《把时间当作朋友》再版前言

Preface to the Reprint of Make Time Your Friend

> By Li Xiaolai · 2011-02-03 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20110906164900/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/10423.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

In June 2009 Make Time Your Friend (《把时间当作朋友》) was formally published. For me this was somewhat unexpected, because when I first wrote these words I had no plan to publish them; I only posted them on my blog in a spirit of sharing—of course, even after this book was printed and bound, its contents remained fully public online.

The first printing of the first edition of Make Time Your Friend was only 8 thousand copies, yet these 8 thousand copies actually sold out within a week of hitting the shelves. This surprised me once again. The bigger surprise was still to come—over roughly the next year and a half, this book actually reached a total of 12 printings!

These words were originally written for my students. I started writing them bit by bit at the beginning of 2007 and finished in about three months. By the end of the year, I went through a corruption of the website's database, so I had no choice but to rewrite them. The title of the article series also changed from Managing My Time (《管理我的时间》) to Make Time Your Friend. What I wanted to solve was students' problems. But two years later, after it was formally published, I discovered that this book's main readers were mostly new recruits in the workplace—many students in school actually had no interest in its contents. I can only guess this is caused by their lack of experience and not having suffered enough losses—perhaps only after suffering a big loss do people have the motivation to turn over a new leaf.

What I myself least expected is this: this book is one with huge "passive" sales. After publication, many readers wrote to say that after reading it themselves, they bought several more copies to give to their classmates, colleagues, friends and even relatives... Some high-school teachers applied to their schools to order several hundred copies to give one to every student, and there were also university counselors who bought dozens of copies at their own expense to give to everyone in their class. Mr. Guo Zhongxiang, vice president of the Shanda Networks Innovation Institute, simply bought them in batches and piled them by the door, so anyone who came could take one. In January 2011, Huawei Symantec in Chengdu, Sichuan ordered 4000 copies from the publisher to give to every employee of the company...

On Douban, Make Time Your Friend is rated 8.7 (as of February 1, 2011, more than 7600 people had rated it). Quite high. But in fact, for the author, such a high score is a kind of pressure. And because it was an unexpectedly high score, it became even greater pressure. From time to time I'd go and carefully read every one of the readers' comments—focusing on the criticism. Some criticism made no sense, but some criticism really made me sweat with shame. One reader pointed out that the book's structure is loose, and said understandingly, "That's what you get when blog posts are collected into a book; easy to understand..."

In fact, at the end of 2009, that is, half a year after the book was precisely published [Translator's note: the original writes 正是 ("precisely"); 正式 ("formally") is likely meant; translated as written], I already wished to revise it, but suffered from being overwhelmed with numerous things [Translator's note: the original writes 事物 ("things"); 事务 ("affairs") is likely meant; translated as written] and having no way to split myself. However, writing at any moment never stopped, and I wrote a great deal bit by bit. By the end of 2010, I felt that no matter how busy I was, I had to rewrite it.

In the new edition, two major changes were made. The first is removing the preachy tone as far as possible. Although I'm not professionally trained, I worked in teaching for as long as ten years in a row; so achieving this was quite hard for me. But it was necessary, because preaching is always tiresome, whether or not it's reasonable, and whether for the preacher or the preached-to.

The second change is the more important one: after heavy cuts, I added a great deal of content about learning, thinking and communicating, to flesh out the main theme of "using the mind to gain liberation." Originally, when writing the two series "Figure It Out" (想明白) and "I Have Something to Say Too" (我也有话要说), I planned to write two independent books. But in the end I decided to merge the essential content of these two series into the new edition of Make Time Your Friend, because publishing one or two more books isn't my goal; my goal is to pass on the content that should be passed on.

At this same time [Translator's note: the original writes 于此同时 ("at this same time"); 与此同时 ("at the same time") is likely meant; translated as written], another book will be published together with the new edition of Make Time Your Friend—Everyone Can Use English (《人人都能用英语》). The latter is the equivalent of a "practice edition for a specific field" of the former. If the method of making time your friend is nothing more than "doing the right things in the right way," then in Everyone Can Use English, the right thing is "using English," and the main content of that book is "the right way"—"using."

After a period of struggle, I finally finished organizing and writing the new edition on the evening of February 2, 2011 (Chinese New Year's Eve), which counts as fulfilling a wish. The joy of writing doesn't come from expression, but from the change those words bring—whether for readers or for myself, whether for my surroundings or for my inner self, it's the same. Every word in this book, whether cut or revised, has brought me enormous joy. I also hope they're of real help to readers, and in turn change our lives.

**Li Xiaolai** *Spring Festival 2011, Beijing*

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