【推荐1】When faced with change, most people go down one of two roads: They either respond or react.     1     Reacting, on the other hand, literally means to meet one action with another. It’s instant. Responding creates more space between an event and what you do about it. In that space, you give immediate emotions room to breathe and you gain a better understanding of what is happening. Consequently, you rarely regret responding.     2    

There is plenty you can do internally to cultivate responsiveness. For instance, “affect labeling”, or naming your emotions, helps create space between you and a difficult situation. Meditation (冥想) is also beneficial.     3     You can do all the affect labeling and meditation in the world. Yet if you regularly inhabit reactive environments, it’s hard not to become more reactive.

    4     When I spend too much time on social media, I’m more likely to roar at my children, feel restless, and my competence in thinking deeply worsens significantly. Yet I’m becoming increasingly concerned that it’s not just me, but our entire culture that is making us more reactive at a time when we need our humanity more than ever.

    5     But distinctly naming the problem is an important first step. We can also reduce reactivity by intentionally creating more responsive environments. We can read print books instead of digital versions. We can go to the gym or take walks without phones. If we desire to navigate our challenging times, we must find ways to preserve the space between stimulus (刺激) and response, which is to say we must find ways to preserve our humanity.

【推荐2】How do companies decide who to send overseas?     1     Just find someone with the right background, ask them if they wanted to go, and that was it. So an engineer just needed to be able to offer the technical expertise required to do the job, a manager simply needed to know the right people, an accountant needed to know how the books worked and nothing else. If they could speak English, then they could probably do the job.

But times are changing. More and more overseas assignments are failing. The reason? Lack of intercultural competence. Companies have discovered that finding the right person for the job is much more than simply identifying the person who could have done the job if it had been in their home country.     2     And this failure is more than irritating. It costs companies a lot of money to replace someone who does not fit in.

So how do companies judge if someone has the right competence for a job in another country?     3     Are they interested in other ways of doing things? Can they see advantages and disadvantages, or only their own viewpoint? Sensitivity is a key factor too. Is the person able to deal with other ways of looking at a problem? How do they deal with authority? What about motivation? Are they willing to treat others with respect and understanding? Such questions can be answered partly by the use of questionnaires and interviews, but of course only real experience can give the final answer.

So what else can a company do to make sure that a person is right for an overseas assignment?     4     Experienced colleagues can also be used to ease someone through the first stages. And another key area is to make sure that the relatives receive similar backup and training: it’s no good having a happy employee who is under pressure from his or her partner to come home.

【推荐3】Winter is one of the most magical times of the year to get moving.     1     However, when you wake up in the morning, it can be hard to follow through on an exercise commitment. Here are ways to keep that drive going throughout the cold months.

Work out with a group.     2     This gives you social support and can help with making friends. When you exercise with a group, flaking out (入睡) is no longer an option.

Dress for the weather. When you are working out in the winter, especially if you are exercising outdoors, keep yourself out of the cold in warm layers (层).     3     Make sure the top layer keeps out the snow and rain. If you plan to exercise outside in the dark or in bad weather, where visibility is poorer, wear bright and reflective clothing for safety.

Change up your workout.     4     Doing the same type of training can be demotivating. Those who vary their workout routines are 20% likelier to enjoy the exercise session. Switching up your routine can give you a boost of motivation, and help keep winter workouts fun and enjoyable.

    5     Using phone apps, or a fitbit, or even going low tech and marking your calendar in red pen can help you visualize how you’ve progressed thus far. Finding a system that lets you track your exercise achievements can give you the extra push to get you going when the going gets hard.

New Year’s resolutions are a great opportunity to start an exercise routine. Sure working out during the winter may be an uphill battle, but there are strategies to get us over the hill, and onto a healthier, happier new year.

【推荐1】According to a large study of activity levels and arthritis (关节炎) pain, there seems to be no link between the amount of exercise people do and whether they develop painful osteoarthritis in their knees. But the research couldn’t rule out that high-impact forms of exercise like running bring on the condition.

Osteoarthritis is more common as people get older and is sometimes called a “wear and tear” condition. Arthritic knees often have obvious damage to their cartilage which covers and protects the ends of bones.

Earlier studies have found conflicting (矛盾的) results on whether exercise can make arthritis more likely. So Lucy Gates at the University of Southampton in the UK and her colleagues joined together the results of six such studies, which over 5,000 people took part in who firstly had no knee pain or other sign of arthritis.

At the beginning, people were asked about how much exercise they did, including playing sports, walking and cycling. They recorded the general time spent exercising each week, and their activities were graded by their metabolic equivalent, or MET (代谢当量) scores, a standard way of dividing activities into different types according to how much they raise a person’s metabolic rate.

At the end of the studies, which lasted from five to twelve years, people were also asked if they had developed knee pain or arthritis. The probability of developing arthritis wasn’t associated with activity levels, either by how much time people spent exercising each week or by their total time and MET scores.

“There’s more work to be done on telling apart risk and different types of activity,” says Gates. “The next step is to figure out how different weight-bearing activities might change things. We can’t say there’s no relationship there,” says team member Thomas Perry at the University of Oxford.

【推荐2】Three Ways to Slow Down Myopia

Myopia, which is also known as short-sightedness or nearsightedness, is a growing problem. In fact, a recent study predicts that myopia will affect vision for nearly half of the global population by 2050. Myopia usually begins in childhood and tends to get worse as people get older. This can have a negative impact on one’s everyday life.     1     Here’s how.

First, put the devices away. Data from 145 studies covering 2. 1 million participants revealed that increases in myopia are driven principally by lifestyle. Today’s youth spend a lot of time performing near work activities, often on electronic devices. Of course, it’s unrealistic not to use these devices at all.     2    

Next, go outside. Increased outdoor activity has been shown to slow the onset of myopia by 11%-34%. One possible reason is that components of sunlight activate vitamin D, which may play a potential role in eye growth.     3     This places fewer near-vision demands on young eyes.

    4    Regular glasses and contact lenses (隐形眼镜)can help people see more clearly, but they do not slow down the progression of myopia. However, certain types of contact lenses including soft lenses can slow down the speed at which myopia develops, providing a more effective and efficient treatment option. Just consult your doctor.

Controlling myopia is important because the dependency on glasses can reduce one’s ability to participate actively in sports and other activities.     5    Therefore, take steps to keep your eyes healthy.