为何我难以联系，或许你也应如此

You may have noticed it’s practically impossible to contact me. I did that on purpose so I can spend my time how I want to spend it. I don’t really use email and I have my private message inboxes on every platform closed. And they have been like that for years.
你可能已经注意到，几乎无法联系到我。我是有意为之，以便能按照自己的意愿安排时间。我很少使用电子邮件，并且在所有平台上都关闭了私信收件箱。这种情况已经持续多年。

I do read public tweets sent to me, and try to reply, but don’t take private messages.
我确实会阅读发给我的公开推文，并尽量回复，但不接收私信。

Most stuff about building startups I learnt by doing and I brain dumped everything I know in a book I update about every few weeks.
关于初创公司建设的大部分知识，我都是通过实践学到的，并将我所知的一切倾注于一本我每隔几周就会更新的书中。

If you’re low on time (like me), here’s quick answers to most questions.
如果你时间紧迫（像我一样），这里快速回答了大多数问题。

Otherwise, keep reading why I made myself unreachable.
否则，继续阅读了解我为何让自己变得难以联系。

There’s 24 hours in a day 一天有 24 小时
I’ve tried to figure out and this is kind of a normal day for me:
我试图理解并这对我来说算是平常的一天：

• 24 hours in a day
• 一天 24 小时
  — 8 hours of sleeping = 16 hours left
  — 8 小时睡眠 = 剩余 16 小时
  — 1.5 hours of showering, cleaning up, coffee = 14.5 hours left
  — 1.5 小时洗澡、整理、喝咖啡 = 剩余 14.5 小时
  — 4 hours of managing contractors, firefighting and fixing bugs = 10.5 hours left
  — 4 小时处理承包商事务、救火及修复漏洞 = 剩余 10.5 小时
  — 1 hours of groceries or errands = 9.5 hours left
  — 1 小时购买杂货或跑腿 = 剩余 9.5 小时
  — 1.5 hours of gym or going for a walk = 8 hours left
  — 1.5 小时健身房锻炼或散步 = 剩余 8 小时
  — 1.5 hours of staying in touch with friends/family = 6.5 hours left
  — 与亲友保持联系 1.5 小时 = 剩余 6.5 小时
  — 1.5 hours of cooking and eating = 5 hours left
  — 1.5 小时烹饪与用餐 = 剩余 5 小时
  — 4 hours of deep work, building new features/products = 1 hours left
  — 4 小时深度工作，构建新功能/产品 = 剩余 1 小时
  — 1 hours of sex/hugs/love = 0 hours left
  — 1 小时性爱/拥抱/爱意 = 剩余 0 小时

It’s all pretty tight. If I start answering everybody’s messages, doing calls or taking on other people’s projects, I wouldn’t have enough time in the day.
一切都很紧凑。如果我开始回复每个人的消息，接打电话或承接他人的项目，我一天的时间将远远不够用。

I’d start skipping the gym, skipping going for walks, skipping sex, and not being able to do deep work anymore. My health, relationships and work would slowly start falling apart. I know this as it’s happened loads of time before. This schedule works for me and I don’t want or need to change it.
我会开始逃避健身房，逃避散步，逃避性生活，也无法再进行深度工作。我的健康、人际关系和工作会慢慢开始瓦解。我知道这一点，因为之前已经发生过很多次了。这个日程安排适合我，我不想也不需要改变它。

(And no, I don’t schedule it exactly like this, I’m not a robot; it’s just an example of an average day.)
（而且，我并非如此精确地安排每一天，我不是机器人；这只是一个普通一天的示例。）

Deep work 深度工作

If I keep getting distracted with messages/calls I can never get into flow state and my creative work will suffer. I have most of my notifications off and my devices are perpetually on Do Not Disturb mode from 00:00 to 23:59.
如果我不断被消息/电话分心，我将永远无法进入心流状态，我的创意工作也会受到影响。我将大部分通知关闭，并且我的设备从 00:00 到 23:59 始终处于勿扰模式。

A lot of my new ideas slowly boil in my head over weeks, months, sometimes years. And undisturbed thinking and working time helps me get into that state. That’s why I like to lead my life async.
许多新想法在我脑海中经过数周、数月，有时甚至数年的酝酿逐渐成熟。而那些不受打扰的思考与工作时光，助我进入这种状态。这正是我偏爱异步生活的原因。

You don’t need my feedback

你不需要我的反馈

People want my feedback on their startup but what they really need is feedback from customers. 99.999% of the times I’m not their customer.
人们希望我为他们的初创公司提供反馈，但实际上他们真正需要的是来自客户的反馈。99.999%的情况下，我并非他们的目标客户。

You don’t need me to figure out stuff

你不需要我来解决这些事情

The most important skill I learnt is how to Google things and figure things out fast. If you always ask other people how to do stuff you’ll never learn that skill. There’s a lot of power in being able to operate autonomously and independent, it makes you an original person which increases the odds of you coming up with great ideas.
我学到的最重要的技能是如何快速利用谷歌搜索并解决问题。如果总是依赖他人指导，你将永远掌握不了这项技能。能够自主独立地操作蕴含着巨大的力量，它使你成为一个原创性的人，从而提高你产生卓越想法的几率。

Internet famous weirdness

网络知名怪诞

It’s hard to imagine what happens when you get internet famous but imagine when 50 people per day send you a message:
很难想象当你在网络上走红后会发生什么，但设想一下，如果每天有 50 个人给你发消息：
1) asking you to work with them,
1) 邀请您与他们合作，
2) asking you to promote them or their app (or hunt it on PH),
2) 请求您推广他们或他们的应用（或在 PH 上寻找），
3) writing giant multi-page dumps of their life stories irrelevant to you,
3) 撰写与您无关的、篇幅巨大的个人生活故事长文，
4) sending you unsolicited advice you didn’t ask for,
4) 向你发送未经请求的建议，你并未主动寻求，
5) getting angry with you because they used your site and didn’t like it,
5) 因使用您的网站后感到不满而向您发火，
6) getting angry with you if you don’t reply,
6) 若你不回复便对你发火，
7) sending you abuse and/or death threats,
7) 对你进行辱骂和/或发出死亡威胁，
8) stalking you and your friends (also in IRL)
8) 跟踪你和你的朋友（现实生活亦然）
Messages my friend Cameron from GameQuitters gets in his DMs
我朋友来自 GameQuitters 的 Cameron 在私信中收到的消息

All because you make websites that people use and you tweet/write about it. At some point you just realize it’s better to shut down the inbox and focus on work.
皆因你制作了人们使用的网站，并通过推文或文章分享。在某一刻，你会意识到关闭收件箱，专注于工作才是更好的选择。

Many of my famous friends have the same problem, people more famous than me have proportionally crazier stories. Tim Ferriss wrote about his experiences too, and they’re fucking crazy.
我许多知名朋友都面临同样的问题，那些比我更出名的人，其故事之疯狂程度也成比例增长。蒂姆·费里斯也写过他的经历，那些经历简直匪夷所思。

With an open inbox I’d get a lot of weird messages and making it impossible for people to message me helps because otherwise they start thinking you read what they send. Now everyone knows: no I won’t read your message or anybody else’s message.
保持收件箱开放时，我会收到许多奇怪的消息，而让人们无法给我发消息则有助于避免他们误以为我读了他们发送的内容。现在大家都知道了：不，我不会读你的消息，也不会读其他任何人的消息。

Most people can’t behave in private messages, especially not with anonymous accounts, which is sad because there’s a good % of messages I would get that’d be great.
大多数人在私信中难以保持得体，尤其是匿名账号之间，这令人遗憾，因为我收到的私信中有相当一部分内容本可以非常精彩。

I don’t have the time to reply

我没有时间回复

If I’d reply to the ~50 messages I get per day, and spend 5 minutes per message on them, it’d take me 4 hours to reply to everyone. No time for deep work then.
如果我要回复每天收到的约 50 条消息，每条消息花费 5 分钟，那么回复所有人将耗时 4 小时。那样就没有时间进行深度工作了。

Even my startup idol Derek Sivers who legendarily would reply to every email stopped doing so recently and now just shares his knowledge as books instead.
就连我那以传奇般回复每一封邮件而闻名的创业偶像 Derek Sivers，最近也停止了这一做法，转而通过书籍来分享他的知识。

“Answering people’s questions was taking up all of my time. So I quit.” – Derek Sivers
回答人们的问题占用了我所有的时间，所以我退出了。——德里克·西弗斯

My other startup idol Patrick McKenzie also closed his DMs recently. And my other inspiration Yongfook seems to have the same problem.
我的另一位创业偶像 Patrick McKenzie 最近也关闭了他的私信功能。而我的另一位灵感来源 Yongfook 似乎也遇到了同样的问题。

Life is short 生命短暂

Our days are numbered and like you I want to spend my limited time in the best way. Ruthlessly cutting out distractions helps.
我们的日子屈指可数，和你一样，我渴望将有限的时间以最佳方式度过。无情地剔除干扰，大有裨益。

Prioritizing responding to DMs from strangers if my girlfriend is sitting next to me and wants a hug, or my friend wants to go for a walk, or I haven’t called my parents in a week, or there’s a critical bug on my sites. It’d be stupid to.
如果我女朋友坐在旁边想要个拥抱，或者朋友想一起去散步，或者我已经一周没给父母打电话，又或者我的网站上出现了严重漏洞，那么优先回复陌生人的私信就显得很愚蠢。

What I’m not interested in

我不感兴趣的事物

I’m not interested in collaborating, I like to work alone. Or with people I hire. If I hire people I find you, you don’t need to message me.
我对合作不感兴趣，我喜欢独自工作。或者与我所雇佣的人一起。如果我雇佣了人，我会找到你，你无需给我发消息。

I’m not interested in doing client work for other people, I never did, and my goal was to never have a boss and I’m difficult to work with anyway, and I make enough money so I don’t need to.
我对为他人做客户工作毫无兴趣，从未有过此念，我的目标是永远不受雇于人，况且我本就难以共事，且收入已足，无需为此。

I’m not interested in fixing your printer or WiFi router.
我对修理你的打印机或 WiFi 路由器不感兴趣。

I’m not interested in doing press anymore, because I’ve had so many bad experiences where the journalist took my words of context, and turned what would be an interesting article into a hit piece to cancel me or my business. I’m not the only one that’s happened to, it’s how the media makes money these days.

I don’t do support for my sites, instead I’ve made most my sites self-serve and hired customer support people. I do product development only.

I’m not interested in you translating my sites or book, or making an audio or paper version of my book, or re-distributing it. I work alone and happy with keeping 100% of my revenue. Google Translate works fine and paper is dead.

I’m not at all interested in doing calls, or podcasts, or joining Clubhouse rooms. Unless it’s Indiehackers or a podcast I listen to myself like Joe Rogan.

Talk is cheap and ineffective while creating something is much more challenging and effective to make change in the world.

“A little less conversation, a little more action, please” – Elvis

I’m not interested in VC or angel investment, my companies are healthy and I have enough money to re-invest. I also don’t want to become a $100 million or $1 billion company. I’d just be diluting my 100% ownership and probably make less than I make now. Also even if you sell, what the hell would you spend $100 million or $1 billion on? A boat? Okay and then? It sounds stressful. You’re not a normal part of society anymore. Everybody will bug you for money. No thanks. I’m happy with where I’m at now.
我对风险投资或天使投资不感兴趣，我的公司运营良好，我有足够的资金进行再投资。我也不想成为一家市值 1 亿或 10 亿美元的公司。那样只会稀释我 100%的所有权，很可能赚得比现在还少。再者，即便你卖掉了公司，你拿 1 亿或 10 亿美元来干什么呢？买艘游艇？然后呢？听起来挺有压力的。你不再是社会普通的一员了。每个人都会找你要钱。不了，谢谢。我对现状很满意。

I’m not interested in proposals to buy my companies. 99% of proposals are not serious. I went through one 6-month process of due diligence and the acquisition bounced off as it was a trick to get a list of my customers. I’m not doing that again. Nor do I need to sell. Why would I throw away a high margin cash flow that keeps me happy by working on it every day for a lump sum of money to then do nothing? Meaningful work makes me happy. Not doing anything doesn’t. If I ever sell, I’ll find a buyer myself through FEI or Empire Flippers (not affiliated but they’re nice).
我对收购我公司的提议不感兴趣。99%的提案都不严肃。我曾历经六个月的尽职调查过程，最终收购告吹，因为那不过是个伎俩，想骗取我的客户名单。我不会再重蹈覆辙。我也不需要出售公司。为何我要放弃每天经营带来的高利润现金流，只为了换取一笔钱后无所事事？有意义的工作让我快乐，无所事事则不然。如果我真要出售，我会通过 FEI 或 Empire Flippers（虽无合作关系，但他们很友好）自行寻找买家。

I’m not interested in traveling to places to do conference talks or workshops for 300 people when I literally reach 1,000x to 10,000x as many people by building a new product or feature, by writing a tweet or blog or by making a YouTube video. It’s not worth the effort. I’d make an exception for a big conference like TED, but that’s about it.
我对前往各地为 300 人做会议演讲或工作坊并不感兴趣，因为通过构建新产品或功能、撰写推文或博客，或是制作 YouTube 视频，我实际上能触及到 1,000 倍至 10,000 倍的人群。这样的努力并不值得。我可能会为像 TED 这样的大型会议破例，但也就仅此而已了。

But what about meeting people and making new friends? I already have a close knit group of friends that have my back.
但结识新朋友、拓展社交圈呢？我已有一群亲密无间的朋友，他们始终支持我。

What I am interested in

我所关注的内容

Spending time with people I love.
与我所爱之人共度时光。

Spending time with people that spark my curiosity.

Spending time on my health like cooking nice food, doing fitness, sports, etc.

Traveling to new places and exploring them alone or with my girlfriend or friends.

Hacking on creative projects, reading about stuff I’m curious about, or working on new businesses I’m passionate about.

Inspiring people to create stuff by sharing what I make and writing about it on here and Twitter.

Sharing stuff with my followers that sparks my curiosity.

Doing anything high impact to
进行任何高强度活动
1) accelerate the freedom of global movement enabled by remote work
1) 加速远程工作带来的全球流动自由化
2) accelerate society towards async living
2) 推动社会迈向异步生活
3) normalize transparency in business by open startups and open salaries.

Maybe you don’t need to be reachable either

My situation seems different because I already have successful companies but maybe it’s not that different from yours, because regardless of that, this applies to you too:

Most things are a distraction, especially in the startup and tech world.

If you get to the core of building companies it’s about creating a great product that gets customers that pay for it .

If you get to the core of life it’s living an existence you’re proud of with people you love doing the things you like while minimizing suffering.

None of these two involve being available for endless chit-chatting to billions of people in private messages. Everything from everyone all the time is too much.

It’s okay to say no, embrace the silence and find your focus.
说”不”是可以的，拥抱静默，找到你的专注点。

P.S. I’m on Twitter too if you’d like to follow more of my stories. And I wrote a book called MAKE about building startups without funding. See a list of my stories or contact me. To get an alert when I write a new blog post, you can subscribe below:
附言：若您想关注我的更多故事，我也在 Twitter 上。我还撰写了一本名为《MAKE》的书，讲述无资金情况下创建初创企业的经历。查看我的故事列表或与我联系。如需在我发布新博文时收到通知，您可订阅下方：
Subscribing you…

Subscribed! Check your inbox to confirm your email.