This week I’ve invited my friend and co-worker Millie Tran of our Global team to share some of her wisdom about figuring out her answer to that question we all grapple with at some point: What am I going to do with my life?
所有人在人生的某个时刻都会遇到这个问题：我要拿这一生做什么？本周，我请到了既是我的朋友，也是我们全球业务团队的同事米莉·陈(Millie Tran)分享她在寻找答案过程中的智慧。
Take it away, Millie!
请吧，米莉！
***
To figure out what I wanted to do, I did what I know best: I read everything, found the most useful tips and frameworks and started putting a plan into action. I had been quietly sharing this presentation with all the women I know, but at the behest of a friend and colleague, I’m sharing it publicly in hopes that it’ll be useful for you — if you, too, have been thinking about what to do with your life.
为了弄清楚我的人生志向，我使用了自己看来最好的办法：大量阅读，找到最有用的建议和框架，并开始把计划付诸实践。我一直在私下和认识的所有女性朋友分享这个演讲的内容，但我现在应一个朋友和同事的要求，进行公开分享，希望它会对你有用——如果你也一直在思考人生志向问题的话。
Start by looking backward
从回顾过去开始
It may feel impossible to predict what exactly you’ll be doing next, but what you can do is connect the dots looking backward. Find the common thread. What did you do? What did you learn? What are the themes? Let that be the compass for how to make future decisions.
也许你会觉得准确预测自己接下来要做的事情是不可能的，但你可以在回顾过去的过程中把那些点连接起来。找到那条主线。你做过什么？你学到了什么？主题是什么？让它成为指引你未来决策的罗盘。
“Your career is defined by your skills and how you’ve used them, not by any external measure of your progress,” wrote Julie Zhuo, vice president for product design at Facebook, on Medium, where she often writes about leadership and design.
“你的事业是由你的技能和你如何利用它们决定的，而不是任何衡量你进步的外部标准，”Facebook负责产品设计的副总裁朱莉·卓(Julie Zhuo)在Medium上写道。她常在该平台上撰写有关领导力和设计的文章。
Titles, salaries and affiliations are fleeting, but your skills and experiences stay with you forever. Careers are long, so think long term. It’s not about what job you want next, but what life you want. Answer the immediate questions of what you’ll do next in the context of your longer and larger career — and life — goals.
职位、薪水和隶属关系转瞬即逝，但技能和经验会永远伴随着你。职业生涯是漫长的，我们也应该从长远考虑。这关乎你想过什么样的生活，而不是你接下来想从事什么工作。要在更长远、更大的职业和生活目标的背景下，回答接下来做什么的紧迫问题。
Define what ‘meaningful’ means to you
定义“有意义”对你而言意味着什么
One framework I’ve found useful is thinking about it in four categories: legacy, mastery, freedom and alignment.
我觉得有用的一个框架是从四个方面考虑这个问题的：影响、精通程度、自由和认同感。
Legacy and mastery are about the body of work and what you want to achieve and the skills you want to cultivate and strengthen. Freedom is about the conditions you need to have the lifestyle you want, like salary, benefits, flexibility. Finally, alignment is about belonging, in terms of the culture and values of whatever organization you may be working with. You can read more about each here.
影响和精通程度涉及工作的主要内容，以及你想实现的成就和希望培养与加强的技能。自由涉及你为了拥有想要的生活方式而需要具备的条件，比如薪水、福利、灵活性。最后，认同感涉及在你所任职的不管什么组织的文化和价值观上的归属感。点击此处了解每一个方面涉及的更多内容。
Do these three things right now
现在就开始做下面三件事：
1. Form a “personal board of directors” by picking four or five people you trust to help you test hypotheses and make decisions. This can be informal. The main point is to not go it alone.
1. 挑选四五个你信任的人，组成一个“个人董事会”来帮你验证假设和做决定。这可以是非正式的。重点在于不要独自行动。
2. Begin building a financial cushion by saving where you can and making a budget if you don’t have one. “Having a financial buffer will make it more likely that when you find something meaningful, you’ll be able to act on it,” wrote Amy Gallo in the Harvard Business Review. Here are a few simple tips for saving a few extra bucks.
2. 开始构建经济缓冲能力，方式是尽量节省并制定预算——如果你没有的话。 “具备经济缓冲能力会增加你在发现有意义的事情时有能力采取行动的可能性，”埃米·加洛(Amy Gallo) 在《哈佛商业评论》(Harvard Business Review)中写道。这里列出了几条简单的省钱建议。
3. Take time to reflect. Schedule it in your calendar and give yourself the space to think. You’ll make progress even if it’s just a few hours every other week.
3. 花时间思考。把思考放进你的日程安排中，并给自己留出思考的空间。即便只是每隔一周深思几个小时，你也会有进步。
Find a sponsor, not just a mentor
找到倡导人，不仅仅是导师
High-potential women are overmentored and undersponsored. Sponsoring is a much more specific function of mentoring and connects mentoring to advancement and getting the promotion. An important distinction is that a sponsor has to be highly placed, so she’s able to pull someone up. You can read more about what sponsorship looks like here.
潜力巨大的女性受到的指导过多，得到的倡导与支持却不足。倡导是一项明确得多的指导职责，会把指导与发展和得到晋升连接起来。一个重要的区别是，倡导者必须身居高位，这样她才有能力提拔他人。点击此处阅读有关倡导活动的更多内容。
Collect experiences and be generous
积累经验，心胸宽广
If you take one thing away from this, I hope it’s that your career and life are long, but not linear. You may have one or many callings, and there will be multiple pathways. Explore them all or not. It could be one or some combination of all of them. As a good friend and mentor told me: collect experiences and be generous.
如果各位能从这次活动中有所收获，我希望这种收获是，我们的事业和生活都很漫长，但并不是线性的。你也许有一项或多项使命，会面临多条道路。试个遍或只尝试其中一部分都是可以的。它可能是其中的一条道路，也可能是所有道路的组合。正如一位好朋友兼导师告诉我的那样：积累经验，心胸宽广。
作者：Tim Herrera
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