导读
This article discusses three non-mainstream metrics for measuring personal growth proposed by tech expert Chip Huyen, moving beyond traditional indicators like net worth and follower count to explore growth from the perspectives of self-change speed, problem-solving efficiency, and future option space. The core view is that growth is not about stacking external labels, but about having the ability to constantly update cognition, solve life problems, and retain more choices for the future. For those who are confused about how to assess their own growth, this framework provides a very practical reference direction, helping us jump out of the single-dimensional evaluation system of social standards and find the growth rhythm that suits us.
这篇文章讨论了科技领域专家Chip Huyen提出的三个非主流个人成长衡量指标，跳出了净资产、粉丝数这类传统评价维度，从自我迭代速度、问题解决效率、未来可选空间三个角度切入探索成长的本质。核心观点是成长从来不是堆砌外部标签，而是拥有不断更新认知、解决人生问题、为未来保留更多选择的能力。对于困惑于如何评估自身成长的人来说，这个框架提供了非常实用的参考方向，帮我们跳出社会标准的单维评价体系，找到适合自己的成长节奏。
My founder friends constantly think about growth. They think about how to measure their business growth and how to get to the next order of magnitude scale. If they’re making \$1M ARR today, they think about how to get to \$10M ARR. If they have 1,000 users today, they think about how to get to 10,000 users.
身边做创始人的朋友总是把「增长」挂在嘴边，每天都在琢磨怎么衡量业务增长，怎么把规模做到下一个量级。现在年营收100万美元的话，就要想怎么做到1000万；现在有1000个用户的话，就要想怎么拉到1万个用户。
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This made me wonder if/how people are measuring personal growth. I don’t want to use metrics like net worth or the number of followers, because that’s not what I live for. After talking with a lot of friends, I found three interesting metrics: rate of change, time to solve problems, and number of future options.
这反而让我开始思考，我们普通人的个人成长要怎么衡量？我不想用净资产、粉丝数这类指标，毕竟这不是我活着的目标。和很多朋友聊过之后，我找到了三个很有意思的衡量维度：变化速率、问题解决耗时、未来可选数量。
Some friends told me they find this blog post mildly sociopathic. Why do I have to measure everything? Life is to be lived, not to be measured. As someone lowkey fascinated by numbers, I don’t see why measuring and living have to be mutually exclusive – measuring often helps me live better – but I see where they come from. This post is more of a thought exercise than a rigorous experiment.
有朋友说我这篇文章看着有点反常识，为啥什么都要量化？生活是用来体验的，不是用来衡量的。我自己本来就对数字很感兴趣，从来不觉得量化和好好生活是互斥的，反而量化经常能帮我把日子过明白，但我也能理解大家的顾虑。这篇文章更偏向思维实验，不是什么严谨的学术结论。
## Rate of change
## 变化速率
I have this theory that life has a circadian rhythm. Every 3-6 years, you become a different person. You work on different problems. Your lifestyle changes. The people you hang out with are different. If you haven’t caught up with a friend in 5 years, you might no longer have anything in common. It’s not a coincidence that schools are structured into chunks of 3-6 years.
我一直觉得人生有个天然的迭代周期，每3到6年，你就会变成一个完全不同的人。你要解决的问题变了，生活方式变了，身边的朋友也换了一批。要是你和一个朋友5年没联系，再见面可能早就没共同话题了。你看学校的学制大多也是3到6年一个阶段，这不是巧合。
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Looking back, I realized that every 3-6 years, my life completely changed. From grade 3 to grade 10, I did competitive math. For the next 5 years, I worked as a writer. Then I went to college and studied computer science for 4 years. After that, I fumbled around for almost 6 years. It was only recently that I felt like I had a handle on life.
回头看我自己的人生，确实每3到6年就会彻底变个样：3年级到10年级一直在搞数学竞赛，之后5年做了作家，上大学读了4年计算机，毕业之后又摸爬滚打了快6年，直到最近才感觉把生活摸出了点门道。
Sami, a new friend who loves designing strategy games, told me about the rule of 72 in finance. It’s a simple formula that estimates the number of years it will take for an investment to double in value. If the annual interest rate is 8%, it’ll take 72/8 = 9 years for the value of your investment to double.
有个喜欢做策略游戏的新朋友Sami和我提到了金融里的72法则：一个简单的公式，用来估算资产翻倍需要的时间，要是年利率是8%，那资产翻倍就需要72除以8，也就是9年。
I wonder if I could treat myself as an investment, and measure my growth by how long it’d take me to become a new person. Becoming a new person isn’t always a good thing, and probably not the goal for everyone. But for me, it is. I want to be able to see things from a new perspective. I want to be exposed to new challenges. I treasure old friends (I still talk to my best friends in elementary school), but I like learning from new friends.
我就在想，能不能把自己当成一项投资，用「迭代成全新的自己需要多久」来衡量成长？当然，变成新的人不一定是好事，也不是所有人的目标，但对我来说是的。我想拥有看待事物的新视角，想迎接新的挑战，我很珍惜老朋友，现在还和小学最好的朋友保持联系，但我也喜欢从新朋友身上学新东西。
## Time to solve problems
## 问题解决耗时
Quynh, an old friend who runs a publishing house in Vietnam, believes that there are three big problems in life: career, family, and finance. It usually takes people a decade to figure each out.
我有个在越南开出版社的老朋友Quynh说，人生有三大核心问题：事业、家庭、财务，普通人通常每个问题都要花10年才能搞定。
1. For the first decade after graduation, you figure out what you want to do with your life.
2. For the next decade, you get married, buy a house, and have kids.
3. For the next decade, you build out your savings to retire.
1. 毕业后第一个10年，搞清楚自己这辈子到底想做什么；
2. 第二个10年，结婚、买房、生孩子，把家庭的基础搭起来；
3. 第三个10年，攒够养老的钱，解决财务自由的问题。
Her goal is to solve these problems as fast as possible, so she can focus on more interesting problems.
她的目标是尽可能快地把这些问题都解决掉，这样就能腾出精力去研究更有意思的事。
This made me think that perhaps I can measure my growth by looking at what big problems I’ve solved. What big problems was I worried about 5 years ago that I no longer worry about now? What big problems am I worried about now that I don’t want to worry about in 5 years?
她的话给了我启发，或许我可以用「解决核心问题的速度」来衡量成长。5年前我天天焦虑的大问题，现在是不是已经不用操心了？现在我烦恼的这些大事，能不能在5年内彻底解决，之后再也不用为它费神？
What is considered a big problem depends on each person. For me, it’s career, finance, social, immigration, family, and health. Here are a couple of concrete examples that made me feel like I’ve made progress. 5 years ago, I was anxious about being in the US on a visa. This problem went away when I got my green card. 5 years ago, I constantly felt insecure like I was an imposter in the Bay. Today, I feel at home here.
什么算核心问题因人而异，对我来说是事业、财务、社交、身份、家庭、健康这几个。我自己就有两个很直观的例子：5年前我天天担心在美国的签证问题，拿到绿卡之后这个烦恼就彻底消失了；5年前我在湾区总觉得自己像个外人，没有归属感，现在我已经觉得这里就是家了。
## Number of future options
## 未来可选数量
A friend I’ve met through my Discord, Denys, told me that his friend has this theory that every few years, half of your dreams die. People give up on their dreams because they realize that they can no longer achieve them.
我在Discord认识的朋友Denys说，他朋友有个理论：每隔几年，你的梦想就会死掉一半。人之所以放弃梦想，是因为慢慢意识到自己再也做不到了。
I disagree. As I grow older, I have more dreams. I now know many things that I didn’t know before, and I have access to more resources than I ever did. This allows me to do things that I used to think of as impossible.
我反而不这么觉得，我年龄越大，想做的事反而越多。我现在知道了很多以前不知道的事，手里的资源也比以前多得多，反而能做到很多以前觉得不可能的事。
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During a reinforcement learning course in college, I learned about empowerment maximization. It’s a simple principle that enables robots/agents to exhibit relatively intelligent behavior. In the face of uncertainty, an agent following empowerment maximization would choose the action that maximizes future options. For example, facing multiple switches, it’d choose the switch that opens the most doors.
大学上强化学习课的时候，我学过一个「最大化赋能」的原则，这个简单的原则能让机器人或者智能体做出相对智能的行为：面对不确定性的时候，智能体要选择能最大化未来可选空间的行动，比如面对好几个开关的时候，要按那个能打开最多扇门的开关。
I realized that this is the same principle that I’ve followed. In the face of uncertainty, I lean towards the decision that would give me the most future options. For example, I’d choose a job that pays less but gives me more job options in the future (e.g. if the job gives me exposure like allowing me to work on open source or publish papers). I’d prioritize tasks that teach me transferable skills instead of tasks that teach me niche, narrow skills.
我发现我自己一直就是这么做决策的，遇到不确定的情况，我会优先选能给我最多未来选择的选项。比如我会选工资低一点，但未来就业选择更多的工作，比如这份工作能让我参与开源项目或者发表论文，积累行业曝光；我会优先做能学到可迁移技能的任务，而不是只能学到小众狭窄技能的事。
Perhaps I can measure my growth by how many new options I have gained/lost. What options are available to me today that were not available to me 5 years ago? What options were available to me 5 years ago that aren’t available to me now? More importantly, what options that are not available to me today do I want 5 years from now?
所以成长也可以用「未来选择的增减」来衡量：现在有哪些选择是5年前的我没有的？5年前有的选择，现在是不是已经消失了？更重要的是，现在我还没有的选择里，哪些是我希望5年后能拥有的？
Sami pointed me to this from Wait But Why. As time goes by, many doors are closed to us, but many new doors open up. Denys’s friend was referring to the black lines on the left, and I focus on the green lines on the right.
Sami给我看过Wait But Why的一张图，随着时间推移，确实有很多门会对我们关上，但同时也会有很多新的门打开。Denys的朋友看到的是左边关上的门，而我关注的是右边新开的门。
## Conclusion
## 总结
There are three heuristics that I follow for personal growth:
我自己衡量个人成长的三个经验法则是：
1. I try to become a new person every 3-6 years.
2. I try to solve big problems as fast as possible. I think of this as creating safety nets that allow me to take bigger risks and explore more things in the future.
3. I take actions that help me maximize future options.
1. 争取每3到6年迭代一次，变成全新的自己；
2. 尽可能快地解决人生核心问题，把这些当成自己的安全网，之后才能敢冒更大的险，探索更多有意思的事；
3. 做能最大化未来选择的决策，给自己留更多可能性。
These heuristics work for me (so far) because I have a strong bias towards novelty and exploration. Maybe one day, I’ll get tired of exploration, and these heuristics will change. When that happens, that’ll be growth.
这几个法则目前对我很有用，因为我本身就是特别喜欢新鲜事物、喜欢探索的人。说不定哪天我厌倦了探索，这些法则也会变，真到了那一天，本身也是一种成长。
