【推荐1】Reading is the ability to process text, understand its meaning and to integrate it with what the reader already knows. Of all the reading skills speed-reading is a necessary skill in the Internet age. We skim over articles, e-mails and WeChat to try to grasp key words and the essential meaning of a certain text. Surrounded with information from our electronic devices, it would be impossible to cope if we read word by word, line by line. But a new trend calls on people to unplug and enjoy reading slowly, listing benefits beyond the intelligent stimulation.

A recent story from The Wall Street Journal reported on a book club in Wellington, New Zealand, where members meet in a cafe and turn off their smartphones. They sink into cozy chairs and read in silence for an hour. Unlike tradition book club, the point of the slow reading club isn’t exchanging ideas about a certain book, but to get away from electronic devices and read in a quiet, relaxed environment. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Wellington book club is just one example of a movement started by book lovers who miss the old-fashioned way of reading before the Internet and smartphones.

Slow readers, such as The Atlantic’s Maura Kelly, say a regular reading habit sharpens the mind, improves concentration, reduces stress levels and deepens the ability to sympathize. Another study published last year in Science showed that reading novels helps people understand others’ mental states and beliefs, a fundamental skill in building relationships.

Yet technology has made us less attentive readers. Screens have changed our reading patterns from the top-to-right, left-to-right sequence to a wild skimming and skipping pattern as we hunt for important words and information. Reading text punctuated with links leads to weaker comprehension than reading plain text. The Internet may have made us stupider, says Patrick Kingsley from The Guardian. Because of the Internet, he says, we have become very good at collecting a wide range of interesting news, but we are also gradually forgetting how to sit back, reflect, and relate all these facts to each other.

Slow reading means a return to an uninterrupted, straight pattern, in a quiet environment free of distractions. “Aim for 30 minutes a day,” advises Kelly from The Atlantic. “You can squeeze in that half hour pretty easily if only during your free moments, you pick up a meaningful work of literature,” Kelly said. “Reach for your e-reader, if you like. Kindles make books like War and Peace less heavy, not less substantive, and also ensure you’ll never lose your place.”

【推荐3】Charles Wang has been to e mail hell, and returned to tell the tale. His journey there began innocently enough when, as chairman of Computer Associates International, a software company, he first heard how quickly his employees welcomed their new electronic mail system. They were sending messages to one another like crazy. “I said, ‘Let’s check into how people are using it.’”   But instead of a pleasant e mail culture, what had developed was a behavioral nightmare. “It was a disaster,” he says. “My managers were getting 200 to 300 e mails a day each. People were so fond of it that they weren’t talking to each other. They were hibernating, e mailing people in the next room. They were abusing it.” In just a few years, Wang’s high-tech communications system had gone crazy.

To stop that, Wang short circuited the system, taking the astonishing step—considering what his $3.9 billion company does for a living—of banning all e mails from 9:30 a.m. to 12 noon and from 1:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. These hours are now observed as a sort of electronic quiet time. Says Wang: “It worked wonderfully. People are walking the corridors again talking to other people. ”

Almost everyone agrees that e mail is a wonderful invention. It is a convenient, informal medium for conveying messages that well meets human needs. E mail is perhaps the ideal means by which one can run a global project. “It is one of the greatest innovations of the last 20 years,” says Paul Argenti, a professor of management communications at Dartmouth’s Tuck School. But Argenti and others also say it is a medium whose function is confusing, in parts because the process is so easy and informal that people treat it as they do conversation but informal as it may be, e mail is writing and constitutes a permanent record, and because so much of human conversation is nonverbal, e mail messages, especially critical or complex ones, can easily be misunderstood.

【推荐1】As a saying goes, "Don`t use a lot where a little will do." I recently saw a reality show about helping change struggling restaurants. The premise（前提）is that an expert comes in to help save a family business, and in the process helps the owners rebuild their relationships and their lives. In the beginning, the expert suggested the family reduce their menu from multiple pages to just one. They originally created a massive list of selections because they assumed this created more value. But in many instances, less is more.

This is a big part of the philosophy behind the website—Tiny Buddha. I publish one post from the community every day, which allows me to spend a great deal of time with writers. Traditional wisdom of the web suggests that more content leads to more page views, which eventually creates a successful site. Yet I’ve found the opposite is true.

Having a lower quantity allows more time to focus on quality, and also allows more time for connection through comments. In this way, it’s not about building a large community; it’s about developing and improving an engaged one. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no greater success than that. Regardless of your project or dream, the "less is more" philosophy can go a long way in creating value and enabling progress.

You may not have a large number of hours to commit, but this means you are encouraged to prioritize your goals, and that just may help you focus and become the most effective. You may not have abundant resources, but this means your passion and purpose may be your greatest possession, and there`s no limit to what you can accomplish when you invest yourself in a vision（构想）that moves and inspires you. You may not have countless readers or customers, but this means you can focus on providing excellent service, which can be far more valuable than dozens of cursory（粗略的）connections and standard experiences.

Most importantly, when we focus on doing less and doing it well, instead of doing more and assuming it better,we are less scattered（分散的）, more deliberate, less harried, and more attentive. And really, isn’t that what we want? It`s not just the goals and the outcomes we imagine; it’s the happiness and satisfaction we imagine we’ll experience when we get there. It may be the biggest advantage to do less: we create more space to enjoy those things now.

【推荐3】Is your promotion really necessary? Many workers focus their hopes on climbing the scale of their organizations. The prospect of higher pay helps explain their ambition,but so does the greater status that comes with each successive(连续的) title.

This climb can often end in disappointment. The Peter Principle, developed by Laurence Peter for a book published in 1969, states that workers get promoted until they reach their level of incompetence. It makes perfect sense. If you are good at your job, you rise up the career ladder. Eventually, there will be a job you are not good at and at that point your career will stop.

There is another problem with chasing the promotion fantasy. Many companies have a strong tendency to promote the best sales people. Convincing others to buy goods and services is a useful skill, requiring charm and persistence. But, as the authors point out, these are not the same capabilities as the strategic planning and administrative competence needed to lead a sales team.

The research then looked at what happened after these super-salespeople were promoted Their previous sales performance was actually a negative indicator of managerial success.The sales growth of workers assigned to the star sellers was 7.5 percentage points lower than for those whose managers were previously weaker performers.

The trick to avoiding this curse is to stick to what you like doing. If you enjoy teaching, don't be a headmaster or college principal. If you like writing articles and columns, editing other people’s work may not give the same degree of satisfaction.

Another problem with pursuing frequent promotions is that it turns you into a supplicant, endlessly in search of favourable feedback from the higher-ups. This can lead you to lose control of your work-life balance. In Charles Handy's new book, 21 Letters On Life And Its Challenges, the experienced management theorist recalls an insight when working for Royal Dutch Shell,an oil giant. "In exchange for the promise of financial security and guaranteed work, I had sold my time to complete strangers with my permission for them to use that time for their own purpose,” he writes.

The higher up the ladder you go, the greater the demands are likely to be on your time.The chief executive will expect you to be available at weekends: after all, that is why you get paid the big bucks.

So that shiny promotion may not be for everyone. Beware the curse of overwork an/dissatisfaction. Some people like to devote their whole lives to their job and be at the centre of events. It is best to let them get on with it.