【推荐1】How to Automate New Habits So That You’ll Keep to Them

Anyone who’s tried to add something new to their routine knows one thing: Building new habits isn’t easy.    1    

The good news: There’s a solution, and it’s called automation.    2    For example: If you want to save more but it seems difficult to achieve, try transferring five dollars to your savings account each time you buy lunch during the week. If you want to do more sports but aren’t motivated to go to the gym every day, try doing 5 pushups after each time you use the restroom.

That sounds easy.    3    “Automation works well in developing new behavior patterns     because it involves the use of positive reinforcement(强化), which is one of the most powerful tools for behavior change,” Kahina Louis, a psychologist, tells Shine.

“As you’re engaging in gradual steps toward your goals, you may quickly start to experience feelings of accomplishment and pride that you’re making the changes you wanted to make,” she says. “Those positive feelings are forms of reinforcement, and you are more likely to continue doing things that reinforce you.”

Along with its positive reinforcement, automation emphasizes the impact of small changes in making a big difference. Though we all love the major successes, the small changes along the way are what get us there in the first step.    4     “As you show yourself each small change you’ve made, you’re giving yourself the message that you are capable of accomplishment,” Louis says. “That feeling and self-belief are extremely helpful to have as you continue toward creating new behavior change.”

    5       Take a look at what things you keep doing throughout the day or course of the week   to decide when to add new automation. Louis says, “For example: If you know that you’re always extremely tired after work, then you might consider picking an auto habit that occurs in   your morning routine rather than in the evening.”

Louis also explains that although you should pick a behavior that occurs frequently enough to maximize the opportunities to build towards your goal, try not to choose an already existing behavior that occurs too often-like checking your phone or drinking of water. “You might not even realize you’re doing it, and may then miss a lot of chances to perform the new habit,” she says.

【推荐2】Why You Should Always Store Apples in the Fridge

To fridge or not to fridge? Have you discovered what foods you should take out of your refrigerator and what unexpected items you should store there?     1    

Apples require a little bit of coolness in order to stay fresh in storage for a longer period of time. Cool temperatures alone are often enough to keep your apples fresh for weeks. Keeping apples in a basket in your kitchen is a good visual reminder to get your doctor-recommended one a day. As it turns out, though, storing apples on your countertop could cause them to go bad weeks sooner than if you put them in the fridge.     2     But if you refrigerate them, they can stay fresh for one or two months. That’s essential for reducing food waste, which is why sellers in the United Kingdom are now required to add a refrigerator icon to the packaging of foods like apples that should be kept cold.

    3     Apples should be kept as cold as possible without freezing them. Ideally, you should store them at temperatures that range from 31 to 35 degrees Fahrenheit. Apples start to freeze at about 29 degrees Fahrenheit.

    4     The freshness drawer of your refrigerator. Keep in mind, though, that you shouldn’t store your apples along with other produce. Apples give off ethylene (乙烯), which can cause other fruits and vegetables to spoil.

If you’re not planning on eating all your apples within a few weeks, you might want to consider the variety you buy.     5     Also, for some reason, the sourer apples store longer than the sweeter apples.

【推荐2】Why can’t we stop longing for the good old days?

People in many countries are longing for the good old days. But when exactly were the good old days? Podcaster Jason Feifer devoted an episode of his program to this question. The most popular answer seemed to be the 1950s, so Mr. Feifer asked historians whether Americans in that decade thought it was particularly pleasant. Definitely not. In the 1950s, American sociologists worried that rampant individualism was tearing the family apart. There were serious racial and class tensions, and everyone lived under the nuclear threat.

In fact, many in the 1950s thought that the good old days were to be found a generation earlier, in the 1920s. But in the 1920s, child psychologist John Watson warned that because of increasing divorce races, the American family would soon cease to exist. Many people at the time idealized the Victor inn era, when families are strong and children respected their elders.

Why are human beings always so nostalgia for past eras that seemed difficult and dangerous to those who lived through them? One possibility is that we know we survived past dangers, so they seem smaller now. But we can never be certain we will solve the problems we are facing today. Radio didn’t ruin the younger generation, but maybe the smart phone will.

Another reason is that historical nostalgia is often colored by personal nostalgia. When were the good old days? Was it, by chance, the incredibly short period when you happened to be young? A U.S. Poll found that people born in the 1930s and 1940s thought the 1950s was America’s best decade, while those born in the 1960s and 1970s preferred the 1980s.

This kind of nostalgia has neurological roots. Researchers have found that we encode more memories during adolescence and early adult hood than any other period of our lives, and when we think about the past, this is the period we most often return to. Moreover, as we grow more distant from past events, we tend to remember them more positively.

Obviously, some things readily were better in the past. But our instinctive nostalgia for the good old days can easily deceive us, with dangerous consequences. Longing for the past and fear of the future inhibit the experiments and innovations that drive progress.

Vaccination, steam engines, railroads and electricity all met with strong resistance when they were first introduced. The point isn’t to show how silly previous generations were. The same kinds of anxieties have been expressed in our own time about innovations like the internet, video games and stem-cell research.

And not all fears about the future are unbounded. New technologies do result in accidents, they disturb traditional cultures and habits, and they destroy old jobs while creating new ones. But the only way to learn how to make the best use of new technologies and reduce risks is by trial and error. The future won’t be perfect, but neither were the good old days.

【推荐1】At the start of the 20th century, an American engineer named John Elfreth Watkins made predictions about life today. His predictions about slowing population growth, mobile phones and increasing height were close to the mark. But he was wrong in one prediction: that everybody would walk 10 miles a day.

Today, in Australia, most children on average fall 2, 000 steps short of the physical activity they need to avoid being overweight. In the early 1970s, 40 per cent of children walked to school, while in 2010, it was as low as 15 percent.

The decline is not because we have all become lazy. Families are pressed for time, many with both parents working to pay for their house, often working hours not of their choosing, living in car-dependent neighborhoods with limited public transport.

The other side of the coin is equally a deprivation: for health and well-being, as well as lost opportunities (机会) for children to get to know their local surroundings. And for parents there are lost opportunities to walk and talk with their young scholar about their day.

Most parents will have eagerly asked their child about their day, only to meet with a “good”, quickly followed by “I’m hungry”. This is also my experience as a mother. But somewhere over the daily walk more about my son’s day comes out. I hear him making sense of friendship and its limits. This is the unexpected and rare parental opportunity to hear more.

Many primary schools support walking school-bus routes (路线), with days of regular,   parent-accompanied walks. Doing just one of these a few times a week is better than nothing. It can be tough to begin and takes a little planning-running shoes by the front door, lunches made the night before, umbrellas on rainy days and hats on hot ones-but it's certainly worth trying.

【推荐2】Balancing work and school is not an easy task for me. My first term in college has come and gone and I’ve had to balance a job there, too. I want to cut one loose. Honestly, many times I thought I wanted to drop out of school and just do my job because I needed the money. For a long while I made myself believe that school was getting in the way of my job and money. Not only was I trying to do work and school, but also I was trying to have a social life. Many times I thought that there were not enough hours in the day but I wasn’t managing my time right. Hanging out with friends may have been wonderful but it wasn’t putting money in my pocket or knowledge in my brain. Friends would have to wait. I was back on the see-saw (跷跷板) of balancing work and school.

Scheduling and planning became the key to my success. Setting deadlines and meeting them were important to my college experience. Planning was going well and I felt ready to try and throw a social life back there. I tried to make plans with friends that didn’t conflict with my deadlines. That was actually harder than I thought. So once again my social life had to be put on hold (搁置). My friends were very understanding and encouraged me to do my work. The extra motivation really proved helpful in the end. Some friends would joke that I was all work and no play but sometimes that’s what has to happen to get work done.

As the last term came to an end I can say I learned a lot about college life. Planning is necessary for organization. Drawing up a list of all things I had to do at the beginning of the week and actually completing them made me feel good. Not only have I learned something new about organization, but also I acquired a new tool that I can take everywhere with me and use effectively.