1 . Machines work well at a constant speed—and the faster the better. They are designed and built for it. Whether they are spinning cotton or dealing with numbers, regular, repetitive actions are what they excel at.

Increasingly, our world is being designed by machines, for machines. We adapt to machines and hold ourselves to their standards: People are judged by the speed with which they respond, not the quality of their response. Such ideas are being woven into our culture. “Always on” becomes something to boast of, or aspire to.

Most of us are busy most of the time, if not with work then with family, domestic tasks or our social networks—real and virtual. When I ask people how they are doing, they almost always answer “busy”. Ticking things off the “to do” list becomes a means of defining ourselves.

A few years ago, I became very interested in what it means to pause. I started to notice where pauses show up in my own work and life. For example, I realized that when I was writing, a short walk was a more effective way to break a creative block than concentrating harder.

I realized that a pause is not nothing. It acts as a kind of switch or opening. As Helene Simonsen, a classical musician, says, “Whatever you are doing, if you want something else to happen, you need to pause.” It is not a fixed unit of time. It might be taking a moment before you enter a room, but it could also be a “screen-free Saturday”, a “Think Week” every two years (which works for Bill Gates) or a year-long vacation. However fast you are moving, there is always the chance to pause—to rest, reflect or refresh of course, but also to appreciate, get perspective, connect to others, or have new ideas.

There is more to life than getting things done. Time, as we experience it, varies wildly. A minute eating ice-cream is not the same as a minute doing push-ups. Even time itself isn’t a uniform raw material—as the physics of Einstein shows. Try to let go of the idea that time is linear (直线型), regular and objective, and think of it in the same way we experience it. Instead of setting work and life against each other, use pauses to leaven (为增色) your experience. Pause is like yeast (酵母): you don’t need much, but it is a vital ingredient.

I want to give pauses more visibility, importance and status. My hope is that each of us can use pauses, great and small, to avoid sliding into a mode where we act like poorly performing machines.

2 . How do consumers access, buy and use their favorite products and services? The answer to the seemingly simple question is changing. Traditionally, people often see ownership as the most desirable way to have access to products. However, an increasing number of consumers are paying to temporarily access or share products and services rather than buy or own them Customer behavior towards many goods and services changes from ownership to sharing. This transformation of people’s consumption, habits has made sharing economy grow and it seems that some individuals and companies have already benefited from this trend.

Growth in sharing systems bas particularly been fueled by the Internet with the rise of social media systems. Anyone can be part of the sharing economy. It is reported that of the 44 percent of U.S. adults who are familiar with the sharing economy, 86 percent say it makes life more affordable, 83 percent say it makes life more convenient and efficient, and 78 percent say it builds a stronger community. The central idea of group consumption is simple: Obtain value which remains in goods or services that are not entirely used by their owners.

A recent survey from Pricewaterhouse Coopers, the largest professional service firm in the world, shows this so-called “sharing economy” is growing faster than ever. Although we are not sure about the current size of this market, by 2025, according to Pricewaterhouse Coopers, the sharing economy could represent $335 billion in profit worldwide. Nowadays, well-known examples of successful corporations built on group consumption systems include Airbnb, a San Francisco-based online accommodations marketplace, and Zipcar, a car sharing brand that is now part of the vehicle rental service company.

The speed of its growth suggests that the sharing economy might represent a serious threat to established industries, due to fewer purchases in conventional markets. For consumers, it seems to bold the advantage to unite cost reduction, benefit expansion, convenience and environmental consciousness in one type of consumption. Companies therefore should understand the new situation and manage their operating system in order to adapt to current and future business models to provide new sources of profits within this growing area of the sharing economy.

3 . It had been a long, hard, wonderful day. The two of us had walked from the sea’s edge through the length of a beautiful valley, climbed a superb mountain, travelled its narrow, rocky ridge, and now stood on its final peak, tired, happy and looking for the perfect campsite.

The experienced backpacker has a natural feeling for such things, and our eyes were drawn to a small blue circle on the map. We could not see it from where we were, but we followed our judgement and went down steeply until it came into view.

We were right. It was a calm pool, with flat grass beside it. Gently taking our packs off, we made the first of many cups of tea before putting up our tent. Later that evening, over another cup of tea and after a good meal, we sat outside the tent watching the sun set over a sea dotted with islands, towards one of which a ferry was slowly moving. It is not always so perfect, of course. On another trip, with a different companion, a thoroughly wet day had ended at a lonely farm. Depressed at the thought of camping, we had knocked and asked if we could use a barn as a shelter.

Backpacking could be defined us the art of comfortable, self-sufficient travel on foot. Everything you need is in the pack on your back, and you become emotionally as well as physically attached to it. I once left my pack hidden in some rocks while I made a long trip to a peak I particularly wanted to climb. I was away for nearly three hours and ended up running the last stretch in fear that my precious pack would not be there. It was, of course.

The speed at which the backpacker travels makes this the perfect way to see any country. You experience the landscape as a slow unfolding scene, almost in the way it was made；and you find time to stop and talk to people you meet. I’ve learned much local history from simply chatting to people I met while walking through an area. At the end of a trip, whether three days or three weeks, there’s a feeling of achievement, of having got somewhere under your own power.

4 . You watch a sad film and get caught up in your emotions. You cry your eyes out at the dramatic plot — you feel sad for the characters if they suffer, or happy for them when they are successful. It is only when the movie is over that you realize that what you were watching is not real.

But why couldn’t you accept that when you were so absorbed in the movie? It was reported in Science Daily this week that scientists at Case Western Reserve University, US, discovered that people simply cannot think emotionally and logically at the same time.

It has long been known that something different goes on in our brain when we use logic, rather than responding to something emotionally. Thinking logically is a step-by-step process, in which people make decisions through reasoning and find answers rationally. When we think emotionally or empathize (有同感), we look at things from someone else’s point of view and try to feel their pain.

Now scientists have found that thinking logically and emotionally are like the two ends of a seesaw (跷跷板). When we’re busy empathizing, the part of the brain used for cold, hard analysis is suppressed. And it’s also true the other way round.

To come to this conclusion, scientists gathered 45 people — men and women — to take brain scans as they solved different kinds of puzzles. Some of the puzzles were tough and involved math and physics and others were social problems that required participants to put themselves in other people’s shoes.

Scientists found that when participants were doing a math problem, the region in their brain that is associated with logical thinking lit up, and when asked to make emotional decisions, the region for emotional thinking lit up. But the most interesting part is that when asked to solve problems that required both logical and emotional responses, the participants always used one of the regions at a time while the other one went dark.

“Empathetic and analytic thinking are mutually (相互之间地) exclusive (排斥的) in the brain,” said Anthony Jack, leader of the study. “You don't have to favor one, but cycle efficiently between them, and employ the right network at the right time.”

However, people sometimes ended up using the wrong one. This explains why some people are good at solving complex math problems but have poor social skills. And why even the smartest people get taken in by fake but touching stories.

8 . Styrofoam, or polystyrene, is a light-weight material, about 95 percent air, with very good insulation (隔热) properties, according to Earthsource.org. It is used in products from cups that keep your drinks hot or cold to packaging material that protects items during shipping. With the above good features, Styrofoam still enjoys a bad reputation. It cannot be recycled without releasing dangerous pollution into the air. The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency says it is the fifth-largest creator of harmful waste.

But now the common worms which are usually disgusting can come to the rescue, specifically, mealworms. Scientists from the U. S. and China have discovered that mealworms can digest plastic. One mealworm can digest a pill-sized amount of plastic a day. Study co-author Wei-Min Wu says that in 24 hours, the plastic is turned into carbon dioxide.

Since Styrofoam has no nutrition at all, are the worms hurt by eating plastic? Much to the scientists’ surprise, the study found that worms eating Styrofoam were as healthy as worms eating bran (谷糠). The researchers will study the worm’s eating habits and digesting system, looking to copy the plastic breakdown but on a larger scale. Once the way can be put into practice, it will make a revolutionary difference to the disposal of plastic.

“Solving the issue of plastic pollution is important”, says Wu, a Stanford University environmental engineering instructor. After all, our earth is small and landfill space is becoming limited with too much garbage waiting to be dealt with, he says.

About 33-million tons of plastic are thrown away in the United States every year. Plastic plates, cups and containers take up 25 percent to 30 percent of space in America’s landfills. One Styrofoam cup takes more than 1 million years to recycle in a landfill, according to Cleveland State University.