WE SHOULD ALL SEEK PERFECTION ALL THE TIME

⊙ By Jon Bowers

翻譯：旭文

不知從什么時候開始，打著“以人為本”的旗號，“我盡力了”“我們都盡力了”代替了對完美的追求，道理很簡單：“人生無法完美，盡力就好”?？墒悄阆脒^嗎？如果《新華字典》的編輯們是這種態度，那你就可能渾然不知地在寫錯別字；如果建筑師和開發商是這種態度，那你就可能天天與“樓脆脆”親密接觸；如果飛機制造商是這種態度……如果銀行是這種態度……如果……你懂的。

聽力難度美式發音 適合泛聽語速：165詞/分鐘

On February 28, an engineer at Amazon made a1)seemingly small key error. Only I say “seemingly small” because this one little2)typo in Amazon’s3)supercode produced a4)massive Internet slowdown that cost the company over $160 million in the5)span of just four hours.

This is actually really scary.

Recently, an employee at the New England Compound, which is a6)pharmaceuticalmanufacturer, didn’t clean a lab properly and now 76 people have died and 700 more7)contracted 8)meningitis.

I mean, these examples are crazy, right? When did we come to live in a world where these type [sic] of typos, common errors,this do-your-best attitude or just good enough was acceptable? At some point, we’ve stopped valuing perfection, and now, these are the type of results that we get. You see, I think that we should all seek perfection, all the time, and I think we need to get to it quick.

You see, I run a training9)facilitywhere I’m responsible for the education of professional delivery drivers, and in my line of work, we have a unique understanding of the cost of failure, the cost of just 99%, because in the world of professional driving, just 99% on the job means somebody dies. Look, a hundred people die every day due to10)vehicular crashes. Think about that for a second. That’s like the11)equivalentof four commercial12)airlinerscrashing every week, yet we still can’t convince ourselves to pay perfect attention behind the wheel. So I teach my drivers to value perfection. It’s why I do uniform inspections daily.13)Undershirtsare white or brown only, shoes are black or brown polished leather. And frankly, don’t come to my class wrinkled and expect me to let you stay. It’s why I14)insistthat my drivers are on time. Don’t be late, not to class, not to15)break,not to lunch. When you’re supposed to be somewhere, be there.

Now, new students often ask me why my class is so difficult,strict, or uniform, and the answer is simple. You see, perfectionism is an attitude developed in the small things and then applied to the larger job. So basically, if you can’t get the little things right, you’re gonna fail when it counts, and when you’re driving a car, it counts.

And you know what? I’m tired of everybody else accepting 99% as good enough. I mean, being less than perfect has real consequences, doesn’t it? Think about it. If the makers of our16)credit cardswere only 99.9% effective, there would be over a million cards in circulation today that had the wrong information on the17)magnetic stripon the back. Or, if the Webster’s Dictionary was only 99.9% accurate, it would have 470 misspelled words in it. How about this? If our doctors were only 99.9% correct, then every year, 4,453,00018)prescriptionswould be written incorrectly, and probably even scarier, 11 newborns would be given to the wrong parents every day in the United States.

And those are just the19)odds.

So it comes down to this: trying our best is not good enough.

So how do we change? We seek perfection and20)settle fornothing less.

1) seemingly [?si?m??l?] adv. 表面上，好像

2) typo [?ta?p??] n. 打字錯誤

3) supercode [?sju?p?k??d] n. [計]超碼

4) massive [?m?s?v] adj. 大規模的

5) span [sp?n] n. 時距

6) pharmaceutical [?fɑ?m??sju?t?k（?）l] adj. 制藥的

7) contract [k?n?tr?kt] v. 得（?。?/p>

8) meningitis [men?n?d?a?t?s] n. 腦膜炎

9) facility [f??s?l?t?] n. 機構

10) vehicular [v??h?kj?l?（r）] adj. 車輛的

11) equivalent [??kw?v?l?nt] n. 相等物，等價物

12) airliner [?e?la?n?（r）] n. 大型客機，班機

13) undershirt [??nd??з?t] n. 汗衫

14) insist [?n?s?st] v. 堅持

15) break [bre?k] n. 休息時間

16) credit card 信用卡

17) magnetic strip 磁條

18) prescription [pr??skr?p?（?）n] n. 處方

19) odds [?dz] n. 可能性，機率

20) settle for 滿足于

If we continue to21)cultivatethis culture, where nobody fails or nobody is told that they will fail, then nobody’s going to reach their potential, either.

So I have an idea. Why don’t we try defining perfectionism as a willingness to do what is difficult to achieve what is right? Then we can agree that failure is a good thing in our22)quest for perfection, and when we seek perfection without fear of failure, just think about what we can accomplish.

Like NBA superstar Steph Curry: he hit 77 three-point shots in a row. Think about that. The guy was able to accurately deliver a nineand-a-half inch ball through an 18-inch23)rimthat’s24)suspended10 feet in the air from nearly 24 feet away almost 80 times without failure. Or like the computer programmers at the25)aerospacegiant Lockheed Martin, who have now written a program that uses 420,000 lines of near-26)flawlesscode to control every aspect of27)ignitingfour million pounds of rocket fuel and putting a 120-ton spaceship into orbit. See, that’s what happens when we seek perfection.

So maybe we should be more like the professional athlete, or we should be more like that tireless programmer. Then we could stop fearing failure and we could stop living in a world filled with the consequences of good enough.

Thank you.

見招拆招

辨析：result與consequence

從字面上看，這兩個詞在作名詞時的意思相同，都是“結果，后果”的意思，as a result和as a consequence都是常見詞組，如：I missed the bus and was late to work as a result/as a consequence. 但實際上，它們是有區別的。Result指某種行為、某個過程產生的結果，比consequence更常用，所指范圍更廣，其本身沒有褒貶之分；但consequence強調前因后果，且多為貶義，指不好的結果，因而含有consequence的詞組也同樣指向負面結果，如face the consequence、take the consequence等。在使用的時候，如果不確定褒貶義，用result會更為保險。

21) cultivate [?k?lt?ve?t] v. 培養

22) quest [kwest] n. 尋求，追求

23) rim [r?m] n. 圈，框架

24) suspended [s??spend?d] adj. 懸掛的

25) aerospace [?e?r??spe?s] n. 航天的，太空的

26) flawless [?fl??l?s] adj. 無瑕疵的，完美無缺的

27) ignite [?ɡ?na?t] v. 點火，點燃

參考譯文

今年（2017年）2月28日，亞馬遜網站的一名工程師犯了一個看似不起眼的鍵入錯誤。我之所以說“看似不起眼”是因為亞馬遜網站超碼中這個小小的輸入錯誤導致互聯網大規模癱瘓，僅僅四小時就給公司造成了超過1.6億美元（約10.08億元）的損失。

這種事兒很嚇人。

最近，制藥公司新英格蘭化合物中心里的一名員工沒有認真清潔實驗室，導致76人死亡，七百多人染上了腦膜炎。

我想說，這些例子簡直讓人匪夷所思，對吧？究竟是從什么時候起，我們開始容忍類似的輸入錯誤、常見錯誤，容忍那種盡力就可以，或者差不多就行的態度？從某個時候開始，我們不再珍視完美結果，于是，這就是我們得到的結果。你們瞧，我認為我們所有人都應該時刻追求完美，而且，我覺得我們應該迅速行動起來。

你們知道，我經營著一家培訓機構，負責培訓職業貨運司機。在我的工作中，我們對失敗的代價有著非同尋常的理解——所謂失敗，就是99%達到要求，因為在職業駕駛這個行當里，99%就意味著有人會失去生命。你們瞧，每天都有上百人死于汽車相撞事故。想一想，這就相當于每周都有四架商業客機墜毀。可即便如此，我們還是無法說服自己在開車時全神貫注。因此，我會教我的司機學員學會珍視完美的價值。所以我會每天進行衣著檢查——汗衫只能是白色或棕色，鞋必須是黑色或棕色的拋光皮鞋。說實話，如果你穿著起皺的衣服來上課，別指望我會讓你留下來。追求完美也是我要求司機學員準時的原因。他們不能遲到，上課遲到不行，休息遲到不行，午餐遲到也不行。你如果應該在某個時候出現在某個地方，就必須做到。

嗯，新學員常常會問我：為什么我的課這么難、這么嚴格，如此整齊劃一。答案很簡單。你瞧，完美主義是在小事中養成，然后應用于大事的一種態度。所以基本來說，如果你不能把小事做好，那么到了緊要關頭，你就無法成事。而如果你開車的話，這種態度就很重要。

知道嗎？我受夠了人們都認為99%是可以接受的這種態度。我想說的是，不夠完美會帶來嚴重的后果，對不對？仔細想一想，如果我們的信用卡制造商只有99.9%的準確率，那眼下就會有超過一百萬張磁條帶有錯誤信息的信用卡在流通。或者說，如果《韋斯特辭典》只有99.9%的準確率，那辭典里就會有470個拼寫錯的單詞。再來看看這個，如果我們的醫生只有99.9%的準確率，那每年就會有445.3萬張錯誤的處方；更嚇人的是，在美國，每天會有11名新生嬰兒的父母抱錯孩子。

而這只不過是一些例子罷了。

這一切都可以歸結為這樣一個問題：僅僅是盡力是不夠的。

那我們該如何改變呢？我們要追求完美，絕不退而求其次。

如果我們繼續鼓勵這種文化——不讓人失敗，或者說從來不對人說他們會失敗，那么人的潛能就無法得到充分的發揮。

因此我有一個想法，我們為什么不把完美定義為一種意愿，一種克服困難、做正確的事的意愿呢？這樣我們就能達成一致：失敗是我們在追求完美過程中的一件好事，于是我們在追求完美的時候就不會懼怕失敗，而是一心只想著我們要達到的目標。

比如說美國職業籃球聯賽的超級明星斯蒂芬·庫里吧，他連續投中77個三分球。大伙兒想想吧，這家伙可以在差不多24英尺（約7.3米）以外往一個離地10英尺（約3米）、直徑僅為18英寸（約45.7厘米）的圈里準確地投入一個直徑為9.5英寸（約24厘米）的球，連投將近80次，無一失敗。又比如說航天巨頭洛克希德·馬丁公司里的電腦程序員吧。迄今為止，他們已經寫下了42萬行幾乎無差錯的代碼，用以控制為400萬磅重（約181萬公斤）的火箭點火，把120噸重的太空船送上軌道這個過程的每一個步驟。瞧，我們一旦追求完美，這就是我們得到的結果。

這么看來，我們或許更應該像職業運動員那般行事，又或者像不知疲倦的程序員那樣工作，那樣，我們就不會再懼怕失敗，就不會繼續面對“盡力了”帶來的后果。

謝謝大家。