My founder friends constantly think about growth. They think about how to measure their business growth and how to get to the next order of magnitude scale. If they’re making $1M ARR today, they think about how to get to $10M ARR. If they have 1,000 users today, they think about how to get to 10,000 users.
我的创始人朋友们不断思考增长问题。他们思考如何衡量自己的业务增长以及如何达到下一个数量级的规模。如果他们今天的 ARR 为 100 万美元，他们会考虑如何达到 1000 万美元的 ARR。如果他们现在有 1,000 个用户，他们会考虑如何达到 10,000 个用户。

This made me wonder if/how people are measuring personal growth. I don’t want to use metrics like net worth or the number of followers, because that’s not what I live for. After talking with a lot of friends, I found three interesting metrics: rate of change, time to solve problems, and number of future options.
这让我想知道人们是否/如何衡量个人成长。我不想使用净资产或关注者数量等指标，因为那不是我的生活目的。在与很多朋友交谈后，我发现了三个有趣的指标：变化率、解决问题的时间以及未来选择的数量。

Some friends told me they find this blog post mildly sociopathic. Why do I have to measure everything? Life is to be lived, not to be measured. As someone lowkey fascinated by numbers, I don’t see why measuring and living have to be mutually exclusive – measuring often helps me live better – but I see where they come from. This post is more of a thought exercise than a rigorous experiment.
一些朋友告诉我，他们认为这篇博文有点反社会。为什么我必须测量一切？生命是用来体验的，而不是用来衡量的。作为一个对数字着迷的低调人，我不明白为什么衡量和生活必须是相互排斥的——衡量通常可以帮助我生活得更好——但我知道它们来自哪里。这篇文章更多的是一个思考练习，而不是一个严格的实验。

Rate of change 变化率

I have this theory that life has a circadian rhythm. Every 3-6 years, you become a different person. You work on different problems. Your lifestyle changes. The people you hang out with are different. If you haven’t caught up with a friend in 5 years, you might no longer have anything in common. It’s not a coincidence that schools are structured into chunks of 3-6 years.
我有这样的理论：生命有昼夜节律。每3-6年，你就会变成一个不同的人。你们致力于解决不同的问题。你的生活方式改变了。和你一起出去玩的人是不同的。如果你五年没有和朋友联系过，你们可能就不再有任何共同点了。学校分为 3 至 6 年制，这并非巧合。

Looking back, I realized that every 3-6 years, my life completely changed. From grade 3 to grade 10, I did competitive math. For the next 5 years, I worked as a writer. Then I went to college and studied computer science for 4 years. After that, I fumbled around for almost 6 years. It was only recently that I felt like I had a handle on life.
回想起来，我发现每隔三六年，我的生活就会彻底改变。从三年级到十年级，我参加了数学竞赛。在接下来的五年里，我从事作家的工作。然后我上了大学，学习了 4 年计算机科学。此后，我摸索了近6年。直到最近我才觉得自己已经掌控了生活。

Sami, a new friend who loves designing strategy games, told me about the rule of 72 in finance. It’s a simple formula that estimates the number of years it will take for an investment to double in value. If the annual interest rate is 8%, it’ll take 72/8 = 9 years for the value of your investment to double.
一位喜欢设计策略游戏的新朋友萨米向我讲述了金融中的 72 规则。这是一个简单的公式，可以估计一项投资价值翻倍所需的年数。如果年利率为 8%，则需要 72/8 = 9 年您的投资价值才能翻倍。

I wonder if I could treat myself as an investment, and measure my growth by how long it’d take me to become a new person. Becoming a new person isn’t always a good thing, and probably not the goal for everyone. But for me, it is. I want to be able to see things from a new perspective. I want to be exposed to new challenges. I treasure old friends (I still talk to my best friends in elementary school), but I like learning from new friends.
我想知道我是否可以把自己当作一项投资，并通过我成为一个新人需要多长时间来衡量我的成长。成为一个新人并不总是一件好事，也可能不是每个人的目标。但对我来说，确实如此。我希望能够从新的角度看待事物。我想接受新的挑战。我珍惜老朋友（我仍然和小学时最好的朋友聊天），但我喜欢向新朋友学习。

Time to solve problems
解决问题的时间

Quynh, an old friend who runs a publishing house in Vietnam, believes that there are three big problems in life: career, family, and finance. It usually takes people a decade to figure each out.
在越南经营一家出版社的老朋友Quynh认为，人生存在三大问题：事业、家庭和财务。人们通常需要十年的时间才能弄清楚每个问题。

  1. For the first decade after graduation, you figure out what you want to do with your life.
    毕业后的第一个十年，你会弄清楚自己想做什么。
  2. For the next decade, you get married, buy a house, and have kids.
    在接下来的十年里，你结婚、买房、生孩子。
  3. For the next decade, you build out your savings to retire.
    在接下来的十年里，您将积蓄退休金。

Her goal is to solve these problems as fast as possible, so she can focus on more interesting problems.
她的目标是尽快解决这些问题，这样她就可以专注于更有趣的问题。

This made me think that perhaps I can measure my growth by looking at what big problems I’ve solved. What big problems was I worried about 5 years ago that I no longer worry about now? What big problems am I worried about now that I don’t want to worry about in 5 years?
这让我觉得也许我可以通过看看我解决了哪些大问题来衡量我的成长。有哪些重大问题是我 5 年前担心但现在不再担心的？有哪些大问题是我现在担心而 5 年后不想担心的？

What is considered a big problem depends on each person. For me, it’s career, finance, social, immigration, family, and health. Here are a couple of concrete examples that made me feel like I’ve made progress. 5 years ago, I was anxious about being in the US on a visa. This problem went away when I got my green card. 5 years ago, I constantly felt insecure like I was an imposter in the Bay. Today, I feel at home here.
什么被认为是大问题取决于每个人。对我来说，是事业、财务、社会、移民、家庭和健康。这里有几个具体的例子，让我感觉自己已经取得了进步。五年前，我对持签证前往美国感到焦虑。当我拿到绿卡后，这个问题就迎刃而解了。五年前，我一直感到不安全，就像我是湾区的冒名顶替者一样。今天，我在这里有宾至如归的感觉。

Number of future options
未来的选择数量

A friend I’ve met through my Discord, Denys, told me that his friend has this theory that every few years, half of your dreams die. People give up on their dreams because they realize that they can no longer achieve them.
我通过 Discord 认识的一位朋友 Denys 告诉我，他的朋友有这样的理论：每隔几年，你的梦想就会破灭一半。人们放弃梦想是因为他们意识到自己无法再实现梦想。

I disagree. As I grow older, I have more dreams. I now know many things that I didn’t know before, and I have access to more resources than I ever did. This allows me to do things that I used to think of as impossible.
我不同意。随着年龄的增长，我有了更多的梦想。我现在知道了很多以前不知道的事情，并且可以获得比以往更多的资源。这让我能够做一些我以前认为不可能的事情。

During a reinforcement learning course in college, I learned about empowerment maximization. It’s a simple principle that enables robots/agents to exhibit relatively intelligent behavior. In the face of uncertainty, an agent following empowerment maximization would choose the action that maximizes future options. For example, facing multiple switches, it’d choose the switch that opens the most doors.
在大学的强化学习课程中，我了解了授权最大化。这是一个简单的原理，使机器人/代理能够表现出相对智能的行为。面对不确定性，遵循授权最大化的代理人会选择最大化未来选项的行动。例如，面对多个开关，它会选择打开门最多的开关。

I realized that this is the same principle that I’ve followed. In the face of uncertainty, I lean towards the decision that would give me the most future options. For example, I’d choose a job that pays less but gives me more job options in the future (e.g. if the job gives me exposure like allowing me to work on open source or publish papers). I’d prioritize tasks that teach me transferable skills instead of tasks that teach me niche, narrow skills.
我意识到这与我遵循的原则相同。面对不确定性，我倾向于做出给我未来最多选择的决定。例如，我会选择一份薪水较低但在未来给我更多工作选择的工作（例如，如果这份工作给我带来曝光机会，比如允许我从事开源工作或发表论文）。我会优先考虑那些教我可转移技能的任务，而不是那些教我小众、狭隘技能的任务。

Perhaps I can measure my growth by how many new options I have gained/lost. What options are available to me today that were not available to me 5 years ago? What options were available to me 5 years ago that aren’t available to me now? More importantly, what options that are not available to me today do I want 5 years from now?
也许我可以通过获得/失去多少新选择来衡量我的成长。哪些选项是我今天可以使用而 5 年前却无法使用的？有哪些选项是我 5 年前可以使用而现在却无法使用的？更重要的是，哪些选项是我今天无法获得的，但五年后我却想要？

Sami pointed me to this image from Wait But Why. As time goes by, many doors are closed to us, but many new doors open up. Denys’s friend was referring to the black lines on the left, and I focus on the green lines on the right.
萨米给我指了《Wait But Why》中的这张图片。随着时间的流逝，许多门向我们关闭，但许多新的门向我们敞开。丹尼斯的朋友指的是左边的黑线，我关注的是右边的绿线。

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Conclusion 结论

There are three heuristics that I follow for personal growth:
对于个人成长，我遵循三个启发式：

  1. I try to become a new person every 3-6 years.
    我尝试每三到六年就成为一个新人。
  2. I try to solve big problems as fast as possible. I think of this as creating safety nets that allow me to take bigger risks and explore more things in the future.
    我尝试尽快解决大问题。我认为这是创建安全网，让我能够在未来承担更大的风险并探索更多的事情。
  3. I take actions that help me maximize future options.
    我采取的行动有助于我最大限度地提高未来的选择。

These heuristics work for me (so far) because I have a strong bias towards novelty and exploration. Maybe one day, I’ll get tired of exploration, and these heuristics will change. When that happens, that’ll be growth.
这些启发法对我来说（到目前为止）是有效的，因为我对新颖性和探索有强烈的偏见。也许有一天，我会厌倦探索，这些启发法将会改变。当这种情况发生时，那就是增长。