At dinner the other night with 50 partners in a corporate law firm, I looked around the room and noticed something alarming. I was one of the oldest people in it.

有一天，我和一家从事公司法事务的律师事务所的50位合伙人共进晚餐。环顾四周，我发现了一件令人惊恐的事情——我在里面属于年纪最大的一拨。

Where were all the lawyers in their late fifties and early sixties? I put the question to the man sitting next to me, who said they had mostly been eased out. The trouble with the law, he explained, is that it takes its toll on you, and if you’ve been at it for 30 years it is almost impossible to hold on to any sense of urgency. By the time you reach your mid-fifties, it is usually time to start thinking about going.

那些六十岁上下的律师们都去哪儿了？我问坐在我旁边的人，他说这些人大多都离开了。他解释道，法律行业的问题就在于它会给人带来负面影响。如果你已经在这个行业里干了30年，那你基本上无法再保持任何紧迫感了。等你到了55岁左右，通常就会考虑离开了。

There was only one exception to this rule, he went on, and that was lawyers in their fifties who had recently been divorced and were starting again with mortgages and young children. They had all the experience of their years — and all the drive of someone 30 years younger. They were propelled by the need to make a vast amount of money but, instead of having a lifetime in which to do it, they had a mere decade. The combination of extreme wisdom and extreme hunger made them unbeatable.

但是这种规律只有一种例外，他接着说，也就是那些刚离婚不久，背着抵押贷款、带着年幼子女重新开始的五十多岁的律师。他们不仅有着多年来积累的经验，还跟比他们年轻30岁的律师一样干劲十足。他们被挣大钱的需求驱使着。可是，不像那些年轻的律师有一辈子的时间来挣钱，他们只有10年。极度的智慧与极度的渴求相结合，这让他们不可战胜。

I don’t think the man realised quite how well this divorce-is-great-for-your-career argument was going down with me. In the past six months I have a) separated from my husband, b) bought a wildly expensive house, and c) been feeling more than usually keen at work.

我觉得那个人一定没有想到，这番“离婚有助事业”的论断如何深得我心。过去的6个月里，我1）和丈夫分居了，2）买了一套贵得离谱的房子，3）感觉工作热情不同寻常地高涨。

Until that minute it hadn’t occurred to me that the three things were connected, but then I saw what was perfectly obvious: a) and b) have caused c).

我之前一直没想到这三件事是联系在一起的，但那一刻我发现这再明显不过了：正是前两点导致了第三点。

Everyone will tell you that divorce is ruinous to a career. It makes you so unhinged that you can’t think straight. A couple of years ago the hedge fund boss Paul Tudor Jones told a conference that as soon as he hears that any of his managers is going through a divorce he stops them trading. The emotional turmoil renders them too unpredictable to be trusted with anyone else’s money.

每个人都会告诉你，离婚会对事业造成毁灭性打击。离婚会让人心智失常，以至于无法正常思考。几年前，对冲基金老板保罗图德琼斯(Paul Tudor Jones)在一次会议上说，只要他听说公司任何一个经理正经历离婚，他就会让他们暂停交易工作。情感的波动让他们的言行难以预料，因此无法放心让他们管理别人的资金。

That may be so. But then again, it may not be. People, marriages and divorces come in many varieties, yet all divorces have one thing in common — they make you poor. Or at least they make you poorer than you were before. To comfortable, middle-aged professionals, feeling a little short of funds can be an unwelcome shock, and the effect of it can, in the right circumstances, be agreeably galvanising.

可能是这样，但也可能不是。人、婚姻和离婚多种多样，但是所有的离婚都有一个共同点——让你变穷。或者至少让你变得比以前穷。对于过着舒适生活的中年专业人士来说，觉得手头稍微紧点就可能带来非常难受的冲击。在合适的条件下，这种难受会变为一种有益的激励。

For me, it has meant that any thought of sloping gently towards retirement is out of the window. And because there is to be no such sloping, I can no longer allow myself the luxury of mild disillusionment. Instead, I am applying myself to the job, and, to my amazement and delight, find that instead of feeling trapped or sorry for myself, I’m rather enjoying it. The work itself has not changed a bit, but I am doing it with more conviction.

对我而言，这意味着混日子等退休的想法都不在考虑之列了。因为不会再有混日子的事情，我也就不能再允许自己沉浸于轻微的幻灭之中。相反，我投入到工作之中。让我感到惊讶和喜悦的是，我非但没有觉得自己受缚于工作或很可怜，反而觉得很享受。工作本身一点也没有变，但是我工作的时候更深信不疑了。

This may not alter the quality of the finished product, but it does affect how it feels to be making it. Every time I am offered an additional piece of paid work, I no longer think: I’m not sure I can be bothered; I think: let me at it.

这可能不会改变工作成果的质量，但的确改变了工作时的感觉。每当我被指派一份额外的有偿工作时，我不会再想：我不确定自己愿不愿意费那个麻烦；而是会想：让我来做吧。

I am not saying that everyone in their sixth decade should ditch their spouse to give their flagging careers a bit more oomph. Neither am I suggesting that everyone who gets divorced can look forward to this kind of professional dividend. Some people are so poleaxed by the misery of it all that they can hardly crawl into the office, let alone feel relatively gung-ho once they get there.

我的意思不是说，每个人都该在六十多的时候抛弃他们的配偶，来给他们日渐衰微的事业注入一点热情。我也不是说每个离婚的人都有望在职业上获得这样的意外好处。有些人被这些痛苦彻底击垮，几乎连勉强去办公室上班都做不到，更不用提感到工作劲头更足了。

Instead, what this proves is that the link between boredom, money and motivation is not what I thought it was. I used to think it was obvious why people in their fifties felt stale— it was because 30 years was simply too long to be doing the same thing.

相反，这正证明了无聊、金钱和动力这三者之间的联系不是我之前所想的那样。我过去一直认为五十多岁的人感到厌倦的原因很明显——30年做同一件事实在太长了。

I now discover it is more complicated than that. People in professional jobs work for three reasons: money, status and the interest of the work itself. The main reason those in their fifties become sluggish is not that their minds are going, nor that the work itself has become too monotonous. It is that neither money nor status move them as they used to and the interest of the job is not enough to keep them going on its own.

可现在我发现，事实比这更复杂。专业人士为了三个原因工作：金钱、地位和对工作本身的兴趣。他们在五十多岁变得懈怠的主要原因，既不是因为他们的脑力在减退，也不是因为工作本身变得太单调乏味，而是不管金钱还是地位都不能像从前那样驱使他们了，而只靠对工作的兴趣并不足以支撑他们继续保持对工作的热情。

You would have to be a most peculiar person to be prepared to stay up all night doing the legal slog on an M&A deal for the sheer fun of it. And even though journalism is arguably more enjoyable than corporate law, it is not so fabulously entertaining that I would consider doing it if I didn’t have to.

如果一个人仅仅是为了其中的乐趣而彻夜工作，处理一桩并购案相关的法务工作，那这个人一定怪到家了。虽然可以说记者工作比公司法工作更有意思，但是也没有有趣到哪怕没有必须做的原因，我也会考虑做着玩。

Almost all the scientific studies will tell you that money doesn’t motivate. Yet when you have just parted company with your nest egg and lost some of the financial security you thought you had, every pay cheque becomes a minor cause of celebration — and the same old, same old work suddenly seems as fresh and full of possibility as it ever did.

几乎所有的科学研究都告诉你，金钱不是动力。然而，当你刚刚失去了一笔储蓄，失去了一些你本以为享有的经济保障时，每一笔收入都能成为小小庆祝一下的理由——同样一成不变的工作突然就会像曾经那样，变得充满新鲜感和各种可能性。