【推荐2】When your work performance is falling, your personal life will certainly be affected.    1    However, if you are equipped with some effective methods, you can absolutely improve your work performance.

Get clear on your goals. With a clear goal in your mind, you are more likely to take action.    2     For each set of goals, decide your own time frame. Refer to these goals on a regular basis and make sure that you are noting the progress you are making.

Plan each day the night before. If you have no daily plan of action, you tend to end up fighting lots of small fires at work.    3     As a consequence, your work productivity suffers. Therefore, it is necessary to take the time to plan for the next day.

    4    You should never spend all your time on the tasks you have to complete each day. Instead, take time out to spend with your colleagues. Therefore, you should make a plan on what you need to do each day and write it in details.

Celebrate your success. Managing your mind is the key to your moving forward. The best way to keep a good state is to celebrate your achievements. You should do this regularly.    5    

In a word, if you want to improve your work performance, you should have a clear action plan and know what needs to be done and how it should be done. If you apply these ways to your life, you will become an excellent performer.

【推荐3】My first newsroom was in a grand building with tall arched windows that dominated a street corner in the small Midwestern city where I worked. Inside, there was a high ceiling. Did this use to be a bank? Many visitors would ask. But it had. in fact, always been a newsroom.

I was young and shy when I first went to work there, and it probably took me a month before I talked to any of the other reporters. But eventually, they became my best friends, the core of my social life.

My second newsroom was the airy top floor of a historic building in the state capital of Maryland. It was smaller and less grand but far more energizing. My colleagues were older. I learned so much about how to be a reporter from overhearing their phone interviews.

This past summer, several American newspapers announced they would be closing their newsrooms. Many local newspapers have gone out of business in recent years, victims of declining circulation and shrinking advertising dollars. Then along came the coronavirus pandemic, and so many of us were sent home to work from there. The pleasant surprise is that we have all succeeded brilliantly in working remotely. But some managers have looked at this success and thought: "Why would we need to return to the newsroom?" I worry that they are making a big mistake. A physical newsroom sends a powerful message to a community： We are here for you. At my first job. strangers could walk right through the door and straight up to my desk. We treasured that visibility.

But I also think about the collaboration—of the times I would overhear colleagues talking about a story and realize that I had some useful information for them. Sometimes, a colleague would see me in the hall and give me a story idea. I can't wait to get back to my newsroom.

【推荐1】It is known that not all heroes wear capes (披风), but Chris Van Dorn does, who has saved dozens of animals in animal shelters (收容所). He has given these animals a second chance of life while dressed as the Dark Knight.

Van Dorn has been a big fan of Batman and grew up watching the TV series about animals. He also became a fan of animal rescue (营救) when his family took in a shepherd dog named Mr. Boots.

“While dressing like Batman is not necessary to rescue animals — anyone can be a superhero by adopting (收养) shelter animals — it does keep the focus on saving animals, not the man behind the cape. The dress just makes everybody happy and smile. It’s special to see Batman walking around, and when they find out that he’s doing a good deed in the world, they get even more excited,” Van Dorn said.

Van Dorn always wanted to be an unknown hero. “When I was first starting out, I would sign everything ‘Bruce Wayne’ and not put my real name out there,” Van Dorn said.

Van Dorn will spend long hours in his Batmobile — a Honda Accord — to take four rescued animals at a time to their new homes. He hopes to be able to buy a large truck so he can transport even more animals. He also hopes to use his pilot’s license as a means to transport animals further away quickly.

Now Van Dorn wants to share what he does with more people, saying, “I challenge anyone to go to their local animal shelter because it’s a sad place, but if you can help out in any way — whether that’s to adopt a dog or just volunteer your time, then you should do it.”

【推荐3】Blue and green honey may look cool, but beekeepers in northeastern France are not happy about their strange-looking new product.

Over the past few months, beekeepers in Ribeauville, a town located in the Alsace region, have noticed that bees there have been making honey in many strange colors. Bees have been returning to apiaries (蜂房)with different colors coating their bodies. The colors then end up polluting the honey.

A recent research showed that a nearby M&M’s factory is behind the change in color. Waste from the factory has been exposing the bees to a number of chemicals. Some of the chemicals are used in the outer shells of the candies, which come in many bright colors.

The local beekeepers do not know if the polluted honey is dangerous to eat, but they are not taking any chances. They are throwing away the candy-colored honey, which means a big loss to local businesses. “For me, it’s not honey,” Alain Frieh, leader of the town’s beekeepers union, tells the Reuters news agency. “It’s not sellable.”

The honey industry in this part of France has been suffering this year. According to Frieh, many bees died last winter or were unable to make honey because of the bad weather. This new problem of colored honey is hurting the beekeepers’ way of life even more.

The region is home to about 2,400 beekeepers and 35,000 colonies of bees, according to Alsace’s chamber of agriculture. The beekeepers harvest approximately 1,000 tons of honey each year, making the product a big part of the region’s economy.

Agrivalor is the company that processes the M&M’s factory’s waste. According to co-manager Philippe Meinrad, the company has been attempting to stop the pollution. “We discovered the problem at the same time they did,” Meinrad said. “We quickly put in place a procedure to stop it.”

【推荐1】I was sitting at my desk when another graduate student in my lab approached me. "Can you help?" he begged. His experiment wasn't working and he desperately needed help. I was a fifth year Ph.D, student, the senior member of the lab at the time. As I had many times before, I gave in and said yes.

I had a hard time saying no to such requests. I was new to the United States, having moved from China for graduate school. I found it difficult to make new friends and discover afterwork activities I enjoyed. My lab-mates served as my primary source of social connection. I feared that if I brushed them off, I'd lose their favor.

After I graduated and started a job in industry, I continued to carry the same attitude with me, and it continued to cost me. It wasn't until my wife gave birth to our first child that I realized how thin I had stretched myself and how misguided my priorities（重要的事）were. While she lay in a hospital bed in the early stages of labor（分娩阵痛）, І sat nearby, busy in correcting a work report on my laptop for my colleague. Hours later, after hearing my daughter's first cry and watching her tiny fingers grab tightly onto mine, it dawned on me that I should have been fully present during my daughter's birth.

From then on, I determined to spare more time for my family by reducing my work tasks and carefully considering each request for help. I sill enjoyed cooperating with others, but I dealt with mutually（共同地）beneficial tasks first, rather than accepting everything that came my way.

I noticed many benefits, and few disadvantages. My daily work schedule was not so crowded. I no longer worked overtime, and I was able to improve my work performance by focusing more on important tasks. I was also pleased to discover that "Sorry, I'd love to help but I have a deadline coming, up", is an acceptable response to a request for assistance. Most colleagues seem to understand.

It's hard to say "no" to those you work with. But I've learned that sometimes that's the best way to avoid too much workload and lead a freer and happier life.

【推荐3】People are always curious about the secret of polyglots — people who speak a lot of languages — about how they make it. So, I decided to meet some polyglots and find that out.

Benny, from Ireland, told me that his method is to start speaking from day one. He learns a few phrases and goes to meet native speakers and starts having conversations with them right away. He doesn’t mind making even 200 mistakes a day, because that’s how he learns.

Lucas, from Brazil, had a really interesting method to learn Russian. He simply added Russian speakers as new friends online, and then opened a chat window with one of them and wrote “Hi” in Russian. And the person replied, “Hi, how are you?” Lucas copied this and put it into a text window with another person, and the person replied, “I’m fine, thank you. How are you?”Lucas copied this back to the first person, and in this way, he had two strangers have a conversation with each other without knowing about it.

I met polyglots who always start by imitating(模仿) sounds of the language and others who always learn the 500 most common words of the language, and still others who always start by reading about the grammar. If I asked a hundred different polyglots, I heard a hundred different methods of learning languages.

As I was listening to these polyglots telling me about their methods, I suddenly realized that the one thing they all have in common is that they simply found ways to enjoy the language-learning process(过程). All of these polyglots were talking about language learning as if it was great fun. So, if you’ve also tried to learn a language and you gave up, thinking it’s too difficult or you don’t have the language talent(天赋), give it another try. Maybe you’re also just one fun method away from learning that language fluently.