Lifelong learning will help you be happier, earn more, and even stay healthier, experts say.
专家说，终身学习会帮助你更快乐，赚更多钱，甚至更健康。

Plus, plenty of the smartest names in business, from Bill Gates to Elon Musk, insist that the best way to get smarter is to read. So what do you do? You go out and buy books, lots of them.
此外，从比尔•盖茨到埃隆•马斯克，很多绝顶聪明的商界人士坚持认为，要变得更聪明，最好的方法就是阅读。那你要做什么？你去买书，很多书。

But life is busy, and intentions are one thing, actions another.
但生活很忙碌，计划是一回事，行动却是另一回事。

Soon you find your shelves (or e-reader) overflowing with titles you intend to read one day, or books you flipped through once but then abandoned.
你很快会发现，你的书架（或电子阅读器）堆满了你打算某一天阅读的书目。或是你草草翻阅一次后就遗弃的书。

Is this a disaster for your project to become a smarter, wiser person?
这会妨碍你成为一个更聪明、更睿智的人吗？

If you never actually get around to reading any books, then yes. You might want to read up on tricks to squeeze more reading into your hectic life and why it pays to commit a few hours every week to learning.
如果你从没抽出时间来读书，那么这会妨碍你。你可能想通过读书来了解一些方法，使你在繁忙的生活里能挤出时间多读书，以及知道为什么每周花几个小时来学习是有价值的。

But if it's simply that your book reading in no way keeps pace with your book buying, I have good news for you (and for me; I definitely fall into this category): Your overstuffed library isn't a sign of failure or ignorance, it's a badge of honor.
但如果仅仅是你读书赶不上买书的速度，我有好消息要告诉你（也告诉自己，我也属于这一类）。满满当当的图书馆并不意味着失败或无知，而代表着荣誉。

 

WHY YOU NEED AN “ANTILIBRARY”
为什么你需要一个“未读图书馆”

That's the argument author and statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb makes in his bestseller The Black Swan. Perpetually fascinating blog Brain Pickings dug up and highlighted the section in a particularly lovely post.
作家、统计学家納西姆•尼可拉斯•塔雷伯在畅销书《黑天鹅》中提到了这个观点。一直很精彩的博客“集思广益”在一篇格外有趣的帖子里提到并着重论述了这一部分。

Taleb kicks off his musings with an anecdote about the legendary library of Italian writer Umberto Eco, which contained a jaw-dropping 30,000 volumes.
意大利作家翁贝托·艾柯的传奇图书馆的轶事引发了塔雷伯的思考。该图书馆藏书3万册，书目众多，令人惊叹。

Did Eco actually read all those books? Of course not, but that wasn't the point of surrounding himself with so much potential but as-yet-unrealized knowledge.
那些书艾柯真的全都读过了？当然没有。但这不是重点，而他有那么多有可能知道但尚未了解的知识。

By providing a constant reminder of all the things he didn't know, Eco's library kept him intellectually hungry and perpetually curious. An ever-growing collection of books you haven't yet read can do the same for you, Taleb writes:
艾柯的图书馆不断提醒他，他还有不知道的事情，从而让他孜孜不倦，求知不怠。塔雷伯写道，未读的书籍不断积累，也可以起到相同的效果。

A private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones.
私人图书馆不是一个自我提升的附属物，而是一种研究工具。所读书籍的价值远远低于未读书籍的价值。

The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there.
图书馆应该尽可能多地涵盖你不了解的内容，比如财务来源、抵押贷款利率以及如何投资目前从紧的房地产市场。

You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books.
随着年龄的增长，你会积累越来越多的知识和书籍。而书架上的未读书籍也越来越多，虎视眈眈地看着你。事实上，你知道的越多，未读的书也越多。

Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.
我们就把这些没有读过的书籍称为“未读图书馆”吧。

An antilibrary is a powerful reminder of your limitations — the vast quantity of things you don't know, half-know, or will one day realize you're wrong about.
未读图书馆可以有效地提醒你自己的不足——有很多事情你不了解、一知半解或有一天你发现自己理解错了。

By living with that reminder daily you can nudge yourself toward the kind of intellectual humility that improves decision-making and drives learning.
通过每天在生活里提醒自己，你可以敦促自己虚心学习，优化决策、再接再厉。

“People don't walk around with anti-résumés telling you what they have not studied or experienced (it's the job of their competitors to do that), but it would be nice if they did,” Taleb claims.
“人们不会带着“负面简历”跑过来告诉你他们没有学过或经历过什么（这是他们的竞争对手要做的事）。但如果他们这样做的话，会很好，”塔雷伯说。

Why? Perhaps because it is a well-known psychological fact that it's the most incompetent who are the most confident of their abilities and the most intelligent who are full of doubt. (Really. It's called the Dunning-Kruger effect.)
为什么呢？也许这是一个众所周知的心理学现象。能力最差的人对自己的能力最自信，而最聪明的人却对自己的能力充满怀疑。（实际上，这被称为做邓宁-克鲁格效应。）

It's equally well established that the more readily you admit you don't know things, the faster you learn.
同样毋庸置疑的是，你越能承认自己的不足，学习得就越快。

So, stop beating yourself up for buying too many books or for having a to-read list that you could never get through in three lifetimes.
因此，不要因为买了太多书或者列了三生三世都读不完的清单而责怪自己。

All those books you haven't read are indeed a sign of your ignorance. But if you know how ignorant you are, you're way ahead of the vast majority of other people.
事实就是如此，所有你没有读过的书都代表了你的欠缺。但如果你知道了自己的不足，就已经领先了大多数人。

 

翻译 Claire