【推荐1】Picking a career is one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make.    1    The most important factors in choosing a career have to do with who you are as an individual.

Carefully consider the following four factors when deciding on a career path.

Your personality

There are sixteen different personality types. Many career counselors use this to help determine which careers are best for an individual.    2    And these should be considered when we choose a career path.

Your interests

    3    No matter how much money you make, a lack of interest in your career is sure to lead to problems at some point. Does this mean you have to develop your interest as a career? Absolutely not! In fact, not everyone has a very strong interest in a particular subject. You just need to have some level of interest in your work so that you remain enthusiastic.

Your values

Although many career tests focus on personalities and interests, values shouldn’t be ignored during the career planning process.    4    Some common career-related values to consider: independence, security, altruism and creativity expression.

Your natural skills and abilities

If you struggle with math in school, you may want to consider a career that doesn’t require a great deal of math ability. However. Most degree programs include a variety of classes that may or may not relate to your future occupation.    5    

【推荐2】Morning or night? Which time of day do you enjoy the most and are more mentally alert? Whichever one you prefer, there is a name for you.

Early birds or morning larks, as you can guess, are morning people. They have more energy in the morning and are happy to greet the day.     1     Therefore, morning larks tend to hit the day early. As most of society runs on daylight hours, morning larks are seen as productive people. As the saying goes: “The early bird gets the worm.”

    2     These people have the least energy in the morning. They would rather get a few more hours of sleep than rise with the sun. But on the flip side, night owls come alive in the late evening hours. They become energetic and find inspiration in the moonlight. It’s no surprise that they can stay up well into the night.

While all birds are created equal, some night owls wish they could rise earlier.     3    

●People can’t adjust their bedtimes overnight. So for those night owls wishing to rise at dawn, start with a 15-minute change. Go to bed 15 minutes earlier than usual and wake up that much earlier as well. Keep the pattern going until you find yourself rising with the sun.

●Though it may be challenging, start your morning with as much light as possible.     4     See what a difference it makes in helping you start your day.

●    5     Don’t work hard to rise early during the week only to sleep in on weekends. To make the change from owl to lark you need to be consistent (坚持的) and rise early every day.

For the night owls out there, hopefully these tips will make your mornings more bearable.

【推荐3】If students followed a typical academic plan over the course of the year, it is precisely the opposite of what science recommends for lasting learning—one topic was probably limited to one week and another to the next. It is what it sounds like—leaving time between practice sessions for the same material. You might call it deliberate not-practicing between periods of deliberate practice. Space between practice sessions creates the hardness that improves learning.

Iowa State researchers read people lists of words, and then asked for each list to be recited back either right away, after fifteen seconds of practicing, or after fifteen seconds of doing very simple math problems that prevented practicing. The subjects who were allowed to reproduce the lists right after hearing them did the best. Those who had fifteen seconds to practice before reciting came in second. The group distracted with math problems finished last. Later, when everyone thought they were finished, they were all surprised with a sudden quiz: write down every word you can recall from the lists. Suddenly the worst group became the best.

Short-term practicing gave purely short-term benefits. Struggling to hold on to information and then recall it had helped the group distracted by math problems transfer the information from short-term to long-term memory. The group with more and immediate practicing opportunity recalled nearly nothing on the sudden quiz. Repetition, it turned out, was less important than struggle.

It isn’t bad to get an answer right while studying. Progress just should not happen too quickly. For a given amount of material, learning is most efficient in the long run when it is really inefficient in the short run. If you are doing too well when you test yourself, the simple solution is to wait longer before practicing the same material again, so that the test will be more difficult when you do. Frustration is not a sign that you are not learning,but ease is.

【推荐1】All forms of tobacco — cigarettes, pipes, cigars, and smokeless tobacco — are dangerous. It doesn’t help to substitute products that seem like they’re better for you than regular cigarettes, such as filtered or low-tar cigarettes.

The only thing that really helps a person avoid the problems associated with smoking is staying smoke free. This isn’t always easy, especially if everyone around you is smoking and offering you cigarettes. It may help to have your reasons for not smoking ready for times you may feel the pressure, such as “I just don’t like it” or “I want to stay in shape for soccer (or football, basketball or other sport)”．

The good news for people who don’t smoke or who want to quit is that studies show that the number of teens who smoke has dropped evidently. Today, about 23% of high school students smoke.

If you do smoke and want to quit, you have lots of information and support available. Different approaches to quitting work for different people. For some, quitting cold turkey is best. Others find that a slower approach is the way to go. Some people find that it helps to go to a support group especially for teens. These are sometimes sponsored by local hospitals or organizations like the American Cancer Society. The Internet offers a number of good resources to help people quit smoking.

When quitting, it can be helpful to realize that the first few days are the hardest. So don’t give up. Some people find they have a few setbacks before they manage to quit for good.

Staying smoke free will give you a whole lot more of everything — more energy, better performance, better looks, more money in your pocket, and, in the long run, more life to live!

【推荐2】Even before the Internet brought unlimited consumer options directly into our homes, choice had long been seen as the driving force of capitalism (资本主义). The possibility of consumers to choose between competing providers of products and services decides which businesses will grow rapidly and which will bite the dust. The competitive environment caused by consumers’ free choice supposedly drives innovation and efficiency, delivering a better overall consumer experience.

However, recent experiments on consumer behaviour have suggested that too many options can lead to a range of anxieties in consumers—from the fear of missing out (FOMO) on a better opportunity, to the loss of pleasure in a chosen activity (thinking “why am I doing this when I could have been doing something else?”) and regret from choosing poorly. The raised expectations presented by a broad range of choices can lead some consumers to feel ill-informed and indecisive when making a purchasing decision.

Fortunately, randomness offers us a simple way to overcome the choice-related anxieties. When faced with a multitude of choices, many of which you would be happy to accept, throwing a coin may be the better option. This “randomized” strategy can help us to focus on our true preference and sometimes making a quick good choice is better than making a slow perfect one, or indeed making no decision at all.

It’s important to remember that you are not required to follow the randomized decision blindly. The suggested choice is just designed to put you in the position of having to seriously consider accepting the specified option, but doesn't force your hand one way or the other.

For those of us who struggle to make decisions, it’s comforting to know that when struggling with a selection, we can get out a coin and allow it to help. Even if we resolve to reject the outcome, being forced to see both sides of the argument can often kickstart or speed up our decision-making process.