You may know that Taylor Swift is a creative and dramatic singer.

你可能知道霉霉是一個既有創意又有戲劇性的歌手。

You may know that she is also a songwriter.
你可能也知道她還是個寫歌人。

But if you assume that all her commercial success came from herself, then you are wrong.

但你如果以為霉霉的商業成功完全是因為她自己，那你就錯了。

There are a lot of people who've made great contribution to this icon's triumph.
她的輝煌，是很多人共同努力的結果。

And one of the most important ones of them all is Jack Antonoff.

而這其中最重要的人之一，就是杰克·安托諾夫。

He is Taylor's producer and a musician himself.
他是霉霉的制作人，同時自己也是一個音樂人。

Don't get me wrong. Jack is not just a producer for Taylor Swift.
別搞錯了，杰克并不是霉霉的“一個”制作人。

He is Taylor Swift's main producer.
他是霉霉的主要制作人。

2017 has been a fruitful year for him, because besides Taylor's new album Reputation he also produced quite a lot other eye-catching pop records like Lorde's Melodrama and St. Vincent's Masseduction.
2017 年對他來說是碩果累累的一年，因為他不光為霉霉創作了新專輯 Reputation，同時還制作出了其他很多奪人眼球的流行音樂，例如洛德的 Melodrama 以及圣文森特的 Masseduction。

Being creative is not easy for anyone, even if it's someone as productive as Jack Antonoff that we're talking about.
想做個有創意的人并不是一件容易的事，這對誰來說都一樣，即使是想杰克·安托諾夫這樣高產的人也不例外。

And his advice is:
而他的建議是：

If it's too big, don't look at it.
如果目標太過遠大，那就不要注視它。

“If, on January 1, 2017, someone laid out in front of me that I was going to make the Lorde record and the St. Vincent record and the stuff with Taylor Swift, I’d say I couldn’t do it.

“如果 2017 年的 1 月有人說我會給洛德、圣文森特還有霉霉做出這些大作，我肯定會說我做不到。

But I knew they were going to get done. You slowly chip away at it one day at a time and keep your head down.但我當時知道這些事最終總肯定會被做出來。你所需要做的，就是每天都多做一點，悶頭做就好了。

If it’s too big, don’t look at it.
如果目標太過遠大，那就不要去注視它。

If you want to do something massive, don’t look at it, because all you’re going to see is why it won’t work.
如果你想完成一件大事，那就不要總是盯著它看，因為那樣的話你只能看到做不到的理由。

The killer of productivity is reality.”
創造力的頭號殺手，是現實。”

This is the advice that Antonoff shared.
以上就是安托諾夫的建議。

And by the way, the time he usually wakes up is between 11 a.m. and 12 p.m.
啊，對了，他通常起床的時間是中午 11 點到 12 點之間。

Right, he is not an early bird. And that's something to be despised by nearly all the success books.
是的，他并不是一個早起鳥。這是幾乎所有成功學書籍里都在鄙視的。

But apparently he is teaching a lesson way more important than anything they taught in those books:
但是顯然，他教會我們的東西，比這些書里的任何東西都重要得多：

Life is a mess. It's already hard even if someone gave you a plan to follow.
生活就是一團亂麻，即使已經有人給你訂好了計劃，你過得也不會輕松。

It's much harder if your job is to create something new.
而如果你的工作是創造新東西，那就更難了。

There is no shortcut for anything.
世上沒有什么捷徑可以走。

You just try everything you can and deal with it when something goes wrong.
你只能盡力嘗試一切你能做到的東西，然后在出問題的時候硬著頭皮去應對。

（來源：滬江英語）