I had thought that I should do this without any plan, 我以为不用计划，

　　that this vacuum of time somehow would be wonderful and enticing for idea generation. 空闲本身就很好，使人创新。

　　It was not. I just, without a plan, I just reacted to little requests, not work requests, those I all said no to, but other little requests. 但我错了，没有计划，我会被动的去应付琐碎小事，我不是指工作上的事情，那些我全拒绝了，我是指的其他琐事。

　　Sending mail to Japanese design magazines and things like that. So I became my own intern. 比如说给日本设计杂志写信，就是说，我成了给自己打下手的学徒工。

　　And I very quickly made a list of the things I was interested in, put them in a hierarchy, 很快，我把自己感兴趣的事情列了个清单，把它们分门别类，

　　divided them into chunks of time and then made a plan, very much like in grade school. 分给大块的时间，然后作个计划，就像在小学校做的一样。

　　What does it say here? Monday, 8 to 9: story writing; 9 to 10: future thinking. 计划有什么呢？星期一8至9点：写小说，9至10点，预想未来。

　　Was not very successful. And so on and so forth. 那不是很成功。等等等等。

　　And that actually, specifically as a starting point of the first sabbatical, worked really well for me.  而实际上，作为第一次休假的开始，这些安排很适合我。

　　What came out of it? I really got close to design again. I had fun.  结果呢，我又重新爱上设计了。我自得其乐。

　　Financially, seen over the long term, it was actually successful.  从长远经济角度看，我的第一个长假是成功的。

　　Because of the improved quality, we could ask for higher prices. 由于质量提高，我们可以设更高的价格。

　　And probably most importantly, basically everything we've done in the seven years following 或许最重要的是，基本上，在接下来的七年，

　　the first sabbatical came out of thinking of that one single year.  我们的设计意念俱源自我们休假的那一年。

　　And I'll show you a couple of projects that came out of the seven years following that sabbatical. 请你看看以下几项作品，都是那个长休假之后七年设计的。

　　One of the strands of thinking I was involved in was that sameness is so incredibly overrated. 第一种体会是（在设计品牌时）我们过分强调一致性。

　　This whole idea that everything needs to be exactly the same works for a very very few strand of companies, and not for everybody else. 其实这种凡事必须完全相同的想法，仅仅能对极少数公司行得通，而并非每家公司都合适。