1 . It was dinner time, yet I hadn’t finished my work for the day. Cheery people who were enjoying their holiday time buzzed around me. But with my head down and headphones in, I had interacted with very few of them. The day passed more like a fast-forwarded video than something that I actually fully experienced.     1    

This was my first week living the digital nomad lifestyle. I had left my corporate role and found freelance (自由职业的) writing work online to afford me the freedom to travel.     2     With enthusiasm, I expected my attitude would also change. Instead, the first surprising realization of my travel journey had hit: despite changing my formal suits to casuals, I was the exact same person I had been at home.

I had prepared excitedly, surfing online about digital nomadism.     3    While you might expect finances to be the biggest killer of this lifestyle, unrealistic expectations are the death blow that I hear about most often. After six years abroad, realism is now the primary message I share.

    4     Instead of an office room, you’ll work from a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean or a sunny rooftop in the heart of Marrakesh. Instead of waiting at the coffee machine next to complaining colleagues, your daily coffee run will lead you down dusty cobblestone streets into tiny cafes. These dreams exist and are waiting for you once you clear customs.

But that’s not all that’s waiting for new digital nomads.     5     At-home life and life on the road can at times feel shockingly similar, or, if bad work habits take over, even worse. It’s an important expectation to understand before you set out on your digital nomad lifestyle: your surroundings will change, but you take you everywhere that you go. No matter how ultra-light you pack.

2 . A role shift—whether a promotion, a move to a new organization, or a fresh challenge in your existing job—can be a huge boost to your career and a chance for you to succeed. You know the drill heading in: Apply your experience and talents to the position, make sure you are accepted by the hierarchy (高层), and get a few big wins in the first couple of months to demonstrate what you can do.

But in today’s hyper-collaborative and dynamic workplaces, successful moves aren’t as easy as they once were, even for the most qualified and hard-working people. Too often, transitional managers and employees don’t live up to their organizations’ expectations. Gartner surveys indicate that a full 49% of people promoted within their own companies are underperforming up to 18 months after those moves, and McKinsey reports that 27% to 46% of transitional executives are regarded as failures or disappointments two years later. They have the right skills and experience. They understand the company’s goals. So why didn’t they quickly excel in their new roles?

We analyzed employee relationships and communication patterns across more than 100 diverse companies and interviewed 160 executives in 20 of them. Our research points to one overlooked prerequisite (先决条件) for transition success: the effective use of internal networks. The people who are the most productive, innovative, and engaged in new roles — the “fast movers” — are those who establish extremely broad, mutually beneficial, uplifting connections from the start. Specifically, they surge rapidly into a broad network; identify how they add value, where they fall short, and who can fill the gaps; create scale; and shape their networks for maximum thriving.

In most cases, individual managers must do these things on their own. Only 43% of people surveyed said their organizations ensured that transitional employees were offered guidance and support. Only about a quarter said their employers encouraged them to build connections early or create networks to address skill gaps. But that should not be the case.

4 . On a chilly autumn morning in the Italian countryside near Larderello, Tuscany, the misty landscape reminded me why the area is nicknamed the Devil’s Valley. The land here is a web of natural cracks in the rock that let a mix of steam and gases reach the surface.

Unlike the rolling hills and cypress-lined roads of other parts of Tuscany, the landscape here is covered with dozens of grey cooling towers puffing white vapors. The deafening roar of a turbine (涡轮机) at the Valle Secolo geothermal (地热的) plant breaks the quietness, but its violent spinning transforms steam rising from underground into energy for 150,000 families in the region. About 30% of Tuscany’s electricity comes from this energy source. After producing electricity, the leftover steam heats water for nearby districts.

This underground energy has recently proved a vital resource. Italy greatly depended on Russian fossil fuels and in 2023 Italians bore the world’s highest household electricity bills. Factories cut down production and households had to turn down their heaters. But residents of the Larderello area spent the winter in warm homes, thanks to the local geothermal plants working 24/7.

Bruno Della Vedova, president of the Italian Geothermal Union, hopes that in the future other Italian regions could benefit from such a resource, which is extremely important when the whole world looks to transition to renewable energy.

While countries like Iceland and Kenya are taking advantage of their geothermal resources, the industry’s growth has made slow progress in Italy. High set-up costs and difficulties in extraction present significant barriers. And new plants often run into opposition from nearby communities over health concerns.

Italy sits on a geothermal sweet spot. Especially below Larderello, as Della Vedova says. A vast reservoir (储备) of steam and water is trapped between Earth’s inner heat and a layer of clay-heavy rocks. High temperatures lead to the formation of steam directly inside the reservoir, providing a significant source of energy.

But while heat from Earth’s core is practically endless, the water it heats within the planet are not. So Della Vedova says restoring underground water supplies and using them sustainably is critical for the future. “We can’t take advantage of a geothermal resource at will,” he says.

Two weeks after my husband and I moved into our new house, he went abroad on a business trip that would take a year. This was the first time I had had to take care of our three-year-olds son Cameron and four-month-old baby Colby alone for so long. I had met a few neighbors, including Karen, Tim and Mike in our new neighborhood, but everyone was busy with their careers. We hardly even spoke.

One afternoon, I glanced out the window and noticed something strange. I walked outside and saw a light green colour in the sky that made my hair stand on end. Before long, the tornado sirens (龙卷风报警器) sounded. I turned on the news to learn of a tornado forming above our town. I was nervous and scared.

“Get into your storm shelters immediately. If you don’t have one, go into a bathroom in your house,” the weatherman soon announced. I rushed to the kids’ room. “We need to get into the bathroom. There’s a big storm outside, and we’ll be safe in here,” I said, trying to sound brave. I then tried hard to pull a mattress over us, but it wouldn’t stay. The baby was crying; the dog was barking. I could hear the wind roaring outside. Fear hit me like never before. I felt anxious and completely alone as the tornado sirens screamed in the distance.

Suddenly, the doorbell rang. It was our neighbour Karen from across the street. “Tim and I are leaving. You and the boys are coming with us,” She said. For a second, I hesitated. Where in the world were they going? If they were getting into their car, I think we’d be better off here. It was raining heavily with bright flashes of lightning. It looked like it would be the end of the world. My kids were firghtened, and I was lost and seemed to be in my dream.

I stood before my door in terrible fear, afraid to move.

I found several other neighbors already in Mike’s storm shelter.

6 . Anger Management

Maybe you have a serious attitude to life, or perhaps you are just angry. Everyone gets angry.     1     The following strategies will help you manage it in more positive ways.

Angry people tend to swear to reflect their inner thoughts.     2     For instance, instead of telling yourself,   “oh, it’s awful, it’s terrible, everything’s ruined,” tell yourself, “it’s understandable that I’m upset about it, but it’s not the end of the world and getting angry is not going to fix it anyhow.”

Don’t say the first thing that comes into your head, but slowdown and think carefully about what you want to say. Listen carefully to what the other person is saying and take your time before answering. At the same time, it’s natural to get defensive when you’re criticized, but don’t fight back.     3    

Give yourself a break.     4     One example is the working mother who has a standing rule that when she comes home from work, for the first 15 minutes “nobody talks to Mom unless the house is on fire.” After this brief quiet time, she feels better prepared to handle demands from her kids without blowing up at them.

Not all anger is inappropriate, and often it’s a healthy, natural response.     5     And it disappoints us to find out that this isn’t always the case. The best attitude to bring to such a situation, then, is not to focus on finding the solution, but rather on how you handle and face the problem.

7 . Born in 1973 in Wenzhou, Jiang Shengnan is the youngest daughter in the family and her name, Shengnan, translates as “better than men”. She was a bookworm as a primary school student and often spent what she calls “a colorful day” at the school library, reading one or two books a day, absorbed in her own world.

Jiang began reading ding Qing Dynasty (1644 — 1911) author Cao Xueqin’s Dream of the Red Chamber in the second l grade, when she did not even fully understand all the characters. She also loved reading history and the first historical books she read were the Chronicles of the Eastern Zhou Kingdoms, stories that are more than 2,280 years old.

In 1996, she wrote her first martial arts novel Modao Fengyun to entertain herself. In 1997, she bought a computer and typed in the manuscript (手稿), but with nowhere to publish, only family and friends read the book.

Jiang focused on women, who were usually overshadowed and presented as simplified characters in Chinese literature, particularly important historical women. She realized that Chinese historical novels tended to focus on emperors, kings, and generals, and women often featured as vehicles, such as virtuous wives and good mothers.

Among the 2, 000 ratings on Douban, a major review aggregator (聚合器) in China, nearly 70 percent of readers gave Jiang’s most famous novel four stars or more out of five. One reader, nicknamed Yinrendeponiang, who gave the novel four stars, commented that, “The book describes the life of China’s first empress dowager (女皇) , through a mix of fiction and history. It details her journey from birth to rule, and how the changes in her life influenced her, shaping her into a kind yet tricky yet tricky individual. She resists others’ control over her...This book not only informs us about her path to growth, but also shows how a woman can achieve success through her own efforts.”

10 . When Colleen Telfer moved to Monash with her two daughters, none of them expected just how much it would change their lives.

It started with buying the small town’s general store and ended with the Telfers volunteering together at a South Australian fire brigade (消防队).

In the first two years of the store, she would see the Monash Country Fire Service (CFS) engines fly past, located just across the road. Whether they were getting into the trucks at a moment’s notice or coming into her shop for a feed, she got to know the brigade and decided to join them.

Her desire to give back was shared by her 20-year-old daughter, Lara. “When the siren (警报器) would go off, I used to hate missing out,” Lara said. The pair joined in February last year, and about a year later they were joined by Colleen’s youngest daughter, 18-year-old Sophie.

As a senior volunteer firefighter, Colleen’s responsibilities have grown to include driving the brigade’s trucks. “I know it is often male-dominated, but don’t look at it like that. Females are just as good as males in any role,” Colleen said.

In November 2021, Georgie Cornish became the first woman to be appointed chief officer for the CFS. Ms. Cornish said there were still misconceptions that women might find it hard to do some jobs. “Women are sometimes better suited to some of those roles,” she said. “It’s very easy for us to assume that strength is everything we need in a firefighter. It’s not. Sometimes it’s agility and nimbleness (敏捷性和灵活性) that we actually need in the jobs we’re going to.”

Being part of something greater has strengthened the Telfers’ mother-daughter connections in more ways than one. “As a mother, you do worry about your children, but we’re not there by ourselves,” Colleen said. “We’ve always got other firefighters around who can help us.”