Missions are things we tend to associate with astronauts.
我们通常会将「使命」跟宇航员联想在一起，
If someone at a party asked you what you did, and you said you were involved on a mission of some kind, people would look at you sort of strangely.
如果有人在聚会上问你在哪里高就，而你说你潜心于某个使命中，人们可能会以奇怪的眼光看你，
But in truth, we’d all benefit from focusing in on the purpose of our lives so that we can refer to them as missions of one kind or another.
但老实说，我们都从专注于人生目的上得利所以我们可以将之称做人生的某种使命
When the entrepreneur Elon Musk was at university, he asked himself very explicitly what his mission in life would be.
当企业家 Elon‧Musk 大学时，他很明确地问自己他人生中的使命是什么，
He began by wondering what the world needed most urgently, then he looked into himself to see what his talents were and that led him to a list of four possible missions: space exploration, electric transportation, Artificial Intelligence and rewriting the human genome.
他开始想知道这世界最迫切需要的是什么然后他审视自己的天赋是什么，这让他列出了四个可能的使命：太空探索、交通运输电动化、人工智慧与改写人类基因
In the end, Elon Musk chose the first two.
最后，Elon‧Musk 选择了前两项，
Few of us will ever settle on missions as mighty as these, but the notion of having a mission, rather than a mere job or hobby, remains widely applicable.
我们之中很少人能够立志达成如此强大的使命，但拥有使命的这个概念，不仅仅是个工作或嗜好，仍能广泛地运用。
How, then, can we learn to adopt the mission mindset?
那么，我们如何学会找到自己的使命？
– Firstly, what matters is to adopt a certain seriousness about one‘s life.
—首先，重要的是认真的对待一个人的人生，
The working bit will only be, at best, 50 years.
工作最多也只会有 50 年。
So the challenge is around focus: how can one reduce the range of one’s enthusiasms and see that having so many interests is half the problem.
所以挑战就是要如何聚焦：一个人如何减少他所热忱的事物范围，还有正视拥有太多兴趣是另一半的问题
Talk of a mission forces us to reduce what we care about down to just a few very big things: it privileges precision over breadth.
谈论一个使命，迫使我们减少关心的事物，将其降至只有几个大方向：这使你除去多余杂务，以获得更精确的使命。
You give yourself a specific target, aware of how much energy it will take to reach it.
你给自己一个明确的目标明白自己需要花费多少精力才能达成。
– Secondly, a mission is about having a plan; and reducing the amount of times that,
because one has no clear goal, one gets swept along by the plans of others.
- 第二，一个使命也要有个计划并降低尝试的次数，因为你若没有清楚的目标，你会被其他计划影响。
– Then again, a mission is different from an ambition.
—话说回来，使命与野心不同
An ambition starts with what you want. A mission centers around what others need.
野心起始于你想要什么，使命的核心围绕在其他人需要什么，
People with missions may well end up making money and having status, but that isn’t what led them to the mission in the first place.
有使命的人们最终可能也能赚到钱、拥有地位，但那并不是使他们拥有使命的首要原因，
Missions are about the intrinsic worth of tasks.
使命是关于任务本身的价值
– The search for a mission requires you to ask: among all the problems facing humanity, what are the ones that properly interest me?
- 要探究自己的使命，你需要自问：在所有人类面临的问题上什么是我感兴趣的？
Be alive to the small-scale but authentic concerns.
别忘了那些微小但真实的事物
– Having focused on a problem of humanity that feels right for you, you then need to take an honest look at your own aptitutes.
—专注感觉适合你的人类难题上，然后你需要诚实地看看你自己的天赋，
What truly are your talents? What can you contribute?
你真正拥有的天赋是什么？你能做出什么贡献？
That may require a lot of introspection, career counselling and experimentation.
那可能需要许多的自省、职涯咨询与亲身体验
– Then, where your skills and aptitudes intersect with the needs of the world, that is your distinctive zone: that’s where your mission lies.
当你的技能、天赋与世界所需相符那就是属于你的领域：那就是你的使命所在。
– A mission isn’t a mission because it is grand, but because it is precise.
使命并非任务因为它更宏伟，因为它是严谨的。
Examples of modest but crucial missions might be: – a mission to improve the care that the elderly receive at the end of their lives – or a mission to teach children music in an engaging way – or a mission to get the best pizzas out to the customers of north Liverpool or downtown San Diego.
以一些贴切但重要的使命为例：改善年长者临终前的照护环境或以寓教于乐的方式教孩子学音乐，做出最好吃的披萨给北利物浦或圣地牙哥市中心的顾客。
– Conceiving of a mission requires us to throw off an attitude of inner serfdom, where we imagine that only other people have the right to plan their lives – and everyone else must just surrender to accidents and random whims of employers.– We can and should all have missions.
构思一个使命需要我们抛去内心卑微的态度，我们总是想像只有其他人才有权利计画他们的人生—其他人必须听命于偶然或雇主临时起意的念头。我们都可以，也都应该具有使命。
With a mission in hand, the next time you’re at a party, you won‘t need to keep the conversation at the level of where you‘re employed, you can answer with reference to the underlying logic of what you are up to.
当我们手握使命，下次你在聚会中，你不需要将对话局限在你在哪里工作，你可以根据你的使命背后的逻辑来回答。
You can, with no space helmet to your name, legitimately announce that you’re in this earth with a mission to carry out.
你可以，在没有太空头盔的情况下合法地宣称你在地球上有使命要达成
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