To do something well you have to like it. That idea is not exactly novel. We've got it down to four words: "Do what you love." But it's not enough just to tell people that. Doing what you love is complicated.

要把一件事情做好，你必须喜欢它。这并不是什么新想法，人们常说"做你所爱"这四个字。但仅仅告诉别人这样不够，因为要做到这一点并不简单。

The very idea is foreign to what most of us learn as kids. When I was a kid, it seemed as if work and fun were opposites by definition. Life had two states: some of the time adults were making you do things, and that was called work; the rest of the time you could do what you wanted, and that was called playing. Occasionally the things adults made you do were fun, just as, occasionally, playing wasn't — for example, if you fell and hurt yourself. But except for these few anomalous cases, work was pretty much defined as not-fun.

这种想法与我们大多数人在小时候所学到的相去甚远。小时候，我觉得工作和玩耍在定义上是对立的。生活有两种状态：一部分时间是大人要求你做事情，那就是所谓的工作；其余时间你可以做自己想做的事，那就是玩。有时候，大人让你做的事情也是有趣的，就像有时候玩耍也并不总是快乐的，比如摔倒受伤。但除了少数这些特殊情况以外，工作基本上就是不快乐的。

And it did not seem to be an accident. School, it was implied, was tediousbecause it was preparation for grownup work.

这看起来似乎并不是一个意外。学校，让人觉得是枯燥无味的，因为它是在为将来的成人工作做准备。

The world then was divided into two groups, grownups and kids. Grownups, like some kind of cursed race, had to work. Kids didn't, but they did have to go to school, which was a dilute version of work meant to prepare us for the real thing. Much as we disliked school, the grownups all agreed that grownup work was worse, and that we had it easy.

那个时候，世界被分成了两类人：大人和小孩。大人们就像遭受了诅咒一样，必须工作。小孩不用工作，但得上学，而学校其实是工作的一种简化版本，是为了让我们适应以后的真正工作。尽管我们很不喜欢上学，可大人们一致认为他们的工作更糟糕，所以认为我们比较轻松。

Teachers in particular all seemed to believe implicitly that work was not fun. Which is not surprising: work wasn't fun for most of them. Why did we have to memorize state capitals instead of playing dodgeball? For the same reason they had to watch over a bunch of kids instead of lying on a beach. You couldn't just do what you wanted.

教师们普遍都相信工作并不是一件有趣的事情，这并不奇怪：对他们大多数人来说，工作确实不有趣。为什么我们必须死记硬背州首府，而不是玩躲避球呢？原因和他们要看管一群孩子、而不能在海滩上放松是一样的——因为不能只做自己想做的事情。