译文
“我不再试图让生活完美，而是试图让它有趣。”
感谢 Reed 主席，恭喜所有 2013 级的同学。
很高兴回到 MIT，也很荣幸今天能和你们在一起。我仍然带着我的 Brass Rat，在毕业那天转动这个戒指仍然是我生命中最自豪的时刻之一。
有很多原因使这一天很特别，但我为你们的兴奋的原因是，这是你们人生中再也不需要勾选框框的第一天。
在你们的头 20 年，生命里的成功意味着从一环跳到另一环：得到测验成绩、进入这所学校，上课、获得这个学位。进入一个好的机构，以便进入下一个好的机构。所有这一切都在今天结束了。
规划人生里最难的事是不知道要去哪里，却希望尽快到达那里。也许你会创办一家公司、治愈癌症或写伟大的美国小说。但谁知道呢？这些事可能会错得离谱。我也不知道。
今天在这里穿着长袍演讲并不是我七年前计划中的一部分。事实上，我从没有一个伟大的计划——而我现在意识到，毕业后几乎没有可能有这样一个计划。
我想了很多次，你们今天开始的生活到底有什么不同。我想过如果重来我会做什么。你们知道的基本上就是变得聪明和努力工作。但没有人告诉你，今天之后，成功的的秘诀改变了。所以我想给你们一张小抄，我在自己毕业的时候想要的那一张。
我的小抄上没有很多内容。只有一个网球、一个圆圈和数字 30000。忍一下，我知道现在它们还没有任何意义。
我 21 岁时在一家 Chili's 饭店里创办了第一家公司。我和联合创始人 Andrew Crick 都是第一次。我们不知道是否需要穿着西装去市政厅，或是制作公司印章来加盖重要的文件。后来我们发现只需要到网上填写一个表格，大约两分钟就可以了。这有一点虎头蛇尾，但我们已经开始做生意了。吃着洋葱圈，我们决定公司将为 SAT 制作一种全新的网课。那时候大多数孩子仍然使用老式的 800 页课本，而其它网课一点都不好。我们给它起名为 Accolade，一个 SAT 词汇，表示赞扬荣誉。实际上，我们称之为 “Accolade 集团有限责任公司”，这样听起来更令人印象深刻。
我在回家的路上停在了斯台普斯，储备了一些卡片。很明显，做生意最重要的步骤是 PS 一个标志，然后打印一些名片，上面印着“创始人”。做生意的下一个步骤是在会议上把它们发出去，然后告诉女孩们“是的，我有一个公司。”这太酷了。
但最好的部分是学习各种新东西。我每个暑假都住在兄弟会的房子里，五楼有一个楼梯通到楼顶。我拖了一个绿色尼龙折叠椅过去，还抱了许多从亚马逊购买的书过去，我把每个周末的时间都花在阅读市场、销售、管理等我完全不了解的地方。我并没有打算在 Phi Delta Theta 的屋顶上拿到 MBA，但就是这么发生了。
两年后，事情开始走下坡路了。我觉得要获得进展越来越难了，有时候我会情绪失控，无法解开关系平行线的数学题，或者无法赶上 3:45 离开孟菲斯的列车。我想有些事情出现了问题。我因为没有生产力而感到内疚。创办一家公司一直是我的梦想，也许，我没有这个能力。
所以我休息了一小段时间。当然，如果你在 6 班，“休息”有时候表示写一个扑克牌机器人。对于那些不知道什么是扑克机器人的同学，就是你在网上玩扑克游戏，坐着点了几小时的按钮，然后输掉所有钱。而一个扑克牌机器人则表示可以让电脑为你输掉所有钱。
但这是一个引人入胜的挑战。我被它支配了。哪怕是洗澡的时候我也会思考它。午夜的时候也会思考。就像是打开了一个开关——我突然变成了一台机器。
进行到中间的时候，父母希望我们所有的人去新罕布什尔州过一次家庭周末。但我真的想继续做我的扑克牌机器人。所以我打开我的雅阁后备箱，然后把电脑和电线全部拖到了我们的小屋里。餐厅桌子不够大，所以我把所有的锅和盘子都移走了，为我的显示器腾出空间。这次是我妈觉得我出现了问题。她确信我马上就要进监狱了。
我当时说是为喜爱的事物工作，但事实上并不是这样。很容易说服自己正在做的事是喜爱的——谁想承认并不是呢？当我想到这一点时，我知道的那些最快乐和最成功的人不仅仅爱他们做的事，他们痴迷于解决一个重要的问题，对他们来说重要的事情。他们让我想起狗追棒球：它们的眼睛看起来有点疯狂，绳子松开它们飞奔出去，撞走路上的任何东西。我有一些其他朋友也很努力工作、获得了丰厚的报酬，但他们抱怨像被铐在了办公桌上。
问题是很多人没有立即找到他们的网球。不要误会我的意思——我喜欢和下一个人一样的良好标准化测试，但成为 SAT 家庭作业届的国王并不是我想要的。让我感到害怕的是，扑克牌机器人和 Dropbox 一开始都是让我分心的事情。我脑海中那小小的声音告诉我应该去哪里，但我一直在让它闭嘴，这样我才能回去工作。但有时小声音才是最好的。
我花了一段时间才知道，工作最努力的人并不辛苦，因为他们顺练有素。他们努力工作，因为解决一个激动人心的问题相当有趣。所以今天之后，不要再强迫自己；而要找到自己的网球，那件拉动你的事。可能需要花点时间，但继续听从内心中那微小的声音，知道你找到它。
让我们回到我毕业的那个夏天，你即将到来的夏天。我兄弟会的一个哥们，Adam Smith，以及他的朋友 Matt Brezina 即将创办一家公司，我们决定一起在一个公寓工作，这样会很有意思。
这是一个完美的夏天——几乎完美。空调坏了，所以我们都穿着内裤编码。Adam 和 Matt 全天候工作，但随着时间推移，他们不断被潜在的投资人拉走，投资人会分享自己的秘密、带他们坐直升机。我有点嫉妒——我已经为我的公司工作了两年，Adam 只工作了几个月。我的直升机在哪儿坐？
事情只会变得更糟。八月要到了，Adam 告诉我一个坏消息：他们要搬出去了。不仅是太热了，还有他们要去硅谷了，他们做出真正的行动了，而我却没有。
每次我给 Adam 打电话都会听到事情在如何进展。总是相当好。“我们今天下午见到了 Vinod，”他会这么跟我说。Vinod Khosla 是 Sun Microsystems 的联合创始人、亿万富翁投资人。然后 Adam 丢出了一枚炸弹，“他即将给我们五百万美元。”
我为他感到兴奋，但这对我来说是一个震惊。他是我忠实的乒乓球啤酒游戏伙伴，也是我兄弟会里的弟弟，比我小两岁。我不能再有借口了。他马上要参加超级碗了，而我甚至没有在选秀中被选上。Adam 当时并不知道，他踢了我一下，我正需要这一下。是时候改变了。
大家经常说你是与你常在一起的 5 个人的平均值。花一分钟想一下：你的圈子是哪五个人？我有一个好消息，MIT 是世界上建立这个圈子最好的地方之一。如果我没有来这里，我不会遇到 Adam，我也不会遇到我神奇的联合创始人，Arash，也就不会有 Dropbox。
现在我学习到了，让自己被鼓舞人心的人包围，和有天赋或努力工作同等重要。你能想象迈克尔·乔丹没有进入 NBA，他身边的 5 个人是一群意大利人吗？你的圈子推动你变得更好，就是 Adam 推动我一样。
现在你的圈子将会增长，会包括你的同事和周围的每个人。你住的地方会有影响：只有一个 MIT，只有一个好莱坞，只有一个硅谷。这不是巧合：无论你在从事什么，顶尖的人才通常只去一个地方。你应该去那里。不要在其它任何地方定居。结识我认为的英雄然后向他们学习，给了我巨大的优势。你认为的英雄也是你圈子的一部分——跟随他们。如果真正的行动发生在其它的地方，那就去。
毕业后你会踩进的最后一个坑是“准备好了。”不要误会我的意思：学习是你的首要任务，但现在最快的学习方式就是去做。如果你有一个梦想，你可以用一辈子的时间来学习和规划，来为之做好准备。你现在应该做的就是开始。
老实说，我从没有觉得自己“准备好了。”，直到我们的第一个投资人说了好，然后问我们钱送到哪里。对于 24 岁的人来说，这就是圣诞节——打开礼物就是在 bankofamerica.com 上一遍又一遍刷新，看着你的公司账户从 60 美元到 120 万美元。刚开始我欣喜若狂——这个数字里居然有两个逗号！我截了张图——然后我突然有点反胃。有一天这些人会把钱要回去。我自己到底他妈的得到了什么？
你们已经知道这种感觉：在 MIT 我们称它为”用消防栓喝水。“它就像听起来的那么好玩，我们都有内出血来证明它。但我们也学到了，这是对你有好处的。今天，一个阀门关上了。你需要出去找到另一个消防栓。
Dropbox 是我的。正像你们猜想的，建设这家公司是我生命中最令人兴奋、有趣和充实的经历。但我没有真的说出来的是，它也是最屈辱、沮丧和痛苦的经历，我甚至数不出出错的事情的数量。
幸运的是，这并没有关系。没有人在现实生活中得到 5.0。事实上，毕业之后，GPA 的真个概念就消失了。当你在学校时，每个小小的错误都会成为你那面挡风玻璃的永久裂缝。但在现实世界中，如果你不是每次都转身去撞墙，就不会走的那么快。你最大的风险不是失败，而是变得太舒服。
比尔·盖茨的第一家公司制作交通灯软件。史蒂夫·乔布斯的第一家公司做塑料口哨，可以让你拨打免费电话。两个都失败了，但很难想象他们曾对此很失落。这是今天的改变中我最喜欢的事情。你不再携带表示你所有错误数量的数字。从现在开始，失败都没有关系：你只需要成功一次。
我以前担心各种各样的事情，但我可以记得我平静下来的那一刻。我刚刚搬到旧金山，一天晚上我睡不着，所以我打开了我的笔记本电脑。我在网上读到“你的人生有 30000 天。”起初我没有想太多，但我突然想在计算器上打出来。我输入 24 乘以 365，然后——我的天，我已经过去了几乎 9000 天。我他妈一直在做什么？
（顺便说一句：你们过去了 8000 天。）
所以这就是 30000 为什么出现在小抄上。那天晚上，我意识到没有热身、没有练习的回合、没有重置按钮。每天我们都在为我们的故事写下几个新的句子。当你死的时候，不会像“这儿躺了 Drew，他是第 174 个来的。”所以从那时起，我不再试图让生活完美，而是试图让它有趣。我希望我的故事会是一个冒险——这就形成了所有的区别。
我外婆今天在这里，下周我们会庆祝她的 95 岁生日。我搬到加州后我们更多通过电话交流。但有一件事一直让我困惑，她总是用一个单词来结束我们的电话：“Excelsior”，意思是“一直向上。”
今天在你们的毕业典礼上，你们现实生活的第一天，这是我为你们许的愿望。不要试图让生活完美，给自己自由让它成为一次冒险，并且永远向上。谢谢。
原文
Below is the prepared text of the Commencement address by Drew Houston '05, the CEO of Dropbox, for MIT's 147th Commencement held June 7, 2013.
Thank you Chairman Reed, and congratulations to all of you in the class of 2013.
I'm so happy to be back at MIT, and it's an honor to be here with you today. I still wear my Brass Rat, and turning this ring around on graduation day is still one of the proudest moments of my life.
There are a lot of reasons why this is a special day, but the reason I'm so excited for all of you is that today is the first day of your life where you no longer need to check boxes.
For your first couple decades, success in life has meant jumping through one hoop after another: get these test scores, get into this college. Take these classes, get this degree. Get into this prestigious institution so you can get into the next prestigious institution. All of that ends today.
The hard thing about planning your life is you have no idea where you're going, but you want to get there as soon as possible. Maybe you'll start a company, or cure cancer, or write the great American novel. Or who knows? Maybe things will go horribly wrong. I had no idea.
Being up here in robes and speaking to all of you today wasn't exactly part of my plan seven years ago. In fact, I've never really had a grand plan — and what I realize now is that it's probably impossible to have one after graduation, if ever.
I've thought a lot about what's different about the life you're beginning today. I've thought about what I would do if I had to start all over again. What got you here was basically being smart and working hard. But nobody tells you that after today, the recipe for success changes. So what I want to do is give you a little cheat sheet, the one I would have loved to have had on my graduation day.
If you were to look at my cheat sheet, there wouldn't be a lot on it. There would be a tennis ball, a circle, and the number 30,000. I know this doesn't make any sense right now, but bear with me.
I started my first company in a Chili's when I was 21. My cofounder, Andrew Crick, and I had never done this before. We were wondering if you needed to wear a suit to City Hall, or if you needed to make a company seal for stamping important documents. It turns out you can just go online and fill out a form and be done in about two minutes. It was a little anti-climactic, but we were in business. Over onion strings we decided that our company was going to make a new kind of online course for the SAT. Most kids back then were still using these old-school 800-page books, and the other online prep courses weren't very good. We called it Accolade, an SAT vocab word meaning an award of distinction. Well, actually, we called it "The Accolade Group, LLC" which we thought sounded a lot more impressive.
I stopped at Staples on the way home to pick up some card stock. Clearly, the most important order of business was to Photoshop a logo and print out some business cards that said "Founder" on them. The next order of business was to hand them out at conferences, and tell girls "why yes, I do have a company." It was awesome.
But the best part was learning all kinds of new things. I lived in my fraternity house every summer, and up on the fifth floor there's a ladder that goes up to the roof. I had this green nylon folding chair that I'd drag up there along with armfuls of business books I bought off Amazon and I'd spend every weekend reading about marketing, sales, management and all these other things I knew nothing about. I wasn't planning to get my MBA on the roof of Phi Delta Theta, but that's what happened.
A couple years later, things started going downhill. I felt like I had to paddle harder and harder to make progress, and at some point I just snapped and couldn't deal with any more math questions about parallel lines or the train leaving Memphis at 3:45. I figured something was wrong with me. I felt guilty for being so unproductive. Starting a company had been my dream, and, well, maybe I didn't have what it takes after all.
So I took a little break. Of course, if you're in course 6, sometimes "taking a break" means writing a poker bot. For those of you who don't know what a poker bot is, what happens when you play poker online is first, you sit for hours and click buttons, and then you lose all your money. A poker bot means you can have your computer lose all your money for you.
But it was a fascinating challenge. I was possessed. I would think about it in the shower. I would think about it in the middle of the night. It was like a switch went on — suddenly I was a machine.
In the middle of all this, my mom and dad wanted all of us to come up to New Hampshire to spend a family weekend together. But I really wanted to keep working on my poker bot. So I pull up in my Accord and open the trunk, and next I'm dragging all my computer stuff and all these wires into our little cottage. The dining room table wasn't big enough so I started moving all the pots and pans off the stove to make room for all my monitors. This time it was my mom who thought something was wrong with me. She was convinced I was going to jail.
I was going to say work on what you love, but that's not really it. It's so easy to convince yourself that you love what you're doing — who wants to admit that they don't? When I think about it, the happiest and most successful people I know don't just love what they do, they're obsessed with solving an important problem, something that matters to them. They remind me of a dog chasing a tennis ball: their eyes go a little crazy, the leash snaps and they go bounding off, plowing through whatever gets in the way. I have some other friends who also work hard and get paid well in their jobs, but they complain as if they were shackled to a desk.
The problem is a lot of people don’t find their tennis ball right away. Don't get me wrong — I love a good standardized test as much as the next guy, but being king of SAT prep wasn’t going to be mine. What scares me is that both the poker bot and Dropbox started out as distractions. That little voice in my head was telling me where to go, and the whole time I was telling it to shut up so I could get back to work. Sometimes that little voice knows best.
It took me a while to get it, but the hardest-working people don't work hard because they're disciplined. They work hard because working on an exciting problem is fun. So after today, it's not about pushing yourself; it's about finding your tennis ball, the thing that pulls you. It might take a while, but until you find it, keep listening for that little voice.
Let's go back to the summer after my graduation, the summer you're about to have. One of my fraternity brothers, Adam Smith, and his friend Matt Brezina were starting a company and we decided it would be fun for all of us to work together out of one apartment.
It was the perfect summer — well, almost perfect. The air conditioner was broken so we were all coding in our boxers. Adam and Matt were working around the clock, but as time went on they kept getting pulled away by potential investors who would share their secrets and take them on helicopter rides. I was a little jealous — I had been working on my company for a couple years and Adam had only been at it for a couple months. Where were my helicopter rides?
Things only got worse. August rolled around and Adam gave me the bad news: they were moving out. Not only was my supply of Hot Pockets cut off, but they were off to Silicon Valley, where the real action was happening, and I wasn't.
Every now and then I'd give Adam a call and hear how things were going. Things were always pretty good. "We met with Vinod this afternoon," he would tell me. Vinod Khosla is the billionaire investor and cofounder of Sun Microsystems. Then Adam dropped the bomb. "He's going to give us five million dollars."
I was thrilled for him, but it was a shock for me. Here was my faithful beer pong partner and my little brother in the fraternity, two years younger than me. I was out of excuses. He was off to the Super Bowl and I wasn't even getting drafted. He had no idea at the time, but Adam had given me just the kick I needed. It was time for a change.
They say that you're the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Think about that for a minute: who would be in your circle of 5? I have some good news: MIT is one of the best places in the world to start building that circle. If I hadn't come here, I wouldn't have met Adam, I wouldn't have met my amazing cofounder, Arash, and there would be no Dropbox.
One thing I've learned is surrounding yourself with inspiring people is now just as important as being talented or working hard. Can you imagine if Michael Jordan hadn’t been in the NBA, if his circle of 5 had been a bunch of guys in Italy? Your circle pushes you to be better, just as Adam pushed me.
And now your circle will grow to include your coworkers and everyone around you. Where you live matters: there’s only one MIT. And there's only one Hollywood and only one Silicon Valley. This isn't a coincidence: for whatever you're doing, there's usually only one place where the top people go. You should go there. Don’t settle for anywhere else. Meeting my heroes and learning from them gave me a huge advantage. Your heroes are part of your circle too — follow them. If the real action is happening somewhere else, move.
The last trap you might fall into after school is "getting ready." Don't get me wrong: learning is your top priority, but now the fastest way to learn is by doing. If you have a dream, you can spend a lifetime studying and planning and getting ready for it. What you should be doing is getting started.
Honestly, I don't think I've ever been "ready." I remember the day our first investors said yes and asked us where to send the money. For a 24 year old, this is Christmas — and opening your present is hitting refresh over and over on bankofamerica.com and watching your company's checking account go from 60 dollars to 1.2 million dollars. At first I was ecstatic — that number has two commas in it! I took a screenshot — but then I was sick to my stomach. Someday these guys are going to want this back. What the hell have I gotten myself into?
You already know this feeling: at MIT we call it "drinking from the firehose." It’s about as fun as it sounds, and all of us have the internal bleeding to prove it. But we’ve also learned it's good for you. Today, one valve shuts off. Now you need to go out and find another firehose.
Dropbox has been mine. As you might expect, building this company has been the most exciting, interesting and fulfilling experience of my life. What I haven't really shared is that it's also been the most humiliating, frustrating and painful experience too, and I can't even count the number of things that have gone wrong.
Fortunately, it doesn't matter. No one has a 5.0 in real life. In fact, when you finish school, the whole notion of a GPA just goes away. When you're in school, every little mistake is a permanent crack in your windshield. But in the real world, if you're not swerving around and hitting the guard rails every now and then, you're not going fast enough. Your biggest risk isn't failing, it's getting too comfortable.
Bill Gates's first company made software for traffic lights. Steve Jobs's first company made plastic whistles that let you make free phone calls. Both failed, but it's hard to imagine they were too upset about it. That's my favorite thing that changes today. You no longer carry around a number indicating the sum of all your mistakes. From now on, failure doesn't matter: you only have to be right once.
I used to worry about all kinds of things, but I can remember the moment when I calmed down. I had just moved to San Francisco, and one night I couldn't sleep so I was on my laptop. I read something online that said "There are 30,000 days in your life." At first I didn't think much of it, but on a whim I tabbed over to the calculator. I type in 24 times 365 and — oh my God, I'm almost 9,000 days down. What the hell have I been doing?
(By the way: you guys are 8,000 days down.)
So that’s how 30,000 ended up on the cheat sheet. That night, I realized there are no warmups, no practice rounds, no reset buttons. Every day we're writing a few more words of a story. And when you die, it's not like "here lies Drew, he came in 174th place." So from then on, I stopped trying to make my life perfect, and instead tried to make it interesting. I wanted my story to be an adventure — and that's made all the difference.
'
My grandmother is here today, and next week we'll be celebrating her 95th birthday. We talk more on the phone now that I’ve moved out to California. But one thing that's stuck with me is she always ends our phone calls with one word: "Excelsior," which means "ever upward."
And today on your commencement, your first day of life in the real world, that's what I wish for you. Instead of trying to make your life perfect, give yourself the freedom to make it an adventure, and go ever upward. Thank you.