1 . Personal Time Off(PTO)is something my wife and I created after having kids. We learned that，over time，a full life can leave little time for personal rest and for reflection，hanging out with friends，or just being“off. ”So，after a number of years，we make a change. If I can persuade you to take your own PTO，then these might help.

■Schedule it

First of all，one of our favorite family sayings is“schedule it. ”Sounds easy enough，but life gets complicated managing full-time work and full-time family. Put your PTO time on the calendar and you make it a real thing.

■Be flexible and strict

If you can schedule PTO at the same time each week，then all the better. Because our calendar can get rather full，flexibility in scheduling becomes a necessity. But being strict in actually taking the time each week is more important. Skipping it once makes it easier to skip again.

■Take enough time

My typical PTO lasts a couple of hours or longer. Sometimes it might be half the day depending on what I’m doing. The goal is to spend enough time away to 1et your shoulders drop.

■Do what you want to do

Remember，PTO time is about personal time to do what you want to do，not what you have to do. PTO time is about relaxation. Grab a friend and get a beer. Work can wait until tomorrow.

2 . Each year, the women of Olney and Liberal compete in an unusual footrace. Dressed in aprons (围裙) and headscarves, they wait at both towns’ starting lines. Each woman holds a frying pan with one pancake inside. At the signal, the women flip (轻抛) pancakes and they’re off!

This “pancake racing” tradition is said to have started on Shrove Tuesday, 1445, in Olney. Shrove Tuesday is the day before the Christian season of Lent (大斋戒) begins. During Lent, many people decide to give up sugary or fatty foods.

Legend says that in 1445, an Olney woman was making pancakes to use up some of her sugar and cooking fats before Lent. She lost track of time and suddenly heard the church bells ring, signaling the beginning of the Shrove Tuesday service. Realizing that she was going to be late for church, she raced out the door still wearing her apron and headscarf and holding her frying pan with a pancake in it. In the following years, the woman’s neighbors imitated her dash to church, and pancake racing was born.

The rules are simple. Racers must wear the traditional headscarf and apron. They must flip their pancakes twice - once before starting and once after crossing the finish line. After the race, there are Shrove Tuesday church   services. Then Liberal and Olney connect through a video call to compare race times and declare a winner.

In both towns, the races have grown into larger festivals. Olney’s festival is an all-day event starting with a big pancake breakfast. Liberal’s festival lasts four days and includes a parade, a talent show, and contests that feature eating and flipping pancakes. Although the women’s race is still the main event, both towns now hold additional races for boys and girls of all ages.

3 . In an incredible display of compassion and kindness, a man from Turkey was spotted trying to warm a pigeon in the most creative way.

Sabahattin Yılmaz was at home one chilly day. After a rain shower had passed, he noticed something landed on the sill (窗台) outside his window—a cold and wet pigeon. The animal was trembling and soaked; it clearly didn’t have the chance to seek shelter before the rain began. Feeling for the poor pigeon, Yılmaz thought of a way to dry him off.

Rather than pick him up and take him inside to warm up, Yılmaz plugged in a hairdryer and used it to dry off the bird. Little did he know that his neighbor captured the whole moment on video. In the video, Yılmaz can be seen leaning out of his window. He was stretching his arm as far as he can so the hot air can reach the pigeon. The bird willingly let the man warm him up, crouching (蹲伏) to let his outer feathers dry.

Yılmaz told the media that he spent about fifteen minutes drying off the bird. He said he had just opened his window when he saw the pigeon around the corner of the sill. He described it as wet and “about to freeze” from the cold and rainy weather.

After fifteen minutes, Yılmaz gave the pigeon birdseed, which he ate happily. However, the bird remained wet still. “I saw that it was still there so I warmed it up again, after the pigeon recovered again, and after eating a good amount of seed, it flew away,” Yılmaz recalled.

He also didn’t know that he was being recorded at the time and that the video was shared online. He simply did it out of the kindness of his heart. “The pigeon is a living creature and deserved to continue living, that is why I did it,” he said.

4 . It might seem strange to be making predictions about 2021, but one thing is clear: technology has been affected just as much as every other part of our lives. Another clear thing is that today’s most important technology trends will play a big part in helping us deal with and adapt to the many challenges facing us. From the shift to working from home to new rules about how we meet and interact in public spaces, technology trends will be the driving force in managing the change.

One of the major technology trends that are likely to play out this year is 5G and enhanced connectivity. Each successive advance in mobile connectivity from 3G onwards has unlocked new use cases for the Internet. 3G made web browsing and data-driven services useful on mobile devices, 4G led to the growth of streaming video and music platforms as bandwidths (宽带) increased, and 5G, similarly, will open more doors in terms of what is possible.

5G means that services relying on advanced technologies such as augmented (增强的) reality and virtual reality, as well as cloud-based gaming platforms like Google’s Stadia, become a practical thing, anywhere at any time. They also threaten to make cable and fiber-based (光纤) networks redundant, with their need for us to be tied to a particular location.

In short, 5G and other advanced, high-speed networks make other new technologies available anywhere, any time. A great example is Norwegian fishery operator Salmar that uses a 5G network to automate the care and feeding of its fish. Image recognition algorithms (算法) are used to detect which fish are over or under-feeding, and automatically distribute food and medicine needed to keep them healthy. Initiatives like this will become increasingly important during 2021, where businesses look to increase automation across their workforces.

6 . In recent years, Ethiopia has become a regional leader in solid waste management. Last year, the country transformed the landfill (垃圾填埋场) in Addis Ababa into a new waste-to-energy plant, the first such project on the continent. The plant incinerates up to 1, 400 tonnes of waste every day, about 80 percent of the city's rubbish, supplying the capital with 25 percent of its household electricity needs.

However, despite these important steps, challenges remain in Ethiopia. Although the country has permitted the Basel, Stockholm and Rotterdam conventions, laws and policies for environmentally sound management of hazardous (有害的) wastes are still not effective in pre- venting littering waste illegally.

To help Ethiopia meet these challenges, the Chemicals and Waste Management Program is supporting the country with a three-year project to enhance its capacity for sound management of hazardous wastes.

In the initial stages, a project management unit will be formed, made up of many representatives from government departments and private organizations. This unit will be responsible for reviewing and assessing Ethiopia's current legal system, which, despite numerous advances in recent years, does not specifically target the recycling of hazardous waste. Once legal gaps are identified, the project will seek to update existing policies and strategies.

Many people in Ethiopia are not aware of the possible effect of environmental damage and the need to report such crimes to the police. To resolve this pressing issue, Ethiopia will be conducting a series of capacity-building activities, including creating awareness-raising programs, training trainers and providing equipment.

Ethiopia will also work to establish a national mechanism for chemicals and waste management by engaging government departments and civil society groups. Authorities will also make budgetary provisions (预算拨款) in national, regional and institutional planning to ensure funding for these activities is sustainable even after the project's completion.

10 . The pandemic (流行病）has left a lot of families in financial difficulty. Not only have many found it difficult to pay bills, they’ve also had to deal with huge unpaid debts. Thankfully, one very kind-hearted doctor, Omar Atiq, from Arkansas decided to forgive the $ 650,000 debt that his patients still had to pay.

Dr. Omar Atiq closed his clinic in Pine Bluff after 30 years of offering patients radiation therapy (治疗），and CAT scans. While putting his affairs in order，with the help of a debt collection agency, Dr. Atiq realized that his patients were really struggling to pay off their debts. “So my wife and I，as a family，thought about it andlooked at forgiving all the debts. We saw that we could do it and then just went ahead and did it.”

The reasoning behind the decision comes from his understanding toward those he's seen suffer throughout his years as a doctor： “Since I started practicing，I’ve always been rather uncomfortable with sick patients not only having to worry about their own health, quality of life, their longevity，their families and their jobs but also money. That’s always concerned me.” Atiq’s wife, Mehreen, shares his caring nature and supported her husband in his decision.

So Omar sent the following letter at Christmas to around 200 of his patients： Although various health insurances pay most of the bills for the majority of patients，the deductibles (自负额） and co-pays can be burdensome. Unfortunately, that is the way our health care system currently works. My clinic has decided to forgive all the debts owed to the'clinic by its patients.

Omar, the father of four children who are also doctors or becoming doctors, seems to have always put the patients first. “I have never refused to see a patient，not for lack of health insurance or funds nor for any other reason. Tve always considered it a high honor and privilege to be someone’s physician — more important than anything else，’’ Omar shared with the local media.