发酵伟大思想的艺术（分享）
作者：Nat Eliason's Essays ｜ 原文
And pickling jalapeños 腌制墨西哥辣椒
Of the useless rain dances in corporate America, “brainstorming sessions” are among the worst. They could only have been dreamed up by a consultant who never stumbled upon a good idea in their life.
在美国企业中，"头脑风暴会议 "是最糟糕的会议之一。只有那些一辈子都没碰上过一个好主意的顾问才会想出这样的点子。
If they had, they would know you cannot sit down and decide to have a great idea. The great ideas hit you when you’re in the shower, tossing and turning in bed, or riding a bike with Dr. Hofmann.
如果他们知道，他们就会知道你不可能坐下来就决定有一个好主意。当你洗澡时、在床上辗转反侧时，或者和霍夫曼博士一起骑车时，伟大的想法就会出现。
And while great ideas seem to appear randomly, there is a science to summoning them out of the ether.
虽然伟大的想法似乎是随机出现的，但从茫茫人海中唤起它们也是一门科学。
Here it is. 就是这里。
Before we get too far into idea generation, I need to teach you how to ferment jalapeños.
在我们深入探讨创意之前，我需要教你如何发酵墨西哥辣椒。
Most people approach idea generation like baking or cooking, a precise practice that you can squeeze into a 50-minute meeting block or a daily regiment of “write down 10 ideas.” But brines don’t care about your 50-minute meeting block. They bubble when they’re ready.
大多数人对待创意的方式就像烘焙或烹饪，是一种精确的做法，你可以把它挤进 50 分钟的会议时间，或者每天坚持 "写下 10 个创意"。但卤水并不在乎你的 50 分钟会议时间。它们准备好了就会冒泡。
So first, you need jalapeños. Ideally, the highest quality ones you can find. If you have to buy them from a grocery store, fine. Better would be from the local farmer’s market, so you know they were picked fresh. The best would be if you could grow them yourself.
首先，你需要墨西哥辣椒。最好是你能找到的最优质的墨西哥辣椒。如果你必须从杂货店买，也可以。最好是从当地农贸市场买，这样你就知道它们是新鲜采摘的。最好是自己种的。
The ingredients you use for your ferment are extremely important.
用于发酵的原料非常重要。
Then, you need a good fermenting environment for them to live in. Chop them into slices, put them in a glass mason jar, cover them in water that’s 5% salt by weight, and then put a burping lid on top and keep them out of direct sunlight. Plastic or tupperware is much less ideal.
然后，你需要一个良好的发酵环境让它们生存。把它们切成片，放进玻璃泥瓦缸里，盖上含盐量为 5%（按重量计）的水，然后盖上盖子，避免阳光直射。塑料或保鲜盒则不太理想。
Too little or too much salt and the bacteria won’t flourish, and if you use the wrong kind of lid, you might get mold or an explosion.
盐放得太少或太多，细菌就不会滋生，如果用错了盖子，就可能发霉或爆炸。
Finally, you need patience. You will get some action in the jar after a few days, but it won’t be ready yet. After a week, it will be delicious. It’s all a matter of taste from there. But if you try to rush it and eat them after a day, you’ll be disappointed.
最后，你需要耐心。几天后，罐子里就会有些动静，但还没做好。一周后，它就会变得美味可口。接下来就看口味了。但如果你急于求成，一天后就吃，你会失望的。
And if you set a timer for exactly 168 hours, you probably won’t get the best flavor either. It requires time and patience.
如果你把定时器设定在整整 168 小时，你可能也不会得到最好的味道。这需要时间和耐心。
These are the three necessary criteria for a great ferment: great ingredients, the proper environment, and patience. Without them, you will fail to create something funky and wonderful. With them, your creativity is the only constraint.
这是制作美味发酵食品的三个必要条件：上好的原料、适当的环境和耐心。没有它们，你将无法创造出时髦而美妙的东西。有了它们，你的创造力就是唯一的限制。
What makes fermentation so magical is that the most important ingredient is the one you can’t control: the bacteria. You don’t add a bunch of bacteria to the pickle jar. They multiply from what’s already in the ingredients you chose.
发酵之所以如此神奇，是因为最重要的成分是你无法控制的：细菌。你不会在泡菜坛子里添加一堆细菌。它们是从你选择的配料中繁殖出来的。
Your job is not to make them or add them or send them strongly worded emails until they do your bidding. Your job is to create the ideal environment for them to reproduce and let the magic happen.
你的工作不是制造它们、添加它们或向它们发送措辞强硬的电子邮件，直到它们听从你的命令。你的工作是为他们创造理想的复制环境，让奇迹发生。
Ideas and bacteria have a lot in common. You can’t control them. You can’t create them out of thin air. Some are good, and some are bad. But you can design the best possible environment for the good ones to thrive and multiply, and that’s how we want to approach idea generation.
思想和细菌有很多共同之处。你无法控制它们。你无法凭空创造它们。有些是好的，有些是坏的。但你可以为好的细菌创造最佳的生长和繁殖环境，而这正是我们希望创造创意的方式。
We want to approach it like a great fermentation.
我们希望把它当作一次伟大的发酵。
So let’s start with ingredients. How do we cultivate the right ingredients for great idea fermenting?
那么，让我们从原料开始。我们如何为伟大创意的发酵培育正确的原料？
III: Ingredients III: 成分
There are two levels of thinking going on in our heads at any time.
在任何时候，我们的头脑中都有两个层次的思考。
There’s the more active and conscious part of your brain that’s reading this article and which you think of as doing the “thinking.” Then a subconscious, processing part of your brain that occasionally figures something out and
你的大脑中有更活跃、更有意识的部分，它正在阅读这篇文章，你认为它在进行 "思考"。然后是大脑的潜意识处理部分，它偶尔会想出一些东西并_schwoop 唧唧_ sends it up into your conscious mind via the mail tube from downstairs.
通过楼下的邮管，将它传送到你的意识中。
But the mailroom processing part of your brain can only work with whatever you feed it.
但是，你大脑中的邮件处理部分只能根据你给它的信息工作。
And just like you shouldn’t expect the best ferment to come from the moldy garbage bin jalapeños behind 7-Eleven, you shouldn’t expect your mailroom to shock and awe you with brilliant ideas when you’re giving it junk.
就像你不应该指望最好的发酵剂来自 7-Eleven 后面发霉的垃圾桶里的墨西哥辣椒一样，你也不应该指望你的邮件收发室会在你给它垃圾的时候给你带来令人震惊的好点子。
The annoying thing about your brain fermentations vs. your counter fermentations is that your brain is always fermenting something. It thinks all information is created equal, so if you’re paying attention to something, then your mailroom should try to do something with it.
你的大脑发酵与你的柜台发酵之间的恼人之处在于，你的大脑总是在发酵一些东西。它认为所有的信息都是平等的，所以如果你在关注某件事情，那么你的收发室就应该试着做点什么。
Whatever you pay attention to is being fermented by your brain. It doesn’t understand that refining your lysergic acid derivatives is more important than whether or not Shanae will find someone new before the next rose ceremony. If you pay attention to it, it’s going in the fermentation jar.
无论你关注什么，你的大脑都在发酵。它不明白，提炼麦角酸衍生物比夏奈能否在下一次玫瑰花仪式前找到新欢更重要。如果你关注它，它就会进入发酵罐。
Every tweet you read, every newspaper you glance at, every show you watch, every email you skim, it’s all feeding your subconscious things to process. And whatever it’s fed, it will ferment into ideas and reactions. So if you want to come up with better ideas, you must get extremely strict about what you let in the door.
你读到的每一条推特、浏览的每一份报纸、观看的每一个节目、浏览的每一封邮件，都在向你的潜意识提供需要处理的东西。无论你的潜意识接受了什么，它都会发酵成想法和反应。因此，如果你想提出更好的想法，就必须严格控制你的思想。
If you want all of the ideas that pop into your brain to be clever responses to that person who was WRONG on Twitter today, then, by all means, scroll Twitter all day.
如果你希望脑中闪现的所有想法都是对今天在 Twitter 上说错话的那个人的巧妙回应，那么请尽一切可能整天滚动 Twitter。
If you want all your mental RAM to go towards fearing for your life over this year’s new armageddon myth, go for it. But if you want to come up with useful brain farts that move your life forward, you will have to stop feeding your mailroom dog shit. Garbage in, garbage out.
如果你想让你所有的精神RAM都用来为今年的新末日神话担心，那就去吧。但如果你想放出有用的脑屁，推动你的生活向前发展，你就必须停止给收发室喂狗屎。垃圾进，垃圾出。
This is why certain prescriptions, like avoiding the news, avoiding social media, or reading older books, are so helpful. If you watch the news and social media all day, you can only generate ideas related to whatever tedium made it into the 24-hour outrage cycle.
这就是为什么某些处方，比如避开新闻、避开社交媒体或阅读旧书，会非常有帮助。如果你整天看新闻和社交媒体，你只能产生与24小时愤怒循环中的乏味内容相关的想法。
If you only read the popular new books everyone else is reading, you will come up with the same thoughts as everyone else. Same if you listen to all the same podcasts. It makes you a boring NPC.
如果你只读别人都在读的流行新书，你的想法就会和别人一样。同样，如果你听的播客都是一样的。这会让你成为一个无趣的 NPC。
You’re like a mental assembly line worker pushing out all-black Model Ts next to everyone else. Mix it up a little.
你就像一个精神上的流水线工人，在其他人旁边推出全黑的Ts型车。混合起来一点。
If you want great ideas, you must remove all the bad ingredients. Outrage, information you don’t care about or can’t act on, trivia, fluff. Obviously, you should keep some fun in your life. I love seeing the creative factory designs in the Satisfactory subreddit.
如果你想得到好点子，就必须去除所有不好的成分。愤怒、你不关心或无法采取行动的信息、琐事、花边新闻。显然，你应该在生活中保留一些乐趣。我喜欢在 "满意 "子论坛上看到那些创意十足的工厂设计。
But you need to be extremely discerning about it because the more info you let in, the less space your mailroom has to do the work you want.
但是，你必须擦亮眼睛，因为你放进的信息越多，你的邮件收发室就越没有空间来完成你想要的工作。
Removal is only the first step, though. You must replace it with the fresh juicy jalapeños you want your brain to be fermenting.
不过，去除只是第一步。你必须用新鲜多汁的墨西哥辣椒取而代之，这样你的大脑才能发酵。
You’re probably assuming I’m going to say “read great books” or “read old stuff” here, but no, that’s not the answer. That helps shift your thinking in a more interesting direction. But it doesn’t necessarily help generate great ideas.
你可能以为我会在这里说 "读名著 "或 "读旧书"，但不，这不是答案。这有助于将你的思维转向更有趣的方向。但这并不一定有助于产生伟大的想法。
The most important food to constantly feed your brain is the problems you want it to be solving. These problems do not need to be grand like “solving world hunger.” Maybe one of your problems right now is what to get people for Christmas. You have to define clearly what those problems are and then constantly remind your brain to think about them.
不断喂养大脑的最重要食物就是你希望它解决的问题。这些问题并不需要像 "解决世界饥饿 "那样宏大。也许你现在的问题之一就是圣诞节送什么礼物给别人。你必须清楚地定义这些问题是什么，然后不断提醒你的大脑去思考它们。
You need to be sending all-caps memos down to the mailroom fifty times a day saying COME UP WITH GIFT IDEAS!!! Otherwise, the mailroom is thinking about whether you’d rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or 1 horse-sized duck.
你需要每天向收发室发送五十次全大写的备忘录，上面写着 "拿出礼物创意！！"！否则，收发室就会考虑你是想打 100 匹鸭子大小的马，还是想打 1 匹马大小的鸭子。
You can figure out the strategy that makes the most sense for you, but here’s mine.
你可以找出最适合自己的策略，但这是我的策略。
This is the only home screen on my phone. I tag certain Apple Notes with #focus, and then they end up in this smart folder on my home screen. They’re often articles I’m working on or related to my book work, but there are other things, like home improvement projects or other big decisions. Then below that is a random quotation I have saved from books and articles I’ve read.
这是我手机上唯一的主屏幕。我用 #focus 标记某些苹果笔记，然后它们就会出现在我主屏幕上的这个智能文件夹里。它们通常是我正在撰写的文章或与我的图书工作有关的文章，但也有其他的东西，比如家装项目或其他重大决定。下面是我从阅读过的书籍和文章中随机保存的语录。
With this taking up my entire home screen, every time I pick up my phone, I’m getting reminded of what I should be thinking about and getting a little inspiration from things I’ve already read.
它占据了我的整个主屏幕，每次拿起手机，我都会被提醒应该思考什么，并从已经读过的内容中获得一些灵感。
I don’t have Twitter on my phone and don’t really use any other social media, so it turns the phone into an idea-generation device instead of a distraction device.
我的手机上没有 Twitter，也不使用任何其他社交媒体，所以它把手机变成了一个产生想法的设备，而不是一个分散注意力的设备。
But you could do this in plenty of other ways. A sticky tab on your computer, a screenshot on your phone lock screen, a forehead tattoo, the method doesn’t matter.
不过，你还可以用很多其他方式。电脑上的粘贴标签、手机锁屏上的截图、额头上的纹身，方法并不重要。
What matters is cutting out all the noise and replacing it with the high-quality ingredients you want your brain working on.
重要的是摒弃一切杂音，取而代之的是你希望大脑工作的高质量成分。
Obviously, ingredients are only one part, though. They also need the right environment to ferment in.
显然，原料只是其中的一部分。它们还需要合适的环境来发酵。
IV: Environment IV：环境
If you fail to create a proper fermenting environment, it won’t matter how tasty your ingredients are.
如果您不能创造一个适当的发酵环境，那么您的食材再美味也无济于事。
They will mold, or never ferment, develop a weird flavor, turn a funky color, or you’ll just open them up after a week or two and take a big deep sniff and go, “hmmm… I don’t think that’s right.”
它们会发霉，或者永远不会发酵，产生奇怪的味道，变成怪异的颜色，或者你会在一两周后打开它们，深深地闻上一大口，然后说："嗯......我觉得这不对"。
Our ideas, too, will disappoint us if we don’t give them the right environment to develop in. They’ll be shallow, derivative, dull, repetitive, or take too long to show up. Or they’ll just not show up at all. We must find the perfect glass jar and lid for them to appear in.
如果我们不给我们的想法提供一个合适的发展环境，它们也会让我们失望。它们会肤浅、衍生、沉闷、重复，或者花很长时间才出现。或者它们根本就不会出现。我们必须为它们找到一个完美的玻璃瓶和盖子。
What is that perfect glass jar, though? Our ideas appear primarily in one situation: when little else is occupying our thoughts. It’s as if it is a defense mechanism of our brain responding to the lack of stimulus.
然而，那个完美的玻璃瓶是什么呢？我们的想法主要出现在一种情况下：当几乎没有其他东西占据我们的思想时。这仿佛是我们大脑对缺乏刺激做出反应的一种防御机制。
If you’re not engaged in hunting, gathering, building, mating, or socializing, then something must be wrong, and you need to fix it. So it starts shooting up ideas from the mailroom to get you back into one of those modes that will save you from dying alone with no progeny.
如果你不从事狩猎、采集、建造、交配或社交活动，那么一定是出了什么问题，你需要解决它。于是，它开始从收发室里提出各种点子，让你重新回到这些模式中的一种，以免你孤独终老，没有后代。
Good ideas require boredom. If you constantly ingest new information, the existing information can never be digested. It’s as if you’re looking at your fermenting jar on the counter every hour and wondering why nothing has happened, so you open it and stuff in another cucumber.
好的想法需要厌倦。如果你不断摄入新信息，现有信息就永远无法消化。这就好比你每隔一小时就会看一下柜台上的发酵罐，想知道为什么什么都没发生，于是你打开罐子，又塞进一根黄瓜。
Think of your time as explicitly allocated to loading in information or towards seeing what your brain shoots out. Input time, output time.
把你的时间明确分配给输入信息或查看大脑输出的信息。输入时间，输出时间。
Input time is reading books, scrolling social media, watching the news, listening to podcasts, talking to friends and colleagues, or anything else that adds new stuff for your subconscious to process.
输入时间是指阅读书籍、浏览社交媒体、观看新闻、收听播客、与朋友和同事交谈，或其他任何能为你的潜意识增添新内容的时间。
Output time is creating the space and boredom for those inputs to ferment into something interesting. Staring at a blank page of your journal, opening a document to start writing, going for a (no headphones) walk with a notebook, working out without music, or sitting in the sauna.
输出时间就是创造空间和无聊，让这些输入发酵成有趣的东西。盯着日记的空白页，打开文档开始写作，拿着笔记本（不带耳机）去散步，在没有音乐的情况下健身，或者坐在桑拿房里。
However you create bored, quite space for your brain to finally get some processing room to spit ideas out; you must create that space if you want the ideas to form.
无论如何，你都要为自己的大脑创造无聊、安静的空间，让它最终获得一些处理空间来吐露想法；如果你想让想法形成，就必须创造这样的空间。
The ways we fail at this are obvious. We never give ourselves output time because we’re terrified of silence and boredom. We need a podcast while working out. We need music while working. We keep social media up in another tab. We have notifications on our phones. We let ourselves be interrupted.
我们失败的原因显而易见。我们从不给自己输出时间，因为我们害怕沉默和无聊。我们在健身时需要播客。我们需要在工作时听音乐。我们把社交媒体放在另一个标签里。我们的手机上有通知。我们任由自己被打断。
If your first response to boredom is to seek out another input to sate the longing for stimulation, then your brain never has to make shit up to entertain you. The idea muscles will atrophy and never produce anything of worth. But if you can respond to boredom by leaning into it, keeping the blank page open, and seeing what pops out, the muscle gets stronger over time.
如果你对无聊的第一反应是寻找另一种输入，以满足对刺激的渴望，那么你的大脑就永远不需要编造任何东西来娱乐你。想法的肌肉会萎缩，永远不会产生任何有价值的东西。但如果你能对无聊做出反应，沉浸其中，翻开白纸，看看会有什么东西冒出来，那么随着时间的推移，这块肌肉就会变得越来越强壮。
That is the magic of boredom. It’s how you seal the jar on your jalapeños and say, “okay, bacteria, do your work.” More information is rarely your friend. It’s often a form of distraction and procrastination.
这就是无聊的魔力你就是这样把墨西哥辣椒封好，然后说 "好了，细菌们，做你们的工作吧"。更多的信息很少是你的朋友。它通常是一种分心和拖延的形式。
We know the first two important aspects now: great ingredients and the proper environment. Let’s talk about the final one: time.
我们现在知道了前两个重要方面：好的原料和适当的环境。让我们来谈谈最后一个方面：时间。
V: Time V：时间
Oh wow, great things take time. Very helpful and creative, Nat. I know, I know, but there is a worthwhile point here.
哇，伟大的事情需要时间。很有帮助，很有创意，纳特。我知道，我知道，但这里有一个很有价值的观点。
Ideas sometimes seem to need days or weeks or months to get to a point where they feel fully formed. If you try to force a solution to a problem into a preset window of time, you will almost certainly reach a suboptimal solution.
想法有时似乎需要几天、几周或几个月的时间才能完全形成。如果你试图在预设的时间窗口内强行解决问题，那么你几乎肯定会得到一个次优的解决方案。
I’ll often have ideas sitting in my focus folder for weeks or months and keep tossing thoughts into them, and then one day, it will suddenly feel very clear how it all fits together.
我经常会把一些想法放在我的重点文件夹里，一放就是几个星期或几个月，不断地把想法扔进去，然后有一天，我突然觉得所有的想法都非常清晰地结合在一起了。
We all want our problems to be solved quickly, and we want to neatly move through a checklist of tasks to retain the illusion of control over our lives, but great ideas don’t seem to work like that. Sometimes you need to be exceedingly patient with them.
我们都希望自己的问题能迅速得到解决，我们都希望整齐划一地完成任务清单上的工作，以保持对生活的掌控感，但伟大的想法似乎并非如此。有时，你需要对它们保持超乎寻常的耐心。
You can’t always have all the time in the world, but when you have the space to noodle on something, take it.
世界上不可能永远有那么多时间，但当你有时间去琢磨一些事情时，就要把握住。
I’ll narrow down what I’m going to write about in this newsletter by Monday or Tuesday of the week before, then spend the rest of the week seeing what ideas pop up about the various topic ideas.
我会在前一周的周一或周二之前缩小本期时事通讯的写作范围，然后在本周剩下的时间里看看会有哪些关于不同主题的想法出现。
By Monday, I’ll typically have the skeleton of a post fully flushed out in one of them. If I waited until Monday to start jotting ideas down, it would be much harder, and the post would certainly be much worse.
到了周一，我通常会在其中一篇文章中完全理清文章的骨架。如果我等到周一才开始记下想法，那就会困难得多，文章肯定也会糟糕得多。
So give the great ideas time to pop up. Even if you know you have weeks or months to figure something out, start priming your brain with those questions now so it has time to process them.
所以，要给好点子时间，让它们冒出来。即使你知道你有几周或几个月的时间来想出一些东西，现在就开始向大脑提出这些问题，让它有时间来处理这些问题。
I hope you liked learning about jalapeños and ideas. Here’s the Recipe Card:
希望你喜欢了解墨西哥辣椒和创意。这是食谱卡：
Find the best ingredients possible to ferment into great ideas, and aggressively prune everything you don’t want your brain to process.
尽可能找到最好的原料，发酵成伟大的想法，并积极地删减你不想让大脑处理的一切。
Give your brain the boredom and output time it needs to figure out what to do with that information. Don’t keep opening the jar and packing more into it.
让你的大脑有足够的时间来思考如何处理这些信息。不要不停地打开罐子，往里面装更多的东西。
Finally, be patient with the process. The more you can reduce the amount of information you’re taking in, and the more boredom you can give your brain to work, the better your results will be.
最后，对学习过程要有耐心。你越能减少接受的信息量，越能让大脑在无聊中工作，效果就会越好。
I hope your jalapeños are delicious.
我希望你的墨西哥辣椒很好吃。