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For advice on how to be a mogul, take it from someone who has been married to one.
想得到怎么才能成为大人物的建议，问问和他们结过婚的人吧。
A user of Quora, a user-generated question-and-answer website, recently posed the question: “How can I be as great as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Richard Branson?”
前不久，一名Quora用户提出了一个问题：“我怎么才能像比尔·盖茨(Bill Gates)、史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)、埃隆·马斯克(Elon Musk)、理查德·布兰森(Richard Branson)那么牛？”
An unlikely individual responded, quietly offering some telling insights that have created a bit of a stir among the mogul-cognoscenti and beyond.
一个令人难以想象的人回答了这个问题，悄悄给出了一些能揭示真相的见解。这番话产生的影响，不仅限于那些熟知大亨掌故的人当中。
The individual is Mr. Musk’s former wife, Justine Musk, who was married to the Tesla and Space X chief from 2000 to 2008.
这个人就是埃隆的前妻贾斯汀·马斯克(Justine Musk)。她与特斯拉(Tesla)和Space X公司的老板埃隆·马斯克的婚姻开始于2000年，结束于2008年。
Having lived with the real-life Tony Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man), Ms. Musk, an author, had a ringside view of one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs and businessmen — and his network of similarly booming pals.
与现实版的托尼·斯塔克(Tony Stark)——又名钢铁侠(Iron Man)——共同生活过的贾斯汀是一位作家。她近距离观察过自己那个名列全世界最成功商人和企业家之中的前夫，以及他结交的那些名头同样响亮的好友。
It is a world with tightly closed ranks. And honest insights about what makes the most successful tick are hard to come by. Usually a parade of academics and other writers comment on the qualities of successful people, trying to speculate about and divine what led to their achievements. Or the moguls themselves wax on with less-than-introspective platitudes about themselves. But Ms. Musk has a unique perspective.
那是一个很难进入的世界。要想如实地了解如何取得成功，并没有那么容易。通常，会有一众学者和其他作家，对成功人士的品质发表评论，试图推测并预言是什么促使他们取得了已有的成就。或者大人物们自己，用实在称不上是反省的陈词滥调谈论自己。但贾斯汀却有一个独特的视角。
That’s why it was so unusual to see her name pop up in response to the Quora user’s question. Ms. Musk said by phone on Monday that she sat down at her computer one night this month and came across the question. “I was procrastinating,” she said. But the question “tapped into something I was musing about for a while.” She said she had read a lot about success but wanted to share “things people weren’t saying.” What followed were several posts over the last few weeks.
也正因为如此，看到她的名字跳出来，回答那名Quora用户的问题，就显得极为不同寻常。贾斯汀周一在电话上说，本月的一天晚上，她坐在电脑前，无意中看到了这个问题。“我拖拉了一段时间，”她说。但那个问题“牵扯到了我自己思索过一阵子的事情”。她表示自己读过大量有关成功的东西，但想分享一些“人们没有说到的东西”。于是，在过去几周里，她发表了几篇帖子。
“Extreme success results from an extreme personality and comes at the cost of many other things,” Ms. Musk wrote. “Extreme success is different from what I suppose you could just consider ‘success.’ These people tend to be freaks and misfits who were forced to experience the world in an unusually challenging way,” she added, noting, “Other people consider them to be somewhat insane.”
“极度的成功源自极端的个性，并且是以其他很多东西为代价的，”贾斯汀写道。“极度的成功和你所认为的‘成功’有所不同。这些人往往是怪胎，与社会格格不入，曾被迫以一种特别具有挑战性的方式体验这个世界，”她接着说，“其他人会认为他们有些发疯了。”
She boiled down the one ingredient for extreme success: “Be obsessed. Be obsessed. Be obsessed.”
她将极度的成功归结为一个因素：“执着。执着。执着。”
But Ms. Musk wasn’t being critical. “Extreme people combine brilliance and talent with an *insane* work ethic,” she wrote, “so if the work itself doesn’t drive you, you will burn out or fall by the wayside or your extreme competitors will crush you and make you cry.”
但贾斯汀并不是在批评。“极端的人会将才华和天赋与一种*疯狂的*工作热情结合起来，”她写道。“所以如果工作本身不能给你动力，你就会感到精疲力尽或中途放弃，或是让极端的竞争对手将你压倒，让你哭泣。”
She seems to suggest that the most successful businesspeople did not start out looking to become billionaires but did so simply as a byproduct of their maniacal focus. “Shift your focus away from what you want (a billion dollars) and get deeply, intensely curious about what the world wants and needs,” Ms. Musk wrote. “It helps to have an ego, but you must be in service to something bigger if you are to inspire the people you need to help you.”
她似乎在说，最成功的那些商人，开始起步时并没期望成为亿万富翁，成为巨富只是他们疯狂专注的副产品。“把注意力从你想要的东西（比如10亿美元）上转移开，对这个世界想要什么、需要什么保持深深的、强烈的好奇心，”贾斯汀写道。“这有助于让你自信起来，但要想鼓动那些你需要的人来帮助你，就必须服务于更伟大的东西。”
In another post, however, she did address how money — billionaire money — is thought about. “Money is rarely just money,” she wrote. “Sometimes it stands in for love or self-esteem or freedom or a sense of control over your destiny (especially if you lacked these things in childhood).”
但在另一篇帖子中，她的确谈到了钱，亿万富翁对钱的看法。“绝大多数时候钱不仅仅是钱，”她写道。“有时候，它代表着爱、自尊、自由或对自己命运的掌控感（特别是你的童年缺少这些东西时）。”
“Sometimes it is a way of controlling others, including family members, because you don’t know how to connect to them in any other way,” she added. “Money can also serve as a scorecard to indicate how well you are doing, the impact you are having, if you are winning. Sometimes it’s not so much the money that matters, but the win is everything — particularly when you are invested heart and soul in your mission.”
“有时候它是一种控制其他人，包括家人的方式，因为你除此之外，再也不知道该以怎样的方式同他们联系起来，”她接着写道。“钱也可以充当记分牌，显示你过得有多好、有多大的影响力，是不是赢了。有时候，重要的倒不是钱，获胜才是一切，特别是当你全身心投入到自己的使命中去的时候。”
Ms. Musk said the reaction to her posting was a surprise: “I had no idea it would blow up the way it did.” She has received hundreds of comments and many emails. Of course, most readers following Ms. Musk’s musings have been looking for hints about Mr. Musk himself.
贾斯汀表示，她的帖子引发的反应令人吃惊：“我不知道会引起这么大反应。”她收到了数百条评论，还有很多电子邮件。当然，关注贾斯汀的帖子的大部分读者，一直在寻找有关埃隆的线索。
She insisted that “I wasn’t specifically talking about Elon” and said she was “uneasy” that people might be reading too much into her words. Still, she said that “Elon is a fascinating character.”
她坚称“我不是特指埃隆”，并表示想到人们可能会对自己的话做过多解读，就会感到“不安”。但她说，“埃隆是一个令人着迷的人。”
Ms. Musk called herself a “watcher,” not an “insider,” saying, “I’ve been on the edge of it for a long time.” She said she had been inundated with emails about her answers and about Mr. Musk. One asked, “Does Elon have any hobbies?” No, she said. His job is his hobby. “The nature of these things is so all consuming. Unless you see that up close it is hard to understand,” she said, adding that “ ‘obsession’ has a bad rap.”
贾斯汀自称“观察者”，而非“局内人”，她说“我近距离观察了很长时间”。她说自己被关于那些回答，以及埃隆本人的电子邮件淹没了。一个人问，“埃隆有什么爱好吗？”她说没有。工作就是他的爱好。“这些东西的本质非常令人着迷。除非那么近距离地看到过，否则难以理解，”她接着说，“不过‘执迷’这个词给人负面印象。”
And what does Mr. Musk think about his former wife’s reflections? According to Ms. Musk, she got an email from him: “Well said,” he wrote.
那么埃隆怎么看前妻的想法呢？据贾斯汀说，她收到了埃隆的一封电子邮件。他在里面写道：“说得好。”
