Feeling overwhelmed by your to-do list can certainly make you unhappy, but a new study released last week suggests that more free time will not actually make people as happy as they commonly believe it will.
The researchers collected data from two large scale surveys, which included more than 35,000 replies. They found that people with up to two hours of free time a day generally had higher levels of well-being than those with less time. But people who had five or more hours of free time a day generally said they felt worse.
So the free-time “sweet spot” might be two to three hours per day, the findings suggest. “While being too busy can cause stress, having more time is not always better,” said Marissa Sharif, an assistant professor at The Wharton School，in a press release.
Experts note, for example, that some adults struggle with the “retirement blues,” which can be due to a lack of stimulation (刺激) and structure, among other things. The “sweet spot” seems to have something to do with how people spend the extra time they have, the researchers behind the new study argue.
They conducted several smaller online experiments. In one they asked participants to imagine having 3½ to seven free hours per day, and to imagine spending that time doing “productive" things (like exercising) or to imagine doing “unproductive” activities (like watching TV). The participants believed their well-being would suffer if they had a lot of free time during the day—but only if they used it unproductively.
Though that experiment was hypothetical, which is one limitation of the new research, it's certainly in line With other researches showing that being in a state of “flow” can be good for people's mental health. In other words, how people use their free time matters.
“In cases when people do find themselves with excessive amounts of spare time, such as retirement or having left a job,” Sharif said, “our results suggest these individuals would benefit from spending their newfound time with purpose.”
1. What's the common belief about “free time”?| A．More free time will bring people much happiness. |
| B．Too much free time will make one feel worse. |
| C．Less free time will make life full. |
| D．One is happy in his free time whatever he does. |
| A．Because they find it struggling to deal with daily life. |
| B．Because they find life is dull with too much free time. |
| C．Because they are not used to retirement life. |
| D．Because their life lacks care and warmth. |
| A．The study lacks data from participants. |
| B．The study doesn't agree with the others. |
| C．The number of participants is small. |
| D．The experiment is imagined. |
| A．Mrs. Wang, retired, spends over six hours watching TV. |
| B．Alex, a salesman, does one hour's reading and another hour's jogging. |
| C．Mr. Yang, a 996 programmer, struggles to find an hour to tutor his son. |
| D．Catherine, a stay-at-home mom, kills her free time purposelessly. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】A food allergy (过敏) is a medical condition that occurs when the body’s protection system perceives certain foods as a threat and responds to them with an allergic reaction.
Symptoms (症状) of a food allergy
Judging a food allergy
Doctors consider a number of factors when investigating a food allergy. Those include both a patient’s symptoms and family history of allergies. A physical examination may be performed to rule out any other conditions.
Treating a food allergy
It may not be possible for a patient to completely avoid foods that induce (导致) an allergic reaction. For minor reactions, you can take some medicine. For severe reactions, however, turn to doctors for help.
The only sure way to prevent an allergic reaction to food is to carefully avoid the allergens. This can be a difficult process. That requires patients to carefully study food labels to ensure the food is safe for them.
| A．Avoiding harm from allergy. |
| B．Preventing an allergic reaction. |
| C．Not everyone knows what a food allergy is. |
| D．But many people don’t know the allergens. |
| E．Other tests can include blood test or oral food challenge. |
| F．An allergic reaction to food usually occurs within minutes. |
| G．For some people, certain allergens can bring a severe reaction. |
【推荐2】“Hello Mother, Dad, and Blanche,” a quiet voice, has clearly been played many times over. “How’s everything at home? I’m recording this from Dallas…” The disc is small, seven inches across, dated October 1954. The old label shows that the speaker’s name is “Gene”. Gene suggests in his minute-long message that he is traveling and tells his family not to worry about him.
This forgotten sound is one of the world’s early “voice mails”. During the first half of the 20th century, these “voice mails” and other messages were recorded largely, pressed onto metal discs and vinyl records (黑胶唱片) and mailed in places all over the world. When Thomas Edison invented the phonograph (留声机) in 1877, he expected a device that could reproduce music and even store languages.
The gramophone, a later form of the phonograph developed by Emile Berliner in 1887, provided a first possibility for recorded sound being used for long distance communication. The practice of sending “voice mails” really got going across the world in the 1930s and 1940s. Back then, families could listen to the messages on repeat — gathering together around the record player whenever one arrived. They could play it proudly again anytime there were guests, but with each play, the needle would scrape away at the grooves (凹槽) until the message could hardly be heard any longer.
Today at Princeton University, professor Thomas Levin is trying to store these sounds of the past. Linguists (语言学家) are particularly interested in “voice mails” because it provides some of the earliest-ever recorded samples of how regular people spoke — their conversational vocabulary, their pronunciation and accents, their sentence structure and their intonation (语调).
1. Why did Gene record his voice in the disc?| A．To let his family know he was OK. | B．To prepare for his experiment. |
| C．To test an old vinyl record. | D．To keep a memory. |
| A．People couldn’t listen to the music in it. |
| B．It couldn’t keep voice in the records very clear. |
| C．The recorded sound would be damaged by the needle. |
| D．The needle of the gramophone must be changed often. |
| A．To research the earliest-ever recorded voice. |
| B．To prove recorded samples are true. |
| C．To learn from famous historical linguists. |
| D．To reproduce the sound of the past. |
| A．The Early Days of Recorded Sound | B．The Importance of “Voice Mails” |
| C．The Development of Our Language | D．The History of “Voice Mails” |
【推荐3】China, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the United States plan to launch (发射) unpiloted spaceships in the next few weeks to fly to Mars. The operations are aimed at searching for signs of ancient, tiny life. Each country hopes the research will help them learn if astronauts could someday visit the red planet.
All the spaceships are expected to reach Mars next February after traveling about 485 million kilometers. Scientists want to find out what Mars was like billions of years ago, when it had rivers, lakes and Oceans, It is not by chance that the three launches are taking place soon. Mars and the earth are now in positions that favor such travel , permitting shorter travel time and less fuel use, The positioning happens about every two years.
The UAE spacecraft is named Amal, an Arabic word for hope. It is set to leave from Japan on Friday. The spacecraft will arrive at Mars in the year that the UAE marks the 50th anniversary of its founding: Controlled from Dubai , the spaceship will study the upper atmosphere of Mars and follow changes in its climate.
China will launch a rover (月球车) and an orbiter sometime around July 23. Chinese officials haven' t released much information about the operation, which is called Tianwen,or Questions for Heaven.
The USA plans to launch on July 30 from Florida. Perseverance, the NASA spaceship, will land in Jezero Crater, the site of an ancient river and lake. The area is Tull of large rocks ,cliffs and sand dunes (沙丘) - all possible threats to Perseverance. It will look for rocks that show signs of past life in the area. It will also test some of the technology that will be needed to send humans to the red planet and bring them home safely.
1. Why have the countries chosen to launch spaceships in the same month?| A．They wish of search for signs of ancient life. |
| B．They can make full use of natural conditions. |
| C．They plan to get to Mars before February. |
| D．They want to test some of the high technology. |
| A．In 2020. | B．In 2021. | C．In 2022. | D．In 2023. |
| A．It aims to study changes in climate. | B．It will be sent to Mars on July 23rd. |
| C．It is to be launched in Jezero Crater. | D．It may face difficulty while landing. |
| A．Culture. | B．Education. | C．Technology. | D．Lifestyle. |
【推荐1】Americans with small families own a small car or a large one. If both parents are working, they usually have two cars. When the family is large, one of the cars is sold and they will buy a van (住房汽车).
A small car can hold four persons and a large car can hold six persons but it is very crowded.
A van hold seven persons easily, so a family with three children could ask their grandparents to go on a holiday travel. They could all travel together.
Mr. Hagen and his wife had a third child last year. This made them sell a second car and buy a van. Their sixth and seventh seat are used to put other things, for a family of five must carry many suitcases (衣箱) when they travel. When they arrive at their grandparents’ home the suitcases are brought into the two seats and then it can carry the grandparents.
Americans call vans motor homes. A motor home is always used for holidays. When a family is traveling to the mountains or to the seaside, they can live in their motor home for a few days or weeks. All the members of a big family can enjoy a happier life when they are traveling together. That is why motor homes have become very popular. In America there are many parks for motor homes.
1. From the passage, a van is also called _________.| A．a motor car | B．a motor home |
| C．a motorbike | D．a big truck |
| A．a baby | B．much money |
| C．more than two children | D．interest in vans |
| A．to travel with all the family members of holiday |
| B．to do some shopping with all the family members |
| C．to visit their grandparents at weekends |
| D．to drive their children to school every day |
| A．they can take people to another city when people are free |
| B．they can let families travel together and have happier holidays |
| C．some people think motor homes are cheap |
| D．big families can put more things in motor homes |
【推荐2】Imagine being at a movie theater. You are watching a movie you’ve been waiting months to see. All of a sudden, a man’s cell phone rings. Not only does the man answer it, he keeps talking on the phone for a long time. Situations like this lead many people to support cell phone blocking (屏蔽) equipment. While this is quite understandable, it’s much fairer and safer to allow people to use their cell phones in movie theaters.
Using cell phones in movie theaters is a matter of culture. If you look around a theater, most people there are not using phones and are enjoying the film they paid to see. The few bad apples are those that are rude in almost all situations. The ones that shout at waiters and cut in line. Putting in the blocking equipment would punish everyone, not just the impolite, but the well-mannered people as well.
Many theaters already have punishments in place for people who use their cell phones in a troublesome way while in movies. At theaters I have been to, they periodically have workers come in and see if there are rude phone users. If they notice anyone breaking theater rules, they have the power to remove people from the area. That’s enough to prevent most moviegoers from using cell phones in an unacceptable way.
Another argument against putting in cellphone blocking equipment is emergency situations. There are times when people might be getting a message that requires them to leave the theater. Some of these might be car accidents, births, deaths, or someone getting locked out etc. All of these are situations that would just require someone to immediately leave the theater.
Putting in cell phone blocking equipment would be unfair to those who know how to use their phones politely. The answer to this problem is to make sure rules are followed, not to prevent everyone in the theater from using their cell phones.
1. Which word can describe the man mentioned in Paragraph 1?| A．Patient. | B．Impolite. | C．Friendly. | D．Strict. |
| A．are rude not just in movie theater |
| B．show no interest in the movies at all |
| C．welcome the blocking equipment |
| D．are much worse than a few bad apples |
| A．are already out of date | B．are proving to be unacceptable |
| C．can keep the theater in order | D．seldom work for most people |
| A．He pays little attention to it. | B．He feels doubtful about it. |
| C．He is uncertain of it. | D．He is against it. |
【推荐3】What parenting style is right for you? Parental Guidance’s expert Dr Justin Coulson breaks down each way you can raise your kids.
Attachment parenting
This is about the parent and the child being as close as possible physically and emotionally. Attachment parenting is usually for babies and young children just learning to walk.
French parenting
French parenting is about allowing adults to live their adult lives while encouraging children to be children, but not interfere (妨碍) with the adults’ lives.
The expectation on children is that if they’re going to interfere, they need to do it in a mature way that respects that the adults have lives to live. French parenting encourages children to do things on their own and also to have high expectations.
Helicopter parenting
Helicopter parents don’t want their children to suffer at all. They do things for their children that they can and ought to do for themselves, especially outside the home.
Free-range parenting
It’s about trusting your children and giving them the skills to find their limits. It’s a pushback against anxious, risk opposing parenting; against helicoptering, making-sure everything-is-OK parenting that so many of us fall victim to.
Routine parenting
Routine parenting is all about arrangement and routine. It improves efficiencies. You get a lot done. Everything has its place and there's a place for everything. But it places high demands on the leader. And too much focus on routine can prevent new ideas, connection and fun.
1. Which style best suits parents with children under 3?| A．Attachment parenting. | B．French parenting. |
| C．Helicopter parenting. | D．Free-range parenting. |
| A．Leaving children in anxiety. |
| B．Expecting too much of children. |
| C．Encouraging children to be independent |
| D．Wishing children to be OK in everything. |
| A．It’s all about arrangement. | B．It’s of little efficiency. |
| C．It takes place everywhere. | D．It discourages creativity. |
