如果没有天赋，努力有什么用？
努力，真的是个很奇特的说法。
Working hard. This is really a peculiar phrase.
基本所有人都在说，但基本没有多少人能说清楚它到底是啥。
Almost everybody keeps saying it. But few of them can explain what it is.
在你小的时候，肯定也这么被爸妈说过。
Back in your childhood, you must had heard this from your parents.
If you could not memorize the new words on your English textbooks, they told you to work hard.
如果你总是做不出数学试卷上的最后一道题，解决方法是努力学习。
If you kept failing in solving the last questions on your math test papers, they told you to work hard.
如果你从来都背不清楚政治课本上看起来差不多的话，解决方法依旧是努力学习。
If you could never manage to remember those almost-identical sentences on your politics textbooks, they told you to work hard.
但是，到底怎样才叫努力？
But what exactly is working hard?
如果你问出这个问题，那些让你去努力的人却多半答不出来。
If you ask this question, a good half of the people who told you to work hard won’t be able to answer.
每天回家做作业到两点，算不算努力？
Some people keep doing homework until 2:00 am. Do we take that as working hard?
但那些栽过跟头的人都知道，这么做并不一定就能带来好成绩。
But whoever had done this and still got an ugly score knows that this does not necessarily promise good results.
所以，那还能怎么办？
So what else can we do?
每天不睡觉了？那肯定不现实。
Quit sleeping all together? That’s totally not practical.
说真的，努力这个词，已经变成了一个不负责任的托词。
Truth to be told, the phrase working hard has already become an excuse to avoid taking responsibility.
一对每天搓麻将的爸妈，可以义正言辞地让孩子去努力；
A lousy pair of parents who play mahjong everyday can self-righteously tell their kids to work hard,
这么一来，爸妈就没有义务去了解任何细节了；
so that it saves them from taking care of any detail in this affair.
一切成败变成了孩子“努力”或“不努力”的结果，以后不管是责备还是表扬，都变得无比方便。
Success or failure, it becomes a result of the kid’s working hard or not. It becomes easy and convenient for the parents to judge and blame.
一个贩卖成功学的无耻之徒，也可以靠着“努力”这杆大旗来大肆敛财。
A shameless liar who sells bullshits which promise success can make money since people believe in working hard.
一个充满顽疾的社会也可以公然拿起“不努力”这个理由，去歧视那些被遗忘的人。
And an illy functioning society can discriminate those who are forgotten and blame them for not working hard enough.
诚然，我们必须承认，成功确实需要努力。
Of course, we must admit that it does take working hard to be successful.
但努力只是个必需品，它不是万灵药。
But working hard is only a necessity. It’s not the elixir.
它是成功的必要条件，但绝不是充分条件。
It is a necessary condition. It’s not the sufficient condition.
如果你天生就对语言这个东西不敏感，那不管你怎么努力去背单词，也不能变成精通7国语言的外交官。
If you are born to be insensitive towards languages, no matter how many words you work hard to memorize, you won’t become a diplomatist who is proficient in 7 languages.
如果缺乏天赋，努力是不能带来成功的。
Without talents, working hard can not bring you success.
但这并不代表世界是残酷的，只是我们一直以来对“努力”和“天赋”的理解都存在很大的误区。
But this is not suggesting that the world is completely cruel. It’s just that our concepts of working hard and talents have been seriously wrong.
天赋的确是一种稀缺品，但天赋不是少数人的专利。
Indeed, talents are scare. But they do not only belong to an extremely limited number of people.
并不是只有“数学好”、“能讲6国语言”才叫天赋。
It’s not that only being good at math or speaking 6 languages are talents.
“擅长料理”、“声音好听”、“会讲段子”、“身材好颜值高”都是天赋。
Being good at cooking, having a nice voice, knowing how to make jokes or even being in good shape are also talents.
关键看你怎么用它们。
What’s critical is how you use them to serve your purpose.
你真正应该做的，不是无限量地堆积未经思索的努力，而是寻找能发挥自己天赋的地方，然后在那里做精准的努力。
What you should do is not accumulating unfiltered hard work without thinking, but trying to find out where your very talent can be fully exploited and working hard on the specific direction.
这样的努力才是有效的努力。
This and only this is the kind of working hard that does promise you results.
不管你多么努力地去囤积砖头，你也终究只是在囤积砖头，造不出一栋大厦；
No matter how diligently you keep accumulating bricks, bricks are ultimately merely bricks. They won’t become a skyscraper.
要让砖头变成大厦，你必须做点别的什么。
If you want the bricks to become a skyscraper, you must do something else.
这就好像是人体的肿瘤，它努力地生长，努力地集聚着能量，但它带来的只能是死亡。
This is just like a tumor in a human’s body. It works so hard to grow, so hard to collect energy. But it only promises death.
没错，
Yes,
唯一值得
努力的，是认清你自己，然后认清自己和世界的合作关系。
the one and only thing that deserves your hard work, is seeing yourself for who you truly are and trying to understand in what ways you can cooperate with this world.
