Looking back over my career to date, I can identify at least three clear influences that forever altered my career path. In retrospect, it's interesting to see how different the context was for each: parental advice, a passage in a book, and a persistent boss. Despite the contrasts, all three share one thing in common -- reinforcing the importance of knowing what it is you ultimately want to accomplish, and being open to allowing outside forces to help clarify, reinforce and facilitate the path to making it happen.

回顾我的职业生涯，我可以总结出至少三种力量永远的改变了我的生涯道路，它们是父母的建议、书本的启发和一个坚持的老板。忽略三者之间的差异，有一点是共同的：它们都认为最重要的是你知道自己最终想要什么，和擅于利用外界力量帮助你澄清并实现你的生涯梦想。

Here are the three pieces of advice that helped shape my career:

以下是改变我职业生涯的三条建议：

 

1. You can do anything you set your mind to

1. 你可以做到一切你一心想做的事

As a child, I can't recall a day that went by without my dad telling me I could do anything I set my mind to. He said it so often, I stopped hearing it. Along with lines like "eat your vegetables," I just assumed it was one of those bromides that parents repeated endlessly to their kids. It wasn't until decades later that I fully appreciated the importance of those words and the impact they had on me.

在我还是个孩子的时候，我的父亲每天都会告诉我：你可以做到一切你一心想做的事。他常把这句话挂在嘴边，就像他常说：“吃掉你的青菜”。我以为这句话就像其它父母总是会不停对子女唠叨的老生常谈一样，直到多年以后我才明白这句话背后的分量和它对我的影响。

Today, the question I'm asked most often by students and interns is how best to achieve their career goals. As simple as it sounds, the short version of my response is that you have to know what it is you ultimately want to accomplish (optimizing for both passion and skill, and not one at the exclusion of the other). As soon as you do, you'll begin manifesting it in both explicit and implicit ways. ithout question, this first principle has been the most consistent driver of my own career path over the last 20 years.

今天，我最常被学生和实习生们问到的问题就是什么是实现他们生涯目标的方式。我会用最简短的方式来回答，那就是：你必须知道你最终想要的是什么（在综合考虑你的能力和兴趣之后，两者是不可割裂的）。一旦你做到了这一点，你就会开始从心理和行为上都向这个目标靠近。毫无疑问的，这条首要原则是我自己过去20年生涯发展不变的动力。

 

2. Everything that can be converted from an atom to a bit, will be

2. 任何把物质数字化的改变都会有价值

In August, 1994, I signed up for an Aol account. I'll never forget my first "a-ha!" moment online which occurred soon thereafter. It came through witnessing the power of collective intelligence on a Motley Fool message board. There, a community of engineers, logistics experts, and individual investors from all over the country had joined together to reverse engineer the cost basis to manufacture what would eventually emerge as a hit computer peripheral product. I remember thinking to myself, "This is going to change everything."

1994年8月，我注册了一个Aol（美国境内提供线上加值网络服务的公司）账户，我永远都不会忘记不久之后互联网给我的个惊喜，那是我在“彩衣傻瓜”网站（美国的投资理财网站）的留言板上见证了集体智慧的力量。在这里，来自全国各地的工程师、物流导师和独立投资人集合到一起，从设计成本基础发展成为讨论制造出一些最终会风行一时的电脑周边产品。我记得我对自己说：“这将改变一切。”

About a month later, I was reading "Being Digital" by Nicolas Negroponte after seeing a rave review in Wired Magazine. In the opening chapter of his book, Negroponte posited that by virtue of the ensuing digital revolution, everything that could be converted from an atom to a bit would be. Having just started as an analyst in the Corporate Development group at Warner Bros, it didn't take much to realize this coming transition would have material implications on the studio and the entertainment industry in general.

大概一个月之后，我正在读Nicolas Negroponte的《数字化》（Being Digital），在他这本书的开篇章节中，Negroponte假定接下来要发生的数字革命将使所有能从原子转化成比特的东西转化为比特。那时我刚成为华纳兄弟电影公司组织发展部门的分析员，我马上意识到这即将到来的转变将引起电影和娱乐行业的总体变化。

In light of those experiences, when the opportunity arose to write the first online business plan for Warner Bros, I quickly volunteered; this despite the fact that at the time, most if not all of the investment focus was on CD-ROM. The first draft of that online plan was completed in December, 1994. It would ultimately be approved several months later and thus began my nearly two-decades-long career in digital media.

根据这些经历，当我面对个为华纳电影公司写线上商业发展计划的机会时，我立马抓住了它，虽然当时基本所有的投资依然是在CD-ROM领域。这个线上商业发展计划的初稿完成于1994年12月，几个月后它得到了批准，我也随之开始了我二十多年在数字媒体界的生涯之路。

 

3. Do you want to push paper around or do you want to build products that change people's lives?

3.你想在办公室处理文件还是想开发能够改变世界的产品？

I started at Yahoo in May, 2001, as co-head of the Corporate Development team. By virtue of the breadth of the role and the company's operations, and Yahoo's influential position within the digital ecosystem, the job provided me a front row seat to a period of extraordinary transformation within the consumer web industry.

我2001年5月加入Yahoo公司，成为企业开发团队的联席主管。通过这个职位和公司的运作，还有yahoo公司在数字生态系统中的重要作用，这份工作提供给我见证消费者网络行业这个特殊的转型时期的机会。

Roughly a year after I started, Dan Rosensweig joined as Yahoo's new COO. In addition to being an experienced web operator, Dan is one of the most effective sales people I know. I learned this firsthand after he tried recruiting me to an operating role on his team literally every time I saw him over the first year of his tenure. Though I'd politely decline each time -- telling him I was happy having the opportunity to work directly with the CEO, founder, and other executives in a strategic capacity -- he never stopped persisting.

我加入Yahoo一年以后，Dan Rosensweig成为Yahoo公司的首席运营官。除了是一个经验老道的网络运营商，Dan还是我所知道的秀的销售之一。我亲身体验到这一点，因为他任职的年内每次见到我都会力劝我加入他的运营团队。虽然每次我都礼貌的拒绝了他——告诉他我很高兴能有跟公司的首席执行官、创始人和其他高管们直接共事的机会——但他一直都没有放弃说服我。

Then, almost a year to the day he started, Dan said, "Jeff, you've always told me that your lifelong ambition is ultimately to reform the education system in the U.S. Let me ask you something: Do you think you are going to be better prepared to make that a reality by pushing paper around, working on strategy, and doing deals; or by moving in to operations and building teams, inspiring people, and developing great products that change people's lives?"

之后，大概距离他次力图拉拢我一年以后，Dan说：“Jeff，你总说你毕生的梦想是促进美国的教育体系改革，让我问你：你认为为了让你的梦想成真，的方式是在办公室处理公文、致力于战略、做交易，还是转入运营领域，组建团队，启发人们，并开发出能够改变人们生活的好产品？”

Suffice it to say, I accepted on the spot and haven't looked back since.

一言以蔽之，我当场接受了他的邀请，并从未后悔过。