【推荐2】Most people fail to achieve their goals because somewhere along the line, they lose focus.     1     And eventually, they give up on their goals. Does this sound familiar to you? Don’t worry. Here are 3 simple techniques you can use to prevent yourself from losing focus on your goals.

    2     All too often, many people make the mistake and believe that the more goals they have, the better. This is wrong. Once, researchers conducted an experiment about the choices of jams and the number of sales. They discovered that the more choices of jams they provided for shoppers, the fewer sales they got. The more options you have, the less likely you can focus better. Therefore, focus on just ONE.

The second technique you can use is this - commit to taking small steps. Success isn’t going to happen overnight. Success is the accumulation of many small steps.     3     It will only make you suffer. Instead, commit to doing a minimum number such as 30 push-ups every day, and then increase gradually.     4     it lowers the resistance, and you are more likely to take action.

The third method is to focus on progress, not results. This is one of the most important distinctions between someone successful and someone who is not. Successful people understand that progress is key, not results.     5     On the contrary, unsuccessful people focus only on getting the result. Whenever they don’t get the result they want, they feel bad, frustrated, and lose their motivation, which eventually makes them give up on their goals.

If you apply these methods, you too, can maintain your focus and reach your goals, slowly, but surely.

【推荐3】This year marks my 21^st as a published author. The media release issued by Penguin for my latest novel says I’ve written 13 books in that time: 12 novels and a collection of short stories. But I have to admit that the media release is wrong.

I’ve written 16 books. Three—thankfully—have never seen the light of day. The first book was rejected by my publisher in 2001. I wrote it in the months after my father died, in great grief. I’d been contracted to write a romantic comedy. Soon after I’d sent off the manuscript, my agent got a call from the publisher. “Is Monica okay?” I was given three months to start afresh. The second rejection came from my husband and my sister, always my first readers. I’d been asked to write a novel for a national reading campaign. The deadline was tight. So I made the central character a sock puppet. My sister and husband read it independently. “Are you okay?” my husband asked. “Is everything all right?” my sister asked. I calmed down, kept one character (not the sock puppet) and wrote a different story. The third book I rejected myself. I’d spent two years writing it, during a deeply sad time for my family. Loss had followed loss: a much-loved brother-in-law, then mother-in-law. Grief surrounded me. The world felt bleak and lonely.

Still, I kept writing. I knew a new idea was always there waiting for me. I began. I stopped. Started again. A novel gradually took shape. A year later, I did more drafts, then sent them to my agents and publishers. That novel, The Godmothers, was published in Australia last October and has just come out in the UK and Ireland.

After 20 years as a writer, I began to understand the creative process. I now know it’s mysterious and unpredictable. It’s influenced by emotion and the outside world in ways I can’t always explore. I have to trust in it, even when it leads me to wrong turns and dead ends. I’m grateful for my three rejections. No one else will ever read them, but that abandoned books helped me find my way through a desolate time. It gave me some purpose.

【推荐1】In this age of cell phones, text messages and computer keyboards, one Scottish school has returned to basics. It’s teaching children the ignored art of writing with a fountain pen. There is no clicking of keyboards in most classrooms at the Mary Erskine and Stewart’s Melville Junior School, although there is a full range of facilities (设施) for computer lessons and technology isn’t being ignored. The school’s headmaster believes the old-fashioned pens have helped strengthen the academic performance and self-respect of his 1,200 pupils.

“The pens improve the quality of work because they force the children to take care, and better work improves self-respect”, headmaster Bryan Lewis said. “Proper handwriting is as relevant today as it ever has been.” Students as young as 7 have been instructed to give up their ballpoint pens and begin to deal with its more artful predecessor. By the time they reach grade five, at age 9, they are expected to write mainly with fountain pens. Lewis said the school’s 7- and 8-year-olds use fountain pens for 80-90 percent of their work, returning to pencils for such subjects as math. “I don’t see fountain pens as old-fashioned or out of date. Modern fountain pens are beautiful to use. It’s not like in the old days of broken metal points and dirtying writing paper,” Lewis said. “We have a particular writing style and we have developed it very carefully and found a way that allows left-and right- handed people to write without dirtying paper.”

Some people argue that handwriting is becoming less important because of the growing use of cell phone text messaging and typing on computers, but the school disagrees. “We talk of the paperless office and the paperless world, but this is not true,” Lewis said. “You still need to have proper handwriting skills.”

【推荐1】A young and fearless child, Thomas Alva Edison wanted to know the inner workings of the world around him and was not afraid to dive (潜水) into the river behind his house to find answers. At five, his curiosity to understand fire ended with the family barn burned down. His dangerous curiosity and endless questions drove his father crazy. But his mother saw something else in her son.

Edison’s “turnabout” really began at age eight. He was registered at Reverend Engle’s school in 1855．The lessons were likely boring to the little boy. He daydreamed through classes.

One day, in front of Edison, Reverend Engle complained that the boy was addled and unable to be taught. Edison ran home in tears. The next day, his mother, Nancy Edison, brought him back to discuss the situation with Reverend Engle. She became angry at the teacher’s ways — Everything was forced on the kids. She said her son was much smart and that she would educate him at home. Surprisingly, this marked the end of Edison’s formal education and the beginning of the great inventor.

Mrs. Edison equipped her son with works of literature and history as well as science that fed his passion (求知). She encouraged Edison’s hands-on experiments. Young Edison applied what he learned to practice. Despite a few explosions and burns that happened at home, Mrs. Edison encouraged her son to go on in that path.

It was the model of discovery and innovation (创新) that Edison learned from his mother that would mark the rest of his creative life. Edison met challenges with his head and hands.

The light of Edison, which has lasted more than a century, might never have reached us were it not for an admirable mother who saw the promise in her son where others only saw problems.

【推荐2】A 71-year-old Swedish man “can’t put into words” how thankful he is for the new technology that quickly flew him into the small category of only ten percent of people who survive sudden heart stopping.

The man now has made a full recovery and returned home, after the speedy delivery of a defibrillator(除颤器)—via autonomous drone(无人驾驶飞机). The company behind the drone pilot project says it’s the first time in medical history, a drone has played an important part in saving a life during a heart stopping.

He was in his driveway when the attack happened. Normally, you have about ten minutes to get help in such a situation. Luckily, a telephone call was immediately placed requesting emergency services and he lived in a region that had partnered with Everdrone’s innovative life-saving programme called EMADE (Emergency Medical Aerial Delivery service). EMADE drones delivered a defibrillator to the scene—and the amount of time from the alarm(警报) until the defibrillator was safely delivered at the doorstep of the incident address was just over three minutes.

Even luckier, a doctor happened to be driving by and stopped to see if he could help. “I was on my way to work at the local hospital when I saw a man collapsed in his driveway and I immediately rushed to help,” says Dr. Mustafa Ali. After the ambulance arrived, the patient was rushed to the hospital.

The man said, “If it wasn’t for the drone I probably wouldn’t be here.”

275,000 patients in Europe and 350,000 in the US, suffer from heart stopping annually. About 70% of heart stopping occur in private homes without defibrillators on site. The chance of survival decreases by 7%—10% with each minute following the collapse(突然倒下)—and as a result, the current survival rate among heart stopping patients is merely 10%.

【推荐2】I am not a typical graduate student. As an engineer, I have designed electronic control systems for more than 30 years, and I had expected to do so until I retired.

My wife is a scientist at the Australian National University (ANU). One year, I accompanied her to a scientific conference. Jochen Zeil, a professor at the ANU who studies animal behavior, captured my interest.

At lunchtime, Zeil and I had a long and very enjoyable discussion about his idea on the fundamentals of insect vision. When we parted, I joked that if he wanted another PhD student, he could count me in. About a month later he emailed me, “Haven’t heard from you Have you enrolled yet?” And that’s how, at the age of 53, I became a part-time doctoral student in biology at the ANU.

My background in biology was decades ago, so I needed to learn the basics fast. Diving into textbooks, I went through an intense “undergraduate course” in my spare time. After a while, I managed to follow the papers I read. But the more I learnt, the more I realized how little I knew. Every paper aroused my interest to read more. It was tiring, and at times frustrating, but fun. I read, and read, and thought, and suddenly things fell into place. Still, being a part-time graduate student wasn’t easy. I forgot the meaning of “spare time” for a while. Now, at the age of 61, my PhD is nearly at an end in itself.

New knowledge enriches you, regardless of how old you are. If you have the opportunity to dive into a new field, just take it.

【推荐3】Emma Rosen had one of the best and most sought-after jobs in the civil service in the UK. 20,000 candidates (候选人) applied, but fewer than 1,000 were offered jobs. But it turned out that she didn’t like sitting at a desk all day, and she struggled to see how what she was doing would make much difference to anything.

Instead of going to work every day and complaining about her job until she reached retirement age, Emma decided to find out what made her happy, what her skills were, and what sort of career would need them. She wrote a list of the jobs she had wanted to do since childhood and set about getting two-week placements (安排) in all of them over a year.

She was 24 years old, and she wanted o have tried out at least 25 different jobs before her 25th birthday. She spent the months before she quit her job saving up her year off, and. spent all her free time setting up the different jobs.

A year later, Emma said her favorites were the jobs that were more creative, relevant to travel or were outdoors. “Things like travel writing, archaeology, farming, working with the police, being a blogger, an explorer and an author,” she said.

“Considering that I am now working as a writer and speaker, communication skills in both verbal (口头的) and written form have been the most important. There were also plenty of more technical skills that I learned, like website design, social media management, building a commercial brand and conducting interviews.”

Emma added she also saw her softer people-focused skills improve. “I could be very adaptable, quickly build relationships and accept change—I could walk into a new team or situation and get on well with everyone. Finally, there were things like showing that I was active, an independent and creative thinker as well as an innovative problem solver—I could certainly show that I could think outside the box!”