buffett’s core tenets for buying a business is that if he doesn’t understand it, he doesn’t buy it. In other words, if he doesn’t have enough information to calculate a margin of safety, he doesn’t invest at all. He also knows that not all margins of safety will protect him—the goal isn’t to get it perfect for every stock he buys; it’s to use the best possible strategy for all his stocks in the big picture.
沃伦·巴菲特（Warren Buffett）购买企业的核心原则之一是，如果他不了解它，他就不会购买它。换句话说，如果他没有足够的信息来计算安全边际，他根本不会投资。他也知道，并非所有的安全边际都能保护他——目标不是让他购买的每一只股票都完美无缺;这是在大局中为他的所有股票使用最佳策略。
Here’s the bottom line: Predicting the future is harder than it seems. Things are great until they’re not. If things are good, a margin of safety seems like a waste. When things go wrong, though, you can’t live without it. You need a margin of safety most at the very moment you start to think you don’t.
想要重要的东西
Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.
GOOD DECISION-MAKING COMES down to two things: 好的决策归结为两件事：
- Knowing how to get what you want 知道如何得到你想要的东西
- Knowing what’s worth wanting 知道什么是值得想要的