Grandma tried to straighten out her fingers.“You know, Ann, I think I am done knitting.” she said.“My fingers just won’t do what I tell them any more.”

I looked at her hands.When I was little, she had taught me how to sew dresses for my dolls and how to embroider (刺绣) the faces of my dolls on the dresses.

But now she can hardly bend her fingers.The doctor said she should keep her hands warm.I made her cups of tea to hold and moved her chair closer to the fire.But it didn’t work.

I wasn’t used to seeing her hands so still.When I came downstairs, her quiet hands made even her voice stay still.I missed her voice more than ever.

I tried to help her find her voice.“Grandma, tell me about when you were a little girl,” I begged, knowing she loved to tell stories.“Tell me about Peti and Zoe.” Peti and Zoe were her brother and sister.“That was so long ago, Ann,” whispered Grandma.“I can barely remember.” But I still remembered her story about Peti cutting off Zoe’s two beautiful long braids (辫子) and then hiding them in the closet.Were those words still moving silently in her head?

Mom was sorting through our clothes for spring.“Ann, take these out to the trash,” Mom said.“There’s no need to keep worn-out clothes.”

I looked sadly at the pile of sweaters and then picked it up.

“Wait,” Grandma said as I walked by her and put the pile downstairs.“Let me see those.”

“Ann, wind the yarn (纱线) of the old sweater into a ball, like this.Then you can use the yarn to knit something new.” Grandma wrapped yarn around and around her fingers, first in one direction and then the other to keep the ball round.

After dinner Grandma fell asleep in her chair.

Mom came downstairs with an old pair of gloves with small holes to add to the pile of sweaters.

Suddenly, the pair of old gloves gave me an idea.

“Your family,” I said, handing the gloves with the faces of Peti and Zoe to Grandma.

6 . How often in your busy life when faced with an issue or a problem do you consider subtraction (减法)?

Every day, with big and small challenges, we ignore a basic way to make things better. We are great at adding to our “to dos”, but we don’t consider “stop-doings”. We collect new-and-improved ideas, but don’t delete the outdated ones.

Do your resolutions more often start with “I should do more of…” than with “I should do less of…”? Do you add new rules in your household or workplace more often than you take rules away? In our striving to improve our lives, our work and our society, we overwhelmingly add.

Leidy Klotz’s Lego bridge test, with two support towers of differing heights, found that almost everyone added a Lego brick to the shorter tower, rather than removing a brick from the longer tower. The valid subtraction solution produced a stronger outcome.

Why do we ignore the option to subtract from what is already there? Why do we fail to use subtraction as a way to change things?

Firstly, behavioural science suggests that our brains are wired to ignore subtraction. Initial studies show that our mental shortcuts have a preference for adding when solving problem. We are tricked by our mindset.

Further, we have a tendency to think addition or subtraction; however, they can be complementary (互补的) ways to make changes.

So we ignore subtraction because it is often harder to think of. Moreover, even when we do manage to think of it, subtracting can be harder to perform.

In chemistry, valency (化合价) refers to an elemental force that is not necessarily visible but helps explain the elements’ behaviour. Psychological valency is the inner attractiveness or strong dislike of something. There is a negative valency around subtracting. Even the word subtraction has a negative valency.

Subtraction is the act of getting to less but it is not the same as doing less. Getting to less often means doing, or at least thinking, more. In your pursuit of success and happiness I encourage you to overcome the tendency to ignore subtraction. Subtracting can be delightful!

It was my job to watch my younger brother, Jack, and sister, Kelly, as we walked home from school.

“I’m tired,” Kelly whined “and hungry.” “Me too,” added Jack So we stopped to rest. “What do you think Mama is cooking?” I asked. “Noodles!” Kelly said. “Barbecue!” said Jack “Come on.” I stood up. “We need to keep walking.”

At a busy corner, I noticed a street banner, reading “First Walking Race to Jasan Park! Climb the Mountain to Win a Washing Machine.”

It might be fun to race. But could I walk fast enough to win?

At home, Mama was working in the kitchen. We had only a single burner stove, so it often took ages to prepare a meal. Sometimes when father came back from work, Mama was still cooking with the single burner stove.

Afterward, Mama and I washed dishes. When Mama pulled out two metal laundry tubs, her smile disappeared. I knew doing laundry hurt Mama’s back and knees. Mama heated a kettle of water on the single burner stove and filled a tub. She filled the other with cold water. Then kneeling, Mama began scrubbing shirts.

Then we carried the wet laundry to the flat roof, where Mama hung it to dry. On roof tops all over the city, clothes and towels danced in the wind. I loved being on the roof with Mama, but I wished we hadn’t had so much housework. Then I would have had more time to play with friends.

How I wish we would have a washing machine! Both Mama and I would be happy.

I remembered the banner and told Mama about it. Mama sighed, ”Maria, many people will enter that race. You can not expect to win.”

On the race day, I woke up early. I laced up my shoes and put on a head band. Mama kissed the top of my head. “Be careful and be safe. Just keep walking!” Mama said.

At the foot of the mountain, large crowds of people gathered.

Then the race began.

With the big cardboard box aside, I rang the doorbell of our house.

10 . Here’s an all-too-familiar situation: You excitedly packed for your beach trip. Luckily, you remembered all the necessities: socks, underwear, a phone charger and your passport, etc. But upon arrival, you realized you forgot to bring your toothbrush. In a new study, researchers suggest offloading important to-do items — for example, by setting reminders on your phone — could clear brain space to better remember the little things, like your toothbrush.

To prove this, the researchers developed a memory task to be played on a touch screen computer. The test was undertaken by 158 volunteers aged between 18 and 71. They were shown 12 numbered circles on the screen, and had to remember to drag some of these to the left and some to the right. The number of circles that they remembered to drag to the correct side decided their rewards at the end of the experiment. One side was “high value’, meaning that remembering to drag a circle to this side was worth 10 times as much money as remembering to drag a circle to the other “low value” side.

Volunteers performed this task 16 times. They had to use their own memory to remember at half of the trials and they were allowed to set reminders on the external digital devices for the other half.

The researchers found volunteers tended to use the digital devices to store details of the high-value circles. And, when they did so, their memory for those circles was improved by 18%. “What was unexpected was that their memory for low-value circles was also improved by 27%, even in those who had never set any reminders for low-value circles,” said Sam Gilbect.

However, results also showed a potential cost to using reminders. When reminders were taken away, the volunteers remembered the low-value circles better than the high-value ones. “Far from causing digital dementia (痴呆), using a memory device can even improve our memory for information that we never saved. But we need to be careful that we back up the most important information. Otherwise, if a memory tool fails, we could be left with nothing but less important   information in our own memory,” Gilbert said.