【推荐1】At first, I didn’t recognize the symptoms that we all had in common. Friends mentioned that they were having trouble concentrating. It wasn’t burnout — we still had energy. It wasn’t depression — we didn’t feel hopeless. We just felt somewhat joyless and aimless.

It turns out there’s a name for that: languishing.

Languishing is a sense of inactivity and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling (应付) through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield (挡风玻璃).

In psychology, we think about mental health on a spectrum (范围) from depression to flourishing (精力旺盛). Flourishing is the peak of well-being. Depression is the valley of ill-being. Languishing is the neglected middle child of mental health. It’s the emptiness between depression and flourishing — the absence of well-being. You’re not functioning at full capacity. Languishing dulls your motivation, disrupts your ability to focus, and greatly increases the possibility that you’ll cut back on work.

Part of the danger is that when you’re languishing, you might not notice the dulling of delight or the decreasing of drive. You don’t catch yourself slipping slowly into aloneness; you’re indifferent to your indifference. When you can’t see your own suffering, you don’t seek help or even do much to help yourself.

So what can we do about it? People who became more focused on their work managed to avoid languishing. Interrupted attention is an enemy of engagement and excellence. To go beyond languishing, give yourself some uninterrupted time. It clears out constant distractions (分心) and gives us the freedom to focus. And try starting with small wins by focusing on a challenge that matters to you – an interesting project, a worthwhile goal, or a meaningful conversation.

We still have a lot to learn about what causes languishing and how to cure it, but naming it might be a first step. It could help to defog our vision, giving us a clearer window into what had been an unclear experience. It could remind us that we weren’t alone: languishing is common and shared.

By acknowledging that so many of us are languishing, we can start giving voice to quiet despair and lighting a path out of the emptiness.

【推荐2】A new study shows girls and boys as young as seven have the choice of jobs with gender differences. Girls choose jobs based on care and love, while boys choose jobs based on money and power.

Professor Laura Scholes and Dr Sarah McDonald surveyed 332 Year 3 students from 14 Australian schools. They found that the top professions for boys included sports and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) related jobs, while girls, on the other hand, wanted to be teachers or nurses.

Professor Scholes said the influence of gender stereotypes (刻板印象) on such choices begins in early childhood. “Bright pink toys for girls and blue toys for boys are sold on store shelves around the world.” she said, “In the boys’ section, you’ll find science, construction and warfare toys—perhaps a robot or a telescope. In the girls’ section, you’ll see toys related to cleaning, dolls, kitchens, makeup, jewellery and crafts.”

“This results in lower numbers of girls taking STEM subjects at school. In turn, this means fewer women are going to work in the sciences.” Professor Scholes’s comments came as women make up only 2 percent of the STEM workforce, with the biggest gap in the highest-paid jobs of computer science and engineering.

In Australia, some brands are no longer targeting boys or girls with their toys. Danish toy giant Lego last week announced that they would remove gender stereotypes from their toys, after a global study found that 71 percent of boys feared being made fun of for playing with toys marketed at girls. Lego said its products were mainly used by boys, but it promised to work to remove gender preference from its toys and instead market them for both genders.

【推荐3】Smoking is even a tradition in Chinese celebrations. At my wedding, we handed out the traditional candies to people who came. I had said to my wife, Ellen, that handing out packets of cigarettes was wrong, as it just encouraged people to continue a deadly habit. “But it’s traditional,” she replied, “People would think we were mean if we don’t!”

Over the years I’ve been given cigarettes as gifts and have always handed them straight back. This might make me look ungrateful in Chinese eyes, but I can’t understand the logic behind handing someone a gift that will cause them to smell terrible, have awful breath, and even worse, kill them.

This year the university I work at has taken the bold step of making the entire campus “smoke free”. As my students are either doctors doing postgraduates studies, or medical students on their way to being doctors, I thought they would be in favor of such a move, but I was wrong. Many of them have complained to me that they see this as depriving them of their civil rights and that they should be allowed to smoke when and where they like.

When I pointed out to them that cigarettes do harm not only to those smoking themselves, but even to those breathing in second hand smoke, the argument was dismissed with a wave. “Those studies aren’t conclusive”, one doctor replied. “Besides, my grandmother told me that smoking is manly.” Tempting(诱人的) as it was to ask if she was also a doctor, I let the argument go and went off in search of some fresh air.

【推荐2】Today, with most of us owning a smartphone that lets us post on social media wherever and whenever we want, oversharing has become harder to avoid. But the tricky thing is that people usually don’t realize when they’ re oversharing. The problem can only be triggered by our friends and family. A survey showed that every two in three people in the US think their friends share too much on social media.

Oversharing can have negative impacts. For instance, it can put your personal information at risk. When you update your status, or simply recall an experience on social networking sites like WeChat, chances are that you are revealing critical personal information.

According to a survey by Visa Canada, 45% of people aged 18-34 “overshare” their financial information online. “Young people shared payment card information via e-mail, loaned out their cards, and didn’t keep their PIN confidential,” reported CBS. This behavior mirrors similar habits of sharing personal information on social media sites. They’re really not totally aware of who has access to this information and who else can be seeing this information and what could be done with it.

“Oversharing contributes to a larger culture in which such behavior is considered acceptable or even desirable,” said Seidman, associate professor at Albright College in the US. Elizabeth Bernstein, a US-based educator, said that “the great increase of overshare is partially because of the wild use of social media as a subconscious attempt to control anxiety. We actually use a lot of mental energy trying to manage the other person’s impression of us by oversharing.”

Moreover, oversharing online can damage effective communication in real life. “Having such easy access to so many people makes communication superficial,” said Chen, a psychologist at South China Normal University. “In the end, the lack of deep communication hurts strong social bonds, particularly friendships.”

【推荐3】When you love working out, taking a break from exercise can seem a waste of time — there are training plans to follow and goals to be met. So, what’s the problem? According to new research, excessive training can be damaging to mental well-being.

‌“The benefits of regular physical activity are well-established, but it’s possible to have too much of a good thing, says Janet, an expert at physical training. But how do you know if you’re doing too much? ”Over-exercising can mean training for too long or too intensely without enough rest for your personal limits,‌” she says. “Some of us may feel unable to stop.‌” Indeed, one research shows almost 40 percent of us feel guilty if we miss a workout and less than 59 percent regularly take a rest day. So should you be taking more time out?

By exercising beyond your limits, not only could you injure your body and reduce muscle mass, you could also end up feeling anxious, too. Over-exercising can impact your mood, relationships and ability to function in other areas of your life, warns Janet. “Exercise releases the stress hormone cortisol. For most people, this can help you better manage stress levels. Over-exercising, however, can lead to increased levels of cortisol in the blood stream which can lead to poor sleep, depression and problems with memory and concentration.‌”

Still not convinced? If you find it hard to put down your trainers, you’re not alone. Up to 10 percent of endurance athletes are affected by overtraining syndrome, with common effects including muscle soreness, persistent fatigue and even mental breakdown, says Professor James. “In addition, over-exercise can stimulate hyper inflammation, which has a severe effect on brain health.‌” There is a simple solution, however. “It has been shown that exhaustion may be delayed almost indefinitely by frequent and regular short breaks,‌” assures James.