【推荐2】For years, I have advocated the importance of hard work, determination, persistence, and practice as key ingredients of success. Malcolm Gladwell, who has written The Story of Success, seems to support my theory. He says it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to attain true expertise.

“The people at the very top don’t just work harder than everyone else,” Gladwell writes. “They work much, much harder.” Achievement, he says, is talent plus preparation. Preparation seems to play a bigger role.

For example, he describes the Beatles: They had been together seven years before their famous arrival in America. They spent a lot of time playing in clubs, sometimes for as long as eight hours a night. Overnight success? Not exactly. Estimates are that the band performed 1,200 times before their big success in 1964. By comparison, most bands don’t perform 1,200 times in their careers.

Neurologist Daniel Levitin has studied the formula for success extensively and shares this finding: “The emerging picture from such studies is that 10,000 hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert in anything. In study after study of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, the number comes up again and again. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others do. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems it takes the brain a long time to digest all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”

Two computer giants, Bill Joy, who co-founded Sun Microsystems, and Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, also were proof of the 10,000-hour theory.

The abilities these people possessed were far-ranging, yet the formula for success was the same: hard work and lots of it. Some people just make it look easy. Of course, you probably didn’t see the first 9,999 hours of hard work.

【推荐3】Earlier this year, my husband and I were presented with the chance to make our home in an urban “micro” space. As we initially considered it, it seemed crazy. Would we even make it a week without going mad? Living room, kitchen, office, dining room, all in one small four-walled space.

There were a number of other potential options. We could move out into the suburbs like most people do in our extraordinarily expensive city and have a small yard maybe even a basement. But there was something about this neat “tiny” home that aroused our interest, which challenged us. We like to live differently from the crowd, to avoid what everyone else is doing “just because” everyone else is.

“Let’s try it for six months. If it makes us crazy, we’ll move. We can do anything for 6 months,” my husband said. It was challenging squeezing into the space at first, but then something caught us by surprise. We started having a ton of fun with our tiny space.

In the past, sometimes we had quite different ideas about which art or decorating style we found appealing. But here, in this tiny space, we found ourselves having a ton of fun exploring possible options. There’s no room for clutter(凌乱的东西), either. This is a gift!

It’s been 8 months, and we’re staying. Perhaps forever. When a space is this small, you don’t need to spend much in furnishing it, and you can’t keep endlessly buying things. There’s nowhere to put them!

This leaves us more financial resources and more time to go out into the much bigger world and enjoy life. For us, living in a “tiny” home has filled us with a feeling of abundance. It’s so much better than feeling weighed down, paying for a big space and more and more things. I highly recommend it.

【推荐1】Goals can give your life purpose and direction as well as motivate(激励) healthy behaviors focused on improving your life.     1    .

Break your goal into smaller goals

    2    . Therefore, it can be helpful to divide you final goal into a series of smaller goals that you can achieve in the near future. Think of these smaller goals as the stepping stones that will eventually take you towards the larger goal.

Think about what is driving your goal

When you set large goal that may take some time to achieve, you can sometimes forget why you set that goal in the first place.     3    . To prevent this, try to think of why you set this goal. What is driving your search for this goal?

Reward yourself for making progress

Once you achieve a goal, you may quickly move on to the next goal.     4    . Reward yourself. Take yourself out to dinner or buy yourself a gift. Do something that marks the progress you have made.

    5    

Sometimes you may realize you no longer want that goal. Your interests may have changed or other goals may take priority (优先). It can be hard to abandon a goal, especially after a lot of hard work has been put into and you have made some achievements. Permit yourself to focus attention on other goals. You are not giving up. You are just changing your focus.

【推荐2】Almost all of us are guilty about spending too much time on our smart devices and not enough time enjoying the world around us. We know that a little bit of truth might be hard to take in and you might be thinking of shutting off your device now out of guilt.     1     We’ve got some tips on limiting your screen time so you can improve your quality of life.

One of the keys to cutting down your screen time is to be disciplined. Picking out a period of time each day to step away from your device is a great way to limit screen time.     2     Of course this won’t prevent you from picking up your device. You’d better turn your device off and place it in another room for the amount of time when you’d like to stay off of it.

    3     Many apps will send you a reminder when it’s time to log off. This feature is easy to set up and holds you accountable for managing your time.

Many devices provide a screen time report for you, which gives you the average hours you spend on your screen. Through the report, you know which apps you are using and how frequently you use them. Monitoring this will help you be aware of the amount of time you spend on your device.     4    

We understand that in the digital age, you need to use your devices for schoolwork. However, we also understand how distracting (令人分心的) they can be.     5     In this way, you’re sure to be on the right track for success in your academic and personal life.

【推荐3】In the 13th century, Marco Polo, the world-known Italian traveler, saw many wonderful things in China. One of the things he discovered was money made of paper. People in the West did not have such kind of money until the 15th century. However, the Chinese began to use it in the 7th century.

Paper was invented by a Chinese man called Cai Lun almost 2,000 years ago. But it was not made in Europe until the year 1,100. Four hundred years later, a German discovered that he could make the best paper from trees. After that, countries, rich in forests, such as Canada, Sweden, America, and Finland, became the most important ones in paper making.

Paper can be used in many ways. The common uses include newspapers, magazines and books. But do you know that paper can be used for keeping warm? In Finland, the farmers wear paper boots to keep their feet warm in the snow. And even houses can be insulated （使绝缘）from heat or cold with paper.

However, we have to understand that paper still comes from trees now. If we keep on wasting so much paper, there will not be any trees left on the earth some day in the near future. Every day people throw away about 2, 800 tons of paper in our city. It takes 17 trees to make one ton of paper. This means that we are cutting down nearly 48,000 trees every day. The fact is that it takes more than 10 years for a tree to grow.

So we must start saving paper right now. We can use both sides of every piece of paper. We can make useful things out of used paper. We can use china cups instead of paper ones. When shopping, we can use fewer paper bags and reuse them if we have some.

In short, we should keep a balance between using paper and protecting trees, and do it now before it is too late.

【推荐1】It's amazing how we grow from careless kids to responsible teens. What happens in the course that makes us responsible now? It's the seed that we sow in the beginning which grows and becomes a huge tree. As I sit here, silently thinking about my growth, I wonder over some questions which don't have an answer but it's because of such unanswerable situations that life has become a roller coaster ride.

As a kid, used to read a lot of story books. In one particular book, I read a story of a bird. From then on, that has become an integral(不可少的) part of my life. It described male bird which takes: a lot of pain to build a nest and the female bird takes shelter in it and nourishes the baby. When the bird learns to fly, the whole family flies off to a different place leaving behind the beautiful nest for other birds to grow their family in it. It made me wonder. How could they so easily sacrifice their house built with so much effort?

One night, when I was deep in sleep, I got this particular dream. I was walking miles on the endless road, totally isolated but lined with beautiful trees on the either side. Fascinated by the greenery, I marched towards it only to end up deeper and deeper into the greenery. I happened to stop upon seeing something. It was a massive, wonderful house. I fell in love with that amazing part of art. Yeah, it was indeed a piece of art with every nook and corner touched artistically and lovingly. I don't know why I felt that it was done lovingly. Maybe because, things turn out to be beautiful only when we put our love into it—just like the food prepared by mom which tastes more delicious with her love.

I explored the house only to fall more in love with it. There was a sloping roof which matched with the greenery around; the large central open courtyard reminded me of the activities that might have taken place there which felt lively even now when it is completely deserted. The small water body that kept the house cool added to the beauty of the house—of course, it was all dried up now. It's really wonderful how such things add life to the spaces which otherwise just become structures. Such liveliness and happening turns the house into a home. They say 'THE HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS', but now began to feel it. This is where my heart belongs. This is what I'm destined to do.

When woke up from the dream, I was clear about everything. I realized where that mile of walk was intending me to lead. I realized what message my dream wanted to convey me. And years later, when finally my turn of choosing my destination came, I simply closed my eyes, held that book in my hand, pressed it against my chest and relived the dream. When I opened my eyes, I was sure what to do. I decided to choose the road -less traveled. Yes, I took up architecture as my profession because this is what I am destined to do. I wanted to do the same thing that the male bird in the story did, to take pain in building a beautiful house and let others stay in it. This is my dream come true and the happiness that I gain now from this profession is indescribable.