Chapter 3 foreword

One evening in July 2001, the phone in the office rang suddenly.I picked up the receiver and reported my family name, and then I heard a naive but persistent voice on the opposite side: "It was hard to find you! It was hard!" She told me that her name was Yang Xue, and she called me from a small county in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Phone, and then told me her story, ordinary but deeply touched me. She was a high school junior and had been a high-achieving, well-loved kid.Three years ago, she was admitted to the current high school with the highest score in the county, but then some bad things happened, which made her feel very bad, her grades plummeted, and her mood became even worse. Such a vicious circle, until All hope is lost.One day she was walking on the street aimlessly, thinking of death.At this moment, she saw the bookstore in the county seat and walked in involuntarily.She likes books and wanted to see if there was anything to read. "I saw your "Following Wisdom". I stood there, read the four sentences on the title page, was immediately attracted, read the preface, and then couldn't help but took all the money I had on me and bought it It's gone." She said on the phone, "I won't be afraid of your jokes if I say it. I originally wanted to use the money to buy sleeping pills." She didn't sleep that night, and she was immersed in the stories of "Microsoft Boy" all night. "For the first time, I know that there is such a life in the world." She decided to cheer herself up and repeat the third year of high school, "I will not give up until I am admitted to Tsinghua University."

This story gives me a feeling that it has all kinds of flavors.The first reaction was relief, and I even thought that even if she was the only one who had read this book, it would be considered that I did not write it in vain.But I know that I never want to encourage all children to take the path of geniuses, and I can't even fully agree with the idea of ​​"don't give up if you don't get into Tsinghua University".I advised her not to go to Tsinghua University. I said a lot of things like "As long as you try your best, the result is not important", and told her that there are many good universities, but she insisted on not listening.Only then did I understand that a book can have such a great impact on readers that even the author himself can't stop it.

The book "Following Wisdom" was published in the fall of 2000, and it tells the story of a group of Chinese in Microsoft Research Asia.Since then, some young friends have often come to me to discuss this book.Most people said that they were inspired by it, but since I received Yang Xue's call, I had vague doubts about my work, which was suddenly cleared up by my son's words.I was putting together a volume of reviews for this book when my son walked in, flipped through a few pages, and said his opinion of the "Microsoft kid" in a somewhat respectful tone: "These people are A human being, not a human being."

I'm a little curious about what he said.Honestly, the book "Following Wisdom" was written largely for him.He was also a high school student and loved computers, so I hoped that he would be as good as the "Microsoft kid" I saw, and imagined that he, too, would be an amazing computer scientist.I told him I was going to write a book he would love to read.He really loved reading this book and read it several times.Knowing that he knew the characters in the book like the back of his hand, I urged him to continue to speak his mind. "These people are very 'beautiful', but not all Chinese are particularly 'beautiful'." He said, "They do not represent ordinary people. Their mouths are always talented, but this kind of thinking that people must be talented It is too painful, and the whole family suffers. Some people want to be outstanding, and some people just want to be ordinary people, have a stable job, and live a carefree life. But according to the current standard , Such a person is called worthless. Therefore, Chinese children are suffering when they are talented, and it is also painful if they are not talented.”

The moment I heard these words, I was a little disappointed, but I soon discovered that what my son said was right.China's education system is indeed like an assembly line for manufacturing industrial products. Everyone follows the same procedures and standards. The children who go in are of all kinds, but the children who come out are all exactly the same. Otherwise, you will not be issued a college diploma.Few people think that educating children and building cars are two entirely different things. The son is the same age as Yang Xue, one is in a big city and the other is in a remote town, one is a boy and the other is a girl.Their responses to the same book were all strong, yet so different, pointing to two extremes, and despite their tendency to exaggerate the problem, they were representative of their peers.So I started to reflect, and went back to re-study those young people at Microsoft. Now that two years have passed, I can say that I have reached a conclusion, which is in this book.

Let us be better.This is the gist of education, and it seems natural. Everyone wants to be excellent, this is Yang Xue's dream. However, there is something more important than excellence, and that is "myself", which is my son's dream. I hope that both of these dreams, not just one, can become a reality. We are not able to be better, often not because we are not naturally smart enough, but because we have lost "me".Instead of using your intelligence according to your own ideas, you always use your own intelligence according to other people's standards. Even if we are excellent, we are still unhappy, basically because we always think that "the best" means defeating others, but we don't think that the real best is "becoming the best of myself".

On March 20, 2003, I started to have this idea.At that time, I chatted with Ling Xiaoning, told him the story of Yang Xue, and told him what my son said.He was silent for a moment, then said, "I always say to my two sons, you don't have to be the best, you just have to be the best version of yourself." Xiao Ning used to be the chief engineer of Microsoft Asia Research Institute, and also my brother, one year older than me, we were inseparable in childhood.Among the four brothers and sisters in the family, he is not smarter than others, but he has the strongest personality.For the things that everyone is chasing, he doesn't think it is necessarily a good thing, but he has an unusual attachment to the things he likes. When he was 10 years old, he wanted to buy a pair of skates, a brand new pair of speed skating running shoes. Maybe his mother thought the shoes were too expensive, so she only agreed to buy him a pair of half-worn figure skates.When other children encountered this situation, they either cried loudly or gave up their insistence, but Xiao Ning ran away suddenly without saying a word, and came back with a hammer and a nail in his hand.He walked into his parents' bedroom, still without saying a word, swung the hammer, and nailed the nails into the wooden frame at the head of the bed one by one, and didn't stop until his mother agreed to his request.Years later, he grew up and went to and from get off work every day, but he didn't have a watch.At that time, the watch ranked second among the "three major items". Everyone in the big city wanted it, but Xiao Ning was indifferent. His mother wanted to buy him a watch, but he didn't want it. He also said, "Where can't you tell the time on the street?" ?” He cycled to a rolling mill every day and worked eight hours, moving steel bars from one place to another, doing it day in and day out, while doggedly retaining his interest.As we mentioned in "Following Wisdom," he loves radio semiconductors and spends all his salary on them. In the mid-1970s, a university admitted him as a "worker-peasant-soldier student". At that time, leaving the front line of production to study in university was a dream for young people. Unexpectedly, he didn't go because he didn't like that major, and he didn't like it. Ken learns things he doesn't like for the sake of being a college student.Later, when Peking University admitted him, he was ecstatic and hurriedly packed his luggage, not because of any "famous university", but because this time he was majoring in computer science, which was exactly what he loved.It’s all been so many years and I still remember it vividly, so when he said, “Be the best version of yourself,” I knew right away what it meant.

His words impressed me deeply, and prompted me to look at the young people in Microsoft Asia Research Institute with new eyes.After a long period of research, I can safely say that each of their stories is not because they are particularly smart, or even because they are particularly brilliant, but because they are "the best of me." Own". I have talked with more than 90 people in Microsoft (mostly Chinese and some Americans), with more than 300 hours of recordings and millions of words of material.This time I focused my research on 30 people, they are Microsoft Research Asia

The most distinctive part of the Institute's 170 fellows and engineers.I sometimes call them "Microsoft boys" in the hope of leaving a unified image in the minds of readers, but in fact there are huge differences among them.They were born in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s.So far at least, they've been held up as examples of being smart, successful, happy, and rich, and most of them are young.All this is the subject of media pursuit.However, what I care about is not their success, but their growth; not their today, but their yesterday. They told me about their respective growth paths, including all kinds of stories and ideas.The more than 100 stories I have written here are just some of them.For me, the point is not to find the differences between them, but to find out what they have in common, what makes them different.Some things they have, but so do others.For example, they are very smart, hardworking, have excellent academic performance, have higher education qualifications, and have parents who care about them infinitely.However, there are simply too many people with such backgrounds in our country, so these things are beyond the scope of my research.In fact, the facts we have come into contact with prove that on their growth path, the really enlightening things are not these.

There are so many clues, and I couldn't help being surprised when I sorted them out one by one.Compared with those educational principles that we usually take for granted, they are completely different: 1. Their growth does not have any positive correlation with the superior family background, in fact, on the contrary, it is closely related to the poor family.Among my 30 subjects, 28 were born in ordinary families, and 22 of them were born in small towns.The other two people with rich family backgrounds also experienced the hardships of family recession in their childhood. 2. I haven't found a family education model that can be connected with their success. The view that family education must be strict or loose can find successful cases.However, these 30 people, without exception, hoped for a relaxed environment during their education years.Among them, those who were older and had children, all stated that they would not educate their children in a strict or even coercive manner.

3. Whether it is "strict education mode" or "loose education mode", family shows a very strong positive influence. Among the parents of 30 people, there are more than ten teachers, which is much higher than the average level of society.But in general, the influence of parents on their children does not depend on the parents' occupation and education level, nor on the educational methods, but on whether the relationship between parents and children is harmonious. 4. All have a process of fully developing independent will.The stricter the parents, the sooner they let their children leave their parents' sight and gain a free space.Among the three most typical families adopting the "strict education model", there is a story of "leaving home at a young age" followed closely.Kai-fu Lee left home at the age of 11, and Shen Xiangyang left home at the age of 11.Zhang Yaqin left home at the age of 12. 5. I don't see a correlation between being "top" in test scores and later achievement.In fact, most of these 30 people were not "number one" when they were students.They are more in the third to tenth positions.There is a popular saying among them that "don't care about the ranking". 6. The time they spend on memorizing textbooks and doing exercises is much lower than the average among their classmates.80% of them had a wide range of interests in secondary school and university, not just meeting syllabus requirements. 7. They not only care about which things must be done well, but also care more about which things they really want, which things are really suitable for them, and which things are absolutely impossible to do.Without exception, they put more energy into what they want to do and what suits them. 8. I don't find them to have superhuman IQs.The truth is that EQ has been shown to be more important than IQ at any stage of learning.They are undoubtedly smart kids, but there are plenty of kids as smart as them, and there are plenty of kids smarter than them.The reason why they are different is that they have healthy personalities, good learning attitudes and study habits. 9. They all went through a "opening period."Before that, none of them had suffered too much pressure from the outside world; after that, they all increased the pressure on themselves in their hearts.The so-called "enlightenment period" is a leap from chaos to self-awareness, from immaturity to maturity.Their "opening period" occurs almost exclusively in their sophomore and junior years of college, not in middle school, as one would normally expect.This expectation of parents has nothing to do with the child's physical and psychological development process, but has something to do with the exam-oriented education system.Therefore, most parents and teachers concentrate their pressure on their children's third and third grades of junior high school. This is precisely when the child has not yet "opened up" and is in the rebellious stage psychologically. When the child enters university, he can bear greater physical and psychological pressure. Sometimes, our education system relaxes the pressure on them. 10. They all met excellent teachers at critical times.None of the teachers they remember was the one who taught them how to handle the exams.Just as they forget the useless knowledge, they also forget the teacher who taught them this knowledge.There are more than 50 teachers listed by these 30 people, some of whom are foreigners, and all of them have the title and reputation of masters.Among most of the Chinese teachers, only one is a "super teacher", and the rest are unknown people.What makes these teachers so memorable lies outside the classroom: teaching them how to be human; teaching them how to learn; telling them which direction to go, and there really is what they want. I observed the students around me very carefully, and found that most of them can also have one or several of the above 10 items.But in my 30 research subjects, most people accounted for 10, and the least could have 8 of them.Combining various factors, we can find that there are three most important characteristics on them: First, high emotional intelligence. Second, be happy and enjoy learning, not just completing it. Third, excellent, outstanding. These three concepts all start with "E" in English (EQ, Enjoy, Excellence), so I call them "3E", and then propose a new concept: "E-student". After reading this, you should understand that the main purpose of this book is not to teach you how to be like them, but to teach you to be an excellent "yourself" like them.The logic is roughly as follows: