Human beings have one foot in the familiar and one foot in the novel.

人类一只脚处在我们所熟知的领域中 另一只脚又横跨未知的新奇领域

And we’re actually biologically built to be that way.

其实我们天生如此

We don’t want to run on autopilot.

我们不想依赖自动驾驶

We don’t want to live Groundhog Day doing the same thing, saying the same thing to the same people all the time.

也不想生活在土拨鼠日 一直做着同样的事 对同样的人说着同样的话

On the other hand we don’t want doors to have new types of ways you unlock them

另一方面 我们又不想让门有新的开锁方式

and gravity is flipping upside down

不想让重力上下颠倒

and the English letters all the letters are scrambled every time you open the newspaper.

也不想打开报纸的时候 看到的是杂乱无章的字母

We need some mixture of the two.

我们需要这两者的结合

Some sweet spot between novelty and familiarity.

要在新奇和熟悉之间找到一个平衡点

And the search for that sweet spot is not something with a formula.

寻找这个平衡点并不能依靠某个公式

It’s a constant experiment.

而是要靠不断地实验

And so in our own lives we’re constantly navigating between the things that are the touchstones for us where we feel solidly grounded

所以在生活中 我们往往会在自认为有理有据的金科玉律

and the places where we’re flying free and there isn’t a net under us.

和没有条条框框限制的新奇领域之间来回周旋

We often think that the most creative people are the ones who leap straight to the right answers and inspiration right from the get go.

我们总认为最有创意的人是那些从一开始就直接找到正确答案的人

But actually when you look closely at it inspiration is usually in the proliferation of a diversity of options.

但如果你认真想一下 就会发现灵感通常存在于多种选择的扩散中

And what Picasso is to art, Beethoven is to composing in that behind his works lie an enormous reservoir of sketches that Beethoven left.

毕加索之于艺术 贝多芬之于作曲 在他们作品的背后 有的是海量的草图

And what you see when you look at those sketches is in trying out ideas after idea after idea,

从这些草图中 能看出他尝试了无数种想法

working the material, never erasing anything, constantly figuring out all sorts of options.

打磨素材 从来不会擦掉任何东西 只会努力寻找各种可能性

And then picking his favorite out of those.

然后从中选出他最满意的一种

And so one thing that I’ll tell my composition students is banish the eraser and have lots of paper.

所以我会告诉我学习作曲的学生们 抛弃橡皮 准备大量纸张

Never make it that you are treading over like treating your other ideas like sandcastles that get washed away by the sea,

不要用对待其他想法的态度来对待作曲 别把它当成会被海水冲走的沙堡

but rather preserve everything so you have the maximum array of choices from which to pull your ultimate decisions.

而要保留所有东西 让你拥有最大限度的选择 从而做出最终决定

You try to come up with as many possible solutions as you possibly can.

你要试着想出尽可能多的解决办法

And you constantly challenge yourself.

不断挑战自己

It’s not good enough to have one answer.

有一个答案还不够好

It’s not good enough to have three answers.

有三个答案也不够好

Let me come up with seven possible answers to this.

我要想出七个可能的答案

The physicist Richard Feynman said that his whole success as a Nobel prize winning physicist

物理学家理查德·费曼说他赢得诺贝尔奖的秘诀就在于

was that he trained himself constantly to come up with different ways of arriving at the right answer.

他不断地让自己想出能得到正确答案的不同方法

So if he ever hit a roadblock he knew he could just jump to another way of approaching the problem.

所以在遇到困难时 他知道还可以换种方法来解决这个问题

And that’s just a wonderful attitude to have with whatever one is trying to wrestle with creatively.

如果你想要创造性地解决某件事 拥有这种态度会大有裨益

And the second is this concept of scouting the different distances.

第二就是考察不同距离的概念

So you don’t want to just stay iterating oh, we’ll do a red building

你并不想一直重复 哦 我们要盖一座红色的楼

and then we’ll do the same building green and then we’ll do it blue.

然后把它染成绿色 再染成蓝色

That’s not really pushing the envelope very much.

那并不是真正的挑战极限

But can you do stuff that is fairly close to the familiar and

但你能否做我们相当熟悉的东西

broaden it all out into the completely whacky and everything in between.

然后把它变成极其怪异或者介于两者之间的东西

And if you set that as a creative challenge – let me come up with as many solutions as possible

如果你把那当做创新挑战——让我想出尽可能多的解决办法

and let me fill this whole spectrum from the familiar to the whacky.

然后填满从熟悉到怪异的整个范围

Then you end up with a very healthy creative attitude

那你就会拥有一种非常健康的创新态度

and you tend to be very stimulated with ideas and constantly coming up with new things.

并且会受到激励 有源源不断的奇思妙想